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Comment by xkcd-sucks | Hacker News Reader

In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they interact genuinely and naturally. When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth.

You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal.

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This is demonstrably incorrect if you look at some of the highest paying companies in SV. FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires", and yet they are well known for still being ruthless political cultures and backstabbing.

Execs might be congenial because at that level, congenial is just how you play the game. It's still cutthroat, but overt backstabbing doesn't get you very far in a tight knit group of execs. But in other groups like a team of devs, IME high pay just attracts the kind of person who wants even higher pay and will do whatever it takes to get it.

> FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires"

Do they though? Quality of Life is not just how much you make, it's relative to what you have to spend. You can't realistically afford a home -even for most of the engineers- with a decent school with a sub 30 minute commute anywhere around one of these companies unless you want to be house poor or you are a dual earning family.

Yes, they do. This comes up every time compensation gets mentioned on HN. Engineers claim that "I only make $500k/yr at Google and I'm poor because SF prices :(" which is just bullshit. In a previous thread, someone mentioned that they make $300k/yr in SF, and even after paying for housing in a nice area and food/utility expenses, they had over $11,000 per month left over in discretionary income. That is insane.

Unless your material needs and desires are to own a superyacht, even "just" $200k/yr starting salary is still far more than enough to satisfy you.

Most Engineers do NOT make $500k total comp per year at FAANG companies, most engineers don't make $300k TC/yr at these companies, and those aren't the engineers I'm talking about anyways. These companies are made up mostly of engineers who make between $100k-$250k.

That's still not a small amount of money; and I never claimed that these people are poor; just that these salaries don't satisfy their needs and desires and these salaries certainly do not feel like you make $100k-$250k. Part of that is anchoring our expectations to what those amounts of money mean to when we first really began to understand the concept of money which is usually in our tween-teen stage of life, but it's also that these are in incredibly high COL areas.

I don't live in SV. Looking at Mountain View, there are quite a few nice 2000 sq ft houses to rent for about $6500/month. When I compare that to what I'm paying in a cheaper COL area, I can assure you that the difference in pay between me and typical Google compensation, after taxes, more than compensates for this increase in rent.

I won't say it's "luxury", but it's still better than most people get around the country.

I pay $2200/month mortgage to live in the burbs of a major southeastern city. - 5 bedroom, 3-1/2 bath, 3100 square feet. It was a brand new build in 2016.

I just went to https://paycheckcity.com and did a gross up calculator. At first I thought you were underestimating how much more I would have to make to make the move worthwhile - with downsizing.

But if we were willing to downsize, I would need to make about $70K - $80K more than the average senior software engineer makes in my area.

I was off. $220K - $240K is about the average range for engineer with 3-5 years of experience in $BigTech so $6500/month is not unreasonable.

Not true. The amazon sde2 external hire offer I saw given to people with >=1 year of experience is around 250K in Seattle and higher in California. Amazon is known as one of the lower paying FAANG companies.

The average SDE 2 total compensation is around $215k according to levels.fyi which I have found to fairly accurate. I'm not saying you didn't see that offer, just that it isn't normal.

$215K in Seattle is still quite high. External hire gets a lot more than internal promo and that site lags behind the current offer compensation which is some part of the diff.

I’d be curious to know where that person got such cheap housing. $300k/yr translates to $15k/month take home. Houses are like $10k/month if you’re looking to own. Even if you rent, it’s still close to $5-6k/month if you want a decent neighborhood.

I’m not even talking about nice houses btw.

Maybe they rent an apartment and share the rent. That’s the only way I see them coming up with those numbers.

$300k/year isn’t enough for single income families in the Bay Area.

EDIT: I'm curious if you live in the bay area and where you get your notions.

In less than 5 minutes of looking I found several very nice houses for $4-5k/month in multiple nice neighborhoods.

Renting, there are actual luxury condos and apartments ready to rent for $3-4k, again in multiple nice neighborhoods.

>$300k/year isn’t enough for single income families in the Bay Area.

The median household income for SF families is less than $100k, and you're telling me three times that "isn't enough"? That's bullshit.

Responding to your edit: I don't live in SF, but prior to covid I traveled there every week for work, so I am familiar with the city. For a local example, my best friend makes ~$140k/yr, lives in Nob Hill in a gorgeous high rise apartment, and still has thousands to spend every month on fun discretionary activities. Another close friend who makes ~$250k/yr owns a great house in Inner Sunset and they certainly seem like they are able to afford any other desires they want (a boat, all kinds of tech gadgets, trips all the time, etc).

You're going to have to show listings. Last time, people were posting spam postings they found on Craigslist. If you want an apartment - you can find 1-bedroom "luxury" apartments (also known as normal apartments outside the bay area) for about $3300-4000/month. Even at $7000/month income that leaves "thousands" left over but that is a fucked ratio of expenses. You shouldn't be spending close to 50% of your take home on RENT. You will never be able to retire and live the same lifestyle.

If you want a house, you're not finding a nice house (3+ bedrooms, central air, etc.) and in a nice neighborhood (San Carlos, Hillsborough, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Menlo Park, etc.) for $4000-5000. I'd love to see the listings... I don't even bother with SF because the prices are even more outlandish for nice neighborhoods.

Familiar with the city and actually paying rent here are different. I've had coworkers who lived with their parents who are wildly out of tune with how much it costs to rent a place. I don't know how your friend affords a high rise on $140k/yr - maybe you should ask what their rent is and if they're sharing it with someone.

You can't buy a house now with $250k/yr in inner sunset. Go to Zillow and find me a nice house you can afford on $250k/yr and won't be house poor in the end with. Do it - prove me wrong.

>Even at $7000/month income that leaves "thousands" left over but that is a fucked ratio of expenses. You shouldn't be spending close to 50% of your take home on RENT. You will never be able to retire and live the same lifestyle.

The general guidance is that 30% of your gross income should be spent on rent. After taxes, that equates to ~40-50% of your take home goes to rent. That's normal for everyone, not just in SF. It is not a "fucked ratio of expenses" at all, and in any case, "thousands" left over after rent is still an extravagant amount of discretionary income.

>I don't know how your friend affords a high rise on $140k/yr - maybe you should ask what their rent is and if they're sharing it with someone.

I'm not going to dox my friend but I just looked up their building and there are 1br apartments for $3-3.3k/mo, and it is a very nice building/apartment. 3k/mo is easily doable on $140k/yr.

>You can't buy a house now with $250k/yr in inner sunset. Go to Zillow and find me a nice house you can afford on $250k/yr and won't be house poor in the end with. Do it - prove me wrong.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1345-16th-Ave-APT-7-San-F...

Literally the first result. Gorgeous 2 bedroom, and at 250k you'd have ~7-8k each month left over after mortgage. 7-8k per month is more money than most people in SF make period, even before paying for their homes. You're not even close to being "poor in the end with it". Also well below the "thirty percent rule" with this condo.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1485-11th-Ave-San-Francis...

Second result. 3 bedrooms, central air, all the amenities. At 250k/yr. At the list price (assuming you can't negotiate lower) with a house note of 5-6k/mo, you are still within the "thirty percent rule" without even stretching your income, and you're still looking at ~6k+ in discretionary spending after paying the house note.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/717-Kirkham-St-San-Franci...

3 bed, 3 bath condo. All the amenities. At 250k/yr, this condo would put you at slightly above the thirty percent rule which isn't wise depending on how much you want to be able to save for retirement, but still doable without worrying about money, and certainly still not even close to worrying about being "poor".

And these are three that I picked off of Zillow in literally 10 minutes without any further research. With any actual effort and talking to an agent, the prices and options would likely be even better.

Your first listing is an apartment. Shouldn't have to explain why that's not a house.

Your second listing has an estimated sale value of nearly $1.7m. Your third is nearly $2mil. Have you ever tried to get a loan for that much at that income with a traditional 20% down? (Assuming you have 350-400k laying around) You will not get approved for a loan on that at $250k/yr. Your monthly cost on that first home is $8,375 after tax (tax is around 1.2-1.6% in CA) + insurance. That's past the maximum 36% of gross monthly income. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/how-much-can-i-... Try the calculator. In general, going past 4x yearly income is not going to get approved by a bank. Theoretically, you might find some lender who'd do it but I haven't seen many. Most people buying here are buying homes with cash or really large down payments.

The fact you're even mentioning negotiations on buying homes in the bay area tells me you have no idea how the market here works. There are bidding wars - there aren't negotiations.

At this point - it's obvious that you're completely out of touch. You think spending 50%+ of your take home pay on rent is sustainable and that you can somehow retire with that expense. Maybe lay off the tidepods?

If you're just going to move the goalposts, then this discussion is pointless. But in good faith, I'll try one last time:

>Your first listing is an apartment. Shouldn't have to explain why that's not a house.

It's not an apartment, it's a condo, which is a form of housing.

>Your second listing has an estimated sale value of nearly $1.7m.

At $1.7m sale price you're still close to the 30% rule and still have more than 5k/mo discretionary spend, which again, is more than most americans make monthly, period, even before paying for a house. The fact that you think this would make you "poor" is absurd and quite frankly, insulting. I'm sure my friend who owns that house in Sunset and has a boat and goes on nice vacations all the time will be bummed to hear that he's apparently "poor". I'll also let my Nob Hill friend know, too. Tell me, do you think commenting on their pic from the St Regis Bora Bora is a good way to break the news to them that they are actually poor?

All of this is also completely ignoring the fact that this is talking about someone making $250k/yr (which is near the beginning of their career for a FAANG engineer) paying for this house by themselves, when in reality the expectation in the entire rest of the world is that you shouldn't be expecting to buy a home like this until your 30s or 40s. There's a reason "starter homes" are a thing, and these listed homes are not that. You have incredibly warped expectations if you think that the target market for these 3br, 3bath homes are 25 year old single people. If you were an engineer in your 30s, you're looking at an income more like 300-400k at a FAANG, and if your spouse also has an income, these houses are trivially affordable.

Again, the median family income in SF is less than $100k, and they seem to be doing fine. For you to sit here and try to argue that "$300k isn't enough" is ludicrous and reeks of ultra privilege. You need a reality check.

> You can't buy a house now with $250k/yr in inner sunset. Go to Zillow and find me a nice house you can afford on $250k/yr and won't be house poor in the end with.

> You're not even close to being "poor in the end with it"

> The fact that you think this would make you "poor" is absurd and quite frankly, insulting

"House poor" is a distinct term that describes a home purchase where home expenses (not just mortgage) drain cash flow in a way that prevents hitting other goals - hence this point:

> You shouldn't be spending close to 50% of your take home on RENT. You will never be able to retire and live the same lifestyle.

A very different notion than "poor" alone. Also, you'd have to put at least closer 25-30% down on that home without absolutely perfect credit; jumbo loans have been tightening awhile.

> Again, the median family income in SF is less than $100k, and they seem to be doing fine.

What do you mean by doing fine, exactly? Not to nitpick, but I was under the impression most people buying in SF are not native to the city.

I don't have firsthand experience, but craigslist seems to have what look like normal apartments to me in the bay area for around $2800/month. Something like 600 apartments below that if I filter by off street parking and washer/dryer in the apt, which is my idea of a nice place. Looking for ads that double that brings up furnished apartments and luxury high rises with "24 hour concierges".

My reference point would be, for a young single person in a "normal" area of the country, $55K and $1250/month rent means you have $2K/month left over. A lot of people don't make this much.

To have the same amount left over after taxes and rent of $2800/month, it appears you'd need to make about $78K. So anything above $80K seems on the face of it to be livable at least for one person.

By the way, I noticed that total income taxes seem to actually be lower than in upstate NY.

Depending on the landlord, you wouldn't get the apartment. Some landlords require you to make 40x the monthly rent per year. I don't see many people renting $2800 apartments here at $80k/yr. If people are at 80k/yr, they're almost always renting a room.

Btw, I wouldn't necessarily use the entire bay area as your reference - as we weren't talking about the entire bay area either. Specifically only nicer neighborhoods. The price varies wildly by region. Apartments in south San Jose are much less expensive than in Palo Alto - but both are part of the bay area. There are many places in the bay area where my coworkers wouldn't even want to walk on the street - let alone live there... but there are cheaper housing options there.

You should be using ratios - not absolutes. If someone had $100,000/month rent then by your logic, they'd be just fine if they only had $2,000/month left over. That's very little buffer.

>If someone had $100,000/month rent then by your logic, they'd be just fine if they only had $2,000/month left over. That's very little buffer.

If you scale things up to that extent, then $2K becomes small compared to the possible variance in income or rent. But it's also small compared to the credit you'd have access to.

Without visiting I can't tell for sure, but I can compare apartments to what I'm used to by amenities, square footage, and such. If I had an offer and needed to move there, I'd judge the neighborhood by the housing, not vice versa.

Can’t find the video now. But saw some political theory thing where they argued that there is a U-shaped correlation greed and relative wealth

This idea of FAANGs having a culture of ruthless political backstabbing is new to me, is it really the case?

I have heard about things like misaligned incentives (eg launching a chat app to get people promoted and then discontinuing it a year later) but that actually seems like the opposite of ruthless to me (complacent?)

Facebook: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/01/14/facebook...

Netflix: https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-workplace-culture-often-ru...

Amazon: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

I remember these articles from when they were posted. I don't know of any specific articles for Apple or Google, but I know that my friends at Google think Google is a brutal place to work for most (Google of early 2010s apparently was much more chill, but not anymore). As for Apple, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook are of course known for their incredibly ruthless management style.

Yes, those misaligned incentives mean rewarding the cutthroat psychopaths who are obsessed with claiming credit for others work, instead of genuine team players who care about delivering a quality product. There is lots of cronyism, like all Indian or Chinese teams who protect and promote each other while only hiring others to fill their PIP quota. The higher you go in the org chart the worse it gets.

Management and upper management is not friendly, it is cut throat.

The skill people who go up the ladder have mastered, though, is to be deceitful and to maintain appearances, you might call that being professional at all times (at least to know when to be and when it is OK to be more natural).

I wouldn't consider cutthroat deceit "professional" behavior, but that's the depressing reality of how the world works.

There are many companies in our industry that disprove this. Culture can be toxic/abusive despite well paid employees. Culture certainly flows down, but it's the execs/managers who create it, not the compensation. See Tesla, Uber, Yelp, and most major video game studios.

> You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal.

i assume this is some sort of very subtle reductio ad absurdum?

> When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth.

i was working at a place where the salaries were flat across the board, and set at a perfectly reasonable level, and it still didn't eliminate concern for appearances and bickering.

Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation.

Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be adjusted for inflation etc by now, but very few devs make less money than they need to live comfortably by most people's standards.

Found the study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489

It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.

True. Cost of living has spiked a lot in tech hubs, too, but devs are usually on the upper tier of the income curve.

It’s not like NYC wasn’t expensive compared to Kansas 10 years ago.

Of course, but what about Austin or Denver? The tech industry has brought high paying jobs to a lot of smaller cities that weren't accustomed to such high salaries.

I wish I could find back the article that I read, years ago, that demolished the $75k claim of that paper, simply by having a different look at the same numbers.

It is worth noting that "happiness" is distinct from "life satisfaction" in these studies. The latter does scale with income up to very high levels. Just being happy on a day to day basis is a low standard, many people aspire to more in life somewhat independent of happiness.

It definitely starts there, it misses on a key aspect: 70k for how long and how assuredly? Usually once you start making that, your next goal would be

- To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal.

- Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above)

- Then you want to ensure this is on top of your car, house, child costs. (Depending on where you like to live and your car choice, add anywhere between 200k -> 2MM)

- Then you realize this car/ house kinda bumps into the 70k limit - especially if you went for a giant house because reasons.

And so on. So yes, folks can definitely start to feel 'safe' at 70k, but that's nowhere close to the checkout point. Once you figure out a target number based on above, you will realize you need to make so much more than 70k to get to that comfort state.

> To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal.

> Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above)

A buffer?? Assuming 2% inflation, the "buffer" you're adding is just over 100% of the original amount.

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