Sorry for the intrusive question but if you make software engineer level salary how is it that you don't have multiple months/years saved to mitigate for those possible layoffs?

Or did we all fall for the lifestyle inflation trap that comes with high salaries?

I'm probably a pessimist/realist but I have always lived way below my income and saved as much as possible because it really feels like the cash cow that software engineering is is eventually going to end. Layoffs are always looming. When that day comes, I want to relax as much as possible and not have a deadline to find a job,

The difference between multiple months/years of emergency savings and retirement savings is intent (and timeline).

I could afford to take months or years off, but I’d rather let that money grow in an interest-bearing account for decades and spend it later.

Sure, but in any case having savings (even retirement savings) allows you to not "frantically" look for a job and be slightly more selective.

It is primarily psychological difference. I have 10 years of expense as savings. But that is tied in my retirement/emergency/child education plans. If I stop earning for 1 year, I'll be dipping in them which will create a pressure.

It's relative, but having to dig into your 401k isn't an attractive alternative, one I'd only consider in truly dire straits. You are capped in how much you can put in a year so it's not like a savings account you can aggressively make up for after getting hired.

I'd much rather resort to temp work than dig deeply into my future if I had a choice.

If I could help it I'd rather invest in

I have 3 kids. My grocery bill alone is 2.5k/month.

How are the people making 65k as a household (median income per household in my state) managing this? I don't even understand how 2.5k$ grocery per month is possible. We are 3 in our households (young kid) and probably spending closer to 1k$ per month groceries and eating super healthy/organic.

Keep in mind we have 5 in our household to your 3.

They probably eat cheaper food? We do a lot of fruits and veggies. But not organic. Eating out is too expensive, we don't do that.

Also, I live in Southern California, it might be cheaper where you are.

yeah, being 5 is a big difference. We usually end up going to Costco once a week for ~250$/trip

Tell me you have teenage boys without telling me you have teenage boys ;)

1. I'm not a software engineer, and don't live in or near the valley.

2. I'm married and I have two kids. It's amazing how fast multiple years of saving disappear when you have daycare.

Just to give you an idea of what childcare looks like: It's a very reasonable question whether we should pay for childcare, or hire a full-time staff member for the household to watch the kids: The price is about the same.

Yeah I get it. It's not easy. As a rule of thumb we are still aiming to live with 70% of our household income even with a kid so to mitigate for one of us being laid-off unexpectedly.

I guess it is a trade-off. We could live slightly better in a bigger house but I don't want to stress and be in a tough spot if one of us lose their job. That mental sanity is worth 30% of our income to me.

Same, my rule is my gross yearly salary or 24 months all recurring expenses whatever is larger. I try to set my lifestyle to where the 2 years expenses are 70% of gross salary which is honestly not terribly difficult as a dink.

Peace of mind for the cost of "only" making 4.65% interest is well worth it to me.

I'd rather not tip into my savings if possible. All of my savings are also not liquid.

> non-frantically

It appears to be very heavily biased toward artists, so even if they start that job hunt today, it’s still going to be frantic.

That is indeed a fair point.

6 months for an artist with Riot on their resume? I can't imagine that not at least opening doors for them.

In this current job market 6 months to next job is a very quick turnaround...

Can you explain? Unemployment is still very, very low and there are hundreds of thousand of open positions out there. Not sure about game companies, hence my asking.

Not just gaming. Tech companies have been shedding jobs like crazy and slashing hiring. Pretty much every day there is news of some company slashing hundreds or thousand of jobs. Anecdotally, its not unusual to take 6 months to find a new job at only 2/3rd the previous salary.

Tech companies are definitely still hiring too though. My company is and I have no shortage of recruiter LinkedIn mail with leads should I need or want to find another job.

I read an article about this recently, but can’t find it to officially cite it. However, the thrust was something like this:

Despite unemployment being low, the reality is that many of those “thousands of positions” are either geographically-distributed duplicates of the same position, eternally-open cattle calls, or open-but-basically-a-formality for either getting a visa or an internal move. This makes the number of actual openings quite opaque, yet much smaller than it appears.

I don't think these numbers are for tech only anyways. Further, it seems like the high demand is around service jobs and not white-collar office jobs either. So it's probably easy to find a job, but you are gonna be selling donuts, not produce art for video games or earn 400k+ building apps.

Fair, but it's also true that many of the positions eliminated were actually unfilled (paper shuffling). It's so hard to tell the facts from the spin.

Yeah, that's my feeling. I see plenty of positions and still get maybe 5 calls a week for work. But it really does feel like most aren't even looking at my resume, nor do recruiters get much farther through a hiring manager.

Of course I could simply be unlucky and swamped by other more attractive candidates. Apparently seniors are swamping Junior roles, so maybe I'm just competing with a bunch of staff/principals now in mid/senior roles.

Six months is long enough to spend two months on the beach, two months looking for a job, and two months getting double paid.