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Wild. I vaguely remember this founder spending an obscene amount of money on some boutique firm to give homepage a small update. Seems he exited the Google gri

• shooker435 2y ago
  This mindset assumes that the only measure of success is monetary. If he left Google to try and get richer than staying at Google, then sure, he probably lost. However, he kept trying again before job hunting or returning to big tech. This tells me the monetary factor was smaller than something else. You mention the underrated educational experience in your last sentence, but there's so much more than that. He was probably never worried about his autonomy, being laid off, working with (or for) people he didn't want to work with, corporate politics, or anything else corporate bureaucracy introduces. This likely freed up his brain to be more creative and actually be used to 100% of its capacity. I believe the obsession with TC in tech is highly problematic and there are a lot of talented folks optimizing for promotions via internal politics, rather than solving real problems for real people. I also wish healthcare wasn't tied to employment, but that's a post for another time.
  • talldatethrow 2y ago
    How is healthcare tied to employment? Isn't it available to buy on the open market?
    • riku_iki 2y ago
      I think it will be (much) more expensive, but I am not an expert.
    • sesm 2y ago
      In US buying medical services without insurance is very expensive. You choices are: - get health insurance from your employer - get covered by insurance of your spouse - buy insurance from your own pocket - don't buy insurance and risk loosing a lot of money in case of health emergency
      • yojo 2y ago
        My wife runs her own consulting business, I’m taking a break from tech work. This means we buy insurance on the federal marketplace (healthcare.gov). It is expensive, but not insanely so. Family of four, living in Oregon, non-smoking, our premium is ~$1k/month. Granted it’s a high deductible ($12k), but it protects us from the kind of catastrophic emergency that could wipe out our savings. We are fortunate to not have expensive, ongoing conditions. Granted, $12k/year is a lot for less affluent families, but government subsidies can bring the premium down considerably if your income is low enough. And while the coverage is far inferior to my old FAANG luxury health plans, it still works well enough.
        • ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
          > Family of four, living in Oregon, non-smoking, our premium is ~$1k/month. Granted it’s a high deductible ($12k), but it protects us from the kind of catastrophic emergency that could wipe out our savings. We are fortunate to not have expensive, ongoing conditions. Family of two, living in the EU, non-smoking, our premium is ~€0/month. Granted it's a €0 deductible, but it protects us from the kind of catastrophic emergency that could wipe out our savings.
          • codegeek 2y ago
            :). If only people in America understood how they are being scammed by the Health Insurance Mafia.
          • dhosek 2y ago
            Healthcare delivery in the US is — not good.
    • floating-io 2y ago
      Employer-offered plans tend to be extremely good value, so the vast majority take advantage of them. I was paying <~$300/mo on that plan. I now pay over $700 on a directly-acquired plan. So that's problem one. The bigger problem, IMHO, is that quitting means changing your insurance, which isn't just a financial change. It can also end up requiring you to change medical providers, which is no small deal! This adds massive friction and stress to the act of quitting/changing jobs, a major source of leverage on the employer's side. And that's to say nothing of the fact that it's effectively an overly burdensome tax on new entrepreneurs. It's a reinforcement of the concept, "you have to have money to make money". JMHO on the topic; for reference, I'm a new entrepreneur very early in the process. I'm just lucky enough to be able to risk the attempt.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • lotsofpulp 2y ago
        > I was paying <~$300/mo on that plan. I now pay over $700 on a directly-acquired plan. So that's problem one. This is relatively small pickles. Your employer paying a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars on your behalf if you are old, per month. You can buy the same on healthcare.gov
        • brianwawok 2y ago
          You actually can’t. There are off market and on market plans. Even though it’s by the same insurer, on market insurance is only taken by 50% of the places that take the off marketplace plans. Been down that road a few years ago and it was a disaster. Ended up getting a great plan for my company through the state chamber of commerce.
          • lotsofpulp 2y ago
            In my experience in west and northeast coast states, the plans are the same assuming they are ACA compliant. The employer even shows the same gold/silver metal level labels when you select a plan, and I’ve always had BCBS plans, which has the same networks via employer or via healthcare.gov They only things that I expect to change are total premium, deductible, out of pocket expense, copays, and network. Otherwise, the coverage itself is dictated by the same law. I can see right now that the BCBS gold HSA premium from my employer (total, including employer portion) is the same as the BCBS gold HSA available on healthcare.gov.
    • demondemidi 2y ago
      In the US there is the affordable care act from ~2013, where anyone can purchase insurance from a pooled market subsidized by the government up to a certain income (50k I think). But that is also impacted by the state you live in, as the states negotiate the contracts paid by federal dollars (I know it's effed up). So the ACA is cheaper on the west coast than it is in Alabama. Today, a "gold" policy for a single man in his 40's is about $900/month through the ACA. The cheaper "emergency" plans (aka "trash" plans) appended by Trump are still a few hundred dollars, but cover almost nothing. I now pay $120 for me and my wife for a plan that is better than the $1000 plan through the ACA in Oregon because I'm no longer self employed. That's almost a 10x difference. After working for myself for 12 years, hustling consulting and contracting gigs, I'm way happier working for a company that pays well, has great benefits, and I always know I have a paycheck coming.
      • talldatethrow 2y ago
        I have a feeling your employer is paying the difference, so basically you're paying one way or another.
        • runako 2y ago
          Exactly this. People feel like wages have not been increasing. In reality wages have been increasing, but employers are passing most of the increase over to health insurers.
        • demondemidi 2y ago
          No feeling that is the reality. But corporations get steep discounts. They pay about half to a quarter of what I would pay on my own.
      • lotsofpulp 2y ago
        > I now pay $120 for me and my wife for a plan that is better than the $1000 plan through the ACA in Oregon because I'm no longer self employed. Look at box 12 code DD on your W-2. That is the total amount you are paying for your health insurance (it’s just that your employer is paying it directly). It’s still counted in the cost of employing you though, obviously. Assuming you have a silver or gold level plan, total cost to insure you and your wife is the same on healthcare.gov or if your employer buys it. The only broad savings are if your employer is self insuring and their risk pool (employees and their families) are disproportionately low risk (young and single).
    • astura 2y ago
      Your employer typically pays the major of the premium.
    • hansvm 2y ago
      The healthcare available on the open market wasn't good last I checked. The premiums were much higher than what my employer and I pay combined, the max out-of-pocket was worse, the deductible was worse, the coverage for uncommon medications was nearly nil, and so on.
  • j45 2y ago
    Money is time, and time that is free to choose is more freedom to spend your time how you please, and work on things that may not need to have a financial half.
    • logifail 2y ago
      > more freedom to spend your time how you please "More freedom" sounds amazing right up until the point you remember that you aren't getting a salary every month but still need to pay rent and buy food and stuff...
      • nativeit 2y ago
        Pro-tip: use a portion of your freedom to exchange goods and services for money to pay rent and purchase provisions from Food & Stuff®. “…it’s where I buy my food, and most of my stuff.” ~ Ron Swanson
      • j45 2y ago
        Having enough money to live off (or interest) is the increasing freedom. Some people like the FIRE approach
• blehn 2y ago
  With promotions, equity, and stock price growth (+220% over the last 5 years), probably closer to 2 or 2.5M of Google income.
  • hansvm 2y ago
    Stock price growth isn't a huge distinguishing factor unless you're acknowledging that we're looking in hindsight and expect that he would have been one of the employees to leave those equity grants in GOOG shares and never touch them. Anyone can convert realized gains to Google stock (including the slightly better GOOGL shares instead of the GOOG shares most employees get from their RSUs), and the fees for converting unrealized gains to Google stock aren't enormous compared to a 26% annual return.
    • blehn 2y ago
      You're right it's not huge but (in hindsight) it's not negligible either. Because the vesting schedule is 4 years for each grant, the employees have no choice but to leave the shares in GOOG for 1-4 years.
      • hansvm 2y ago
        That's not quite right in general. I had monthly vesting when I was there with a short cliff (I don't remember how short, but <<1yr). Shares appreciated according to the initial grant, regardless of cliffs. My previous comment glossed over the benefits/costs of borrowing against future earnings (note that typical RSU situations are effectively a 0% interest loan in a particular security), but that doesn't seem relevant to your rebuttal. Each month of vesting you can absolutely move shares out of GOOG (minor restrictions on insider trading, but regardless of your level you can set up automated strategies), and most employees probably should given the correlated risk between Google taking a nosedive and employees losing their jobs. The vesting is unrelated. With no promotions or raises the 4yr bump is uninteresting. With those, they match your TC, but they happen _during_ those interesting career events. They describe some subset of your compensation for the next 4yrs. You can still invest them however you choose. You can still leave at any time (unless you believe that in your personal case the promotion train is better than the job-hopping train). You could have just as easily job-hopped and invested the surplus in GOOG.
• tills13 2y ago
  Holy hell the pessimism in this thread over a life-changing amount of money for 99% of people. > should have stayed at Google You should feel privileged that you've never been "stuck" at a job that you don't find personally interesting and stimulating. Wasting your life to see the number in your bank account increase.
  • ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
    Half a million isn't really that much.
    • demondemidi 2y ago
      less then quarter mill after taxes.
      • wallawe 2y ago
        This is capital gains, meaning 15-20% in taxes. Nowhere near half.
        • bagels 2y ago
          20% + 10% state income tax for many here
        • tradertef 2y ago
          Why is it capital gains?
          • lionhead 2y ago
            Because he is either selling his shares in the company, or the individual assets owned by the company, either way it should be taxed as capital gains.
            • rexreed 2y ago
              Asset Purchase Agreements are taxed primarily as income. Only a sale of the company ownership or equity would be taxed differently
• hiddencost 2y ago
  Assuming he was a senior SWE, he would have made around $400k / yr staying at Google. I suppose if he can parlay this outcome into an L7 role at Google, E.G, then in another 6 years he would break even (compared to staying at L5)
  • mattgreenrocks 2y ago
    It's goofy to see people talking numbers and completely disregarding the mess that is Google's culture right now from the mass layoffs. Everything has non-monetary costs associated with it. Chasing L7 means more politicking and less actually making things if I understand it correctly. Maybe that's invigorating to some people (am convinced people get off on fighting over artificially scarce resources), but I don't understand them one bit.
  • DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    $400k for Senior is an outlier. According to Levels.fyi - and my personal contacts - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-francisco-bay-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... Median TC - something just-south of $300k TC (not salary) is more likely. Furthermore, the higher you go, a greater proportion comes as RSUs, not cash - even if it was $400k TC, a good chunk of that is money you literally can't spend for a couple of years.
    • blehn 2y ago
      Vesting for each grant starts at one year and is monthly after that. So you're really only waiting one year for the first big chunk of stock to be liquid. 400k TC at Google means that you have 400k (pre-tax) liquid at the end of the year (depending on the stock price, which has historically gone up).
      • beacon294 2y ago
        Where is vesting monthly versus quarterly or annual?
• brk 2y ago
  I don't think he took an L at all. He now has successfully built, and sold a company. While being a dev at Google is somewhat elite, the number of people who have executed a successful sale is a tiny fraction of the number of FANG devs (or whatever we're calling FANG now). There is a very high probability he gets offered a CEO position at some company that is looking for an exit path. That type of thing will usually come with a nice salary and a minimum 7 figure payout on exit. As of this specific date, his bank account might be slightly lower than had he stayed at Google. 5 years from now it will almost certainly be significantly higher, and if it is not, it is more likely because he chose a path that he preferred.
  • pyb 2y ago
    Pretty sure indiehackers don't get offered CEO positions. Also 100% sure that his next business will be many times more successful than Tiny Pilot.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• abtinf 2y ago
  > grinder That’s the hint you aren’t comparing like kinds.
• chubot 2y ago
  What’s really wild is when people assume that everyone shares their value system It also appears you haven’t met anyone truly wealthy, because I can tell you they don’t share your point of view
• drubio 2y ago
  I also remembered his post about dropping $50k on the site redesign* I actually thought it was a big W for him when I saw this post. But I guess, if you consider the opportunity cost of Google employment, it's a financial L. * https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot-redesign/ https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot-redesign/
  • consumer451 2y ago
    Based on my reading here he was just offered a no-interview re-hire at Google, and decided not to take it. So calling that and L or W seems to take too few factors into account.
• steve_adams_86 2y ago
  This is so strange to read. He learned and experienced so much more than he could have at Google. He actually built and sold a profitable company. What’s life if we reduce it to how much money we could have earned?
• brushfoot 2y ago
  > Seems like he took an L Your numbers come out to $250K/year at Google and $230K/year as an entrepreneur. That's a small price to pay for this kind of real-world education. There's no guarantee his next business will be successful -- but there's no guarantee that those kinds of Google positions are going to keep existing, either. On the other hand, there's also the chance that his next business could be massively more successful because of lessons learned, and open the way to much higher amounts than he could have been earning at Google were he still there. Overall, I think it was a massive win for him. And it may have been more beneficial to society than the work he was doing at Google.
• khaki54 2y ago
  This was basically a sponsored super MBA with 250k annual stipend.
• broner 2y ago
  Should be a tax advantage to the non-grind income. $920k with 20% fed + 5% state capital gains tax?