5 ms·

> good TC Not to get too mopey but I went through the phase of "sell out and do things that make me unhappy and stressed for more money" a few years ago and wh

by duped 4y ago

> good TC Not to get too mopey but I went through the phase of "sell out and do things that make me unhappy and stressed for more money" a few years ago and while it put me in the position I am today financially, it came at great personal expense. I lost friends and partners by moving, lost years of close contact with family late in their lives, and the stress put a physical toll on my body and mental toll on my psyche. I think we're quite naive at a young age - our eyes glaze over at the massive amount of money we can make but don't value the non-monetary cost. Your youth is finite and you don't know what you've missed until it's gone.

outsomnia 4y ago
There are reasons they have to offer the huge TC, you will be doing things that are not in your interest for it.
- eloisant 4y ago
  Not necessarily, the total comp is mostly because those companies are overflowing with money so they can afford it. And they're competing with other companies overflowing with money. There are not enough developers, and especially senior developers with experience in other FAANG (the skillset is different from your regular service IT company).
  - kroltan 4y ago
    Thank you for not using the initialism for total compensation, as a non-native English speaker I was quite confused in this thread.
- roland35 4y ago
  Not necessarily true! I've found that as TC has gone up the level of respect for workers has gone up as well. When companies don't pay well they generally treat workers poorly. Now of course, some mission-based companies are an exception to this! My most stressful job was my first, and it required a lot of late nights of crunch time and writing proposals which I hated. Now at a big tech company, I am making 3-5x more than before, more opportunities to lead projects, more respect from management, and more interesting and impactful work.
neilv 4y ago
You're not alone. It's normal to incur costs one didn't really understand. Some of them will be bigger costs than others. But I'd guess most people have big regrets. Given the linear nature of our experience of time, all I know that we can do is to count our blessings, and do the best we can going forward. And often situations we thought couldn't get better do get better (which the mind tends to resist believing).
thewebcount 4y ago
That’s totally legit, but there’s a flip side, too. I was running my own business, but it wasn’t going anywhere. (I think after 5 years, I’d had one year in the red, 3 years of just barely breaking even, and 1 good year.) My spouse was working 2 jobs, one of which required a lot of evenings and weekends during the holidays. I “sold out” and got a high-paying job, and it made our lives much easier. Even doing hard work for someone else was easier than doing literally all the work myself. And a few years later when my spouse developed a serious medical condition, we had good insurance to cover us. I’m glad I got the experience of doing it myself, but I’m also glad I got out. There are still stressful times, but my current situation is less stressful than when I was running my own business. (There are, of course, other options like not working for yourself, but also not going for a very high paying job, etc. That’s totally legit, too.)
- diegoop 4y ago
  I was in that boat myself and totally agree, building a business was fun and exciting, but stressful in the same amount and not taking much (if any) of the money home for the good of the business wasn't helping. In the end, after several years in the startup storm, I sold it out, landed a well paid job with cool people in my team and I'm pretty happy with my current situation, plus wife is also happy because I'm working from home so I'm always around.
bowsamic 4y ago
- duped 4y ago
  Frankly, grow up. "Hustling" is for children.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    - the_cat_kittles 4y ago
      you seem pretty joyless... i guess youre broke?
      - bowsamic 4y ago
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Hustling is for hustlers. Children can enjoy their lives at a relaxing pace too.
Aeolun 4y ago
But would you do it again?
TimPC 4y ago
It definitely depends on where you are in life and what you want from life but for those of us who live in crazy housing markets good TC is the only way to have a mortgage. It’s kind of crazy to be a successful dev and be stuck forever renting. If okay compensation in a low cost of living area gets you a home that’s a bit different. But for people who live in places like the Bay Area, NYC, Vancouver or Toronto the comp has to be there and it’s a very big deal.
- mancerayder 4y ago
  That's it. For there to be any HOPE of stability you need a high enough salary to either eat the rent increases, be qualified for new rents, or save up for down payment/afford a mortgage. Maybe in Europe where rents are controlled it's a different story. But in US HCOL cities, a high salary is an absolute MUST, and unfortunately health and other considerations go second. That is assuming long commutes or roommates are off the list, which they are for many of us.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  Yeah that can make the choice to live somewhere you love, or do something you love. Which is a hard one, but with remote work it isn't always a thing. And other than climate, most places I have been had a variety of neighborhoods with different cultures, even in the midwest. So it is possible to make your joy in your work part of your TC and let the monetary aspect slide. But telling someone who grew up in Manhattan or the Bay to move to be happy isn't right either. I maybe wouldn't recommend someone move there just for TC and climate and/or culture either though. And right or wrong, having to move to get better conditions isn't new to humanity.
  - TimPC 4y ago
    The thing is total comp tends to multiply based on region and most companies adjust salaries based on where you live. If my cost of living is double in the Bay Area but my salary is also doubled I pay slightly more tax and save like 180% of what I did before. I’ve made that tradeoff in the past when I went to work at Apple. I hated the Bay Area and eventually moved back home but I saved more in those 2.5 years than I did in my entire life before that. That life included working at least part-time for 13 years before that and working full-time in tech for 6 years including as CEO of my own consultancy where I billed higher than market rates for my area. I think there is a lot of merit to at least trying moving to the Bay Area once in your career as a developer if you get the offer. As much as I hated it I don’t regret it because my resume has been dramatically better which has opened tons of doors when I moved back and the extra savings were extremely valuable too. I lived fairly frugally in Cupertino paying a small amount of rent compared to the region or SF rents. When your job is designed to pay a $6500/month rent in SF and your rent is $2200 that’s $51,600 in savings on top of what the person in SF was supposed to save. My stock options performed about averagely but I still banked roughly $300k CDN ($230,800 USD) from that 2.5 years. On the other hand if you can find a job that doesn’t adjust salaries regionally but still pays top of market you can live in rural Washington for 2 years and make bank paying an effective income tax rate close to 25% because of no state tax. You also get to enjoy a relatively low cost of living with a salary designed to pay for a very high one. So that can be a great way to make money for a few years. At Staff Engineer levels it’s possible to bank an entire house in 3-4 years of saving aggressively. I’d definitely be willing to put up with a fair amount of crap for a few years to not have to worry about a mortgage for almost the rest of my working life.
throwaway74829 4y ago
I think you're getting a lot of "Yes, but"s that go on to completely disagree with the spirit of your post -- something I see annoyingly often... as if people are constantly piggybacking off what others are saying to say their own piece... (ha! I'm no different). I would like to add something original instead: the act of selling out, and shifting one's focus towards money is an irreversible change in one's soul. I can feel it in myself, and I can plainly see it in others. It deadens the spirit, if only ever so slightly; but what is lost here is lost for good. And the more time is spent in that headspace, the more likely it is one will never be able to leave it. I don't know what it is or how it works: I just notice it happens. Why does forsaking the more nuanced joys of life lead one to losing all nuance oneself? Perhaps it's a comfort thing. Where you shed away all strong emotion in exchange for a consistent tranquility -- you also lose the very things that gave life depth. The opulence leads one's material needs to always being fulfilled, as if in a perfect bubble; where any sort of stimulus that could push one's emotions one way or the other are completely cut off. And then once you start down this path... perhaps you become complacent. The bubble is comfortable, unvulgar, pleasant, unprovocative: why would you leave? All the things which spur one's emotions are quite the opposite. And it reinforces itself. The more you get a taste for this tranquility -- this unchanging homeostasis of comfort -- the more effort (consciously and unconsciously) you will put into maintaining it; and the more strongly its grip takes hold of you. Until you lose all appetite for the things that enliven. You become boring, insular to life.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  For a lot of people this change happens when they find a partner. Where you shed away all strong emotion in exchange for a consistent tranquility Once our life decisions affect somebody besides ourselves, it's just so f'ing hard to live freely and fully. I would like to add something original instead: the act of selling out, and shifting one's focus towards money is an irreversible change in one's soul. Part of it is getting older, particularly in a country without universal health care. My wife has a lot of medical conditions and I essentially have to restrict myself to jobs with good pay and benefits. It's absolutely soul-deadening, but the alternative is unclear. Even without partners and dependents to consider, a lot of basic capitalist "facts" push us toward this stultified complacency. We need places to live. To be a renter is to subject one's self to all kinds of... crap. Owning a home is marginally better in many ways for many people so many of us are incentivized to chase that, but for most people this means chasing a certain amount of money and committing to a mortgage. There are alternatives (van living?) but they're compromised or impractical for many people in various ways.
snowwrestler 4y ago
And it's easy when you're young to underestimate your lifetime potential to generate wealth. Some time spent on very long-term financial planning (like, 30-40 years out) can help reduce the feeling that one needs to earn as much as possible in the next 3 years or whatever. Compound growth is amazing over the span of decades! It's also easy to overestimate how much happiness you'll get from buying expensive things. Quite a lot of people who buy boats or mountain/lake/beach houses (typical objects of wealthy lifestyle fantasy) go on to sell them later with gratitude that they're gone. I would say that "good" compensation is an important component of a long-term job, but it does not necessarily have to be "amazingly great" to have a very comfortable, fun life. This is on top of the potential benefits of having good work-life balance when you're young.

by duped 4y ago

outsomnia 4y ago

There are reasons they have to offer the huge TC, you will be doing things that are not in your interest for it.

eloisant 4y ago
Not necessarily, the total comp is mostly because those companies are overflowing with money so they can afford it. And they're competing with other companies overflowing with money. There are not enough developers, and especially senior developers with experience in other FAANG (the skillset is different from your regular service IT company).
- kroltan 4y ago
  Thank you for not using the initialism for total compensation, as a non-native English speaker I was quite confused in this thread.
roland35 4y ago
Not necessarily true! I've found that as TC has gone up the level of respect for workers has gone up as well. When companies don't pay well they generally treat workers poorly. Now of course, some mission-based companies are an exception to this! My most stressful job was my first, and it required a lot of late nights of crunch time and writing proposals which I hated. Now at a big tech company, I am making 3-5x more than before, more opportunities to lead projects, more respect from management, and more interesting and impactful work.

neilv 4y ago

You're not alone. It's normal to incur costs one didn't really understand. Some of them will be bigger costs than others. But I'd guess most people have big regrets. Given the linear nature of our experience of time, all I know that we can do is to count our blessings, and do the best we can going forward. And often situations we thought couldn't get better do get better (which the mind tends to resist believing).

thewebcount 4y ago

That’s totally legit, but there’s a flip side, too. I was running my own business, but it wasn’t going anywhere. (I think after 5 years, I’d had one year in the red, 3 years of just barely breaking even, and 1 good year.) My spouse was working 2 jobs, one of which required a lot of evenings and weekends during the holidays. I “sold out” and got a high-paying job, and it made our lives much easier. Even doing hard work for someone else was easier than doing literally all the work myself. And a few years later when my spouse developed a serious medical condition, we had good insurance to cover us. I’m glad I got the experience of doing it myself, but I’m also glad I got out. There are still stressful times, but my current situation is less stressful than when I was running my own business. (There are, of course, other options like not working for yourself, but also not going for a very high paying job, etc. That’s totally legit, too.)

diegoop 4y ago
I was in that boat myself and totally agree, building a business was fun and exciting, but stressful in the same amount and not taking much (if any) of the money home for the good of the business wasn't helping. In the end, after several years in the startup storm, I sold it out, landed a well paid job with cool people in my team and I'm pretty happy with my current situation, plus wife is also happy because I'm working from home so I'm always around.

bowsamic 4y ago

duped 4y ago
Frankly, grow up. "Hustling" is for children.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  - the_cat_kittles 4y ago
    you seem pretty joyless... i guess youre broke?
    - bowsamic 4y ago
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Hustling is for hustlers. Children can enjoy their lives at a relaxing pace too.

Aeolun 4y ago

But would you do it again?

TimPC 4y ago

It definitely depends on where you are in life and what you want from life but for those of us who live in crazy housing markets good TC is the only way to have a mortgage. It’s kind of crazy to be a successful dev and be stuck forever renting. If okay compensation in a low cost of living area gets you a home that’s a bit different. But for people who live in places like the Bay Area, NYC, Vancouver or Toronto the comp has to be there and it’s a very big deal.

mancerayder 4y ago
That's it. For there to be any HOPE of stability you need a high enough salary to either eat the rent increases, be qualified for new rents, or save up for down payment/afford a mortgage. Maybe in Europe where rents are controlled it's a different story. But in US HCOL cities, a high salary is an absolute MUST, and unfortunately health and other considerations go second. That is assuming long commutes or roommates are off the list, which they are for many of us.
galangalalgol 4y ago
Yeah that can make the choice to live somewhere you love, or do something you love. Which is a hard one, but with remote work it isn't always a thing. And other than climate, most places I have been had a variety of neighborhoods with different cultures, even in the midwest. So it is possible to make your joy in your work part of your TC and let the monetary aspect slide. But telling someone who grew up in Manhattan or the Bay to move to be happy isn't right either. I maybe wouldn't recommend someone move there just for TC and climate and/or culture either though. And right or wrong, having to move to get better conditions isn't new to humanity.
- TimPC 4y ago
  The thing is total comp tends to multiply based on region and most companies adjust salaries based on where you live. If my cost of living is double in the Bay Area but my salary is also doubled I pay slightly more tax and save like 180% of what I did before. I’ve made that tradeoff in the past when I went to work at Apple. I hated the Bay Area and eventually moved back home but I saved more in those 2.5 years than I did in my entire life before that. That life included working at least part-time for 13 years before that and working full-time in tech for 6 years including as CEO of my own consultancy where I billed higher than market rates for my area. I think there is a lot of merit to at least trying moving to the Bay Area once in your career as a developer if you get the offer. As much as I hated it I don’t regret it because my resume has been dramatically better which has opened tons of doors when I moved back and the extra savings were extremely valuable too. I lived fairly frugally in Cupertino paying a small amount of rent compared to the region or SF rents. When your job is designed to pay a $6500/month rent in SF and your rent is $2200 that’s $51,600 in savings on top of what the person in SF was supposed to save. My stock options performed about averagely but I still banked roughly $300k CDN ($230,800 USD) from that 2.5 years. On the other hand if you can find a job that doesn’t adjust salaries regionally but still pays top of market you can live in rural Washington for 2 years and make bank paying an effective income tax rate close to 25% because of no state tax. You also get to enjoy a relatively low cost of living with a salary designed to pay for a very high one. So that can be a great way to make money for a few years. At Staff Engineer levels it’s possible to bank an entire house in 3-4 years of saving aggressively. I’d definitely be willing to put up with a fair amount of crap for a few years to not have to worry about a mortgage for almost the rest of my working life.

throwaway74829 4y ago

I think you're getting a lot of "Yes, but"s that go on to completely disagree with the spirit of your post -- something I see annoyingly often... as if people are constantly piggybacking off what others are saying to say their own piece... (ha! I'm no different). I would like to add something original instead: the act of selling out, and shifting one's focus towards money is an irreversible change in one's soul. I can feel it in myself, and I can plainly see it in others. It deadens the spirit, if only ever so slightly; but what is lost here is lost for good. And the more time is spent in that headspace, the more likely it is one will never be able to leave it. I don't know what it is or how it works: I just notice it happens. Why does forsaking the more nuanced joys of life lead one to losing all nuance oneself? Perhaps it's a comfort thing. Where you shed away all strong emotion in exchange for a consistent tranquility -- you also lose the very things that gave life depth. The opulence leads one's material needs to always being fulfilled, as if in a perfect bubble; where any sort of stimulus that could push one's emotions one way or the other are completely cut off. And then once you start down this path... perhaps you become complacent. The bubble is comfortable, unvulgar, pleasant, unprovocative: why would you leave? All the things which spur one's emotions are quite the opposite. And it reinforces itself. The more you get a taste for this tranquility -- this unchanging homeostasis of comfort -- the more effort (consciously and unconsciously) you will put into maintaining it; and the more strongly its grip takes hold of you. Until you lose all appetite for the things that enliven. You become boring, insular to life.

JohnBooty 4y ago
For a lot of people this change happens when they find a partner. Where you shed away all strong emotion in exchange for a consistent tranquility Once our life decisions affect somebody besides ourselves, it's just so f'ing hard to live freely and fully. I would like to add something original instead: the act of selling out, and shifting one's focus towards money is an irreversible change in one's soul. Part of it is getting older, particularly in a country without universal health care. My wife has a lot of medical conditions and I essentially have to restrict myself to jobs with good pay and benefits. It's absolutely soul-deadening, but the alternative is unclear. Even without partners and dependents to consider, a lot of basic capitalist "facts" push us toward this stultified complacency. We need places to live. To be a renter is to subject one's self to all kinds of... crap. Owning a home is marginally better in many ways for many people so many of us are incentivized to chase that, but for most people this means chasing a certain amount of money and committing to a mortgage. There are alternatives (van living?) but they're compromised or impractical for many people in various ways.

snowwrestler 4y ago

And it's easy when you're young to underestimate your lifetime potential to generate wealth. Some time spent on very long-term financial planning (like, 30-40 years out) can help reduce the feeling that one needs to earn as much as possible in the next 3 years or whatever. Compound growth is amazing over the span of decades! It's also easy to overestimate how much happiness you'll get from buying expensive things. Quite a lot of people who buy boats or mountain/lake/beach houses (typical objects of wealthy lifestyle fantasy) go on to sell them later with gratitude that they're gone. I would say that "good" compensation is an important component of a long-term job, but it does not necessarily have to be "amazingly great" to have a very comfortable, fun life. This is on top of the potential benefits of having good work-life balance when you're young.