Comment by whateveracct | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whateveracct | Hacker News Reader

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FAANG total comp is higher, but I think I've made way more money/hour off working remotely than I ever would have if I stayed at FAANG [1]. So while I have less total money, I have made the money I made way more efficiently. Which in some ways, makes me richer :)

I sometimes have to remind myself that this level of leisure is basically what "traditional retirement" looks like (but with like a quarter-mil/year income + benefits) and that gives me get a sense of perspective when I'm feeling stressed.

[1] A key thing that makes this true is that commute + forced office time is like 3-4x the active working time I average working from home. So it's not hard to beat the Amazon 400k total comp quote when weighted against hours - I honestly beat that at my first remote gig years ago as a relatively junior dev! And I have the same engineering output more or less.

The commute angle of the remote work argument always seemed weird to me. If you work at a FAANG you can afford to live anywhere, including in places that would give you a short commute to work.

I feel sorry for people in the service industry who have hour-long commutes because they can't afford to live closer. But that is not the case for tech workers.

To be fair, I had a 15-20 minute walking commute. But that adds on 30-40 minutes to an 8+ hour workday.

Also, you can start bean counting and consider the costs of housing with a short commute vs the longer commute and realize that the market knows what it's doing and it becomes a wash comp-wise.

> If you work at a FAANG you can afford to live anywhere, including in places that would give you a short commute to work.

Not necessarily. If you're an E4 with kids, good luck paying $150k a year for a 3br apartment in walking distance of Facebook's NYC office.

> If you work at a FAANG you can afford to live anywhere, including in places that would give you a short commute to work

I think this is an exaggeration. Not everyone who works at FAANG companies is making $300K+/yr or whatever the current figure being quoted is, although senior people probably are. For rank-and-file employees, even engineers, your choices "within walking distance" of a FAANG office typically are: 1. A tiny apartment or townhome, 2. A larger townhome with roommates, or 3. Unaffordable. Numbers 1 and 2 are fine I guess if you're young and don't have kids, but I'm not willing to move my family into a sardine can in Mountain View or Cupertino.

So yea, you can afford to live almost anywhere, but only if you adjust your lifestyle drastically.

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