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If you are in your 50s then your recent years of peak lifetime earning potential overlapped with an industry massively overpaying its workforce. You shouldn't

If you are in your 50s then your recent years of peak lifetime earning potential overlapped with an industry massively overpaying its workforce. You shouldn't need a job. You should have FIREd.

suzzer99 2y ago
Having FIRE doesn't mean you're ready to retire and build ships in a bottle or whatever. I like programming, it puts me in flow state and keeps my brain young. I want to go out on my own terms. Also good luck with FIRE if you're putting kids through college. And thirdly, for those of us at normal companies the pay has been nice, but not FAANG mid-six-figures nice.
- milesrout 2y ago
  You don't have to "put kids through college". If you're in the US, they can borrow to go somewhere decent and affordable. Harvard has never been for you, it has always been for the children of very rich New Englanders.
  - NBJack 2y ago
    You should probably update your personal data on what kind of debt they would be taking on, and how long it takes to pay it off. https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://research.com/education/average-time-to-repay-student-loans https://research.com/education/average-time-to-repay-student... https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college Even at a relatively average college, debt repayment is often measured in decades.
musicale 2y ago
> massively overpaying its workforce As I understand it, tech employees are typically paid a small fraction of the revenue that they bring into the company. Outside of tech, employees are underpaid, and wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s. Profit growth has greatly exceeded wage growth since the early 2000s, with the exception of the 2008 recession.
- genewitch 2y ago
  Minimum wage, fairly, should have been around $32 in 2019 or so. I haven't run numbers lately because it's depressing, but I bet it's worse now. You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel. I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years." I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013. Gasoline changes prices so much I can't really say, it's about twice as expensive for 87 here as 12 years ago, but 93 is 2.5+ times higher. Food? Don't get me started. I live in the rural south. I don't really care about price fixing in Los Angeles or silicon Valley.
  - milesrout 2y ago
    There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly". What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more. There are many people who do jobs worth much less than $32/hour. That min wage would just make them illegal to employ. >You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel. You can't use economic indicators that track volatile commodities either. We use baskets of consumer goods and the inflation tracking is very accurate in short time frames but it becomes harder to compare the further out you get. A TV today is much better than a TV even 10 years ago but it is hardly even the same product as one from 1970. >I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years." What is wild about that? If you had 50c then and you had invested it in even relatively poorly performing investments it would be worth much more than $1 now. >I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013. That you are not an economist is obvious. You are aware that dollars buy more things than energy from your energy provider according to your energy plan, yeah?
    - 2y ago
acheron 2y ago
This is not a real thing outside of a tiny number of people.
tetromino_ 2y ago
> your recent years of peak lifetime earning potential overlapped with an industry massively overpaying its workforce Only if the following conditions are true: 1. You spent your entire career in the US, ideally on the West Coast 2. You entered the industry early, ideally right after (or in!) university 3. You did not spend significant time in low-paying segments of the industry, such as in academia, hardware, games, idealistic open source, or the public sector 4. You did not need a significant career break, such as for major medical issues, being a SAHP, or caring for sick family members Even if all of the above applied, certain wealth-destroying events such as an expensive illness, legal trouble, or bad divorce, might have made FIRE infeasible.
giantg2 2y ago
When I get to 50, I will still need some sort of job. Maybe I can get a lower paying or low stress job. That's me being in the industry for my entire career, good credentials, etc. I will have been making somewhat less than the national developer median (about $130k is median). I live in a moderately high cost area. Even the people that live in high cost areas making 2x my salary have significant tax and real estate burdens. Not everyone can FIRE, especially if you're below the median.

If you are in your 50s then your recent years of peak lifetime earning potential overlapped with an industry massively overpaying its workforce. You shouldn't need a job. You should have FIREd.

suzzer99 2y ago

Having FIRE doesn't mean you're ready to retire and build ships in a bottle or whatever. I like programming, it puts me in flow state and keeps my brain young. I want to go out on my own terms. Also good luck with FIRE if you're putting kids through college. And thirdly, for those of us at normal companies the pay has been nice, but not FAANG mid-six-figures nice.

milesrout 2y ago
You don't have to "put kids through college". If you're in the US, they can borrow to go somewhere decent and affordable. Harvard has never been for you, it has always been for the children of very rich New Englanders.
- NBJack 2y ago
  You should probably update your personal data on what kind of debt they would be taking on, and how long it takes to pay it off. https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://research.com/education/average-time-to-repay-student-loans https://research.com/education/average-time-to-repay-student... https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college Even at a relatively average college, debt repayment is often measured in decades.

musicale 2y ago

> massively overpaying its workforce As I understand it, tech employees are typically paid a small fraction of the revenue that they bring into the company. Outside of tech, employees are underpaid, and wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s. Profit growth has greatly exceeded wage growth since the early 2000s, with the exception of the 2008 recession.

genewitch 2y ago
Minimum wage, fairly, should have been around $32 in 2019 or so. I haven't run numbers lately because it's depressing, but I bet it's worse now. You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel. I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years." I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013. Gasoline changes prices so much I can't really say, it's about twice as expensive for 87 here as 12 years ago, but 93 is 2.5+ times higher. Food? Don't get me started. I live in the rural south. I don't really care about price fixing in Los Angeles or silicon Valley.
- milesrout 2y ago
  There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly". What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more. There are many people who do jobs worth much less than $32/hour. That min wage would just make them illegal to employ. >You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel. You can't use economic indicators that track volatile commodities either. We use baskets of consumer goods and the inflation tracking is very accurate in short time frames but it becomes harder to compare the further out you get. A TV today is much better than a TV even 10 years ago but it is hardly even the same product as one from 1970. >I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years." What is wild about that? If you had 50c then and you had invested it in even relatively poorly performing investments it would be worth much more than $1 now. >I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013. That you are not an economist is obvious. You are aware that dollars buy more things than energy from your energy provider according to your energy plan, yeah?
  - 2y ago

acheron 2y ago

This is not a real thing outside of a tiny number of people.

tetromino_ 2y ago

> your recent years of peak lifetime earning potential overlapped with an industry massively overpaying its workforce Only if the following conditions are true: 1. You spent your entire career in the US, ideally on the West Coast 2. You entered the industry early, ideally right after (or in!) university 3. You did not spend significant time in low-paying segments of the industry, such as in academia, hardware, games, idealistic open source, or the public sector 4. You did not need a significant career break, such as for major medical issues, being a SAHP, or caring for sick family members Even if all of the above applied, certain wealth-destroying events such as an expensive illness, legal trouble, or bad divorce, might have made FIRE infeasible.

giantg2 2y ago

When I get to 50, I will still need some sort of job. Maybe I can get a lower paying or low stress job. That's me being in the industry for my entire career, good credentials, etc. I will have been making somewhat less than the national developer median (about $130k is median). I live in a moderately high cost area. Even the people that live in high cost areas making 2x my salary have significant tax and real estate burdens. Not everyone can FIRE, especially if you're below the median.