4 ms·

The standard conversation that happens around such posts: "Salaries in SV are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is rent, but SV still comes out to be mo

The standard conversation that happens around such posts: "Salaries in SV are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is rent, but SV still comes out to be more profitable" "Salaries in USA are so much higher than elsewhere" - "But so is healthcare, and there's no social safety net" "Salaries in FANG make smart people work on optimizing for clicks instead of doing something more beneficial for the world"

throwawinsider 6y ago
In Germany I earn 30k but my kids attend free public school and I can sleep knowing they won't be shot one day.
stack_underflow 6y ago
One thing I've noticed is that the people making these counter-arguments seem to completely ignore (or don't know about) the ridiculous amounts of equity that $big_tech_co's are handing out. Yes some of those points can be valid, and I understand that not all software companies hand out that much stock or are private and therefore it's harder to depend on, etc. But maybe it's just the bubble of tech that I've existed in within the PNW, but tonnes of people in my circle have built FIRE-level wealth by just having been driven enough to put up with bullshit interviews and staying long enough to get their stock grants. I can say personally I definitely wouldn't have made it to where I did financially had I stayed in Canada, or it probably would've taken me at least 15 years instead of ~5. If you're the type of person for who money can solve a lot of problems, I always suggest considering this as an option. It's solved ~90% of the problems in my life and has bought me years of time to be able to do what I actually want in life.
- ghaff 6y ago
  This is mostly an argument for people who have either gotten a lot of equity at large public tech companies--at least some of them--and/or just had a lot of money in equities, including large public tech companies, over the past 10 years or so. Even if someone hasn't won the FAANG lottery, there are a lot of folks, including those that aren't collecting SV-level comp, who have done pretty well being well-invested in diversified equities.
- tomatotomato37 6y ago
  Equity is great when the stock market is booming, but when it decides to drop off a cliff every decade or so for whatever reason I'd prefer if my actual salary didn't go with it
  - dcolkitt 6y ago
    The thing is, it's very hard to get rich without some sort of equity. Maybe it's not equity in public companies, but almost all wealthy people get to that point by owning something. Whether that's stock options in a startup or a general partnership in a hedge fund or a medical practice or a piece of property that gets developed. All equity comes with risk. Doubly so for the type of equity that generates a lot of wealth. Stability is nice, but expect to pay through the nose for it. The only real exception I can think of are people with exceptional talent in an exceptionally in demand skill. E.g. Tom Brady or Linus Torvalds or a world-class neurosurgeon.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Linus Torvalds makes a lot less than Tom Brady. He basically makes as much as the executive director at the Linux Foundation, something over $600K, but nothing extraordinary by SV standards. And there's no equity associated with the LF.
      - wallflower 6y ago
        I once saw him walking the floor at Comdex (not the main Las Vegas one but in Chicago). Watchig him walking around, shaking hands, and catching up with his old friends at Red Hat and the like, I couldn't help but feel an intangible sense that the guy was happy. Someone who had created something significant out of nothing (This was before Linux really took off in the 90s). I was starstruck. > His fortunes changed in 1999. Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading purveyors of Linux-based software packages tailored for large enterprises, had granted him stock options with no strings attached, thank-yous from entrepreneurs who hoped to grow rich off his creation. When Red Hat went public that year, Torvalds was suddenly worth $1 million. On the day VA Linux (now VA Software) went public, Torvalds was worth roughly $20 million, though by the time he could sell his shares, they were valued at only a fraction of that. > Torvalds hesitated before buying himself his first expensive bauble, a two-seater BMW convertible. "I was a bit nervous about people's reaction," he confesses. "Are they going to think I've gone over to the dark side?" In the end he decided that the shape and price of the hunk of metal he drove to and from work each day was his own business. Despite counsel to the contrary, Torvalds wisely sold all of his stock and spent almost all of the windfall on his home and his cars, trusting that he'd always be able to earn a good salary as an engineer. https://web.archive.org/web/20031127045640/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/linus_pr.html https://web.archive.org/web/20031127045640/https://www.wired...
- laurencerowe 6y ago
  > I can say personally I definitely wouldn't have made it to where I did financially had I stayed in Canada, or it probably would've taken me at least 15 years instead of ~5 This is my experience coming from Britain too, but honestly not sure it's had any great effect on my level of life satisfaction - you can live a pretty comfortable life on software engineer's salary most places. The work available in Silicon Valley is definitely more interesting, but you now work in an office park 30 miles form the city centre and housing has gotten so expensive its driven out a lot of the interesting cultural life.
ketamine__ 6y ago
On balance, anyone remote before the pandemic and traveling the world has probably had a better life than someone with the same skills making double the salary in SV. Just the reduction in poop on sidewalks speaks for itself. Apparently this comment triggered someone lol.
- astrange 6y ago
  San Francisco isn't in Silicon Valley. They're just pretending.
- dang 6y ago
  Scene_Cast2 should add this as a fourth element to their list.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    It will all make it to n-gate.com. Don't worry.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  Maybe this is falling into the trap that OP wanted to avoid but I think you're right. Sure, if I moved to the Bay Area my income would go up by 10-15%. But about half of that would go straight to taxes, and IMO the remainder wouldn't be enough to set me up with a comparable quality of life.
vmception 6y ago
when the deepest financial discussion from the general population is about cost of living, I rest assured that I have no competition
dang 6y ago
You're quite right. I wish we had a more reliable way to downweight such generic responses, which reliably recur on every story related to an ongoing theme. HN threads are much better when they have interesting diffs. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... Of course I need to downweight this subthread too, because metageneric is a subset of generic, plus meta is its own issue.
- Scene_Cast2 6y ago
  Makes sense. My goal with the comment was to shortcut the stuff that's already been discussed. I wouldn't necessarily call this topic "generic". The "gravitational pull" you mention seems like a product of "number of people affected" x "how much of a relatable concern it is"; employment compensation scores high. Apple launches are another example of this.
  - dang 6y ago
    I just mean that as a topic becomes larger and more general, there are fewer new things to say about it.
- clairity 6y ago
  at the risk of wallowing in the meta, sometimes i fantasize about having a button that zaps away all the tropey, partisan, bigoted, and ideological comments (even ones i might nod along with) in one fell swoop, leaving just the ~10 genuinely interesting comments (which seems to be about the average on any given story, regardless of # of comments). can we get a button like that? #downvotingfatigue (i realize this is practically impossible)
notJim 6y ago
My idea has always been that you can take a topic like this, and generate 90% of the discussion using machine learning. If I ever have some time, I will give it a shot, or hopefully someone else does it. Then write a forum software that just fills in the appropriate discussion for each article, and save us all a lot of trouble :)

throwawinsider 6y ago

In Germany I earn 30k but my kids attend free public school and I can sleep knowing they won't be shot one day.

stack_underflow 6y ago

One thing I've noticed is that the people making these counter-arguments seem to completely ignore (or don't know about) the ridiculous amounts of equity that $big_tech_co's are handing out. Yes some of those points can be valid, and I understand that not all software companies hand out that much stock or are private and therefore it's harder to depend on, etc. But maybe it's just the bubble of tech that I've existed in within the PNW, but tonnes of people in my circle have built FIRE-level wealth by just having been driven enough to put up with bullshit interviews and staying long enough to get their stock grants. I can say personally I definitely wouldn't have made it to where I did financially had I stayed in Canada, or it probably would've taken me at least 15 years instead of ~5. If you're the type of person for who money can solve a lot of problems, I always suggest considering this as an option. It's solved ~90% of the problems in my life and has bought me years of time to be able to do what I actually want in life.

ghaff 6y ago
This is mostly an argument for people who have either gotten a lot of equity at large public tech companies--at least some of them--and/or just had a lot of money in equities, including large public tech companies, over the past 10 years or so. Even if someone hasn't won the FAANG lottery, there are a lot of folks, including those that aren't collecting SV-level comp, who have done pretty well being well-invested in diversified equities.
tomatotomato37 6y ago
Equity is great when the stock market is booming, but when it decides to drop off a cliff every decade or so for whatever reason I'd prefer if my actual salary didn't go with it
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  The thing is, it's very hard to get rich without some sort of equity. Maybe it's not equity in public companies, but almost all wealthy people get to that point by owning something. Whether that's stock options in a startup or a general partnership in a hedge fund or a medical practice or a piece of property that gets developed. All equity comes with risk. Doubly so for the type of equity that generates a lot of wealth. Stability is nice, but expect to pay through the nose for it. The only real exception I can think of are people with exceptional talent in an exceptionally in demand skill. E.g. Tom Brady or Linus Torvalds or a world-class neurosurgeon.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Linus Torvalds makes a lot less than Tom Brady. He basically makes as much as the executive director at the Linux Foundation, something over $600K, but nothing extraordinary by SV standards. And there's no equity associated with the LF.
    - wallflower 6y ago
      I once saw him walking the floor at Comdex (not the main Las Vegas one but in Chicago). Watchig him walking around, shaking hands, and catching up with his old friends at Red Hat and the like, I couldn't help but feel an intangible sense that the guy was happy. Someone who had created something significant out of nothing (This was before Linux really took off in the 90s). I was starstruck. > His fortunes changed in 1999. Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading purveyors of Linux-based software packages tailored for large enterprises, had granted him stock options with no strings attached, thank-yous from entrepreneurs who hoped to grow rich off his creation. When Red Hat went public that year, Torvalds was suddenly worth $1 million. On the day VA Linux (now VA Software) went public, Torvalds was worth roughly $20 million, though by the time he could sell his shares, they were valued at only a fraction of that. > Torvalds hesitated before buying himself his first expensive bauble, a two-seater BMW convertible. "I was a bit nervous about people's reaction," he confesses. "Are they going to think I've gone over to the dark side?" In the end he decided that the shape and price of the hunk of metal he drove to and from work each day was his own business. Despite counsel to the contrary, Torvalds wisely sold all of his stock and spent almost all of the windfall on his home and his cars, trusting that he'd always be able to earn a good salary as an engineer. https://web.archive.org/web/20031127045640/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/linus_pr.html https://web.archive.org/web/20031127045640/https://www.wired...
laurencerowe 6y ago
> I can say personally I definitely wouldn't have made it to where I did financially had I stayed in Canada, or it probably would've taken me at least 15 years instead of ~5 This is my experience coming from Britain too, but honestly not sure it's had any great effect on my level of life satisfaction - you can live a pretty comfortable life on software engineer's salary most places. The work available in Silicon Valley is definitely more interesting, but you now work in an office park 30 miles form the city centre and housing has gotten so expensive its driven out a lot of the interesting cultural life.

ketamine__ 6y ago

On balance, anyone remote before the pandemic and traveling the world has probably had a better life than someone with the same skills making double the salary in SV. Just the reduction in poop on sidewalks speaks for itself. Apparently this comment triggered someone lol.

astrange 6y ago
San Francisco isn't in Silicon Valley. They're just pretending.
dang 6y ago
Scene_Cast2 should add this as a fourth element to their list.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  It will all make it to n-gate.com. Don't worry.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
Maybe this is falling into the trap that OP wanted to avoid but I think you're right. Sure, if I moved to the Bay Area my income would go up by 10-15%. But about half of that would go straight to taxes, and IMO the remainder wouldn't be enough to set me up with a comparable quality of life.

vmception 6y ago

when the deepest financial discussion from the general population is about cost of living, I rest assured that I have no competition

dang 6y ago

You're quite right. I wish we had a more reliable way to downweight such generic responses, which reliably recur on every story related to an ongoing theme. HN threads are much better when they have interesting diffs. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... Of course I need to downweight this subthread too, because metageneric is a subset of generic, plus meta is its own issue.

Scene_Cast2 6y ago
Makes sense. My goal with the comment was to shortcut the stuff that's already been discussed. I wouldn't necessarily call this topic "generic". The "gravitational pull" you mention seems like a product of "number of people affected" x "how much of a relatable concern it is"; employment compensation scores high. Apple launches are another example of this.
- dang 6y ago
  I just mean that as a topic becomes larger and more general, there are fewer new things to say about it.
clairity 6y ago
at the risk of wallowing in the meta, sometimes i fantasize about having a button that zaps away all the tropey, partisan, bigoted, and ideological comments (even ones i might nod along with) in one fell swoop, leaving just the ~10 genuinely interesting comments (which seems to be about the average on any given story, regardless of # of comments). can we get a button like that? #downvotingfatigue (i realize this is practically impossible)

notJim 6y ago

My idea has always been that you can take a topic like this, and generate 90% of the discussion using machine learning. If I ever have some time, I will give it a shot, or hopefully someone else does it. Then write a forum software that just fills in the appropriate discussion for each article, and save us all a lot of trouble :)