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After reading all this, I admit I feel kind of silly for working so hard (50-60h a week on average) to earn my Silicon Valley FAANG comp. I am wondering how mu

After reading all this, I admit I feel kind of silly for working so hard (50-60h a week on average) to earn my Silicon Valley FAANG comp. I am wondering how much survivorship bias is at play here, some ideas look relatively simple compared to the amount they bring in. Or maybe one really has to take the leap of faith and trust that there is demand for virtually anything? Maybe it’s not so simple, my partner opened a small e-commerce store selling some genuinely nice craft she produces, and has been seeing $0 revenues even with some aggressive ads campaigns, so go figure. My job currently compensates me above $1M a year depending on stock price (public FAANG company), so I never even considered it worthwhile to invest my evening/weekend time in a side project, and always funneled every second of non-recreational time back into my job. But maybe I’ve been doing it all wrong when I see people bringing in several thousands a month for minimal time investment after the product is stabilized. To somewhat answer the thread: my “side project” is my investment portfolio of boring index funds, where I funnel all my savings. This year is up about 15% (unrealized gains) and realized income of ~$50k via dividends. Certainly huge congratulations to the business owners, very humbling thread.

sydthrowaway 5y ago
Jesus christ, what is your role and level of experience?
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  Tech lead on backend systems at a FAANG that has been experiencing significant stock growth. 11 years of experience, mid 30s.
  - sydthrowaway 5y ago
    Teach me your ways. Any major tips besides getting lucky?
    - deanmoriarty 5y ago
      No tips, it’s truly all about luck. My job is not particularly difficult or anything, I mostly herd cats all day without producing much, as I am at the whims of massively over engineered systems that are almost impossible to comprehend. The only thing I would say that can affect your luck is to always say yes to any opportunity that has a chance of taking you forward, even if it is incredibly uncomfortable. A couple random decisions I’ve taken in my life that affected my luck: - Relocate at a young age to the US from Europe, leaving a promised incredibly cushy job (imagine well paid, for local standards, European tech job with 60 days off a year etc) for a crappy internship at a no-name American company, with no promises whatsoever. I relocated entirely by myself, leaving family, friends and (ex) partner behind. I am still separated from them. - Took some risks in my career, joining early stage startups to build experience while most of my coworkers would call me crazy for taking a 50% paycut from the job where we were all “stagnating” maintaining old systems. - Accept new work opportunities even if they mess up your life. They said: “Do you want a job for a 50% raise in NYC?”. I said: “Yes Sir, I’ll be there next Monday and throw my San Francisco life down the toilet, break my expensive rental lease and convince my girlfriend who lives with me that we will have a long distance relationship for a while”. - Live a frugal and minimalist life like a college student, it’s easier to take bets in your life when you don’t have a mortgage/car/kids and your monthly expenses are under $3k in a very expensive city. Most people I know would say a sound NO to all the above, and I’m not saying they would be wrong in doing so.
      - GeoAtreides 5y ago
        You sacrificed much for your money. What's your exit strategy?
        deanmoriarty 5y ago
        I don’t have a clear plan for the future, right now I’m just accumulating assets until I get to a point where I can feel financially unbreakable. I might be getting there in ~5 years with some substantial luck, or never if shit hits the fan. I decided a long time ago that I won’t have kids (not for financial reasons), so there is not much urgency in my life beside the itch to get back more personal time. Current dream is to early retire with my partner in a small beach town in Mediterranean Europe, and live a simple life.
_3u10 5y ago
Why not pay someone to develop your side project? More importantly if you want to put survivorship bias on your side, never develop anything until you have a working sales funnel. Put $1000 aside a month on a design and site for your idea, followed by a marketing person w/ a budget. The screen following getting their card should be a page letting them know you aren’t onbaording new customers, their card hasn’t been charged and you’ll let them know when you’re taking on more customers (eg. The product is built)
- Kaze404 5y ago
  > The screen following getting their card should be a page letting them know you aren’t onbaording new customers, their card hasn’t been charged and you’ll let them know when you’re taking on more customers (eg. The product is built) If a website did this to me they'd also be getting a very angry e-mail and zero recommendations from me.
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    Then you're not the target customer. I hear this often that people, especially on HN, don't like this tactic, but most people don't really care, they'll just shrug and move on.
  - nlh 5y ago
    Yup agreed 100%. I see this often as a suggestion for testing your project hypothesis and I think it’s a terrible idea. Starting your relationship with a customer by misrepresenting your state of development is bad advice.
    - _3u10 5y ago
      They aren’t customers as they haven’t bought anything. Second not spending hundreds of thousands to millions in dev on a product with no market vs having to buy a new domain because your site went viral and you now have millions of bad reviews. (Hint: this never happens) Is great advice. There’s also other ways to do it, my friend was creating a course so I got her to do all the marketing first, set a date six months out and used the proceeds of the first sales to fund development. What I’m trying to get at is to verify sales you need to get people to put their money on the line.
Rastonbury 5y ago
How is that silly monetarily? If extra work get's you even a 5% raise, that's $50k year pre-tax that will compound (with future pay bumps/stock grants). What is the equivalent amount of time to build a side project to that level? That said, if you spend extra time that does not translate into extra pay, it's essentially opportunity cost of a side income.
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  Silly because the two types of income are not fungible in my mind. With a job, I am a mercenary of my time and the income will dry up immediately if I decide to stop (let’s set aside the long tail effect of investing the savings). With a successful side project, it becomes a very passive income, like many people mentioned below. Ultimately I guess I am genuinely jealous of people clawing back their own time, while I am working incredibly hard with life passing me by, that’s it.
  - vfinn 5y ago
    Dude, you're making a million / year. You could move right away to a cheaper area and do whatever you want. I'm pretty sure you do realize this, so...
  - Rastonbury 5y ago
    I'm not sure if its realistic calculus to think you'll be easily able to make $1m passive income side project. Would you trade $1m a year for $100k passive?
    - deanmoriarty 5y ago
      It’s clearly tough to say without having a real opportunity in front of me, but if the passive income was diversified enough and with minimal time investment, I would most definitely trade my 60h/week job for a side project bringing a fraction of my current income (the exact fraction would be on a case by case). I think I personally am at the point where time is a scarcer resource than money. Getting a lower paid job or consultancy is not an alternative either, both would still be too big of time commitments.
jonathanzufi 5y ago
Congratulations on your own success! I think you answer this question when you say you “never considered it worthwhile to invest [your time] in a side project” but: how much of that perspective is based on comparing ways of earning income vs the desire to want to build something yourself?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  I think for me it’s pretty clearly about maximizing the total income (immediate and cumulative for passive sources) per unit of time invested, as opposed to building something myself. This might also be the reason why I never actually started anything, which is just a different way of stating what you quoted from my previous message.
seaphaw 5y ago
I’m in a similar situation as a backend tech lead at a FAANG-like company but I also have a side project web app that generates about $500/month from ad revenue. I find that I learn a lot from the side project that helps me at my day job like front end development, ux, listening to user feedback, deployment all the way out to end users, and programming in other backend languages I wouldn’t have an excuse to play with at work. Also the higher up I move on the engineering ladder at a bigger tech company, the more valuable it is to spend time doing things that aren’t coding. The side project lets me scratch my coding itch while doing the more valuable stuff all day. Edit: typo
lifeformed 5y ago
The powerful part of passive income isn't that you could make some more money, but that you could make more time. Even with a huge salary, you've sold your best 50 hours every week, as well as most of your mental energy. The richest people still have the same amount of time. Making $50k a year passively is worth so much more than making a few hundred thousand a year actively. It could mean having your whole life to yourself.
thegypsyking 5y ago
You are much luckier and more of a “survivor” than any of them I feel. I also work at Faang, but only graduated college last year and only make 200k a year, barely. I will never reach your income at a job with where the stock market is at now, and how much the competition increased, you rode the wave all the way to the top of the corporate slaves pyramid. So I’ll quit next year to start something because otherwise I’ll never become anywhere near rich with my income.
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  I am not entirely sure your premises are correct, but it certainly boils down to personal opinions so no point in debating. Just for fun, I went back to my 1040 tax statements for the first three years of my career, about a decade ago: $35k, $65k, $89k. The fact that you are starting with $200k is fabulous and not to be taken for granted imho. If you are able to put the majority of your after tax savings in the market, compounding over a decade might surprise you even if we are at an all time high.
  - abustamam 5y ago
    $200k is a lot, but it doesn't really go far in the bay area if you don't want to cohabitate. That being said, people have done more with less under similar circumstances, and thinking $200k is not enough is harmful. I used to make $130k, then I made $90k, and now I make $300k and I don't feel any different, even though I once thought it would make me happier. I don't regret focusing on my career, but I now spend time doing things that make me happy instead of working all the time. As the saying goes, "you can afford anything, not everything." it's important to determine what brings you most joy. For me, it's being able to buy meal kits so I don't have to worry about cooking (save time). Of course, saving / investing money is important too.
barfingclouds 5y ago
Maybe you have a case of “the grass is always greener.” 1 million dollars a year is a lot. Couldn’t you pretty easily save up and take 5 straight years off if you wanted? What’s to stop that from happening?
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  > What’s to stop that from happening? Fear. Specifically, fear that I would walk away from that kind of income forever and that I could become destitute in the future (I have a weird relationship with money, having grown up rather poor).
  - markvdb 5y ago
    I have read your comments about income, spending patterns and dreams about a simple life in the Mediterranean. You've played the money game smartly and won. You just don't seem to realise that yet. You've described fear of poverty instead. Can I respectfully suggest you to consider seeing a good psychotherapist if that's not yet the case? A therapist can help you conquer your fear. Please do read my suggestion in the friendly way I wrote it!
codegeek 5y ago
Running a side project or a full business is not just about Money (even though money is imp. part of it). Lot of people just like creating things, sometimes they accidentally end up monetizing it and some are looking to create a product that can make some money but then doesn't take a whole lot of time to operate. However, most side project will never beat FAANG level income especially $1M incomes. You are one of the most privileged people on the planet. Making 1M for working 50-60 hours is amazing. I say this as a business owner myself. So unless you have the real entrepreneurial itch to create something of your own, you are almost always better off working at a FAANG and investing all that cash that you already are doing.
majani 5y ago
In your position, you have so much leverage in the job market, the most sensible route would be for you to maximize on that. Get a silent auction going of companies bidding for your talents, then get a job that is fully on your terms
kqr2 5y ago
Just curious what index funds are you invested in?
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  95% of my portfolio is VTSAX, VTIAX, VBTLX.
lbrito 5y ago
Honest question: why not leave FAANG/SV, take a relaxed remote job of maybe 30h/week and live in a low-cost, warm and cosy Mediterranean city (since you mentioned you're from Europe that shouldn't be a problem)?
- deanmoriarty 5y ago
  That’s the tentative plan once I’ll reach my target number :-)
  - soramimo 5y ago
    In a similar boat. Out of curiosity, what's your target number? How do you make sure you're not getting stuck in an infinite "just need about 30% more" loop. I'm thinking 3M in invested assets should do. If properly diversified (real estate + stock) that should be sufficient to generate about 90k/year of passive income.
    - deanmoriarty 5y ago
      Close to $10M for me, currently sitting on about $4M. I fully understand the 4% rule and a conservative 3% withdrawal rate wrt historical returns, but I have no confidence that those will continue to be true moving forward. So for my calculations I am assuming my portfolio will have a 0% real growth, and that it will just keep up with inflation after volatility. In the best case I am expecting about 65 years to live (wildly optimistic), so my withdrawal rate is 1/65 ~= 1.5%. I understand this might be overly conservative, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and when I pull the plug I better be damn sure I won’t go broke ever. As mentioned earlier I should be getting there in about 5 years with some luck, so it’s not too long. If the luck won’t materialize maybe I will revisit my plan and the opportunity cost trade-off.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I think you just told me my retirement plan :-) Thank you

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Jesus christ, what is your role and level of experience?

deanmoriarty 5y ago
Tech lead on backend systems at a FAANG that has been experiencing significant stock growth. 11 years of experience, mid 30s.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  Teach me your ways. Any major tips besides getting lucky?
  - deanmoriarty 5y ago
    No tips, it’s truly all about luck. My job is not particularly difficult or anything, I mostly herd cats all day without producing much, as I am at the whims of massively over engineered systems that are almost impossible to comprehend. The only thing I would say that can affect your luck is to always say yes to any opportunity that has a chance of taking you forward, even if it is incredibly uncomfortable. A couple random decisions I’ve taken in my life that affected my luck: - Relocate at a young age to the US from Europe, leaving a promised incredibly cushy job (imagine well paid, for local standards, European tech job with 60 days off a year etc) for a crappy internship at a no-name American company, with no promises whatsoever. I relocated entirely by myself, leaving family, friends and (ex) partner behind. I am still separated from them. - Took some risks in my career, joining early stage startups to build experience while most of my coworkers would call me crazy for taking a 50% paycut from the job where we were all “stagnating” maintaining old systems. - Accept new work opportunities even if they mess up your life. They said: “Do you want a job for a 50% raise in NYC?”. I said: “Yes Sir, I’ll be there next Monday and throw my San Francisco life down the toilet, break my expensive rental lease and convince my girlfriend who lives with me that we will have a long distance relationship for a while”. - Live a frugal and minimalist life like a college student, it’s easier to take bets in your life when you don’t have a mortgage/car/kids and your monthly expenses are under $3k in a very expensive city. Most people I know would say a sound NO to all the above, and I’m not saying they would be wrong in doing so.
    - GeoAtreides 5y ago
      You sacrificed much for your money. What's your exit strategy?
      - deanmoriarty 5y ago
        I don’t have a clear plan for the future, right now I’m just accumulating assets until I get to a point where I can feel financially unbreakable. I might be getting there in ~5 years with some substantial luck, or never if shit hits the fan. I decided a long time ago that I won’t have kids (not for financial reasons), so there is not much urgency in my life beside the itch to get back more personal time. Current dream is to early retire with my partner in a small beach town in Mediterranean Europe, and live a simple life.

_3u10 5y ago

Why not pay someone to develop your side project? More importantly if you want to put survivorship bias on your side, never develop anything until you have a working sales funnel. Put $1000 aside a month on a design and site for your idea, followed by a marketing person w/ a budget. The screen following getting their card should be a page letting them know you aren’t onbaording new customers, their card hasn’t been charged and you’ll let them know when you’re taking on more customers (eg. The product is built)

Kaze404 5y ago
> The screen following getting their card should be a page letting them know you aren’t onbaording new customers, their card hasn’t been charged and you’ll let them know when you’re taking on more customers (eg. The product is built) If a website did this to me they'd also be getting a very angry e-mail and zero recommendations from me.
- cercatrova 5y ago
  Then you're not the target customer. I hear this often that people, especially on HN, don't like this tactic, but most people don't really care, they'll just shrug and move on.
- nlh 5y ago
  Yup agreed 100%. I see this often as a suggestion for testing your project hypothesis and I think it’s a terrible idea. Starting your relationship with a customer by misrepresenting your state of development is bad advice.
  - _3u10 5y ago
    They aren’t customers as they haven’t bought anything. Second not spending hundreds of thousands to millions in dev on a product with no market vs having to buy a new domain because your site went viral and you now have millions of bad reviews. (Hint: this never happens) Is great advice. There’s also other ways to do it, my friend was creating a course so I got her to do all the marketing first, set a date six months out and used the proceeds of the first sales to fund development. What I’m trying to get at is to verify sales you need to get people to put their money on the line.

Rastonbury 5y ago

How is that silly monetarily? If extra work get's you even a 5% raise, that's $50k year pre-tax that will compound (with future pay bumps/stock grants). What is the equivalent amount of time to build a side project to that level? That said, if you spend extra time that does not translate into extra pay, it's essentially opportunity cost of a side income.

deanmoriarty 5y ago
Silly because the two types of income are not fungible in my mind. With a job, I am a mercenary of my time and the income will dry up immediately if I decide to stop (let’s set aside the long tail effect of investing the savings). With a successful side project, it becomes a very passive income, like many people mentioned below. Ultimately I guess I am genuinely jealous of people clawing back their own time, while I am working incredibly hard with life passing me by, that’s it.
- vfinn 5y ago
  Dude, you're making a million / year. You could move right away to a cheaper area and do whatever you want. I'm pretty sure you do realize this, so...
- Rastonbury 5y ago
  I'm not sure if its realistic calculus to think you'll be easily able to make $1m passive income side project. Would you trade $1m a year for $100k passive?
  - deanmoriarty 5y ago
    It’s clearly tough to say without having a real opportunity in front of me, but if the passive income was diversified enough and with minimal time investment, I would most definitely trade my 60h/week job for a side project bringing a fraction of my current income (the exact fraction would be on a case by case). I think I personally am at the point where time is a scarcer resource than money. Getting a lower paid job or consultancy is not an alternative either, both would still be too big of time commitments.

jonathanzufi 5y ago

Congratulations on your own success! I think you answer this question when you say you “never considered it worthwhile to invest [your time] in a side project” but: how much of that perspective is based on comparing ways of earning income vs the desire to want to build something yourself?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deanmoriarty 5y ago
I think for me it’s pretty clearly about maximizing the total income (immediate and cumulative for passive sources) per unit of time invested, as opposed to building something myself. This might also be the reason why I never actually started anything, which is just a different way of stating what you quoted from my previous message.

seaphaw 5y ago

I’m in a similar situation as a backend tech lead at a FAANG-like company but I also have a side project web app that generates about $500/month from ad revenue. I find that I learn a lot from the side project that helps me at my day job like front end development, ux, listening to user feedback, deployment all the way out to end users, and programming in other backend languages I wouldn’t have an excuse to play with at work. Also the higher up I move on the engineering ladder at a bigger tech company, the more valuable it is to spend time doing things that aren’t coding. The side project lets me scratch my coding itch while doing the more valuable stuff all day. Edit: typo

lifeformed 5y ago

The powerful part of passive income isn't that you could make some more money, but that you could make more time. Even with a huge salary, you've sold your best 50 hours every week, as well as most of your mental energy. The richest people still have the same amount of time. Making $50k a year passively is worth so much more than making a few hundred thousand a year actively. It could mean having your whole life to yourself.

thegypsyking 5y ago

You are much luckier and more of a “survivor” than any of them I feel. I also work at Faang, but only graduated college last year and only make 200k a year, barely. I will never reach your income at a job with where the stock market is at now, and how much the competition increased, you rode the wave all the way to the top of the corporate slaves pyramid. So I’ll quit next year to start something because otherwise I’ll never become anywhere near rich with my income.

deanmoriarty 5y ago
I am not entirely sure your premises are correct, but it certainly boils down to personal opinions so no point in debating. Just for fun, I went back to my 1040 tax statements for the first three years of my career, about a decade ago: $35k, $65k, $89k. The fact that you are starting with $200k is fabulous and not to be taken for granted imho. If you are able to put the majority of your after tax savings in the market, compounding over a decade might surprise you even if we are at an all time high.
- abustamam 5y ago
  $200k is a lot, but it doesn't really go far in the bay area if you don't want to cohabitate. That being said, people have done more with less under similar circumstances, and thinking $200k is not enough is harmful. I used to make $130k, then I made $90k, and now I make $300k and I don't feel any different, even though I once thought it would make me happier. I don't regret focusing on my career, but I now spend time doing things that make me happy instead of working all the time. As the saying goes, "you can afford anything, not everything." it's important to determine what brings you most joy. For me, it's being able to buy meal kits so I don't have to worry about cooking (save time). Of course, saving / investing money is important too.

barfingclouds 5y ago

Maybe you have a case of “the grass is always greener.” 1 million dollars a year is a lot. Couldn’t you pretty easily save up and take 5 straight years off if you wanted? What’s to stop that from happening?

deanmoriarty 5y ago
> What’s to stop that from happening? Fear. Specifically, fear that I would walk away from that kind of income forever and that I could become destitute in the future (I have a weird relationship with money, having grown up rather poor).
- markvdb 5y ago
  I have read your comments about income, spending patterns and dreams about a simple life in the Mediterranean. You've played the money game smartly and won. You just don't seem to realise that yet. You've described fear of poverty instead. Can I respectfully suggest you to consider seeing a good psychotherapist if that's not yet the case? A therapist can help you conquer your fear. Please do read my suggestion in the friendly way I wrote it!

codegeek 5y ago

Running a side project or a full business is not just about Money (even though money is imp. part of it). Lot of people just like creating things, sometimes they accidentally end up monetizing it and some are looking to create a product that can make some money but then doesn't take a whole lot of time to operate. However, most side project will never beat FAANG level income especially $1M incomes. You are one of the most privileged people on the planet. Making 1M for working 50-60 hours is amazing. I say this as a business owner myself. So unless you have the real entrepreneurial itch to create something of your own, you are almost always better off working at a FAANG and investing all that cash that you already are doing.

majani 5y ago

In your position, you have so much leverage in the job market, the most sensible route would be for you to maximize on that. Get a silent auction going of companies bidding for your talents, then get a job that is fully on your terms

kqr2 5y ago

Just curious what index funds are you invested in?

deanmoriarty 5y ago
95% of my portfolio is VTSAX, VTIAX, VBTLX.

lbrito 5y ago

Honest question: why not leave FAANG/SV, take a relaxed remote job of maybe 30h/week and live in a low-cost, warm and cosy Mediterranean city (since you mentioned you're from Europe that shouldn't be a problem)?

deanmoriarty 5y ago
That’s the tentative plan once I’ll reach my target number :-)
- soramimo 5y ago
  In a similar boat. Out of curiosity, what's your target number? How do you make sure you're not getting stuck in an infinite "just need about 30% more" loop. I'm thinking 3M in invested assets should do. If properly diversified (real estate + stock) that should be sufficient to generate about 90k/year of passive income.
  - deanmoriarty 5y ago
    Close to $10M for me, currently sitting on about $4M. I fully understand the 4% rule and a conservative 3% withdrawal rate wrt historical returns, but I have no confidence that those will continue to be true moving forward. So for my calculations I am assuming my portfolio will have a 0% real growth, and that it will just keep up with inflation after volatility. In the best case I am expecting about 65 years to live (wildly optimistic), so my withdrawal rate is 1/65 ~= 1.5%. I understand this might be overly conservative, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and when I pull the plug I better be damn sure I won’t go broke ever. As mentioned earlier I should be getting there in about 5 years with some luck, so it’s not too long. If the luck won’t materialize maybe I will revisit my plan and the opportunity cost trade-off.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I think you just told me my retirement plan :-) Thank you