Yes I realize I’m saying this and I make a lot more, but if I was “stuck” at $400k I don’t think I would be upset.
The median household income in NYC is something around $75k.
I can’t really do the career or manager interaction stuff well because I don’t care about it personally and I don’t have any problems myself with my manager being incompetent or changing all the times.
I think that’s correlated with my somewhat unintentional success, but “have a better manager” or “don’t get reorged by directors playing game of thrones” isn’t actionable advice.
What I am good at is technical stuff, so if I have a person that is 1. technically competent and with the right attitude (IYKYK) and 2. good and technical manager then I and they do very well. But that’s very situational and also the technical stuff is very company specific.
2. Split completely evenly with partner. This also saves on “per household” things like internet, power, heating.
3. It’s still a big part of the spending, proportionately!
I just don’t spend that much. Don’t drink outside, don’t go out for dinner at fancy places, never order delivery (it doesn’t even taste good! Soggy food sucks!), don’t take Uber ever or even the subway much, ride a fixed gear bike around mostly. Exercise is using said bike rather than paying $300 for a fancy gym. Take vacations, but prefer camping and hiking to resorts or fancy expensive cities. Don’t stay in luxury hotels, have never considers paying for business class. My hobby is playing mostly cheap indie games that I still waited for a Steam sale on, and it’s all stuff like Rimworld that you play for 400 hours. Or watching free YouTube videos.
This is straight out of Mint (obviously rounded) so it’s not a lie!
My manager talks about getting me to L8 all the time and it’s exhausting. I’m done! I’ve won the income game! She is very career oriented and cares about climbing the ladder, I do not.
I’ve never actually cared about “career goals” or done “growth” really, I don’t think I’d actually be unhappy if I was stuck at L5 making a mere $400k forever. That’s a really high income, an integer multiple of what my parents ever made.
So my “what’s next” is keep throwing it into VTI and then retire in a few years.
FWIW there were very little politics involved in my L7 promotion, I just wrote a lot of good code and mentored some people to do the same.