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Comment by anon_070522 | Hacker News Reader

No, they have not dried up; about a year ago, I changed jobs, effectively doubling my already six-figure salary. I'm currently in the interview process again and from my experience so far, while I don't think I'll be doubling my salary, I do expect the position I end up taking will probably pay $30,000-$50,000 more than I currently make without any sort of jump in title.

YMMV; I'm a senior cloud engineer with 8 years of experience (all non-FAANG), though no academic CS background. Another caveat: starting right before COVID, I made the decision to only ever work remote, so all my experience with the job market in the past few years is only with 100% remote positions.

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So what happens when you work remote for like 250k? Do you just retire after five years? Trying to get my head around US salaries.

You pay 35% taxes so that's like 150, then you max out retirement and you're left with like 130. You spend 50-70k and then save 60k a year which is like 1 year of your pre-retirement expenses (not including any children, just like a couple or single person)

So yeah definitely not retiring in 5 years unless you are already 55.

This also means you didn't do anything flashy or crazy with your money or lose it in markets.

> You pay 35% taxes so that's like 150

These are weird numbers.

35% of 250k is not 100k. It’s 87.5. And you shouldn’t be paying 35% on 250k. 35% is the top tax rate you pay. Most of your dollars will not be taxed at that rate.

At 250k of income you should actually be paying about $70k in taxes.

But yeah, you’re not retiring in 5 years unless you’re retiring somewhere exceedingly cheap.

You are forgeting the 10% (aka $25,000) state tax in California which might be where this person is, which will bring them quite neatly to $95,000.

If you choose to work remotely to save money, you’re probably not going to stay in California.

That is true, however only a handful of states have 0 income tax (making up for it instead with property tax), and most still have around 5-7%.

That's only federal. You could pay more than 100k on this.

I know that pedantry is kind of a thing here, but people working remotely to save money aren’t generally living in a state like California.

Also for the sake of pedantry, you still won’t be paying 35% even with California taxes. Nor could you pay over 100k even in California, so far as I can tell, unless taxes go up or there’s other income at play.

California isn't the only state with state income tax. Most states have it. The pedantry is on your end.

> You spend 50-70k

Woah, woah, woah! That's more than most people in the world, the US or even California earn in a year, before taxes. (Median per capita income in California is $39k).

Why is a remote worker going to be spending roughly double the average Californian?

Its long been a a realtively true thing: take any salary in California, and cut it in half - and thats the same level of salary-Quality-of-Life you would have in any other state...

So making 100K in CA is the same as making $50K in Wyoming.

However, we are seeing a HUGE squeeze on cost of living in California.

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As an example, my brother bought a house in June 2020 for $327,000.

The house now Zillows for between 488K and 517K (depending on if yu believe their site, or the emails they send you.

This house was built in 1959.

My grandparents bought their house in Saratoga in 1959 for $29,000.

Sold it in ~2000 for $2,500,000.

Its now zillowing for $3,650,000.

Its almost the exact same layout as my brothers. Same build year. The only difference is that it is a 4BR and my brothers is a 3BR.

(and location...)

THe california real-estate market is literally crazy.

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But realors are an abomination. They are part of the reason (a major part) that cost of living is nuts.

Reality shows about realtors should be illegal - its market manipulation.

Look at companies like HouseCanary -- they attempted to build a ML/AI platform to inform hedgefund realtors on buying everything they could...

There should be a "protected" class of real-estate, one that cannot be purchased by hedgfunds or any individual that does NOT live in the residence. THese housing developments should be partially helped by local muni ords etc..

Budget accountability should be a thing ; SF is proposing to PAY for people from outside SF and California to COME to SF and get an abortion, such that they will pay for travel, accomodation AND procedure.

SF can't even take care of its OWN homeless folks, yet want to pay for out-of-state-abortion-medical-tourists???

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A few years ago I went thrugh the CDPH budget and read it, and looked at the salaries and employees divided by the number of homeless it claimed to be "helping"

I found that the city of SF was paying out ~$25,000 per year, per homeless person in "services"

Why not just pay those homeless people the $25,000 a year to have a city job that requires them to clean the city?

The salaries of the people that work in CDPH on the homless prblem shows the root cause

These are just anecdotes on how california is fn broken.

That's a lengthy post with a lot of anecdotes and so many line breaks that it takes up a full page in my browser. It doesn't answer my question, though.

Why does this poster's hypothetical example of a remote worker spend double what the median Californian could? Even if they were in California, it doesn't seem unreasonable to spend what the median Californian does.

Why would someone motivated by financial concerns move to California to at all, if they can work remotely from anywhere?

Your experience with the UI/UX too my text has nothing to do with my message, nor how you consume your information.

I dont write online posts as if they are Hemmingway passages, and in 9pt font.

I write in such a way which hopefully allows for easy skimming in speed reading fashion (at least it does for my eyes... I can easily filter out fluff words.. but thats only because my ADHD dopamine-pump requires it...

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However, point taken - just that I wont type out my thoughts different to the way I also think.

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>>>Why does this poster's hypothetical example of a remote worker spend double what the median Californian could? Even if they were in California, it doesn't seem unreasonable to spend what the median Californian does.

>>>Why would someone motivated by financial concerns move to California to at all, if they can work remotely from anywhere <--- THIS

THIS is exactly the reason why this argument / tpoic is so deep.

I don't know where you live, but if you have ever lived in California, with even a modicum of success, yu would immediately understand why California is a great place (so long as yu can make a living)

Snow, Sun, Beach, City, Moutains, Wine, entertainment, blah blah blah -- litereally every single thing your may want is within a 4 hour drive.

The sacrifice is that many would take your place. You are not PAYING to live here... you are paying to *LIVE* here.

Yet, at the same time, the ratchet of life clamps down.

While you have all these amenities, your upkeep of all aspects of your personal life go up. So you pay more for every single service and luxury -- plus you have whata-boutism culture all over the place...

The one absolute GREAT thing I can say about Silicon Valley (from a CULTURAL perspective*) is that Hollywood celebrity-ism-worship has not really been a thing TOO THE DEGREE of LA/SoCal...

There is a long quasi-competition between Science (norcal) and the Arts (socal) -- even though its "fake" -- it still has truth.

Norcal: Glamour through creation.

Socal: Glamour through looks (empowered by creation)

They are essentially the same, just different muscle groups.

what are you talking about? that statistic has no relevance… never heard of cleaning people working 4 jobs just to get by in CA?

you can’t live on 50k per year in the bay area or LA unless you have roommates and eat at work both of which are not sustainable. any decent apartment is going to be already 4k per month and you can easily spend another few K on food and other stuff, not even overdoing anything, so close to 10k per month is more realistic.

Seems quite easy to calculate? What's your estimated cost of living per year, what's your savings rate re: your salary, what do you need to safely generate that cost of living passively based on investments until your estimated last year of life? Are there any extraordinary costs (health care in the US for example) you'd need to be responsible for after early retirement? With those numbers in hand, for most people, no, you don't retire after working 5 years at 250K per year even in an extreme low cost of savings locale.

250k is a good pay in America but you won’t be retiring after five years. Income tax usually takes 25-35% off so your take home is 162k-187k. It’s easy to spend 10-15k/mo on expenses (mortgage, cars, gas, utilities, child care, food, clothes, medical, paying off student loans, retirement, savings, etc.). Then you’ll want to do things like take vacations. It gets eaten up pretty quick here.

In my case, you pay most of it to tax, mortgages, and all of the very expensive things wives like to buy.

Rents for decent apartments in most US cities over 200k population are between 2000 and 9000 dollars per month

Where did you find these remote positions?

LinkedIn searching for the “#remote” or “remotework” tag

https://remoteok.com

https://4dayweek.io

https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

https://weworkremotely.com

https://awesomejobs.io

https://remotewide.co/

(not op, no affiliation with anyone on this list)

I've had 3 fully remote positions in my career so far and I found them in the following ways:

1) filtering listings on AngelList ---> the job before last

2) searching "remote" on the "Who is Hiring?" threads here of HN ---> my last job

3) looking at the job listing page of companies whose work interests me who I've heard have remote-friendly or -only cultures ---> my current job and most of the places I'm currently applying

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