> But there’s this super prevalent idea that keeps getting pumped around the blogosphere that it’s absolutely impossible to not work at a terrible huge company and therefore you cannot possibly escape, and I quote, “going home and despairing”.

Behind all such writing is an unspoken piece of context: those terrible huge companies pay software devs better than small ones. It's not that they can't work at a smaller company - it's just that it means taking a hit to your take-home pay, so it's Not An Option.

Agree! In fact, while you wrote this I made an edit (last sentence) to address that. It was supposed to be my core point but I had somehow left it implicit.

Also work life balance is usually better in big corp you actually can clock that 9:5 and go home.

All of my friends at FB/G work way more hours than me and miss family activities. Same as when I was at MS.

FAANG are megacorps pretending to be startups to young developers, and treat them accordingly. There are other megacorps doing tech that behave like proper megacorps, and pay accordingly.

Those companies tend to attract type As, and it’s similarly easy for non type As to feel implicit peer pressure. You don’t have to work a ton to succeed.

If you prefer to maintain a 9-5 schedule at these companies, it's extremely possible as long as you:

1) genuinely stick to a 9-5 work routine (some individuals I saw struggling were actually working something like 11-4).

2) are comfortable with the possibility of not experiencing rapid career advancement, potentially reaching a plateau at the first terminal level.

The people who tend to work extra hours are the ones who choose to in my experience. If you don't work extra hours now you won't after switching to one of those companies either. You might witness folks who do, but you can usually tell they are more self motivated than they are forced into it.

Depends on the company. My stints with BigCorp life were full of 6-7PM meeting times and expectations to keep up with Slack and email even during vacations and holidays.

I have friends at Amazon who have started to miss our Saturday events because they’re feverishly working to avoid being caught in the next round of layoffs.

I also have friends at some FAANG companies who seem like they’re barely working (their own admission) so it varies wildly. Can’t really generalize.

Bezos is a known taskmaster.

I think it depends how you look at it. For me, it's a pretty small price to pay to look at Slack here and there, whether over the weekend or on vacation, to get paid significantly more. Rarely do I have to actually put in more than an hour or two during these times, and I can very easily take that time off during the work week.

You're saying if you can't maximize your pay, it's not an option?

I cannot wrap my head around it. Being happy with your life is not a one-to-one correlation with income. You can make less money than "maximum" and still have a great life.

It's not necessarily maximizing money, but maintaining lifestyle. It's extremely common for people to increase their standard of living as their means increase, and reducing that requires significant effort in some cases (e.g., people tend to buy as much house as they can afford, so any significant salary reduction could necessitate selling the house and uprooting your family). It's a minimal sacrifice in the face of having to work a job you hate, IMO, but it's still a powerful barrier for many.

Right.

> extremely common for people to increase their standard of living

That was a choice. But the opposite is "not a choice"? You choose to spend so much money that you are forced into work you may despise to support the spending choices you make, so there's no option to... not make those spending choices?

Choices aren't made equal. Some are easier to make, even unconsciously, than others. For example, choosing immediate pleasure is easier than immediate discomfort. A series of small, incremental choices over time is easier than one large step. Etc.

What is your point? It’s still a choice. It’s easier to spend more money than less money, great insight.

It's also easier to spend the same money than to spend less money. Given two easy things, most people won't chose the hard thing most of the time.

I'm unsure why you've quoted "not a choice", as I never said any such thing. I said it's difficult for many to decide to change their lifestyle to afford a less lucrative but more enjoyable job.

You've also got the cause and effect backward. You do the work you can be employed to do with the promise of competitive compensation. Years go by, you get used to living with that salary (plus yearly raises), and then you realize your job sucks. Now what do you do? Soldier on at BigCo1, switch companies to an effectively isomorphic position at BigCo2, or spend low 5 figures moving to and outfitting a new house for a 20% pay cut and a job you love? All three are choices, but #3 has the highest barrier to decision.

> I'm unsure why you've quoted "not a choice", as I never said any such thing.

TeMPORaL did, though, in the parent chain. That's why neogodless is quoting it. (This isn't a one-on-one conversation here...)

>You can make less money than "maximum" and still have a great life.

I think the bigger assumption here is "all companies are bad, so even if I change I'm simply choosing another poison".

What alternatives do you have in mind? trying to join a startup? That means having the money/idea for yourself and pitching to investors or being experienced enough that other founders want you on the ground floor with them (i.e. going back to spending 10+ years at "not an option" BigCo).

Unless you’re talking about big tech that’s not true. A random bank or insurance company or whatever will pay worse than well funded startups

God points but:

1) For someone in BigCo it is fun to read.

2) BigCo is not a bad place for most people. Management should just shut up about efficiency and data driven. No one believes them, not even themselves.

It's also nice to read for us in SmallCo. We remember why we took that salary hit to stay sane.

Hey, some of us in SmallCo have dreams of trading in joy for a much larger paycheck at BigCo. No pain, no gain.

The audience for the management statements, such as investors and analysts, might just want to hear certain things. These things will have certain fads and fashions as to what needs to be uttered.

Yeah, at this point in my career I'm tired of the bullshit that management spouts. I know they don't believe one bit of what they are saying except as a method to get product out quicker. We aren't even necessarily labour bound, but management doesn't accept that 9 women can't make a baby in a month.

I'm all for looking at processes periodically to make sure we are doing the right things to get everything released, but when you come at it from a hitting ever tighter arbitrary KPIs you just make everyone angry or apathetic to your words.

If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important I would fully agree with you.

But it is.

I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.

So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice.

Choosing to earn less and hope for a lottery ticket win like being an early employee in a unicorn startup is not a real plan. It's wishful thinking.

I hate this is the world we live in and my soul dies a bit every day I have to waste my talents writing useless software, but there's no real choice.

> No it's not really a choice.

Hard disagree. Have never worked for "terrible big company" (though some mediocre medium companies!) But outside of the super high cost of living areas like NYC and San Francisco, it's trivially simple (if not easy) to live on $50-60K USD each year (adjust this number for inflation as needed) while still enjoying yourself, having high performance technology, doing some travel, etc. You can't buy every damn thing you want or live like a millionaire, but you can live a great life.

How many software / engineering jobs in the U.S., excluding terrible big tech companies, pay more than $60k USD per year?

Almost all of them. In fact, it's not hard to make well over $100k. And live on half that. So you don't have to work forever just because you're not making $500k USD each year at some huge terrible tech company.

$60-100k salary is not enough to support a family and retire; it's probably not enough to for a single person to make meaningful progress towards retirement because at that level of pay home ownership is constantly out of reach and inflation outpaces wage growth. It's sacrificing your life so someone else can get rich.

In today's environment, home prices really seem to be getting nuts.

As I said, anyone in software is likely making over $100K. A $500K house with 20% down would have a P&I payment of $2,715 / month (plus taxes/insurance.) That's less than $33K / year. (I bought my first house for $155K making $55K / year, and my second house for $390K making $100K.) If you're making over $100K, and spending under a third of it on housing, you should be able to afford to live, unless you're careless with your money.

I don't think I'm making any sacrifices in my life, because I don't think of the things you can overspend on as sacrifices. As I said, I eat well (at home and at restaurants), I travel, I have great technology / toys. And at 44 I have a 7 figure net worth. Because I'm still spending under $65K USD / year, I could likely live off investments in a few more years, though being in software, it's easy to continue contracting on my own terms and having extra money.

$100k for a down payment - how many years of saving does that take and what happens to that $500k price tag during those years of saving? One hardship like a medical issue, a setback in employment, or a child you weren't ready for, then what? And I'm not sure you could find a one bedroom, one bathroom for $500k in a city with tech jobs.

In places where houses are $500K, rent is probably $2000 / month. (More like $1200 - 5000 / month, but depending on the size, location, amenities, luxuriousness of fixtures, etc.) If you make barely $100K, and are spending $24K on rent, let's say you spend half of the rest on living. That leaves you with $38K savings per year. So it takes you 32 months to save up $100K for a down payment.

The secret is don't spend all of the money you make. Well it's not a secret, but it's also not "normal." It's culturally normal to spend all of your money, and then wonder why you can't build up savings. But if you're a software engineer with an income of 6 figures, you really should be able to figure out how to live a good life without spending every last dollar.

Does this $100K/yr earner pay no income taxes and FICA somehow?

You forgot taxes. $38k - $27k in taxes = $11k savings. So 9 years to save up, by which time housing inflation will have taken the price to ~$700k. You are then $40k short for the down payment.

Do you know a lot of software engineers that barely make $100k?

That's why I'm not getting caught up in the particulars of this example.

There are many people in software that are making under $100k

Anyone working in in a government position, or for a state university, or for a nonprofit is probably not earning $100k except maybe in high COL areas or those with quite senior positions.

In Europe frontend is about 60k annually.

Don't you think it's interesting that you forgot taxes and how dramatically that skews the example?

Think about people earning $50k - $100k. 37 million households in the US. Another 34 million households earn less. 128 million households in America total.[1]

12, give or take 2, years into professional life, you have the privilege of signing a 30-year note and cashing out all of your savings. Wages and cost of living won't be constant, but that's basically the optimistic case. Working 42 years to retire on one paid off mortgage.

I think owning one basic shelter should be more accessible than that.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...

To be sure if we want an example with someone making $80k after tax, we should really not be looking at houses above $400k. Yes, home prices are nuts, as I observed, but no one should be spending 5x gross income and 6.25x net income on housing.

In my own life, I spent about 2.5x gross income for both of my home purchases. And they were arguably more home than I needed. When I bought my first house, I was single, and I rented out the two other bedrooms. My spouse and I bought a house together, but ultimately could not have children, so the house is too big. (We also live on an acre and have a lot to maintain.) Now I know these Philly suburbs are nothing compared to California real estate, but it's still a medium to high cost of living area compared to the rest of the country, where we're minutes away from any kind of shopping or entertainment we'd want, and 45 minutes from the large international airport.

For sure the rising housing costs make it even harder for households making less than the median. I never argued otherwise. My point was about that which started this thread, that there is "no option" but to work for a big, awful tech company. I disagree, and elevated housing costs don't change that.

I've been stuck making $60K for 15+ years.

It took me about five years to save my down payment. I lived very frugally, don't have a wife, don't have a kid, I paid less than $20k on note for each of my cars, and do not have college debt. I'd say it's fairly difficult if you start moving any of the knobs I minimized or set to zero above. Even then, after my down payment money was tight for the first year because it was everything I had.

I got a mortgage similar to what OP mentioned but I have a veterans home loan. Most people I know don't have one of those, so their mortgage that was gotten at the same time as mine is closer to $4k/m.

So you are a both a bit of an exception nowadays with no family and no debt.

I'm largely an exception, yes

Home rates are closer to 8%. The redfin calculator puts a $490k home near me at just under $3200/mo with 20% down.

So over $36k a year. I'm in Washington, so no income tax. Let's say $100k income, single person. No pre tax deductions and you'll be bringing home $6200/mo. So over 50% of your take home goes to mortgage alone.

In your example, your home prices were roughly 3x-4x your annual income. Compared to your example of prices being 5x.

Why on earth would a single person buy a 490k house? Everyone I know either had roommates, an inheritance, or make enough it’s a trivial expense.

Also don’t forget about the home mortgage tax deduction, that plus inflation really impacts the cost of home ownership.

[delayed]

70 miles from the downtown of a major city is still generally considered part of that city’s metropolitan area and prices reflect that. Still though getting a 1br condo in LA for 150-300k is more reflective of what it actually costs to get an affordable place as a single person in that area. Yes you have condo fees, but maintain a house comes with serious costs as well.

That’s the thing, if it’s a trivial expense then who cares, but when there’s more affordable options it’s hard to imagine why stretching yourself buying a house at that price would be a good idea.

255k for a 1,952 square foot place in Harrisonburg, VA 22802 is far more representative of most of the US’s housing prices. It’s a modest 50k population university town 130 miles from DC so not in the middle of nowhere but still cheap. https://www.redfin.com/VA/Harrisonburg/1036-Meadowlark-Dr-22... Plenty of places listed for less than that or far more, but in general there’s still a lot of options under 300k.

>getting a 1br condo in LA for 150-300k is more reflective of what it actually costs to get an affordable place as a single person in that area.

A house is a multi decade investment. Why would I buy a single shack if I want to perhaps have a family one day? Especially in this market? I don't want to own a house for the sake of ownership.

And yes, like anything else in life, you have super cheap deals and super expensive. I was using a very rough median pricing. Especially since the lowest cost houses likely mean you need to do the most work on it. I'm not a carpenter nor a house flipper, so that's not of interest to me (and I imagine many other people in tech).

Median pricing downtown is 1m for 2 Bed/bath. I feel the cost going down to 40-50% for going beyond what is considered LA county (which is huge, but not a 70 mile radius) seems to make sense. I suppose you can keep looking northeast towards Death Valley and find something at 200-300k, but you're legitimately getting towards food desert[1] area at that point. The high desert area is already pretty rural as is, unless you are a true hermit (or a stargazer) I can't imagine going further out and making it a 20+ mile drive to any and everything.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

That phrase only refers to the distance from you to a grocery store. So, no you don’t need to enter food desert territory when you buy a house in one of the many smaller CA cities/towns.

Anyway, buying a house can be an investment but living in a larger one than you need is wasting a productive asset. If you have a 4 bedroom house you can rent out for 4k/month then living in it is costing you 4k/month the same way renting a place for 4k would be. There’s nothing inherently wrong with buying an investment house, but you shouldn’t be out anywhere close to the full monthly cost.

[delayed]

> I don’t really consider an extra room a waste.

By waste I simply mean it’s consumptive. It’s obvious when you’re spending well above the norm on rent, but it doesn’t slap you in the face in the same way when buying a larger house.

If you bought in the past, you made it. That doesn't help the current generation.

Hundred year-old teardowns are two million in our neighborhood. 60+ y-o condos are $800k. Redfin est payment/mo: $5,974. Just the property tax and HOA fee is over $1,000 a month.

>I eat well (at home and at restaurants), I travel, I have great technology / toys. And at 44 I have a 7 figure net worth.

You clearly don't have kids. and/or a spouse that depends on your income. The former drains your money very quickly, especially if you need services like daycare (if your spouse isn't a full time parent... so we're back to one income to support a family of 3+) or perhaps invest in private school. I wouldn't call either of those "overspending" depending on the area. And nowadays you may need to invest in a 529 for that kid's college...

It's already hard raising a kid badly. Raising one well is expensive.

>A $500K house with 20% down

how are you saving 100k on a 100k salary, on top of other savings for rainy days? do you just save for 5-10 years by throwing 20% into a savings account, on top of rent/utilities and other stuff?

Even then, the hard part is getting approved for the sale. The market right now is just absurd. Even if you can comfortably pay mortgage you may be outbid by some family or other person who simply buys the house in cash. You really can't keep up.

Median household income in the US is $71k.

I live in Toronto. The lowest I've seen for a job listing at a tech-oriented small company was 90k on the low end(the job listing was 90k-120k), and this was for someone with 2 years experience. I've never seen a tech or tech-adjacent company offer 60k for even new grads. Most small companies I've seen offer for someone with 5+ years of solid experience a minimum of 120k USD. These are for remote jobs.

So you say a salary above the median salary is not enough? This raises a big question of how is half the population in the country getting by.

« Retire early » is the main part you’re missing from their argument, that implies saving large portions of disposable income. I always feel sad when people have high paying jobs they hate just so that « retire early » though, in a field like software engineering you can find a happy medium I feel like.

The happy medium for me would be working less than 20 hours per week. It's not about the work but about how much time it consumes. And part time software engineering jobs don't seem to exist... I would happily live on half my income for half my hours. But if retiring early is more realistic than that (and it seems to be), I'll take it.

It's possible much later in career when you establish yourself in a certain domain. You become valuable enough that you working half the time (or even just consulting) is more valuable than 2 other employees.

But people who can do that are also probably in positions to retire early already. Either with PhD's and 10+ years working on some now-extremely-valuable tech (think AI if you worked on it in the 2010's, or data science in the 00's) or some otherwise reputable name in their industry.

I've been very confused about how people are getting by.

If they're not in tech, and and they're not a member of the professional class (doctor, lawyer, etc), how are they doing it?

Is everyone working two jobs and doing uber on top of that, or what? How much of a bubble am I in? I'm in tech and I feel like I'm barely making it.

Middle class has been and continues to being squished and crushed, things are getting worse and worse if you haven’t noticed. And it’s not just in the US, but also other western economies such as Germany, France, UK, etc.

I wonder the same thing. I suspect that the answer is they carry a lot of debt that they never really expect to pay off.

Roommates, living with parents. A decade+ past when earlier generations moved to their own homes.

Well, not being able to retire at 60-100k is such an US problem... It is enough to easily retirely at whatever the legal retirement age is, earlier if I include all tue benefits my boring big corp job and collectively bargained salary provide.

You can always lower your standard of living, sure. But that's a different conversation IMO.

I guess technically that's a choice, but it's so bad in the long term I personally can't consider it valid.

Can you elaborate?

As I've never raised my standard of living to spending over $100K / year, I don't exactly know what I'm missing.

I think more to your point, yes there is a choice - to make $500K at a "big bad tech company" and then spend like there's no tomorrow on things that you feel are worth spending all that money on, hoping that it makes up for the 40 hours you spend working (and maybe hating?) Or you enjoy your 40 hour job, make less, spend less. But spending money doesn't have a direct and equal correlation with life satisfaction. I spend about $65K / year (for two people, no kids), and I feel like I have an amazing life, and spending a bunch more money would, at best, have small incremental returns on life satisfaction.

Of course!

I have also never raised my spending to anything close to that. Nor I have the choice of making $500k (I wish).

When I mention standard of living I don't mean spending like crazy. I mean not having to constantly worry that if you lose your job you can't make your mortgage in a few months.

I save around 50% of my salary and I'd save even more if I didn't have a kid and wasn't the sole provider in my home right now. Not because I wouldn't love to be living like a king, but because for me that's the only option I have to afford a life long term.

What if I die? What if I get hurt and can't work anymore? What if me or my wife gets sick and we can't treat it with the limited free healthcare we have access to?

Even barring that. I absolutely hate that I have to give away the prime hours of my day to ensure me and my family can simply survive. I don't want to do that forever. I'd much rather use all I know to build software that actually makes a difference. Read more, experience life more. Travel at least once in my life. Enjoy life while I'm not declining physically and mentally.

I could definitely earn less and live a less stressful life in a better company if I wanted to. But that's the kind of decision that will most likely come back to haunt me and my family in the long term.

Maybe I get very lucky and none of those things happen, and all the time I suffered through those soulless jobs was not needed. But in my view that's a risk I'm willing to take.

To your point, if you are talking about simply getting all that extra money and spend it all without a care, I agree. That's a choice but one I don't have the same sympathy for.

Living below your means (whatever that is) is a very good thing, not a bad thing.

Being stuck on an expenses ~= income treadmill is what sucks.

Living below your means is separated from your standard of living.

In a better world everyone should be able to live well without having to sacrifice as much.

Somehow we've convinced ourselves that it's always the individual's fault when they have to live with a worse standard of living to maybe retire one day.

It’s the individual’s wise choice (not fault) when they do that, IMO.

I agree with you regarding the means of living but that's not what I said.

Accepting that you will have to work until you die is lowering your standard of living. So is accepting that any emergency can bankrupt you or that you will never be able to travel, and so on.

For some reason people are conflating standards of living with irresponsible spending.

At least you have talents. Imagine being in your 30s with a family to support and no real career future - bad reviews, bad organizations structure, shitty technology/systems, and no skills to move elsewhere.

> I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.

> So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice.

Literally hundreds of millions of Americans retire on much less than than BigCo compensation.

Are they retiring with the same standard of living they had before?

Can they sustain a medical emergency?

Can they pay for their kids college?

I'm sure some can do all this. But I'm pretty sure most can't.

> Are they retiring with the same standard of living they had before?

This is a strong indicator that choice is a factor, despite your protests to the contrary. But what exactly do you mean by "standard of living"? For example, when you're employed, you have to live where the jobs are, no matter how expensive, unless you can get remote work. Whereas when you're retired you can live anywhere, perhaps a place that is both less expensive and warmer.

Retired people seem less obsessed with collecting more material goods (which are often "labor saving" devices, of little relevance to those who aren't laboring) and focused more on enjoying life, traveling, spending time with family, etc. Is that a "worse" standard of living? And the children are presumably living on their own, so there's less need for bigger homes. (Who wants to spend a bunch of time, effort, and money maintaining a big house when you're older and also traveling quite a bit?)

> Can they sustain a medical emergency?

Have you heard of Medicare?

> But I'm pretty sure most can't.

Based on what? Do you have economic statistics to back up your belief?

> For example, when you're employed, you have to live where the jobs are.... Whereas when you're retired you can live... [in] a place that is both less expensive and warmer.

I think that it may be just the opposite. From what I've observed, access to good public transportation is a major contributor to quality of life in old age. In the US, that requires someone to live in a much higher cost of living location.

> From what I've observed

What have you observed, and are your observations anything but anecdotal?

You're telling me most retired Americans have more than hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings?

I'm not gonna dive into stats for that since I'm not an American, but I would be thoroughly surprised.

> You're telling me most retired Americans have more than hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings?

How much do you think you need? I think the recommendation is something like 10x your current annual income.

> I'm not gonna dive into stats for that since I'm not an American

How is your nationality relevant to reading stats? If you don't want to, then just say that.

10x? Financial independence is normally at least 20x, more like 30x.

> How is your nationality relevant to reading stats? If you don't want to, then just say that.

Sorry maybe I wasn't clear, but that's exactly what I meant. I won't dig into stats for the US because it's of no interest to me. That's why I mentioned I'm not from the US.

I know that for my country that's absolutely not the case and I'm pretty sure it's the same for most of the world.

> 10x? Financial independence is normally at least 20x, more like 30x.

You appear to be overlooking Social Security, which is a crucial source of income that all US workers pay into their entire careers. It's not just savings.

> I won't dig into stats for the US because it's of no interest to me.

Yet it's interesting enough to you to make baseless empirical claims about the US.

> I know that for my country that's absolutely not the case and I'm pretty sure it's the same for most of the world.

That's not the way the world works.

Since you're so adamant I had a quick search and it turns out I'm right.

>43.09% of American adults had no retirement savings >23.15% of American adults had no (or negative) retirement savings even including the extended assets

https://dqydj.com/average-retirement-savings/

Of course you can rely on some government assistance but arguing that's a good enough standard is a bit of a stretch.

> Since you're so adamant I had a quick search and it turns out I'm right.

No, you changed the subject. You said:

> You're telling me most retired Americans have more than hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings?

To which the answer is no, but you don't need a million dollars to retire.

Whereas your link is not about retired Americans, it's about UN-retired Americans: "Statistics are for households headed by adults aged 32-61 at the time of the survey".

I'm done with this conversation. Your games and lack of good faith interest are becoming very tedious to me.

Read the article. It's about people that will retire. Unless you're trying to be facetious and say they'll never retire, which I guess will be true for many.

> Read the article. It's about people that will retire.

Yes, and the point that everyone is trying to explain to you, which you refuse to acknowledge, is that in general, software developers in the US are doing fine. They don't need to "grind all the leetcode" and work for a BigCo. It's a choice not a financial mandate. Software developers, even outside of BigCos, are in the upper income brackets in the US.

I'm not saying that everyone in the US is doing fine as far as retirement is concerned, but the idea that software developers have to work for BigCos is absurd. I've never worked for a BigCo, and I'm doing fine.

Well now you're moving the goalpost. Your original comment mentioned hundreds of millions of Americans so it can't be only about software developers. That's why the focus changed to everyone.

Anyways, yes you have the choice of not working on big corps. My point is that it's not a real choice unless you want to accept all of the consequences of leaving all that money on the table. You have to accept the risk that you might be a few emergencies away from bankruptcy.

> yes you have the choice of not working on big corps.

Finally admitting the truth.

> You have to accept the risk that you might be a few emergencies away from bankruptcy.

Working for a BigCo doesn't magically protect you from emergencies. Accumulating $millions might protect you, but you don't just walk in the door of a BigCo and pick up your treasure chest. You have to work there for many years. In the meantime, you're subject to the same risks as everyone else. For example, lot of BigCos have been doing layoffs recently, which would put a big dent in the "for many years" plan. Also, if you suffer some kind of disability that prevents you from continuing to work, then you're screwed regardless.

Anyway, what makes you think you would be BigCo material? Not everyone is. The number of jobs is limited, and the competition is fierce. You might be able to get in the door by grinding leetcode, but once you're in the door you still need to make management happy in order to keep your job and win pay raises. The grind doesn't end.

God the amount of unnecessary hostility coming from you is absurd. From my original comment:

> So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice.

From the very beginning I said it's not really a choice, but I always acknowledged it. Whatever, your pedantry wins.

> Anyway, what makes you think you would be BigCo material?

I can't really know since I'm automatically excluded from it simply because of I don't live there (and I would never work with a visa, having a corporation ruling over my life). But it's very possible I wouldn't make the cut, or if I did I'd likely be another one writing blog posts like this one - assuming reality is how they portray it.

Technically I know I can hold my own, but that's not really what work is all about in my experience (barring few exceptions). Connections, ivy leagues, kissing ass, leetcode and other aspects that shouldn't matter are valued more than actually getting shit done.

But I'd sure as hell try because even though it's not a guarantee of protection, it's as close as we can get to it in a capitalist society. Money is, unfortunately, crucial.

You seemingly care about this but also can't be bothered to bring any empirical evidence for any of your claims. Goes both ways.

The US is not that different from everywhere else... we all live in the same capitalist hellhole last time I checked.

> You seemingly care about this but also can't be bothered to bring any empirical evidence for any of your claims. Goes both ways.

Which claims? That Social Security exists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States... That Medicare exists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States) That 10x savings is the recommendation? https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/retirement/how-much-do-i...

> The US is not that different from everywhere else

Says you, but you apparently aspire to live and work here, so it's different enough.

> we all live in the same capitalist hellhole last time I checked.

Have you checked North Korea?

>Says you, but you apparently aspire to live and work here, so it's different enough.

Never said that. It's just where tech salaries are bigger.

>Have you checked North Korea?

What does this have to do with anything? Unless you're writing from North Korea, this is childish.

Apparently I hit a nerve and that was not my intention. My point was never specifically about the US but you keep insisting on it and have a bone to grind. That doesn't add to the conversation though.

> My point was never specifically about the US but you keep insisting on it and have a bone to grind.

You said: "I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37809983

My first reply to you was to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37810176

The HN thread history doesn't lie. Your point that I replied to was specifically about the US.

You're interpreting my mention of the US which is incidentally where tech salaries are higher as the focus of my comment. That's not it.

You could replace that with whatever country could offer those salaries.

>You appear to be overlooking Social Security, which is a crucial source of income that all US workers pay into their entire careers. It's not just savings.

I certainly am. I was taught as early as grade school (mid 00's) that Social Security would run out before I retire. I take that strongly to heart.

The Americans retiring now didn’t work in the New Economy for most of their working life. Things were very different.

Let’s revisit this comment in 15 years or so.

Even in the US.

It isn't like these opportunities are everywhere.

As much as people pretend, it is in fact not easy to just uproot your family and move across the country to work at a challenging startup. So there are good engineers that get stuck in BigCorp Jobs that do suck your soul, just like these online rants depict.

Even stepping back and forgetting the ranting. All big human organizations, eventually become bureaucratic, and locked into hierarchies, and have a difficult time making decisions. And all of these things make IT and writing software very difficult. And, because of individual constraints on geography, family, etc.. good engineers do get stuck in these big organizations, and tend to suffer.

> I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.

I'm earning an exceptionally high salary for my age, with more than enough money to retire at a decent time, while working from home for a mid-sized company for <=40 hours a week. I turn off my computer at 5pm and don't think about work until 9am the next morning. I work with people I like and we get stuff done.

I could probably retire even earlier if I were willing to enter the rat race, but I'd rather be there for my kids' childhoods than resurface from the grind just in time to send them off to college.

For context outside of tech. I have a super flexible job with amazing benefits. I haven't missed a single thing my kids have done, unless I chose to.

And I'll work until I'm 75.

I say this not out of being bitter, but for the context that many (probably most) people who do what they love to do don't get the massive paychecks even mid-tier tech jobs get. Context is everything.

To be honest it vastly depends on what you expect to need in retirement. Based on my current salary and estimated retirement payment (which some online calculator calculated at ~2/3rds my income) I'm still slightly below what I should be saving for that. But by then I will both need more money to take care of family (hopefully) and less money since I should have long paid off my house and car by then.

My salary is much higher than household average but far from unheard of in tech. There are definitely some scrappy college grads getting offers higher than it. and I have 3+ decades to increase it.

You only expect to need one car from now through the end of your retirement?

Ha, okay fair. But I'm hoping any subsequent cars can be bought outright instead of under a plan. But who knows with inflation?

Post retirement I should definitely have the finances to get some pretty nice sports car.

>And I'll work until I'm 75

If you’re lucky. Modern medicine still has yet to solve most major disabilities for people in their sixties. It will be hard to work if you’re suffering any of the innumerable disabling diseases. What will you do then?

Suicide. My plan is to die at work, so my family gets the massive life insurance payout. My employer carries 7 digit plans on every employee, for no cost to us.

That's real, by the way. Like I said, really good benefits.

For anyone concerned about my mental health - Don't link to anti-suicide things. I'm talking in like 30 years. I do not have a plan, yet.

This is not a good strategy. Your job is likely not as secure as you think, particularly once you are legitimately elderly.

I see you're unfamiliar with higher education.

All joking aside, it seems to be the one area that only wants the elderly.

Too bad by that time, someone will have figured out how to look up everything you've ever posted online to dig up insurance-invalidating comments like this one.

> If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important...

Money being important is not part of the world, it's part of you. You even say so a few lines later:

> ... I don't want to work forever.

So yes, you indeed have no choice but to treat money as important because... you've chosen to treat money as important.

I'm offering this in the hopes that you can stand back and look at your need from a distance. What are other ways to satisfy this need without you writing useless software _and_ without money being the main constraint? Get creative!

Money is kind of important, though, at least to those of us who don't want to depend on a soup kitchen.

Look, money isn't everything. This isn't a video game, where the highest score wins, and you chase points just for points. But money lets you buy things, and some of those things are important - food for yourself and those who depend on you, shelter, healthcare. (But there's a bunch of stuff that money can buy that isn't important, and learning to let go of those things is really healthy.)

So: Money is important, because some of the stuff it can buy is important. That's not going to change any time soon.

>So yes, you indeed have no choice but to treat money as important because... you've chosen to treat money as important.

yes, I have chosen to treat the ability to have a roof over my head as important. Rent in my area is 2000+ minimum so I at the very least am recommended to make 60k+ in salary to support that.

add on basic utilities (water, electricity, inernet), food above rice and beans, and maybe a little bit of premium entertainment and we're talking more around 70k+ a year. And this is all for supporting myself. If I ever want kids I either require a working spouse or to make even more money to support a full time parent. So yes, I'm talking more around 130k+ minimum. Not unreasonable in tech, but it sure does start to exceed the salary of many other industries

>What are other ways to satisfy this need without you writing useless software _and_ without money being the main constraint? Get creative!

With my current skillset? I suppose I embrace hustle culture and try to make a side income with my talents. try to make some small apps or games that give some continual income. Could also find an angle as a content creator. Both basically eat into my time since this is in tandem with full time work, so it doesn't really fix the problem.

Despite all the obsession with FAANG, I find it harder getting responses from small studios writing not-useless software. They want very experienced personell both for branding (how many new startups have you seen with pitches of "with talent from Apple, Blizzard, Deloitte, etc.") and the fact that they need someone who can architect a project from the ground up.

> I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.

I find it funny that the internet exaggerations have convinced non-US people that:

1. Doing a couple LeetCode problems is the only thing interviewers look for

2. Everyone here automatically gets a high paying FAANG-like job if they can memorize enough LeetCode problems

3. All of these jobs just write useless software all day and never really do anything productive

and

4. LeetCode problems are impossibly difficult and it’s a tragedy that anyone would be asked to code during a coding interview.

I struggle to read these threads any more because everything seems so stretched out of proportion from the real world. If your view of what US development or interviewing culture is like comes from HN threads, you’d probably be pleasantly surprised by what it’s actually like here most of the time. The weird catastrophizing that happens on HN and Reddit is hyperbole.

I haven't had a job interview without leetcode bullshit in about 15 years.

As a counter-point, I've almost never had a job interview depend on leetcode-type problems in my ~20 years.

You may be focusing on the leetcode label, and not the rest of the fail-fast zingers that are ubiquitous. Only a subset are actual leetcode. The first mistake and you're done, due to the high number of applicants.

If you've got networking to let you bypass the BS, that's great. But most interviews (by number) are "cold" interviews that conduct these almost exclusively. Due to lack of trust and extreme fear of failure.

The only offer I've received in years was because, while they did this type of test as well, they didn't take the results too seriously. One out of maybe a hundred attempts that year.

I was an interviewer at [FAANG]. I did 300+ interviews. At the beginning I asked tough questions since I didn't know better, but I quickly realized I was not getting the signal I wanted. So I changed and just asked simple questions that included writing some code. There was no gotcha, no need to know sophisticated data structures. Leetcode practice would not have helped much.

> No it's not really a choice.

Of course it is. Taking leetcode job because you don't want to work forever is buying a lottery ticket. Maybe it's your ticket to financial independence, but maybe not.

The alternative, of taking a more normal job that affords you a higher day-to-day happiness level but doesn't pay as much is a legitimate other option. Plus, doing that doesn't exclude being able to achieve financial independence.

There's no right or wrong choice here. It all depends on your personal attitudes, goals, and tolerances. But there is a choice.

How do you go about finding a job at an amazing company with fulfilling jobs?

For starters, HN has a monthly "Who's hiring?" thread with a lot of cool companies posting. Personally I find a lot more of the posts there to make me go "hey that sounds like a cool place to work" than eg a search on job sites or Stack Overflow career ads. In a broad sense I mean, eg there's tiny startups, healthy profitable SMBs, and VC-fueled unicorn rocket ships posting there, but they all seem above-average cool for their category to me.

As an employer, I find that the inverse holds too - applicants that find us via the "Who's hiring?" thread are much more often a potential fit than those who find us via other routes.

Look for owner-managed companies without middle management, or where middle management consists of engineers and not MBAs. Look for small(ish) companies that work on topics you find interesting. Connect with people who are looking for the same. You might not find the fulfilling job in a sane company on the first try, but if you keep looking and talking to people, you’re likely to find one.

"It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo, spend their evenings writing ranty blog posts about how terrible it all is, culminating in the inevitable “I quit” article, only subsequently to accept a job at a different terrible BigCo."

I don't know, it sounds like you think people actually like their jobs. Seems like for most of us, we do work at shitty BigCos. Plenty of small shitty companies too. That's just how life goes.

Agreed. It takes constant effort and a lot of luck to land at a small company with competent people and good, sane culture.

I scored that once by accident. We all keep in touch, people from every department, and recount how it was the best job we ever had.

It was acquired by a medium company of limited competence and everyone was scattered to the wind in a frenzy of empire building by the managers in that company.

I have been consulting/contracting and visiting megacorps since then. Traumatizing, to say the least.

Sounds like “hustle culture”, which IMO is a cancer on the human mind.

We’re apex predators; laziness is inherent to our being. Or at least thats my head-canon :)

> This is because Power BI tracks usage metrics and almost all dashboards are completely unused.

This is what I term the “dirty secret of BI” - for most organisations, most dashboards are unused, except by the teams creating them.

This is because reports need to be useful to be used, and most are not. In my opinion useful means one of:

1) Aiding people with actual decision making power to make decisions

2) Improving the ability of “front line” staff to complete their day to day tasks better

PowerBI and similar tools are poorly suited to the above because 1) requires mgmt to understand the data they are looking at, which is difficult without context in a grid of charts, and 2) requires a thoughtfully designed, fast UX that is basically impossible to deliver in a dashboard.

I’m now working on an open source BI tool, Evidence.dev (https://github.com/evidence-dev/evidence) which is targeted at these two use cases. It enables you to add context to data inline, design the UX for the use case, and is just fast.

Previous discussions on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35645464 (97 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28304781 (91 comments)

[delayed]

Looks like a pretty cool tool though!

Bless you.

Which is even more surprising on 'hacker' news. Maybe the average (US-centric) 'hacker' nowadays is just a corporate worker dreaming.

I recently joined a megacorp after decades of small companies and I'm having quite enough fun on the project side and everything. Corporate bureaucracy is nothing after you dealt with actual international bureaucracy. Only downside is that pay is /too low/.

Every time I see these articles I'm amazed at how at odds it is with my experience. I work for a tiny company of ~30 people and it's awesome. I'm super well taken care of in pay, benefits, and work/life balance. I could make a bit more at a large corp, but I get some pretty stellar benefits here. Also if it's anything like what I read on here then there's no way it's worth it.

I work in games and that already risky to begin with. Finding a small game studio that can pay decently is pretty much like finding a needle in a hay stack.

The smallest studio I worked at was still 100+ people, and grew to 200+ by the time I left.

I'm with you here. I don't like this hand-wringing suffer porn (great label btw!) about how something is wrong with the world.

We only have to consider that building and maintaining an organization is not a clear science. To think otherwise is to indulge in utopian thinking. So there will always be wasted effort in any organization, whether it's BigCo or SmallCo or Boy Scouts or the local Church. It's like, if you build any machine, that machine will produce waste. Heck, if you undertake any venture, such as cooking a meal or writing a book or running a 5k, you will produce waste: wasted food scraps, wasted words (that the editor will remove), wasted trainings (when you werent really focused, eg.)

A person being unhappy about an organization happens because of a single reason: they are placed in a position in that organization that makes them unhappy. They can change their position or the organization. Or they can recalibrate their mind to make themselves happy.

And this is what happens: people move around or change jobs or reflect and discover a new purpose.

Not to forget the inevitable techbro complaining about being unable to support a family and buy a house at anything below 500k per year. Or being able to retire...

I have no idea who Zippia is, but according to them 1/3rd of software engineers in the US work at companies >10,000 people. And 2/3rds of software engineers work at companies still > 1,000 people.

So I'd argue, working at a small shop, while not rare, also isn't as predominant as you're portraying.

https://www.zippia.com/software-engineer-jobs/demographics/

While I meant globally, and I’m not sure that these stats generalize beyond the US (but they very much might), I’m surprised! I had expected 2/3rd to work at companies under 1000 employees simply because there’s so extremely many of those and many of them need devs.

EDIT woa that page says there’s 320k software engineers in the US. That’s one entire percent of the population! That’s a lot, could that really be true?

That’s 0.1%, actually.

(Facepalm) (thanks)

Seems pretty off, Department of Labor clocks it more around 1.8m https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

>It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo,

People are bad at understanding risk. When a company pays significantly more for the same job than another, there is always an economic reason:

* The job is undesirable because of how people are treated, and as a result the only way to attract and retain people is to overpay. The extra pay mitigates flight risk when the inevitable bad day or week happens for the hire.

* Management is likely to or has a history of sudden lay offs and firings often indiscriminately. The extra pay mitigates the risk of sudden loss of income to the employee.

* Poor reputation/employment brand requires paying more to get people to avoid the risk of associating with that bad employer brand.

The extra money is being paid not because the employer wants to. It is exactly because they have to in order to hire and retain people that can do the job. The whole "we're better and pay a premium because you are the best developers in the world" is really management self-justifying having to overpay due to risk.

When you look at compensation, ask yourself and the interviewer why is the company over-paying? You'll often save yourself years of misery.

This is true, but it got very temporarily skewed in recent years at some companies that had a lot of cash flow. There really were companies hiring a lot of highly qualified people mostly to have large teams of highly qualified people.

The rubber band is snapping back, though. Layoffs are hitting all of these companies and expectations are rising quickly. Inevitably, companies paying a lot of money for people will expect to get their money’s worth out of them.

> The rubber band is snapping back, though.

One can argue that the snap-back is exactly they had to offer more money to have large teams of highly qualified people.

> expectations are rising quickly

I think more reality hitting than expectations hitting.

So… you don't want to improve things? The unhappy person should leave. Is that right?

Not a major driver of improvement, that there attitude.