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Comment by ohgodplsno | Hacker News Reader

For many devs, especially non SV people (or even non US people), a TC of 250k+ is more than life changing. It's "I never could have ever gotten this, and not only is my life set, the people around me are too".

Needless to say, if I was offered these compensations (or higher), I'll gladly take even 10 years of incompetence around me to then be able to do fuck all for the rest of my life (or, well, things I actually enjoy doing, not for a megacorporation). Being an elevated engineer doesn't pay the bills.

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> a TC of 250k+ is more than life changing.

It doesn't get you that far.

Consider tax and cost of life in NYC/SF/London where you won't be able to buy a house anyway, and you're left with 50k to save a year. In other places, you're less likely to get such a TC.

Sure, it's a lot of money, but not enough to change your social status. It adds up if you manage to stay long enough there, but considering ageism and burning out, you're not in the same leagues as let say doctors, or people who inherited 1 million after selling their parents house.

How much do you think doctors make? Unless they specialize and spend another 5+ years pursuing it, they're in the 100K-250K range anyway depending on location.

Sorry but you’re completely wrong about both your 5 years comment and your income range. For a more realistic look at physician income see https://www.offerdx.com/

Family medicine $270k. Doesn’t seem that far off.

There are two big differences. Family doctor can work easily until 65. And they don't need to live in the most expensive cities in the world.

For comparaison, there are extremely few SWEs in FAANG over 50 years old.

Extremely few? If the company only existed for less than 20 years and founded by a bunch of college dropouts, you wouldn't have many workers over 50.

You're mistaking the exponential growth of the SWE "profession" with Ageism.

The company exists for less than 20 years and since then, they have hired 10000s of SWE. Their selection process is heavily biased toward younger people, and so is their performance evaluation process. Their demographic is totally not representative or the workforce, and it's not just a coincidence.

Those are income numbers for specialists (cf. GP's comment "Unless they specialize")

The time to acquire a fellowship seems to be a couple years.

During that the time it takes for a doctor to go through med school, residency and specialist training (after which they would have the income numbers you cited), the FAANG careerist would probably have risen through the ranks and have comparable income numbers anyway.

Again, you are just mistaken - I'm not sure if this is a tech industry coping mechanism, or what. General practitioners are in the above dataset, and make an amount comparable to an L5 Google SWE.

If you want to make an argument that the overall career arc of a software engineer is better off than that of a physician, then that's a very different statement than GP made. (My personal view - strictly from a monetary standpoint, medicine in the US is more lucrative than big tech over the course of a ~40 year career, when you take into account lifestyle and personal flexibility, tech comes out looking better).

> over the course of a ~40 year career

To me this is an important difference between these two careers. Ageism is a thing in tech and in corporations in general. Of course, a few winners can climb the ladder and have a lucrative corporate career or earn enough money to retire early. But lots of SWEs get pushed out in their 50s or don't manage to work in fast pace / high pay environments for decades.

> General practitioners are in the above dataset

I don't see which row. Levels.fyi says L5 Google SWE is 350k. The left column in your link has a header saying specialty. "Family medicine" is 270k in your data set. Nothing in the 350k range vaguely resembles general practice.

> If you want to make an argument that

I'm not trying to make any argument, except to counter yours.

> not sure if this is a tech industry coping mechanism

Heh. I can't speak of the industry as a whole, but I don't think I'm coping in any way. I'd say in medicine you know the demand for your skills is going to be stable, worldwide. In tech, there's no way to project 20 years into the future.

lmfao

Alright, let's consider this: my current gross salary is at 47k €. With what my boss pays, let's say it would be the equivalent of 100k in the US (unemployment, social security, etc). And I'm from France, which is a pretty wealthy first world country. My salary puts me in about the top 20% in terms of salary.

If you think I wouldn't be able to commute for 2 hours every day for 2.5x salary so i could save up MY ENTIRE CURRENT SALARY IN A YEAR, you have massive blinders preventing you from realising how privileged of a status it'll be. The amount of people that can put 50k aside in a year is ridiculously small. And 50k is actually being awful at saving, you can easily reach 100k if you're not a dumbass.

Now consider this for an indian H1B, who can pretty much make an entire family live like kings off of that.

No, you don't realise just how much of a life changing amount 250k is.

I actually went from 50k in a median city to 200k in an expensive megalopolis so I know exactly whether it's life changing or not. Consider $3000 rent for a 2br apartment.

My lifestyle hasn't changed to the slightest, except I work more. I won't be able to sustain that lifestyle for many years, because ageism + stressful job. For comparison, in France, 10% of people inherit more than 500K without doing nothing. I'll probably never reach that level of savings, won't ever be able to live in a house and so on...

I'm not complaining as I'm in a privileged situation. But in countries like France, inequalities come primarily from inheritance. It's hard to lift yourself from middle class with salary alone.

Sometimes I feel like people here mistakenly or purposefully obfuscate TC info for one reason or another (uninformed, can’t/doesn’t want to get into FAANG, etc..) but even with the current market downturn, I’m safely at around the ~500k mark as a ‘senior’ engineer at a FAANG (levels.fyi is your friend). I’m under 30 and have been doing this job at a comfortable pace for over 5 years now so no risk of burnout hopefully. I save much more than 50k a year, and yes it’s social status changing money and no I don’t feel out of league with my friends who are doctors.

> Sometimes I feel like people here mistakenly or purposefully obfuscate TC info for one reason or another

So you're at least E6 and less than 30 or/and you join the companies when stocks were low. Don't think your particular case is the same as everyone else. Some people go to FAANG at E5 in their late 30s in Europe/Asia. 200K is more the norm for them, and it's not sure they'll be cruising until 50 in an IC position.

Very true. Golden handcuffs is an option, but you can also just liberate yourself from financial stress and help the people around you who need it. Not everyone is chasing a BMW or bragging rights.

That TC might be life changing if they earned that much in their current cities/towns. That TC would involve moving to SV and the associated costs of living in SV - specially housing.

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