[nostrademons]

$1-2M is ridiculous. You can accumulate that much in 5 years without too much trouble.

The challenge with extrapolating this out to retirement is that tech changes very fast, and fortunes can fall just as rapidly as they rise. Particularly if they're held in stock compensation, which Google and Facebook rely on extensively.

Many Sun Microsystems engineers were worth > $10M at the peak of the dot-com boom. A couple years later and they were insolvent, with tax bills larger than their net worth. A decade after that and their employer didn't exist anymore. Of course, a significant number of them quit and joined Google when their employer's stock crashed, and those folks have net worths > $100M or so.

If you extend out to timescales of 35 years, you not only have to worry about your employer disappearing, but you also have to worry about your industry and municipality disappearing. Right now folks who own houses in the Bay Area are sitting pretty - but what if the Bay Area goes the way of Detroit, with the tech industry obsoleted by foreign competition and houses not sellable at any price? The question isn't quite academic: Detroit had its heyday in 1950, and 35 years later, by 1985, it had lost 40% of its population and its major companies were non-competitive.

[greenyoda]

> If you extend out to timescales of 35 years, you not only have to worry about your employer disappearing, but you also have to worry about your industry and municipality disappearing.

That's a very good point. For example, if the U.S. ever passes a law like GDPR, the growth prospects of Google and Facebook could look very different. They could also end up saturating their markets (e.g., if you double Facebook's user base a couple more times, there will be no new users left on the planet - China is already closed to them). And the price of a stock is based on earnings growth rate.

Also, a large percentage of the recent growth of the S&P 500 has been due to the growth of a handful of big tech companies. If anything happens to their business models, not only will their stocks take a hit, but so will the S&P 500.

There's also no guarantee that Google, Facebook, etc. will be the leaders in new industries and technologies that emerge over the next 35 years - new startups could grab these markets. There's not even a guarantee that Google, Facebook, etc. will continue to dominate their current industries - they could be replaced by startups, just as they did to their predecessors.

Finally, tech companies could become more globalized over this time period, leading to fewer of their employees having jobs in California and more having jobs elsewhere in the world.

[thiago_fm]

Haha. I like how modest you are.

If I work my whole life as a software developer, I'll make around that figure. Then you remove the 42% taxes I pay and the fact that I'll likely be a renter my whole life(because buying apartments here is too expensive).

Basically that's the same for everybody in Europe.

[toomuchtodo]

Fortunately, your healthcare costs will be far lower than in the US (estimated to be at least $100k-200k between retirement and death).

https://money.cnn.com/2015/12/30/retirement/retirement-healt...

[jklein11]

How do you accumulate 2M in 5 years making 250K? If you had no expenses and somehow paid no taxes you would have 1.25M. The thought that you could make an extra 750K in 5 years in interest seems extremely optimistic. Saying that it is not a lot of trouble is a little bit misguided.

[nostrademons]

Stock price appreciation. Say that your pay is $150K base and a further $150K in RSUs, vesting over 4 years and with periodic refresh grants. Google stock has tripled over the last 5 years, so by the time 5 years has rolled around, assuming you keep your stock, your effective compensation was $600K/year ($150K/year salary and stock grants currently worth $450K/year) for that first year and slightly less for subsequent years (because the refresh grants are offered at a higher price). After taxes & living expenses you've got maybe $1.5-2M in the bank.

No, this is not guaranteed going forwards, and yes, an outsider could achieve the same effect just putting their paycheck into Google stock. Someone who works at the company has inside information about whether that's a good idea, though; if you're an outsider, it really is a crapshoot whether the stock goes up or down, while if you're an insider, you have knowledge of what upcoming projects are happening, how much key metrics are growing, what morale is like, etc.

This is also why I say it could turn around very fast - if your employer is Google and much of your net worth is Google stock, then if Google falls on hard times you could be wiped out just as easily as your nest egg grew.

[jklein11]

Yeah I totally get that.. current Google Engineers have made a killing with RSUs.

I guess my only issue with your comment is this:

>$1-2M is ridiculous. You can accumulate that much in 5 years without too much trouble.

I would say to rely on 300% growth is a moonshot, especially for a company that is almost 3% of the S&P 500

Calling out the risk of putting all of your eggs in one basket with google stock as an employee of google is an excellent point.

[segmondy]

Are you speaking from experience or what you heard?

[nostrademons]

Experience.