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I did the same and for around 50% cut. Working from home allows me to spend more time with my kids (I get to have lunch with them and hear them play in the back

I did the same and for around 50% cut. Working from home allows me to spend more time with my kids (I get to have lunch with them and hear them play in the background), no toxic rush hour commute, and I get the comfort of my own space. I know there's a down side of not being able to collaborate as well with my team. But I put my wellbeing over that. And to be honest, the pay cut - while significant - made no change in my daily life. But the peace of mind and serenity I have retained by WFH is invaluable.

jumping_frog 2y ago
I don't understand why isn't WFH made mandatory since it helps with climate change.
- Muromec 2y ago
  Because mandate giving authority doesn’t care about climate change. That’s pretty obvious explanation
  - griomnib 2y ago
    Hey now, the morons somehow managed to remain organized enough to choose these authorities. And now we’ll all burn together. Don’t let your fellow citizen off the hook.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      Yep, crime is always orginized and your fellow citizen, especially during the good times, aren't
- bdangubic 2y ago
  data to support this claim? you are (incorrectly) assuming that since employees are not commuting to work they are just home and cars are just collecting dust in a garage… but of course you go to the store and mall and park and … in the middle of the day and you see a whole other story :)
  - jumping_frog 2y ago
    One off excursions are totally different than a 5 day back and forth. I don't have data but one can guess.
    - brantonb 2y ago
      I have data for myself. My annual driving dropped from roughly 9,000 miles to 5,000 miles when I switched to WFH. In addition to avoiding the daily back and forth, I’d often make a detour on my evening commute to get groceries for the next couple of days. Now I plan things out better and make fewer shopping trips, as well. I wonder if I could negotiate cheaper car insurance rates. I’m driving far less and on safer streets, rarely getting on a major highway.
      - bdangubic 2y ago
        lets say you are good representative of a general population… how much of a climate change “dent” do you think we made?
        brantonb 2y ago
        I was simply providing a single data point. Please feel free to use that to support your theory or ignore it.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      you don’t write policies based on guesses…
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      there are many positives of WFH but climate change is not one of them
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    We have data from COVID when most people were working from home.
lolinder 2y ago
> And to be honest, the pay cut - while significant - made no change in my daily life. Yep. Speaking for myself, beyond a certain income threshold there has been no substantial quality of life improvement. My last promotion made it even easier to save for an even earlier retirement, and that's about it. Early retirement is nice, and earlier retirement is even nicer, but given a choice between retiring when my kid is 20 and being home with him every day throughout his whole childhood, there's no contest. I'll happily delay retirement if that's the trade-off that's needed in order to be there while he's growing up.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  I am starting to wonder if the management wants to ensure people in general do not make that connection ( and just want to have, ideally, serfs barely making ends meet ). Covid was a big moment for me in a lot of ways, because I was very pro-corporate for a long time. Having seen some of the bs up close and personal, it made me realize how broken our current system really is ( I still remember 'we are in this together' lip service and 'driving is your zen time' ). Having a kid ( and seeing it grow up ) can be such a radicalizing moment.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    Management wants replaceable units which are cheap to source, maintain and replace and utilize to the maximum. That’s all it was ever about
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
      It does ring true and I am not sure I can refute it ( management wants easily replaceable cogs for the machine ). But my overall thought is that humans are a lot of things, but among those things they are also horrible biological machines if seen only through that prism. Our whole value to the system is that we can adjust to the unknown. Still, maybe more importantly, we are not all even the same cogs, but management tries to lazily put us in the same category. I am not sure we can even really call it management. That is actually a mismanagement of human resources.. I think I mentioned this pet theory before here, but it is no longer 1950, but the management has not evolved since that period in US. Maybe it is time to force that evolution.
jfengel 2y ago
Beyond a certain point, you have as much money as you wish to spend. Some people don't seem to have a top limit, but for many, those lucky enough to earn more will just put it away. The difference in your lifestyle isn't now, but in a few decades. It's hard to know when you have enough for the rest of your life. There are formulas, though I don't really know how meaningful they are. Meantime you're clearly leading a better life now, and may well not mind having a few additional years of it (compared to a bit less time with a lot more aggravation). So, congratulations. It sounds like you made a well-founded choice.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I probably saved more than I had to do and probably shouldn't be as (relatively) frugal as I am. COVID definitely pushed out a significantly earlier (semi-)retirement.
bradlys 2y ago
> I did the same and for around 50% cut. How did you and poster above manage this? A 50% paycut would mean having to move to a much more remote area for most people without a lot of NW already. Homes being $1-3m in most of the places that FAANG resides just makes it implausible to take a cut from $400k+/yr to maybe $200k/yr. You can't afford a mortgage at $200k/yr for a $1m home with 20% down. Is everyone here who is taking these paycuts just have a partner who makes bank or are you already rich thanks to having bought/inherited property long ago? This advice just seems implausible to most anyone who cares about being in a good school district, in a relatively populous area, and hasn't inherited millions through buying real estate, inheritance, or stock appreciation.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  200k/yr for an 800k loan should be fine. You'd have a 60-65k/yr mortgage. Your DTI would be under 36% so lenders would be okay with it, and you might have like 100k in total living expenses so plenty of savings buffer. 1M can buy a house in a very nice suburb in an excellent school district.
  - bradlys 2y ago
    It can’t in Silicon Valley. Maybe in Tacoma or the very outer burbs of nyc. I don’t get the point living that far out though. You’re just in suburban hell at that point and stuck with working remote or a megacommute. Either way, over half your net income is going to housing and that’s on the lower bound of what I gave. You probably won’t have a nice house. Maybe a starter home. May as well move to rural Indiana at that point.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago
      In a good area of "suburban hell" you can find things like clean streets with lots of greenery, a 2% poverty rate, public schools with an average SAT score at the 91 percentile and 71% AP enrollment, over 80% of households with married couples and almost 50% with kids. $1M can buy you a 4000 sq ft house on 1 acre. Working remote is the point. You can live somewhere nice for families instead of a big city. Just don't live in places like California.

jumping_frog 2y ago

I don't understand why isn't WFH made mandatory since it helps with climate change.

Muromec 2y ago
Because mandate giving authority doesn’t care about climate change. That’s pretty obvious explanation
- griomnib 2y ago
  Hey now, the morons somehow managed to remain organized enough to choose these authorities. And now we’ll all burn together. Don’t let your fellow citizen off the hook.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    Yep, crime is always orginized and your fellow citizen, especially during the good times, aren't
bdangubic 2y ago
data to support this claim? you are (incorrectly) assuming that since employees are not commuting to work they are just home and cars are just collecting dust in a garage… but of course you go to the store and mall and park and … in the middle of the day and you see a whole other story :)
- jumping_frog 2y ago
  One off excursions are totally different than a 5 day back and forth. I don't have data but one can guess.
  - brantonb 2y ago
    I have data for myself. My annual driving dropped from roughly 9,000 miles to 5,000 miles when I switched to WFH. In addition to avoiding the daily back and forth, I’d often make a detour on my evening commute to get groceries for the next couple of days. Now I plan things out better and make fewer shopping trips, as well. I wonder if I could negotiate cheaper car insurance rates. I’m driving far less and on safer streets, rarely getting on a major highway.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      lets say you are good representative of a general population… how much of a climate change “dent” do you think we made?
      - brantonb 2y ago
        I was simply providing a single data point. Please feel free to use that to support your theory or ignore it.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    you don’t write policies based on guesses…
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    there are many positives of WFH but climate change is not one of them
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  We have data from COVID when most people were working from home.

lolinder 2y ago

> And to be honest, the pay cut - while significant - made no change in my daily life. Yep. Speaking for myself, beyond a certain income threshold there has been no substantial quality of life improvement. My last promotion made it even easier to save for an even earlier retirement, and that's about it. Early retirement is nice, and earlier retirement is even nicer, but given a choice between retiring when my kid is 20 and being home with him every day throughout his whole childhood, there's no contest. I'll happily delay retirement if that's the trade-off that's needed in order to be there while he's growing up.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
I am starting to wonder if the management wants to ensure people in general do not make that connection ( and just want to have, ideally, serfs barely making ends meet ). Covid was a big moment for me in a lot of ways, because I was very pro-corporate for a long time. Having seen some of the bs up close and personal, it made me realize how broken our current system really is ( I still remember 'we are in this together' lip service and 'driving is your zen time' ). Having a kid ( and seeing it grow up ) can be such a radicalizing moment.
- Muromec 2y ago
  Management wants replaceable units which are cheap to source, maintain and replace and utilize to the maximum. That’s all it was ever about
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
    It does ring true and I am not sure I can refute it ( management wants easily replaceable cogs for the machine ). But my overall thought is that humans are a lot of things, but among those things they are also horrible biological machines if seen only through that prism. Our whole value to the system is that we can adjust to the unknown. Still, maybe more importantly, we are not all even the same cogs, but management tries to lazily put us in the same category. I am not sure we can even really call it management. That is actually a mismanagement of human resources.. I think I mentioned this pet theory before here, but it is no longer 1950, but the management has not evolved since that period in US. Maybe it is time to force that evolution.

jfengel 2y ago

Beyond a certain point, you have as much money as you wish to spend. Some people don't seem to have a top limit, but for many, those lucky enough to earn more will just put it away. The difference in your lifestyle isn't now, but in a few decades. It's hard to know when you have enough for the rest of your life. There are formulas, though I don't really know how meaningful they are. Meantime you're clearly leading a better life now, and may well not mind having a few additional years of it (compared to a bit less time with a lot more aggravation). So, congratulations. It sounds like you made a well-founded choice.

ghaff 2y ago
I probably saved more than I had to do and probably shouldn't be as (relatively) frugal as I am. COVID definitely pushed out a significantly earlier (semi-)retirement.

bradlys 2y ago

> I did the same and for around 50% cut. How did you and poster above manage this? A 50% paycut would mean having to move to a much more remote area for most people without a lot of NW already. Homes being $1-3m in most of the places that FAANG resides just makes it implausible to take a cut from $400k+/yr to maybe $200k/yr. You can't afford a mortgage at $200k/yr for a $1m home with 20% down. Is everyone here who is taking these paycuts just have a partner who makes bank or are you already rich thanks to having bought/inherited property long ago? This advice just seems implausible to most anyone who cares about being in a good school district, in a relatively populous area, and hasn't inherited millions through buying real estate, inheritance, or stock appreciation.

ndriscoll 2y ago
200k/yr for an 800k loan should be fine. You'd have a 60-65k/yr mortgage. Your DTI would be under 36% so lenders would be okay with it, and you might have like 100k in total living expenses so plenty of savings buffer. 1M can buy a house in a very nice suburb in an excellent school district.
- bradlys 2y ago
  It can’t in Silicon Valley. Maybe in Tacoma or the very outer burbs of nyc. I don’t get the point living that far out though. You’re just in suburban hell at that point and stuck with working remote or a megacommute. Either way, over half your net income is going to housing and that’s on the lower bound of what I gave. You probably won’t have a nice house. Maybe a starter home. May as well move to rural Indiana at that point.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    In a good area of "suburban hell" you can find things like clean streets with lots of greenery, a 2% poverty rate, public schools with an average SAT score at the 91 percentile and 71% AP enrollment, over 80% of households with married couples and almost 50% with kids. $1M can buy you a 4000 sq ft house on 1 acre. Working remote is the point. You can live somewhere nice for families instead of a big city. Just don't live in places like California.