[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...

[scarface74]

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.

That was kind of the point of my replies. I live in metro Atlanta. Not exactly small town America. We just bought a house in the burbs two years ago - 5 bedrooms, 3-1/2 bath almost 3000 square feet, brand new build for less than $350K.

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

And somehow kids manage to “enjoy life” where the average household income in the US is $60K a year.

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?

Let’s talk about a stereotypical couple. Someone brought up that they were making $120K in a low cost city and they were in their early 30s. Let’s also say the spouse was grossing $50K (about average for a college educated person in the US).

According to paycheckcity.com. The lower earning spouse would bring home $3400 a month. The higher earning spouse would bring home a little over $6000 after maxing our his 401K (pretax) at $19K a year for retirement. Many couples I know in that situation live completely off the higher earners income. That’s what I would have done if I got married at the average age of around 30.

If they were just hitting their stride at 30 with no kids. That $350K-$400K 5 bedroom house could be paid off in around 10-12 years.

If the developer just put $2083 a month (that includes the $1583/month in his 401K) in an S&P Index fund that historically earned 11% a year, they would have 2.1 million in today’s dollars adjusted for inflation (2.9%) by the time he was 52.

Getting the kids through college? Let’s add some variables. The wife could take a year or two off when they had kids and the house would still be paid off by the time they graduated from college and they could put her income toward cash flowing the kids through college. I also didn’t take into account that hopefully they will get more than inflation adjusted wages.

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.

While the numbers for income I quoted above were theoretical, the fact that I have plenty of opportunities to work for a consulting company after my youngest graduates in two years and I’m willing to travel isn’t. I live in the same city as the world’s busiest airport. Getting a direct flight to almost anywhere isn’t a problem. Even Amazon is hiring AWS consultants who live in most major cities.

I personally would love to work on tackling scaling challenges. These opportunities just don't exist here

Even if the challenges don’t exist where I live, one or two of my friends/former coworkers work remotely. As I said above, I’m willing to travel.

But I know people, like my former manager who is in his late 50s, that wanted and did just the opposite, he changed jobs, self demoted to a developer and is doing your basic Microsoft/Azure full stack development. Once you have “enough”, you can get off the hedonic treadmill and make different life choices, you can take a pay cut to have a less stressful life, a better work life balance, etc.

I didn’t make nearly the same “good life choices” as the idealized couple I wrote about above but even I can say no to consulting companies that would pay me more than I am making now because I just really don’t want the headache at this point in life.

One final point. My parents are in their 70s, they retired in their mid 50s in the small town south with less than a million in the bank. My mom was a teacher (with a pension) and my dad was a factory worker (no pension). They aren’t struggling. They had 5 years left on their 30 year mortgage when they retired - they were paying $600/month for their mortgage.

[hello_moto]

Majority of the hi-tech companies here are SaaS product companies that use AWS/GCP. But the scale isn't there.

I'm referring to million sctive users of messaging app.

[scarface74]

Why is that the only definition of complex? Most complexities in business comes from process complexities or even business complexities. I once worked with a software as a service company that provided software for the car repair industry. We had to translate these rules for both the repair shop and the car owner.

https://www.railinc.com/rportal/documents/18/260737/CRB_Proc...

There is more to it than this.

Did we have millions of users? No. The rules were complicated, and most processing happened once a month. There is a central exchange that both sides go through.

I’ve had three jobs in healthcare. While the scale of users weren’t anything crazy. The business requirements were complex.

[hello_moto]

Because that definition of complex opens tons of doors to companies that are leading tech industry?

My background has always been in Enterprise software (healthcare, insurance, BI, etc, almost a decade). At some point I felt that translating complex biz reqs are no longer interesting.

I find dealing with scalability (and hopefully build my own system library) is more interesting and challenging that the Enterprise market.

Consistent Hashing algorithms, Distributed Systems, System programming, build your own programming languages, maybe build my own messaging/background processing?

YMMV.