I spent most of my twenties in college and grad school. Then worked in the Midwest in my early thirties making $100k-$130k.
I moved to Silicon Valley and took a job for $150k. That was a downgrade considering the much higher cost of living, but it seemed like a good stepping stone at the time. I stayed at that company for way too long working towards a promotion that was dangled in front of me but never came, and finally switched to FANG for a 2X increase in total comp.
And many people at my age in the company make about 2X+ of what I make now. The housing prices here are so crazy that I’m ready to throw in the towel on SV, even if it means a pay cut. My QOL was highest outside of the Bay Area working for less.
All that clever software that increased the company's revenue by 10%? A large part of those additional earnings ended up in some landlord's pocket.
We're all just working around the clock so that landlords can increase their rents and sip cocktails.
It’s like the peasants who work all day and have nothing when people from blue blood are having generations living of their backs in castles.
Having an elite is fine, it’s even better when class movement is feasible but when you have a large class of people doing nothing or rewarded drastically differently for the same input, things are not fine.
A friend is thinking about to open a restaurant in a very attractive location, but I said, if you don't own the property the restaurant is in, the land lord will just increase rent until the any profit is barely OK anyways. There is no money in that.
Then, contract around it with a capped escalation factor? And doesn't this apply to any <insert business> renting space?
Of course the restaurant business is probably hit-and-miss and risky, and owning the premises might give you more stability, at least if you don't have a large amount of debt. It sounds to me like your stance might be quite cynical in the sense that almost nobody would try starting a restaurant if they considered owning their premises a necessity.
On a $300k income, even with one earner, you can comfortably afford a $1m+ home (of which there are plenty of single family homes available in many parts of the bay area), and while yes the COL for things like groceries/eating out is higher than in Austin TX, it's not high enough to seriously claim that it's not liveable
I work on the Peninsula. 90% of 3+ bedroom houses currently on the market here cost over $1.75M. Those below that, in the bottom 10%, are what you’d expect to find in the bottom 10%. There are many great places to live where I wouldn’t be forced to choose between that or spending a couple hours a day in traffic. Less money and higher quality of life.
Every time I've changed jobs to date I've had multiple job offers. 3 years ago I had 3 offers from 3 different companies. This time around I had the same - 3 offers, 3 companies. Just in the last 5 years my salary has increased 6 fold.
My basic philosophy with respect to compensation is to take home enough to maintain the lifestyle you want + 20% extra to save and invest.
People on here are always talking about changing jobs and getting a huge salary increase, but these numbers don't make sense unless you were tremendously underpaid for many years.