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Comment by destitude | Hacker News Reader

Many companies hope that engineers don't know their value or that they simply aren't willing to relocate near one of the tech hubs. A trick of startups is to woo you with stock options which almost never amount to any value. You also have to watch out for REMOTE work where many companies seem to place an excessive $ on the "privilege" of working from home.

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These companies are also ludicrously selective. I think to think I'm a pretty good engineer and I have built up a lot of management experience to boot and I can barely get the time of day from any of them. I only ever got to the interview round twice and I felt like I did really well and just never heard back.

I'm willing to relocate for better pay so that I can afford nice things.

I want to have a place where I have room for a chicken coop (30 chickens) and a 1-acre fish pond. I'm willing to commute by car for a maximum of 15 minutes. A slightly longer commute might be OK if I can afford to commute by horse and the employer doesn't mind.

Which tech hub should I move to?

You can find this in many places around the Bay Area outside SF. I have 5 acres and keep chickens in Woodside, and it's 15-20 minutes drive to several big tech companies in Palo Alto and Redwood City. Some people keep horses here.

5 acres that is 15 minutes from Palo Alto/Mountain View? How much does that cost?

Yeah seriously. Just the land for a regular house lot can easily be over a million dollars in the area, and 1 acre can hold like six of those. So five acres...like thirty million dollars? Unless there's some weird situation I've never heard of.

5 acres in area where minimum lot is 5 acres is much cheaper than in area where minimum is 5k sq ft. In most areas you can’t subdivide lot - that’s the reason houses in Atherton on huge lots are so cheap (relatively).

The land is what you're generally paying for in any real estate deal. It doesn't cost millions to build these houses, but the land is valued as such because it's finite.

Nice, but I don't see how it generally works. The highest levels of pay in the article was $950,000. Wikipedia says that in Woodside "The median household income in the town is $212,917, and the median family income is $246,042."

Double those pay numbers to determine the price of a house that a person can afford... and it is not looking good. I looked around on www.trulia.com a bit. An empty lot of questionable geological status goes for $1,500,000. A small empty lot far from the tech companies goes for $500,000. Most of the actual homes go for millions.

So I guess yeah, it could work for the experienced person earning $950,000 per year at Facebook. That would allow building $500,000 of house on the $1,500,000 empty lot, assuming you can solve the geological issues and get the permits redone.

That is the top pay listed though. It's the top level at the top company.

Why on Earth do you think you need to make 950k/year to afford a million dollar home?

The mortgage on a 2 million dollar loan (which would be a 2.4 or 2.5 million dollar home) is 10k/mo or 120k/year, which is solidly affordable on a 400k income.

I know of 5 and 6 bedroom houses than can be gotten for that much in Palo Alto and Cupertino.

This is assuming you never lose a job or can get a new one to replace current one easily. When market downturns, those equity based salaries will go heavily discounted, and you might not be able to afford mortgage anymore.

People overestimate their max credit payments... And financial system incentivizes that (why wouldn't you borrow from 401k? It's just your retirement savings)

Which are great reasons to be responsible and run a large emergency fund, or be responsible and make 450k combined before buying the house. But not reasons to make 900k.

Sure, if you have $Xmm you can spend on land or can afford the mortgage on it

None of the major tech hubs fit this. Hell, I'm not sure any medium-sized tech hubs fit this. 1 acre is a hell of a lot of land for a real city, and 15 minutes doesn't get you very far by car most of the time at rush hour.

In Berlin (not exactly a techhub so about 100k for a good engineer), they are currently selling a plot of about 2 acres (8500sqm) for 1.5M (plus cost of a good new house ~= 300k). About 30min by public transport to city center. 40min to the new Tesla factory by car...

(in german) https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/108629168

(Though even if serious, I would not do that as you can get more land further out much cheaper and why do you need a pond directly at your house, having it within 1 hour reach for the weekend should be enough)

I am serious, aside from minor personal details being changed. (different animal, etc.)

The pond is so that the kids can go fishing out in the back yard. They don't need transportation, they can be watched from the house, they can have friends over, and there is no performance pressure to catch fish before it is time to go home. They can float on the pond with a canoe or a makeshift raft.

Having a little creek is fine too. Kids can build damns, dig for crawfish, catch frogs, pan for gold, make waterwheels, and so on.

The kids can camp in the backyard, complete with a campfire. The larger back yards have room for shooting.

The point really is personal land to enjoy.

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