[Steeeve]

Most people, even well paid engineers, live paycheck to paycheck.

Sizable companies take a month to bring in a new employee in the best case.

Most hiring managers are skeptical of people fired in a mass "underperformance" firing.

Toss in the fact that most people have never been fired and it's a massive blow to the ego. And also that it's terrible to communicate to your spouse and children that you've been fired for doing a bad job at work. That's a recipe for depression. Which makes it even harder to find work again. Which exacerbates the depression. And you're living on credit. And the bills are piling up. And you are starting to get phone calls.

If you can't jump right into a new job, it's a hard situation to be in, no question about it.

[ethbro]

There's no reason a well-paid engineer (let's say $75k-250k) should be living paycheck to paycheck, even with a large family.

If someone is, they should realize they deliberately chose that situation by failing to adjust for cost of living when comparing employment options.

[Steeeve]

Someone married with 4 children at $200,000/year earns a net pay of $10611.48 in California with a 5% deduction for retirement.

If they worked at Tesla and lived in Palo Alto, they would need a 5 bedroom house. That's an $8,000/month rental.

The average car payment in the US is $503. One car for dad, one for Mom, one for the teenager. That's $1509. That leaves $1102.48. Take $600 for electricity, water, and trash. That leaves $502.48 each month for food, gas, car insurance, parking, sports, birthdays, christmas, etc.

All of a sudden, Palo Alto doesn't seem so appealing, so the family moves to San Jose where a nice 5BR can be had for $4500. More affordable. The budget isn't so tight. The family can go out to dinner once in a while. They can save $1000/month. But it costs Dad 2-3 hours a day in commuting time. And he shows up late once every couple of weeks because the traffic is atrocious and his hours are set.

Well that pisses his Tesla manager off, so he gets cut as a low performing employee. He gets 2 weeks severance - $5k. He's saved up $5k over the last 6 months. He's not eligible for unemployment because he was fired for cause. He has 30 days to start a new job, at close to $200,000/year, or ... well... he's living on credit. So he takes a job at $150k/year because those are easier to find and he's under pressure.

Now his income is down to $8400/month. To a lot of people, that's still a lot of money. To this guy, he's treading water. It's hard for people to sympathize with this situation. Especially people out of the area with no kids and no debt who could live quite well on that kind of salary. But it's reality for a great many people. Maybe it's not 3 five-hundred dollar car payments. Maybe it's required tutoring. Or helping grandma make her house payment. Or paying for dead-beat brother-in-law's rehab.

Looking around at SV families, I see more people busting their butts to get by than I see buzzing around in sports cars. There are people that are comfortable. There are people that can get by six months without working. I don't think it's a large percentage of the population.