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Now imagine having one of these incomes but having a spouse who is hellbent on moving back to the southeastern U.S. in a year. It’s driving me nuts; I can’t fin

Now imagine having one of these incomes but having a spouse who is hellbent on moving back to the southeastern U.S. in a year. It’s driving me nuts; I can’t find any company in the south that pays anywhere near my current compensation, and a rough calculation indicates that leaving FANG will bump my retirement age from 38 to 65 (never mind the amazing health insurance I’ll be giving up too). It’s like throwing a winning lottery ticket on the ground and walking away. I’m seriously considering commuting by plane in the future, because even with a $200 per day flight, I would still retire a decade earlier than taking a local job.

cletus 7y ago
Surely cheaper housing, education and other costs would compensate for a locally lower income? I don’t know where in the southeast you’re talking snot but I imagine it’s 50-80% cheaper for housing?
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  Here's the central issue with the coast: saving 10% of $350k anywhere is a lot easier than saving 20% of $175k in a dirt-poor county in <Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana>. Partially, this has to do with the desire to retain your absolute peer tier: if your neighbors have PhDs in Alameda, then you want to live with the PhDs in New Orleans. And the Sliver by the River is still expensive. Same holds in Augusta, Jacksonville, wherever.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Those numbers are way off. Th comparison is saving 25+% of $350k vs 50% of $175k. And that's assuming your spouse doesn't work.
- austhrow743 7y ago
  Sure but then you need to go for even cheaper housing when you retire. Instead of going from high cost of living to medium cost of living, you end up going from medium cost of living to low cost of living or worse.
- coldpie 7y ago
  Also higher quality of life. The spouse wants to move for a reason. I wouldn't live in San Francisco for any amount of money.
jamisteven 7y ago
I would divorce before considering working an extra 27 years. If your spouse thinks this is justified then he/she needs to be replaced anyways.
- naikrovek 7y ago
  Yeah because nothing is more important than the acquisition of wealth.
  - philjohn 7y ago
    It's worth mentioning that retiring early is an important goal in and of itself. You can either spend the bulk of your healthy years working towards a far off goal in your 60's, or you can work hard in your 20s and 30s and then spend your only time on this earth doing things that interest you, with your spouse.
    - chinesempire 7y ago
      > or you can work hard in your 20s and 30s and then spend your only time on this earth doing things that interest you, with your spouse What if your spouse wanna spend her 20s and 30s with you, in a place that has a normal cost of living, doing a job that doesn't require you to be on 60hours a week? What if she doesn't wanna wait for you to retire or she doesn't want to retire early (or can't)? What if you spend your 20s and 30s to do the things you like and interest you and then spend the rest of your life working a steady job enjoying your family? It is possible to work hard in your 20s and still have a lot of time to do what you like. It is not possible to do what you like in your 60s with the same energy you had in your 20s. It's not binary, you either work or stay with the people you love doing interesting stuff, you can do both if you realise that retiring at 38 is not that important as a goal.
      - vonseel 7y ago
        > What if your spouse wanna spend her 20s and 30s with you, in a place that has a normal cost of living, doing a job that doesn't require you to be on 60hours a week? I'm not sure 'bout the exact number of hours, but the top comment in this thread already said "In fact you'll typically find significantly better work-life balance at a FAANG than a startup.".
Craighead 7y ago
You make that much at FANG but can't work remotely?
jw_mc 7y ago
It's harder, but not impossible to get this sort of compensation in a remote gig. I recently went through a similar process, needing to move from Seattle to central MD for family reasons, and not wanting a lifestyle-altering commute. E.g. Stripe is high on this list and is very remote friendly.
notacoward 7y ago
Negotiate better terms. I work for a FANG, and my salary is pretty consistent with what's in that list despite the fact that I work from home elsewhere. Sure it's northeast, but that's probably closer to southeast than to west coast at this point. Maybe in southeast you'll take a bit of a salary hit, but probably still make quite a bit more than you can get locally. There are a couple of other downsides, though. One is that you'll probably only be mostly remote. I travel one week a month, which my family can tolerate well enough (one kid in high school) but if your need to be with your family is greater then that could be a bigger issue. The reason I do this is because of downside #2: being the only remote in a team sucks in 90% of cases, even more at FANGs which tend to have extremely remote-unfriendly work flows/habits. A lot of people just can't be weaned away from hallway (across the desk, lunchtime) decisions, nothing written down, each outcome typically presented as a no-longer-debatable fait accompli days or weeks later - no matter how much it screws you or anybody else. Questions asked online get answered hours instead of seconds later, if at all. Code reviews take days instead of hours, again because everybody's attention is exclusively on what's happening in person and also because of time-zone issues which you can't avoid no matter how well you've educated your colleagues. Get used to working west-coast hours at least half the time no matter where you really are, and expect to get dinged on reviews because you can't complete anything collaborative as fast as your peers (short of being such a force of nature that you can overcome the entire org's resistance to change in this area). I know that sounds pretty dire, but that's how you'll earn those big (by local standards) bucks. Only you can decide if it's worth it. Good luck.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  I'm in central Canada and work remotely for an org in the bay area, and this is (generally speaking) true. As the remote worker you're always going to be a step behind. Still totally worth it, financially speaking, but know that your triumphs are smaller and your fuck-ups larger while remote.
  - infinite8s 7y ago
    Hi any chance I could speak to you offline? I am about to start a similar situation and would love to understand your setup. My email is in my profile.
texasbigdata 7y ago
How much of the delta in years is compound growth? Btw Monday to Thursday with a corporate apartment (aka hotel) might he easier.
jerkstate 7y ago
See if you can negotiate a remote work position. I work for one of the companies in this report in a fairly senior position and even though they don't advertise it, they do allow some folks to go remote after a lengthy HR process. If not your current company, figure out which companies will allow it and get a different job, then work there for a year or two to establish a great reputation and then ask for a transfer. Please don't consider commuting daily by plane. The CO2 impact is immense. Heck, even flying 8x or 10x a year or so is a huge impact that requires significant lifestyle adjustment to mitigate.
- auiya 7y ago
  > See if you can negotiate a remote work position If you're lucky and they DO offer a remote position, it will be for 1/4th of your current salary. Bet on it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - notacoward 7y ago
    Do you have any evidence for that claim? I don't have anything broad-based, but I work remotely for one of these companies and make exactly what I would if I worked at HQ. And it's not because I'm some super-awesome negotiator.
    - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
      Gitlab famously publishes a bizarrely micromanaged & comprehensive policy on how they will reduce your salary based on where you choose to move, and they are a fully remote company. It never ceases to amaze me how companies try to argue they shouldn’t pay their top wage everywhere, and how workers are willing to accept this. Especially for a remote-only company where your salary should literally not be based on costs in your home region (since the company is not based there, not paying taxes there, etc.).
      - 7y ago
auiya 7y ago
As someone who worked for a remote FAANG office IN the southeast US, I feel your pain. Rates in this part of the country aren't anywhere near what they are in the bay area sadly. I took a job with fedgov for twice what I was making at FAANG.
- savrajsingh 7y ago
  You mean half?
  - auiya 7y ago
    No. FAANG remote position paid a pittance. Promotion was going to require a relo to HQ. Fedgov paid double what FAANG was paying in the same area believe it or not, and I had no desire to move to SF. Admittedly the barrier to entry is quite a bit higher w/ Fedgov and the work isn't nearly as glamorous.
tvararu 7y ago
> because even with a $200 per day flight, I would still retire a decade earlier than taking a local job You'd get so many air miles too!
heedlessly3 7y ago
HN never ceases to amaze me. Plenty of people here are great at negotiating job offers, but struggle negotiating in relationships. Different skill, set I guess maybe no surprise. Well, either way, figure it out. Go remote, long-distance, invest, build a business, or whatever else you need to do to retire around 40ish. Learn to make sacrifices.
- poulsbohemian 7y ago
  There's more to risk in the relationship negotiations, especially if there are kids involved. You can play potential employers off against each other. You might be able to leave an employer and come back in a few years at a higher compensation level. Try playing off a spouse against their replacement and see how that goes ;-D
  - drblast 7y ago
    It didn't go well.
nabnob 7y ago
Have you considered working at a bank in Charlotte?
chrshawkes 7y ago
No offense, I'd let her go. Speaking from a guy with 14 years of marriage and a subsequent nasty divorce. I have custody of my 2 children as well. You only live once. Retire early.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
are you kidding? that's the dream. Just work for the FANG for 5 years and save 75% of your salary. then you can retire for the rest of your life in the Southeast US. I'd love to be in that position.
whiddershins 7y ago
Do not relocate. Figure something out. Have dual residences. Negotiate negotiate negotiate. Read every relationship book known to mankind. Especially out of fashion things like ”way of the superior man” and such. Read How to Win Friends and Influence people. Do not quit your job.
anon73044 7y ago
How many years to go to hit 38? And what do you plan on doing from ~38~58? Do you plan on sending your kids to a big name school that's going to charge 5-6 figures per semester? As someone who's bearing down on my mid to late 30's, my recommendation is to work you ass off while you're still young and full of energy.
signalremotefac 7y ago
One of the highest paying companies is stripe. They recently annouced that their fifth hub would be remote. https://stripe.com/jobs/search?l=remote https://stripe.com/jobs/search?l=remote

cletus 7y ago

Surely cheaper housing, education and other costs would compensate for a locally lower income? I don’t know where in the southeast you’re talking snot but I imagine it’s 50-80% cheaper for housing?

killjoywashere 7y ago
Here's the central issue with the coast: saving 10% of $350k anywhere is a lot easier than saving 20% of $175k in a dirt-poor county in <Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana>. Partially, this has to do with the desire to retain your absolute peer tier: if your neighbors have PhDs in Alameda, then you want to live with the PhDs in New Orleans. And the Sliver by the River is still expensive. Same holds in Augusta, Jacksonville, wherever.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Those numbers are way off. Th comparison is saving 25+% of $350k vs 50% of $175k. And that's assuming your spouse doesn't work.
austhrow743 7y ago
Sure but then you need to go for even cheaper housing when you retire. Instead of going from high cost of living to medium cost of living, you end up going from medium cost of living to low cost of living or worse.
coldpie 7y ago
Also higher quality of life. The spouse wants to move for a reason. I wouldn't live in San Francisco for any amount of money.

jamisteven 7y ago

I would divorce before considering working an extra 27 years. If your spouse thinks this is justified then he/she needs to be replaced anyways.

naikrovek 7y ago
Yeah because nothing is more important than the acquisition of wealth.
- philjohn 7y ago
  It's worth mentioning that retiring early is an important goal in and of itself. You can either spend the bulk of your healthy years working towards a far off goal in your 60's, or you can work hard in your 20s and 30s and then spend your only time on this earth doing things that interest you, with your spouse.
  - chinesempire 7y ago
    > or you can work hard in your 20s and 30s and then spend your only time on this earth doing things that interest you, with your spouse What if your spouse wanna spend her 20s and 30s with you, in a place that has a normal cost of living, doing a job that doesn't require you to be on 60hours a week? What if she doesn't wanna wait for you to retire or she doesn't want to retire early (or can't)? What if you spend your 20s and 30s to do the things you like and interest you and then spend the rest of your life working a steady job enjoying your family? It is possible to work hard in your 20s and still have a lot of time to do what you like. It is not possible to do what you like in your 60s with the same energy you had in your 20s. It's not binary, you either work or stay with the people you love doing interesting stuff, you can do both if you realise that retiring at 38 is not that important as a goal.
    - vonseel 7y ago
      > What if your spouse wanna spend her 20s and 30s with you, in a place that has a normal cost of living, doing a job that doesn't require you to be on 60hours a week? I'm not sure 'bout the exact number of hours, but the top comment in this thread already said "In fact you'll typically find significantly better work-life balance at a FAANG than a startup.".

Craighead 7y ago

You make that much at FANG but can't work remotely?

jw_mc 7y ago

It's harder, but not impossible to get this sort of compensation in a remote gig. I recently went through a similar process, needing to move from Seattle to central MD for family reasons, and not wanting a lifestyle-altering commute. E.g. Stripe is high on this list and is very remote friendly.

notacoward 7y ago

Negotiate better terms. I work for a FANG, and my salary is pretty consistent with what's in that list despite the fact that I work from home elsewhere. Sure it's northeast, but that's probably closer to southeast than to west coast at this point. Maybe in southeast you'll take a bit of a salary hit, but probably still make quite a bit more than you can get locally. There are a couple of other downsides, though. One is that you'll probably only be mostly remote. I travel one week a month, which my family can tolerate well enough (one kid in high school) but if your need to be with your family is greater then that could be a bigger issue. The reason I do this is because of downside #2: being the only remote in a team sucks in 90% of cases, even more at FANGs which tend to have extremely remote-unfriendly work flows/habits. A lot of people just can't be weaned away from hallway (across the desk, lunchtime) decisions, nothing written down, each outcome typically presented as a no-longer-debatable fait accompli days or weeks later - no matter how much it screws you or anybody else. Questions asked online get answered hours instead of seconds later, if at all. Code reviews take days instead of hours, again because everybody's attention is exclusively on what's happening in person and also because of time-zone issues which you can't avoid no matter how well you've educated your colleagues. Get used to working west-coast hours at least half the time no matter where you really are, and expect to get dinged on reviews because you can't complete anything collaborative as fast as your peers (short of being such a force of nature that you can overcome the entire org's resistance to change in this area). I know that sounds pretty dire, but that's how you'll earn those big (by local standards) bucks. Only you can decide if it's worth it. Good luck.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
I'm in central Canada and work remotely for an org in the bay area, and this is (generally speaking) true. As the remote worker you're always going to be a step behind. Still totally worth it, financially speaking, but know that your triumphs are smaller and your fuck-ups larger while remote.
- infinite8s 7y ago
  Hi any chance I could speak to you offline? I am about to start a similar situation and would love to understand your setup. My email is in my profile.

texasbigdata 7y ago

How much of the delta in years is compound growth? Btw Monday to Thursday with a corporate apartment (aka hotel) might he easier.

jerkstate 7y ago

See if you can negotiate a remote work position. I work for one of the companies in this report in a fairly senior position and even though they don't advertise it, they do allow some folks to go remote after a lengthy HR process. If not your current company, figure out which companies will allow it and get a different job, then work there for a year or two to establish a great reputation and then ask for a transfer. Please don't consider commuting daily by plane. The CO2 impact is immense. Heck, even flying 8x or 10x a year or so is a huge impact that requires significant lifestyle adjustment to mitigate.

auiya 7y ago
> See if you can negotiate a remote work position If you're lucky and they DO offer a remote position, it will be for 1/4th of your current salary. Bet on it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- notacoward 7y ago
  Do you have any evidence for that claim? I don't have anything broad-based, but I work remotely for one of these companies and make exactly what I would if I worked at HQ. And it's not because I'm some super-awesome negotiator.
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    Gitlab famously publishes a bizarrely micromanaged & comprehensive policy on how they will reduce your salary based on where you choose to move, and they are a fully remote company. It never ceases to amaze me how companies try to argue they shouldn’t pay their top wage everywhere, and how workers are willing to accept this. Especially for a remote-only company where your salary should literally not be based on costs in your home region (since the company is not based there, not paying taxes there, etc.).
    - 7y ago

auiya 7y ago

As someone who worked for a remote FAANG office IN the southeast US, I feel your pain. Rates in this part of the country aren't anywhere near what they are in the bay area sadly. I took a job with fedgov for twice what I was making at FAANG.

savrajsingh 7y ago
You mean half?
- auiya 7y ago
  No. FAANG remote position paid a pittance. Promotion was going to require a relo to HQ. Fedgov paid double what FAANG was paying in the same area believe it or not, and I had no desire to move to SF. Admittedly the barrier to entry is quite a bit higher w/ Fedgov and the work isn't nearly as glamorous.

tvararu 7y ago

> because even with a $200 per day flight, I would still retire a decade earlier than taking a local job You'd get so many air miles too!

heedlessly3 7y ago

HN never ceases to amaze me. Plenty of people here are great at negotiating job offers, but struggle negotiating in relationships. Different skill, set I guess maybe no surprise. Well, either way, figure it out. Go remote, long-distance, invest, build a business, or whatever else you need to do to retire around 40ish. Learn to make sacrifices.

poulsbohemian 7y ago
There's more to risk in the relationship negotiations, especially if there are kids involved. You can play potential employers off against each other. You might be able to leave an employer and come back in a few years at a higher compensation level. Try playing off a spouse against their replacement and see how that goes ;-D
- drblast 7y ago
  It didn't go well.

nabnob 7y ago

Have you considered working at a bank in Charlotte?

chrshawkes 7y ago

No offense, I'd let her go. Speaking from a guy with 14 years of marriage and a subsequent nasty divorce. I have custody of my 2 children as well. You only live once. Retire early.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

are you kidding? that's the dream. Just work for the FANG for 5 years and save 75% of your salary. then you can retire for the rest of your life in the Southeast US. I'd love to be in that position.

whiddershins 7y ago

Do not relocate. Figure something out. Have dual residences. Negotiate negotiate negotiate. Read every relationship book known to mankind. Especially out of fashion things like ”way of the superior man” and such. Read How to Win Friends and Influence people. Do not quit your job.

anon73044 7y ago

How many years to go to hit 38? And what do you plan on doing from ~38~58? Do you plan on sending your kids to a big name school that's going to charge 5-6 figures per semester? As someone who's bearing down on my mid to late 30's, my recommendation is to work you ass off while you're still young and full of energy.

signalremotefac 7y ago

One of the highest paying companies is stripe. They recently annouced that their fifth hub would be remote. https://stripe.com/jobs/search?l=remote https://stripe.com/jobs/search?l=remote