[dmode]

That's not how the math works at all. 25-30 yr olds making 250k don't live in 2m homes. They usually share an apartment in SF and pay ~$2000-2500 on rent. Then when it is time to get married or move in with a gf, you get a starter home for 500-600K, putting 10% down. Now in a couple of years, your starter home has gained $200k in value. Sell that and use the proceeds for a larger single family home around 1-1.5mn. Meanwhile, since your partner is in the Bay Area, your household income is between 400-500K. Now you are 35 and you get a couple of promotions and are either a senior Engg manager or an architect/tech lead at L6 or L7. You then start pulling 200K just in RSUs. Meanwhile your house also appreciates in value. At this point, said engineer has 300-400k in liquid savings and another 300-400k in home equity. There is a reason why people move to Seattle and SF as the math largely works out

[z0r]

That path is as rarified among software engineers at bigco as software engineering at bigco is among software engineering at large as that is to the general population.

[someguydave]

No, they move there because they hope that math works out that way, and they think they will be the one guy out of 10? 20? 100? where it actually does work out.

[pm90]

I don’t understand what is the unlikely thing to happen in the scenario described. If you’re talking about striking millions in startup exit/IPO money, I def agree with you it’s unlikely.

[z0r]

Plenty of engineers hit their cap at L5 or thereabouts (I'm sure if you look at the distribution of levels at your local bigco you'll see there's a sharp decline in numbers at some point), and not everyone is going to be part of a DINK engineering power couple.