[scarface74]

$300K to live on the west coast is really not that appealing to someone who is living in a major city, with the stereotypical house in the burbs in a good school system with 2.1 kids where on the higher end you can make $150K to $160K as an architect/team lead/principal. Especially if you are married with two incomes where you can easily put the lower income completely toward increasing net worth or cash flowing your kids college expenses.

Engineers getting paid $300K could easily be the stereotypical r/cscareerquestions “learn LeetCode and work for a FAANG” type graduating from college.

[enraged_camel]

I think you are perhaps too focused on the immediate salary, and not thinking long-term.

Yeah, $300k in the Bay Area isn’t that much. But if you work for a Tier 1/2 company for a few years, it can have a drastic impact on your future employment prospects and salary levels. Furthermore, the street cred can open many doors that otherwise would remain closed to you.

[scarface74]

I think my reply would have had more context in response to a sibling reply made by another poster:

Consider the scaling factor for salaries; My salary is on the high end in my area, but would be on the low end of a living wage in the Bay Area. My salary is in the neighborhood of 120k; I'm a senior-level engineer with almost a decade of experience...

So think about the trade offs. If you’re young and single, the tradeoff between a one bedroom in a major city anywhere not on the west coast and the west coast and the difference in the salary you can make is well worth it.

In most major cities a junior developer will make $60K and can probably find an apartment for $900/month in a decent part of town. If they work on the west coast and get $250K and find an apartment for $2400K/month, that’s a tradeoff worth making.

10-15 years into your career, you may already be married with kids. That $120K he’s making can easily buy a 3000 square foot house in the burbs, brand new build, great school system and close to work for $350K. This is from personal experience (not the salary, the price of the house). Now that tradeoff between $150K and $300K-$400K doesn’t look so appealing when you can’t live nearly the same lifestyle on the West Coast that you could live on much less money

If he’s like me, he’s probably built a local network where any door he wants to open locally is probably already open to him.

In my case, I’m 45, but because of $bad_life_decisions, I only started taking my software development career seriously a decade ago. But I do have a great local network, skills that match what the market demands and the house in the burbs with the wife, the white picket fence and 2.1 kids.

I don’t really need new doors opened to me. As soon as the youngest graduates and I’m willing to travel, I am already in the position of being a high earning “consultant”. Not bragging, I have been working over 20 years, I should be able to consult somebody

[hashfunktion]

> Furthermore, the street cred can open many doors that otherwise would remain closed to you.

The assumption here is that technical screenings actually work. As many here have pointed out, technical interviews today are highly capricious and pretty have no correlation with actual technical qualifications. "Street cred" and even superb interview performance don't seem to matter anymore.

[scarface74]

I’ve found that people who work for large companies are often not a fit for smaller companies. They may be good developers, but most of the time they come in with prebuilt infrastructure, processes, separate departments to handle the infrastructure parts etc.

Most small companies I’ve worked for, I’ve had to go back and forth between every layer of the stack - currently including the infrastructure set up. You just don’t get your hands dirty with multiple parts of the stack at a large company.

[hello_moto]

DING DING DING.

I've seen quite a few people only focus on the $300k aspect in HackerNews (and made negative remarks) without thinking about the trajectory.

[scarface74]

Anyone who is making $135K+ in any city that is not on the west coast or NYC, is probably 10 years into their career and may already have a family. In that case, they probably don’t want to make the sacrifices needed to go from making enough to live an upper middle class lifestyle - ie the nice house in the burbs to downgrading to a small apartment.

In my case, I’m 45, why would I move to the west coast for $300K when I can just stay in $major_city and work for a consulting when my younger son graduates and can make $180K-200K+ and still have the same lifestyle?

And then go back to being just a developer anytime I wanted to and still live comfortably?

[hello_moto]

But you're assuming with 10-15 years of experience you're stuck at 250-300k.

People who advanced in their career at Bay Area can make 500k or more (IC, not management), solving challenges that did not exist in the first place too (that alone might potentially put you in top 1-5%?). There are more startup opportunities (whether IPO or just the technical challenges, that's up to you) with higher chances of success.

Different people have different goals.

[scarface74]

I’m not denying that different people have different goals. But if you already are living a life free from worry, can work part of the year, doing what you enjoy, paid off house, what’s really the difference between 2 million and 15 million? (not saying I am there yet).

It’s not like I go to work everyday hating software development and hating what I have been doing since I was 12 years old. My wife works for the government and we have guaranteed access to health care whether she works or quits tomorrow.

I can have technical challenges and jump from opportunity to opportunity in two years once my youngest graduates.

Outside of the west coast/HN bubble, people retire comfortably all the time with a million in the bank, I paid off house, and social security.

[hello_moto]

2 vs 15 depend on the person.

If you're a single? none.

Married couple with no child? none.

Married couple wanting more children? yes, it matters.

Parents who want their kids to enjoy life? yes, it matters.

Parents who need to take care both in-laws and kids? absolutely, it matters a lot.

2 mills can get you a Duplex (closer to center) /House (further away) in the suburb of Vancouver/Toronto (Canada) with probably 100-200k left. Certainly not enough for retirement. In Seattle (USA), I suppose it depends on the area of your chosen.

How long do you have to work to reach the point of no-mortgage (nice house), kids done college paid by parents, and $2 mills for retirement?

But this is just what might be one dimension of the discussion: financial => lifestyle.

> I can have technical challenges and jump from opportunity to opportunity in two years once my youngest graduates.

We both live in different cities. I don't know your city as well as you do but where I live, there's definitely a ceiling to that technical challenges. Now before we go further with examples... I live in a city that certainly have huge hi-tech ecosystems and quite well known internationally.

I don't see Facebook/Google/Uber/Netflix/AirBnB anywhere nearby. My coworker would love to do impactful ML work. There's zero companies in my city that does ML meaningfully (more than just gluing OSS solutions or calling 3rd-party APIs). I personally would love to work on tackling scaling challenges. These opportunities just don't exist here.

The companies here are quite good compare to major cities out there, but certainly there's a virtual ceiling/limit due to a mix of VC, culture, talent, etc.

Just to wrap things up and to put things into perspective, I'm not a workaholic or ambitious person. I see those challenges as opportunity to invest my skill to stay relevant for years to come so I can take my foot off the pedal a bit. Otherwise, I'd be just an Engineer like everybody else in this city...