This is why the 99% stuff misses the mark. That 1% is the best of us; our doctors, lawyers, successful small business owners, etc. People who drive the economy and create outsized value through specialized labor that is rightfully compensated. The true problem in our society is the 0.01%. There is a tiny portion of these that are the Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerbergs who are self made. But the vast majority of them are the intergenerational wealth holders whose fortunes have simply continued to compound and provide them with an unnatural amount of power influence that is completely undeserved. It's why a wealth tax is so neccessary in this country, and if properly implemented could completely absolve the need for income tax.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2018/10/03/the-forbe...

The companies - both public and private - that can contain or produce that level of wealth are very well known and almost impossible to hide. It's rare for Forbes or Bloomberg to find new stray billionaires that had been hiding for a long time. It does happen [1], it's just quite rare, especially versus the size of the known list. You don't magically quietly generate or inherit billions in wealth, you move things when you do that and it makes headlines (either over time or when a liquidity event occurs), it garners a lot of attention.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/02/19/the-great...

here is the full list of the forbes 400: https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

I don’t care what they started with - I care what they did with it.

For instance, if you started with 10MM and built a billion dollar company, great.

But if you started with 1MM and turned it into 1MM, then you really didn’t help out at all.

But I wonder (and it's only a thought based on some observations that I've had over the years) how large the talent pool is. Because "talent" in starting a business is so much more than just the knowledge to do the work, or the capital to start it...

For instance, I've started a few businesses. All but the current one closed at roughly breakeven.

My current business has required my life savings and selling my house, but we are finally (more than 3 years!) starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We're profitable, but I'm not making 6-figures yet. I should be by tax day next year, and hopefully between 150-200K by the end of next year. But interestingly, based on our trajectory, the growth curve is getting steeper, which is awesome, and should top out in the low 7 figures within 5 years or so.

However, there have been several (more than I can count) strong moments of doubt, where I've just wanted to quit. It's been really, really freaking hard. My wife works full time, and that's paid the bills, but the stress has been insane. (with kids, it's not just me - I have to make sure I don't tank the whole family)

This is just one data point (I'm skipping the others for brevity), but the stuff that it takes to start a business that actually generates free cash flow is really unusual. I know other people who've started businesses and shut them down because they didn't want to make the sacrifices. Our cars are old, we sold our house, I dipped into my IRA even. Most people don't have that kind of drive (or is it insanity?). Heck, there have been days recently where I question if I can get through the next 6 months.

So "talent" in starting a business is very different from talent in being good at work. And that kind of talent I think is rare, probably because the risks and sacrifices in many cases are just several standard deviations from the norm. Or maybe I've been doing this long enough where I've become deluded - I don't really know anymore.

Anyway, hope this adds to the conversation somewhat.

The fact is that the vast majority of people in above the 5% mark come from comfortable families. This would be fine, except that 1) they live in and influence a society where many live in exceedingly uncomfortable circumstances, and 2) instead of recognizing this as a moral travesty and acting accordingly, they hoard not only resources but the opportunity to better oneself.

We passed the point where "personal responsibility" was a reasonable justification for systemic suffering when we stopped hunting with rocks. Much of civilized history has been marked by the apparent ability to provide generally for the populace and the baffling decision not to. I don't think it's radical to say that we're discussing a manifestation of this phenomenon, more than anything else.

In the San Francisco area, a bit over $500k is the mean income of the top 5% of households, so while it's not too 1% locally, it still in a fairly narrow slice at the top.

https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/California/San-Franc...

I guess you would have to define the threshold of “absurd,” but It’s a pretty big deviation from the median in Los Angeles and New York, where the median incomes are between 60-65K. In SF, you’re talking two people both making more than double the median (about 110K)

Considering things like the cost of things like housing in these places, the inequality seems massive anyway you slice it.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/losangelescount...

https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/income-taxes/med_hhold_i...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MHICA06075A052NCEN

The median income, for a college graduate, nationally is >$90K. A lot of the median income stats are meaningless once you consider only the educated slices of the workforce.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

It’s not really relative. $500k HHI in Manhattan is a ridiculous amount of money that lets you live a ridiculous life of luxury, whether you realize it or not.

Wealthy elites really like to make this false “relativity” argument, where $500,000 isn’t “that much” because everything in New York is so expensive… but they ignore the simple fact that they get to live in New York and have access to everything that entails. Being able to live in New York at all is something many fantasize about. It’s part of why so many TV shows are based in New York. For most, it’s a fanciful life beyond their reach.

$500k is $500k. It gets you $500k worth of stuff. That $500k of stuff may be in the form of material items, access or lifestyle (e.g. weather). The fake relatively argument comes in when you only compare material items and selectively ignore everything else to make a false argument and appear like less of an elitists than you are. But $500k will get you EQUALLY absurd lifestyles in Manhattan or Kansas. In one, you get to live the high life in the middle of New York, with access to basically everything. In the other, you live in the midst of nothing, but with a pool that might qualify as a theme park and a fleet of exotic cars.

In either case, these are lifestyles only available to the 1%.

lol. really? what software devs are making 250k a year?

Most of the time it's due to having some leverage (multiple FAANG+ offers).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057514

the SWE ladder requires/expects for an L3 to get to L4 by makes no such requirement to ever get to L5.

Also career and personal skill wise, it's good to see how other companies work. Pay is in many ways determined by your negotiation skills, and that is empowered by creating better BATNAs via interview skill.

In NYC a senior dev makes that much or more in finance, and in a startup probably closer to 140-160 with bonus and fuzzy-numbered stock options. I don't count my stock options ("units") as anything worth anything at this point, not because I'm cynical but because there's no clear valuation.

All things considered I'm suddenly feeling underpaid - I know many quite senior folks barely breaking that.

We aren't talking about stock options, we are talking about concrete RSUs with real valuations.

A Staff Engineer at Google can easily be vesting $200k in stocks alone each year.

It's true that they make a lot of money, so do the owner of a SME or a director in a large organization. It's not a position most employees will ever attain in their lifetime.

That's true for non-public companies, but stock options at a publicly traded company like Google or Apple are much easier to value.

I'm trying to work toward the tech-adjacent side because developer comp tops out around 150k or 160k total in my area—and the top end of that's usually got one foot in management. Remote comp seems similar, unless you can do the hardcore algo interview thing—and even some of those don't pay especially well, if they're offering remote and feel like they're already doing you some kind of favor.

If your skills and what's shiny in the market right now are all concentric, you can add 100k's on top. (Just left FB on the internal React team? Been on Netflix's recommendation model team? SRE working with core Kubernetes? Cha-ching!)

~150k salary

~15k bonus

~100k stock

Good 401k match

This is the average of anecdotal evidence I have seen from friends and acquaintances with around your experience.

I was making a lot less not long ago. Then I went to an interview, knocked it out of the park, and when the ask TC reqs I just said $250 would work, and they made it happen. This is not in SF-area or NYC either.

Get promoted once at google / Facebook and you should be there. Promoted again and you’ll be 300-350k

If you don't mind, can you please share how much net you project to save this year after all taxes and expenses? Sorry if this is a little weird but as a poor person I'd imagine expenses to go up with higher income for ordinary people resulting in not that much (proportionately) savings.

My salary is $160K (that’s the max your salary can be at Amazon). The rest of my compensation (remaining ~$160k) is in restricted stock unit vests. I save 100% of that $160K after taxes. I max out my 401K from my salary. I also save 30-40% of each paycheck.

My husband and I don’t eat out 11 months of the year. The 12 month is a vacation where we travel within the US for a week vacation. Even then, we don’t go to expensive restaurants and will look for good deals... I mean my husband will open the McDonalds app on his phone to get a buy 1 get 1 Big Mac coupon. We don’t spend eating out... it is unhealthy and a bad habit.

We don’t have a car - so living in downtown Seattle, no expensive car tabs or parking. Also no fuel costs or car insurance payments. We paid off student loans and so there’s no debt. We pay for that with high rent ($2400/month excluding utilities).

Our only splurge is we have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and we might get Disney’s new service. Our apartment is upscale (by our standard). Our furniture is nicer.

You called yourself a poor person - I’m sure you know this, but income is not a measure of wealth. We’ve built up some investments and liquid savings over the years, but I know coworkers from previous teams and other friends who earn just as much or more than us but also have $15K/month mortgages and are house broke or have expensive drinking or general spending habits where they end up saving practically nothing.

$28.6k - 401k contributions & match

$112k - RSUs after tax

$14k - Monthly emergency fund contributions from paycheck (yearly total)

~$16k - Bonus after tax

My expenses really haven’t increased in line with the compensation. The picture would look different if I had a family, but I’m in my late 20s. I suppose I could eat high quality sushi daily, but I’ll settle for weekly.

But this is actually rare across the industry as a whole in the US, and extremely rare when considering other countries. It's nowhere near as common as the heavily skewed HN comments will make you believe.

This isn't unusual at all for top talent.

http://visadoor.com/greencards/index?company=Netflix&job=&co...

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Netflix&track=Software%20Eng...

Netflix is known to pay at the top of market, so the highest few compensations there being >$350k make at least a little sense.

Filter the visadoor results with job=software to see only the software developer salaries. These range from $280K to $850K, have a mean of $373K, a median $370K, 24 of 66 are at $400K and above.

This is very much the same ballpark as the self reported average salary of $433K on levels.fyi (I'd expect PERM figures to be slightly lower than average for the company as a whole since I presume they would normally be filed in the first year of employment.)

This strongly suggests to me that the levels.fyi self reported salaries for other companies are also ballpark correct.

> Netflix is known to pay at the top of market, so the highest few compensations there being >$350k make at least a little sense.

47 of 66 in the visadoor figures make $350 and above. While I would expect Netflix's average to be higher than other comparable companies this is because it hires only at Senior Software Developer level and above. Facebook and Google certainly pay their senior and above developers in the Bay Area similarly, albeit with a different RSU/salary mix.

(Well not me, but..)