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You should try leaving a company for money sometime. Financial independence really is life-changing, and you can get there surprisingly quickly in the tech indu
by steelframe 2y ago
You should try leaving a company for money sometime. Financial independence really is life-changing, and you can get there surprisingly quickly in the tech industry by putting yourself on the market more often.
Anecdotally, at my current company nearly everyone I know who left did so within a few months of hitting the 4-year cliff on their signing equity. I've left 3 companies in my career primarily because the next company doubled my comp. I've only left 1 company for reasons other than pay.
- BadHumans 2y agoI make low six figures in a low to medium cost of living area. I don't think even doubling my income would change my life too much.
- bb88 2y agoI've had my income more than doubled now, nearly tripled in the past decade. Just because I was willing to move where I would be paid market rate. There's a lot of companies in high cost of living areas that may be willing to split the difference in salary.
- fragmede 2y agoWhat's your FIRE number? When are you going to retire? Doubling your income shouldn't change your current lifestyle but it should change your trajectory towards retirement. Why retire at 65 when you could retire at 55, or even 45?
- sokoloff 2y agoMoney isn’t everything, but the math behind retirement saving is compelling. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
- maxlamb 2y agoRight but what if you enjoy your job and don’t want to retire?
- sokoloff 2y agoKnowing that you have F-you money in investments makes it a lot more likely that you can enjoy your job and removes other stresses in life, or at least it did in my case even with only lowercase f-you money.
- malux85 2y agoHaving the option is better than not having it
- WrongAssumption 2y agoWhat if you stop liking your job?
- desmosxxx 2y agoThis happened to me sometime between my first and second kids (last year or so). It was some mix of changing priorities, less time, starting to feel my age, work becoming more difficult, company cultural changes, etc. I think I've stuck a decent balance of saving and living, but man does life come at you fast. Went from happily working 60-80 hours (including some side projects) to struggling to work 40 hours. Reminds me of how one day something switched and I just couldn't drink anymore. Age is probably the biggest factor, and I can't imagine what this is going to be like in my 50s (just turned 40).
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoThen take more unpaid sabbaticals, or buy a boat. "Too much money" is a solved problem
- _zoltan_ 2y agoI love my job but having too much money would let me email someone 4 higher in the hierarchy to give them my opinion on things. :)
- ryandrake 2y agoYep, I look at every extra dollar I could make (that I don't technically need to survive) as some number fewer minutes until I can retire. So every extra dollar is worth it, no matter how frugal my lifestyle is.
- kennyloginz 2y agoWow. Is this really true? Do you live in a studio apt in the Midwest while working for a FAANG?
- ryandrake 2y agoI consider myself a "FIRE devotee without the compensation necessary to actually FIRE." So yea, time to retirement is definitely a variable that I actively try to minimize however I can. I don't want to be one of those guys who has to wait so long to retire that they're dead.
- chgs 2y agoI’ve known far too many people who die within 3 years of retirement regardless of age. Quality of life now is more important to me.
- kulahan 2y agoHere’s hoping you’re lucky enough to live until then. Don’t forget to live in the meantime. It’s a lot easier to hike across Europe in your 30s than in your 50s.
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago"Here’s hoping you’re lucky enough to live until then."? The median lifespan is over 80 and developers are paid above the median, often by quite a bit. It's far, far more likely in your 50s that you'll be staring down the barrel of a layoff + industry downturn and cursing yourself for the money spent on your trip across Europe and other frivolities in your 30s.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y agoSoon to have 25% skimmed off every year and that's assuming you get to live long enough to spend it.
- BadHumans 2y agoI assume you're talking about the proposed tax on unrealized gains that only applies on holdings over 100 million. 100 million dollar threshold being a critical piece of information you conveniently left out.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y agoHow many people did the original income tax apply to?
- BadHumans 2y agoI don't think it matters. I'm in favor of the tax as proposed. If it changes I'll adjust my stance accordingly.
- simonw 2y agoHave you considered worst-case scenarios? An injury that prevents you from working, or something like cancer in the family, could be a whole lot easier to deal with if you have a sizable nest egg.
- BadHumans 2y agoI have considered it and it is a legitimate concern to think about. I'm still fairly young and healthy and I have enough money to not work for years if it came down to it so you could call it hedging my bets but it is something that does lurk in the background as time passes. On an unrelated note, big fan of your work :)
- kyawzazaw 2y agofor me, I like donating. So more money is great!
- BurningFrog 2y agoDoubling your income would mean you can take 50% of your time off with the same income. Pretty sure that would change your life!
- YZF 2y agoIt doesn't really work like that. The reality is that you can't work 50% of the time for half the salary (if that's what you mean). When you make more money you typically want a nicer place to live, maybe a nicer car, your standard of living will go up somewhat. Now to maintain that standard of living you're going to need to save more money. Maybe you have kids and you want to be able to pay for their education, or buy them a place to live... Maybe you're helping your family. Personally I could have "retired" a long while back if I wanted to have a lower standard of living and also take some risk. But I don't hate my work, I do things out of work as well, I prefer a nicer house and a nicer car, I'd probably be bored if I didn't work.
- brazzy 2y agoDevelopers in the USA earn far beyond the level where the lifestyle creep that you describe is so compelling that it makes any sense at all to say "you can't work 50% of the time for half the salary". A more solid factor is that companies don't want to hire part-time developers, because coordination overhead means twice the number of developers each working half as many hours are far less effective.
- YZF 2y agoI meant it in that sense. Even if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to work 50% for half my salary (likely) because my employer would have a problem with that. For the reason you gave and others.
- yunohn 2y agoIf anything, most tech company contracts are written the other way around - there is almost never overtime pay and any thinking/work done both within and outside work hours is completely owned by the company.
- emrah 2y agoI love it when people guess how changing or trying something new will affect them without doing it and never having done it.
- abc123abc123 2y agoMaybe not for you, but for your family and future children it could be a life changer. If something happens to you, having a few millions in the bank is also very nice.
- bb88 2y ago> Financial independence really is life-changing. This. All companies want you to be loyal to them and them only. But they won't reciprocate it. Only the C-suite is deserving of hefty pay bumps.
- nsxwolf 2y agoI always find my salary very difficult to replace, and it's not particularly high. I'm assuming it's all pay cuts from here on out with the economy the way it is.
- dartos 2y agoFor the next few years at least, probably
- BurningFrog 2y agoThe economy has been objectively really great last few years. Many people say the economy is bad, whatever the measurable macro-economical state of the economy is.
- nsxwolf 2y agoIf you find it almost impossible to get jobs I don’t know if it matters.
- BurningFrog 2y agoYour immediate situation is equally shitty, sure. But if you realize the problem is not "the economy" (which you can't possibly affect), but something about you (which is the though you can affect the most), you have a chance to find a better path for yourself.
- RGamma 2y agoYou see, according to that one HN commenter everything is always fine (they own capital)
- consteval 2y agoThis is because the idea of economy has been highjacked by armchair capitalists. The economy has almost nothing to do with the average person's quality of life. We've completely lost the plot. That's why a country like the US can have such an insane GDP and GDP per capita and have comparatively much lower quality of life than countries with worse economies. When people say the economy is bad, they mean the things that actually matter. When economists say the economy is good, they're speaking of some theoretical economy nobody can see. They're speaking of numbers on a screen, that don't go into your pocket. That's where the discrepancy comes from.
- jongjong 2y agoI've never been in a position where I had any kind of leverage to negotiate a serious increase. I've even been in an extreme situation in crypto sector where I was putting pressure on the company founder for a salary increase. I was earning like USD $100K per year comp total. They had over $100 million of assets. The founder, a multi-millionaire who had more money than he knew what to do with said that the pressure I was putting was like "Holding a knife to the company's throat." Guess how much of a raise he offered? 2%! I quit. Within 1 month after I quit, they fired half of the company. Coincidence? They didn't even need to do layoffs, they still had over $100 million in liquid assets/runway. They were spending at a rate of like $1 million per month. WTF! Out of the 10+ tech startups and corporations I worked for over the past 20 years, that was the closest I ever came to receiving a raise and still didn't get it. The whole market feels fake. Like a kind of weird social engineering PsyOp.
- roncesvalles 2y agoGetting more money from your current company based on market conditions almost never works. Even star performers get shafted on the regular.
- epiccoleman 2y agoI'd have to make it into FAANG or similar to double my comp. I'd certainly be open to the idea, but the path seems awfully narrow for senior level midwestern engineers like me.