7 ms·

The distinction between valley culture and everywhere else is never made in these pieces which is a pity. I work in fortune 500s and we’re all 40+ in these comp

The distinction between valley culture and everywhere else is never made in these pieces which is a pity. I work in fortune 500s and we’re all 40+ in these companies. I rarely see 20s.

mcguire 8y ago
And when you do see a 20-something, they're often kind of sketchy, since good ones are preferentially siphoned of into the valley.
- kuhhk 8y ago
  > And when you do see a 20-something, they're often kind of sketchy, That’s not true at all and comes off as elitist. I’ve worked at dozens of Fortune 500 offices for my company, and met some truly talented young (20’s) engineers all over the world. Many don’t want to live in SV, many can’t move because of family, or friends.
- sharemywin 8y ago
  And the shame of it all is all that wasted talent being used tricking people to click on more ads.
galangalalgol 8y ago
I too work in a fortune 500 outside the valley. Occasionally I wonder why we lose so many young coders good and bad to SV. I'll then go check salaries using a job hunting site for the same positions in SV and they pay the same or less after adjusting for cost of living. Is there some magic pool of jobs there that let you retired after 10 years that I am not seeing? I'm coming up on 20 years of writing c++ and I'm not paycheck to paycheck but I couldn't retire yet.
- pedrosorio 8y ago
  http://www.levels.fyi http://www.levels.fyi
- frakr 8y ago
  If you're able to save 10% of your salary for retirement, you're a lot better off in raw dollar amount to work in SV and then move elsewhere at retirement.
- throwaway713 8y ago
  > I'll then go check salaries using a job hunting site for the same positions in SV and they pay the same or less after adjusting for cost of living That's the problem. Salaries on job hunting sites are wildly inaccurate. Glassdoor lists FANG compensation as 2-3x less than what they actually pay. Also, the important metric isn't COL adjusted income; it's the total amount of money that's left over to save/invest after all other expenses. So it doesn't matter that CA has high income tax or that rent costs $50k per year when you're still able to save significantly more than anywhere else in the U.S.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Under specific assumptions: 1) You don’t aspire to own a home here, as that will eat easily 100% or more of your savings. 2) You plan to spend your savings in a cheaper place. USD is a convenient shorthand for purchasing power, but breaks down under huge regional COL differences. A $200k savings account in the Bay Area is like a $50k savings account elsewhere: about enough to think about setting up a middle-class grown-up lifestyle.
    - throwaway713 8y ago
      Both good points that I forgot to mention. I implicitly assumed most people would eventually move away from SV, but if you plan to stay there your whole life, then you'll have a much more difficult time buying a home and/or retiring. And having children adds a whole new dimension of financial difficulties.
      - closeparen 8y ago
        I can’t imagine what else I’d do “after” this. I intend to be with the industry for a full career; unless and until it moves, that means being here.
      - secabeen 8y ago
        It also adds a bunch of social difficulties, unless you try to pull of the entire make-bank/move-elsewhere cycle before they reach elementary school age. Once they are in school, they start making their own friendships and relationships, and it becomes much more impactful for everyone to make that move to the new low-cost area, leaving everything they know behind.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  In addition to salary, you also have the chance of hitting the jackpot when the startup you work at goes public.
- dnautics 8y ago
  I think you don't understand the math here. If you are in your 20s, single, and making six figures, you can rent an apartment with three other people in the bay and pay like 1-1.5k in rent and it's quite nice because you have so much extra capital to spend on top of saving. And there are things to spend it on here. Heck many in their thirties do this.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k Or live in a nice area for 800 a month. Or live in a shit area for 400. SV math does not work out. You are taxed to much. Pay to high rent and have the pleasure of needing a shit map to walk in your city. I keep seeing this same argument about getting to pay 1.5k to live with a bunch of other people to save some money. No thanks.
    - LyndsySimon 8y ago
      > Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k Or in my case, a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of $850. We paid ~$125k for ours, in a semi-rural area, last year. It blows my mind that people would prefer to live in the Valley or elsewhere. I put in my five years in a higher COL area (Charlottesville, VA) to build my earning potential - and then I moved back to where I grew up as soon as I was confident that I could hold down a well-paying remote dev position and could get another one if the need arose. The disparity between the coasts and "middle America" is insane. Working for a company based in the LA area, I make literally 2-3x what my colleagues are making working for local companies - while my employer pays me probably around half of what they'd have to pay for similar talent local to them.
    - selectodude 8y ago
      > SV math does not work out Sure it does. For one, they're taking home an extra thousand dollars per week in SV even after all the taxes. Also, they don't have to live in Birmingham, AL or whatever the hell.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  People end up in non-tech business roles, technology verticals or in other places. For good or ill, people tend to fall out of the funnel as they hop from job to job.
- stale2002 8y ago
  > Is there some magic pool of jobs there that let you retired after 10 years that I am not seeing? Yes there is, actually. It is called "working for one of the big 5 tech companies/or one of the unicorns". 200k+ total comp is the norm for someone with a couple years experience working at one of these places. And god knows how much the people with 10+ years make. A Google L6 (staff engineer) makes something like 450k?
  - lrem 8y ago
    Note that Google (and presumably the others) pay for performance, not tenure. 10 years in you might be L8-9 and earn a million or be L4 and, well, not earn a million ;) Source: I'm keeping a pace of 1 promo / 2 years in Google. I've seen people going both faster and slower (and some stopping at L4, because why bother).
    - jpatokal 8y ago
      Promos at Google get exponentially harder at each level, which also means the mean time between promos increases as you go up. L9 is Senior Director, meaning you're managing hundreds of people, and hitting that in 10 years is highly unlikely.
      - 17896378 8y ago
        The last person I knew who managed thousands of people hit that after 7 years. It's not the norm, but it happens. And with 15 years of experience I was being groomed to be promoted from an L6 to L7 "Uber Team Lead"... it wasn't easy and wasn't coasting, took a ton of very hard very impactful work... but it's possible for a mere mortal.
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    You don’t even need to work for a big-n company to make 200k TC with a few years experience, if that’s your goal.
- Vadoff 8y ago
  Your fortune 500 company pays $250-400k total compensation to young coders (2-9 yrs experience)? Which company is it? You don't? Then you're not paying more or less the same...
  - galangalalgol 8y ago
    Really? Who does that? Bit late to figure it out now. I'm almost 40 and I make way less than that range with 20 years of embedded/hpc c++ experience. But still curious.
    - 17896378 8y ago
      Throway for obv. reasons. Google, Facebook, Netflix, Linkedin, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft etc. typically^H^H^H often pay $400-500k for someone with that much experience who can be a team lead. If you can be a more senior architect-type person, or a manager who manages managers, 7 figures can be within reach (though not easy). This is why you're losing coders to Silicon Valley. If you want a big house, then yeah, that will be $2M and you might be better off making $150k in the midwest. If you're happy with a two bedroom apartment for $4k-$5k/mo, there is no place better.
madengr 8y ago
Ditto, I’m 48 and design hardware at a defense contractor in flyover country. Plenty of people working here 60+.

The distinction between valley culture and everywhere else is never made in these pieces which is a pity. I work in fortune 500s and we’re all 40+ in these companies. I rarely see 20s.

mcguire 8y ago

And when you do see a 20-something, they're often kind of sketchy, since good ones are preferentially siphoned of into the valley.

kuhhk 8y ago
> And when you do see a 20-something, they're often kind of sketchy, That’s not true at all and comes off as elitist. I’ve worked at dozens of Fortune 500 offices for my company, and met some truly talented young (20’s) engineers all over the world. Many don’t want to live in SV, many can’t move because of family, or friends.
sharemywin 8y ago
And the shame of it all is all that wasted talent being used tricking people to click on more ads.

galangalalgol 8y ago

I too work in a fortune 500 outside the valley. Occasionally I wonder why we lose so many young coders good and bad to SV. I'll then go check salaries using a job hunting site for the same positions in SV and they pay the same or less after adjusting for cost of living. Is there some magic pool of jobs there that let you retired after 10 years that I am not seeing? I'm coming up on 20 years of writing c++ and I'm not paycheck to paycheck but I couldn't retire yet.

pedrosorio 8y ago
http://www.levels.fyi http://www.levels.fyi
frakr 8y ago
If you're able to save 10% of your salary for retirement, you're a lot better off in raw dollar amount to work in SV and then move elsewhere at retirement.
throwaway713 8y ago
> I'll then go check salaries using a job hunting site for the same positions in SV and they pay the same or less after adjusting for cost of living That's the problem. Salaries on job hunting sites are wildly inaccurate. Glassdoor lists FANG compensation as 2-3x less than what they actually pay. Also, the important metric isn't COL adjusted income; it's the total amount of money that's left over to save/invest after all other expenses. So it doesn't matter that CA has high income tax or that rent costs $50k per year when you're still able to save significantly more than anywhere else in the U.S.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Under specific assumptions: 1) You don’t aspire to own a home here, as that will eat easily 100% or more of your savings. 2) You plan to spend your savings in a cheaper place. USD is a convenient shorthand for purchasing power, but breaks down under huge regional COL differences. A $200k savings account in the Bay Area is like a $50k savings account elsewhere: about enough to think about setting up a middle-class grown-up lifestyle.
  - throwaway713 8y ago
    Both good points that I forgot to mention. I implicitly assumed most people would eventually move away from SV, but if you plan to stay there your whole life, then you'll have a much more difficult time buying a home and/or retiring. And having children adds a whole new dimension of financial difficulties.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      I can’t imagine what else I’d do “after” this. I intend to be with the industry for a full career; unless and until it moves, that means being here.
    - secabeen 8y ago
      It also adds a bunch of social difficulties, unless you try to pull of the entire make-bank/move-elsewhere cycle before they reach elementary school age. Once they are in school, they start making their own friendships and relationships, and it becomes much more impactful for everyone to make that move to the new low-cost area, leaving everything they know behind.
daveFNbuck 8y ago
In addition to salary, you also have the chance of hitting the jackpot when the startup you work at goes public.
dnautics 8y ago
I think you don't understand the math here. If you are in your 20s, single, and making six figures, you can rent an apartment with three other people in the bay and pay like 1-1.5k in rent and it's quite nice because you have so much extra capital to spend on top of saving. And there are things to spend it on here. Heck many in their thirties do this.
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k Or live in a nice area for 800 a month. Or live in a shit area for 400. SV math does not work out. You are taxed to much. Pay to high rent and have the pleasure of needing a shit map to walk in your city. I keep seeing this same argument about getting to pay 1.5k to live with a bunch of other people to save some money. No thanks.
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    > Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k Or in my case, a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of $850. We paid ~$125k for ours, in a semi-rural area, last year. It blows my mind that people would prefer to live in the Valley or elsewhere. I put in my five years in a higher COL area (Charlottesville, VA) to build my earning potential - and then I moved back to where I grew up as soon as I was confident that I could hold down a well-paying remote dev position and could get another one if the need arose. The disparity between the coasts and "middle America" is insane. Working for a company based in the LA area, I make literally 2-3x what my colleagues are making working for local companies - while my employer pays me probably around half of what they'd have to pay for similar talent local to them.
  - selectodude 8y ago
    > SV math does not work out Sure it does. For one, they're taking home an extra thousand dollars per week in SV even after all the taxes. Also, they don't have to live in Birmingham, AL or whatever the hell.
Spooky23 8y ago
People end up in non-tech business roles, technology verticals or in other places. For good or ill, people tend to fall out of the funnel as they hop from job to job.
stale2002 8y ago
> Is there some magic pool of jobs there that let you retired after 10 years that I am not seeing? Yes there is, actually. It is called "working for one of the big 5 tech companies/or one of the unicorns". 200k+ total comp is the norm for someone with a couple years experience working at one of these places. And god knows how much the people with 10+ years make. A Google L6 (staff engineer) makes something like 450k?
- lrem 8y ago
  Note that Google (and presumably the others) pay for performance, not tenure. 10 years in you might be L8-9 and earn a million or be L4 and, well, not earn a million ;) Source: I'm keeping a pace of 1 promo / 2 years in Google. I've seen people going both faster and slower (and some stopping at L4, because why bother).
  - jpatokal 8y ago
    Promos at Google get exponentially harder at each level, which also means the mean time between promos increases as you go up. L9 is Senior Director, meaning you're managing hundreds of people, and hitting that in 10 years is highly unlikely.
    - 17896378 8y ago
      The last person I knew who managed thousands of people hit that after 7 years. It's not the norm, but it happens. And with 15 years of experience I was being groomed to be promoted from an L6 to L7 "Uber Team Lead"... it wasn't easy and wasn't coasting, took a ton of very hard very impactful work... but it's possible for a mere mortal.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  You don’t even need to work for a big-n company to make 200k TC with a few years experience, if that’s your goal.
Vadoff 8y ago
Your fortune 500 company pays $250-400k total compensation to young coders (2-9 yrs experience)? Which company is it? You don't? Then you're not paying more or less the same...
- galangalalgol 8y ago
  Really? Who does that? Bit late to figure it out now. I'm almost 40 and I make way less than that range with 20 years of embedded/hpc c++ experience. But still curious.
  - 17896378 8y ago
    Throway for obv. reasons. Google, Facebook, Netflix, Linkedin, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft etc. typically^H^H^H often pay $400-500k for someone with that much experience who can be a team lead. If you can be a more senior architect-type person, or a manager who manages managers, 7 figures can be within reach (though not easy). This is why you're losing coders to Silicon Valley. If you want a big house, then yeah, that will be $2M and you might be better off making $150k in the midwest. If you're happy with a two bedroom apartment for $4k-$5k/mo, there is no place better.

madengr 8y ago

Ditto, I’m 48 and design hardware at a defense contractor in flyover country. Plenty of people working here 60+.