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I've seen two types of people here in Seattle in tech affected by these layoffs and Amazon and Microsoft: a) living paycheck to fat paycheck because of how the

I've seen two types of people here in Seattle in tech affected by these layoffs and Amazon and Microsoft: a) living paycheck to fat paycheck because of how they decided to misuse their compensation, i.e. luxury cars, getting the maximum mortgage the bank would allow for them and buying a house in the past year because of FOMO, etc. b) those who have years of runway, and are only upset because they may have to sell off some of their ETFs to make ends meet if they can't find something in >1 year Unfortunately, I see too many of my fellow devs fall into category a) and are really up a creek. The best thing to do when one lands a highly-compensated tech job (in the future at least) is to treat the "extra comp" as that: extra. Just max out the "mega backdoor Roth IRA" instead buying of a custom-wrapped Tesla.

bushbaba 4y ago
Housing is more expensive today than it was in the past. Sure they might have gotten an expensive mortgage but what's the alternative if you want to start a family? Shame on the boomer generation for continually prioritizing their generation over future generations. They deviated from the long outstanding trend to sacrifice today for the betterment of the future. Boomers left us with a housing shortage, education decline, health decline, public-pension deficits, unsustainable government deficit, trade deficit, and so much more. Hopefully the younger generations can look towards reformation that while maybe painful for us makes our childrens, and their children's life better.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Agreed that the past generation has made policy at the expense of their children/descendants. That's what taking on a higher debt as a percentage of GDP effectively is. But there is no housing shortage. There was a shortage of listings for a period of time, not a structural shortage. Number of housing units per household is same as it was 20 years ago. 1.1:1 [Different metric, but gives an idea] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=MvZv https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=MvZv Prices in previous tech hub areas will fall drastically if remote work sticks, so won't be a problem for future residents of SF/Bay/Seattle/Austin.
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    With real estate management software enabling the market to act as a cartel you can have an 'excess' of housing yet maintain an apparent shortage and extract monopoly rents.
    - adam_arthur 4y ago
      True, though I question how effectively a cartel on rents can be formed in practice. I believe that specific piece of software is already being investigated by the Government for anti-competitive, price fixing like behavior
      - cjbgkagh 4y ago
        Effective enough to elicit government investigation. There is a huge industry of data aggregators and managers for which this cartel like emergent behavior is the primary value offering. My current rent is managed by it and I can presume at least 10% rent hike every year. The entrenched money benefits from this status quo so without an establishment threatening crisis I doubt much would be done about it.
        adam_arthur 4y ago
        Rents are declining nominally right now, not rising. If you look at recent MoM data. The software can't just tell companies to raise rents 10% if the market doesn't bear it. It would require a unilateral cartel without meaningful supply outside of that agreement to actually fix prices. That being said, this kind of behavior should be subdued as much as possible, within reason
        cjbgkagh 4y ago
        They would be declining more without the software, you can still extract monopolistic rents in an economic downturn. Just because the rents have declined does not mean they’re not monopolistic. A lot of this is geographical monopolies and actual liquid stock is often quite limited, so long as price is set at the margin and the managed property is on that margin they can elevate the price. This is easy enough to do as low rent options don’t stay on the market. Plus non-managed properties will benchmark themselves against the market which includes the managed properties allowing for price leadership. There is a whole zoo of anti-competitive behavior strewn through business that is tolerated due to the immense amount of money that is made that is beneficial to governments who tax it and politicians who receive donations. I don’t know how to fix it, step 1 seems to be fix political corruption and that already seems impossible. Once something becomes corrupted it’s very difficult to un-corrupt it.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  At least when they die we will get their stuff
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Most won’t. The assisted living centers will, and the workers at the facilities. Assisted living is a money pit, and most boomers aren’t sitting on massive amounts of wealth.
    - gammarator 4y ago
      The owners of the assisted living facilities will. The workers there will presumably continue to be paid peanuts.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There has also been a change in people in younger professional demographics actually wanting to live in (certain) cities which was mostly not the case 25 years ago. When I took a job in the MA computer industry out of grad school, I don't think anyone in my class actually lived in Boston/Cambridge. (And all the computer companies were out in suburbs/exurbs anyway though finance was downtown of course.)
- rayiner 4y ago
  Don’t blame boomers, blame knowledge economy industries and the unbalanced and concentrated rewards they produce (not just at the top, but all the way down the line). When we came to America we moved to Northern VA, and we’re able to afford a nice house in a good school district even without my mom working. Subsequent waves of mg family are moving to places like Texas for the same reason. To get housing prices under control, it’s not going to be enough to tackle the supply side by building more housing. You also need to tackle the demand side by heavily taxing those knowledge workers so they have less disposable income to spend on housing.
  - gammarator 4y ago
    No. The “good school district” in your comment is the tell. As long as access to good education is gated by housing, parents will plow any salary gains back into bidding up homes in “good districts.” See “The Two Income Trap,” two decades ago.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
coolbreezetft22 4y ago
Mostly agree but houses are really expensive around here, significantly more expensive than 10 years ago. If you have a family and need a decent amount of space then your options are either buy > $1million house (at minimum) or live very far away and have an in sufferably long commute. New grads are pretty fcked tbh unless housing supply increases fast or they just stay in apartments. There is a balance between overspending and forcing yourself to live uncomfortably just to save money. Maxing out roth ira isn't that helpful for this situation given there is a 10% early withdraw penalty
- sharker8 4y ago
  Rent is still less than 1/3 of post tax income most places if you have a high paying tech job. Also you can always downsize on stuff to save on floorspace.
  - uptownfunk 4y ago
    Yeah I rent in a neighborhood and my rent is a third of the equivalent mortgage. The downside is that you miss out on the annual appreciation. If you invest what you save in paying down a mortgage the market you can actually make more than what you’d make on the rental appreciation. Still I think there’s an intangible value to owning your own house and keeping that in the family, especially once you have kids / grandkids.
    - granshaw 4y ago
      Not to mention being in control of what you can do and when you move (if ever)
  - coolbreezetft22 4y ago
    Yeah that's the point - new families now have to either: a) rent b) downsize significantly c) stretch their budget. While 6-10 years ago a house in Sammammish or Issaquah was easily attainable
- 2devnull 4y ago
granshaw 4y ago
I dunno about the mega back door Roth part… unless you truly have tons of excess, I don’t wanna be old till I can enjoy my money

bushbaba 4y ago

Housing is more expensive today than it was in the past. Sure they might have gotten an expensive mortgage but what's the alternative if you want to start a family? Shame on the boomer generation for continually prioritizing their generation over future generations. They deviated from the long outstanding trend to sacrifice today for the betterment of the future. Boomers left us with a housing shortage, education decline, health decline, public-pension deficits, unsustainable government deficit, trade deficit, and so much more. Hopefully the younger generations can look towards reformation that while maybe painful for us makes our childrens, and their children's life better.

adam_arthur 4y ago
Agreed that the past generation has made policy at the expense of their children/descendants. That's what taking on a higher debt as a percentage of GDP effectively is. But there is no housing shortage. There was a shortage of listings for a period of time, not a structural shortage. Number of housing units per household is same as it was 20 years ago. 1.1:1 [Different metric, but gives an idea] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=MvZv https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=MvZv Prices in previous tech hub areas will fall drastically if remote work sticks, so won't be a problem for future residents of SF/Bay/Seattle/Austin.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  With real estate management software enabling the market to act as a cartel you can have an 'excess' of housing yet maintain an apparent shortage and extract monopoly rents.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    True, though I question how effectively a cartel on rents can be formed in practice. I believe that specific piece of software is already being investigated by the Government for anti-competitive, price fixing like behavior
    - cjbgkagh 4y ago
      Effective enough to elicit government investigation. There is a huge industry of data aggregators and managers for which this cartel like emergent behavior is the primary value offering. My current rent is managed by it and I can presume at least 10% rent hike every year. The entrenched money benefits from this status quo so without an establishment threatening crisis I doubt much would be done about it.
      - adam_arthur 4y ago
        Rents are declining nominally right now, not rising. If you look at recent MoM data. The software can't just tell companies to raise rents 10% if the market doesn't bear it. It would require a unilateral cartel without meaningful supply outside of that agreement to actually fix prices. That being said, this kind of behavior should be subdued as much as possible, within reason
        cjbgkagh 4y ago
        They would be declining more without the software, you can still extract monopolistic rents in an economic downturn. Just because the rents have declined does not mean they’re not monopolistic. A lot of this is geographical monopolies and actual liquid stock is often quite limited, so long as price is set at the margin and the managed property is on that margin they can elevate the price. This is easy enough to do as low rent options don’t stay on the market. Plus non-managed properties will benchmark themselves against the market which includes the managed properties allowing for price leadership. There is a whole zoo of anti-competitive behavior strewn through business that is tolerated due to the immense amount of money that is made that is beneficial to governments who tax it and politicians who receive donations. I don’t know how to fix it, step 1 seems to be fix political corruption and that already seems impossible. Once something becomes corrupted it’s very difficult to un-corrupt it.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
At least when they die we will get their stuff
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Most won’t. The assisted living centers will, and the workers at the facilities. Assisted living is a money pit, and most boomers aren’t sitting on massive amounts of wealth.
  - gammarator 4y ago
    The owners of the assisted living facilities will. The workers there will presumably continue to be paid peanuts.
ghaff 4y ago
There has also been a change in people in younger professional demographics actually wanting to live in (certain) cities which was mostly not the case 25 years ago. When I took a job in the MA computer industry out of grad school, I don't think anyone in my class actually lived in Boston/Cambridge. (And all the computer companies were out in suburbs/exurbs anyway though finance was downtown of course.)
rayiner 4y ago
Don’t blame boomers, blame knowledge economy industries and the unbalanced and concentrated rewards they produce (not just at the top, but all the way down the line). When we came to America we moved to Northern VA, and we’re able to afford a nice house in a good school district even without my mom working. Subsequent waves of mg family are moving to places like Texas for the same reason. To get housing prices under control, it’s not going to be enough to tackle the supply side by building more housing. You also need to tackle the demand side by heavily taxing those knowledge workers so they have less disposable income to spend on housing.
- gammarator 4y ago
  No. The “good school district” in your comment is the tell. As long as access to good education is gated by housing, parents will plow any salary gains back into bidding up homes in “good districts.” See “The Two Income Trap,” two decades ago.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

coolbreezetft22 4y ago

Mostly agree but houses are really expensive around here, significantly more expensive than 10 years ago. If you have a family and need a decent amount of space then your options are either buy > $1million house (at minimum) or live very far away and have an in sufferably long commute. New grads are pretty fcked tbh unless housing supply increases fast or they just stay in apartments. There is a balance between overspending and forcing yourself to live uncomfortably just to save money. Maxing out roth ira isn't that helpful for this situation given there is a 10% early withdraw penalty

sharker8 4y ago
Rent is still less than 1/3 of post tax income most places if you have a high paying tech job. Also you can always downsize on stuff to save on floorspace.
- uptownfunk 4y ago
  Yeah I rent in a neighborhood and my rent is a third of the equivalent mortgage. The downside is that you miss out on the annual appreciation. If you invest what you save in paying down a mortgage the market you can actually make more than what you’d make on the rental appreciation. Still I think there’s an intangible value to owning your own house and keeping that in the family, especially once you have kids / grandkids.
  - granshaw 4y ago
    Not to mention being in control of what you can do and when you move (if ever)
- coolbreezetft22 4y ago
  Yeah that's the point - new families now have to either: a) rent b) downsize significantly c) stretch their budget. While 6-10 years ago a house in Sammammish or Issaquah was easily attainable
2devnull 4y ago

granshaw 4y ago

I dunno about the mega back door Roth part… unless you truly have tons of excess, I don’t wanna be old till I can enjoy my money