[HN Gopher] Sacrifice the first 13 years of your life to Google ...
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Sacrifice the first 13 years of your life to Google for 2M
Author : gigatexal
Score : 8 points
Date : 2023-06-16 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gigatexal.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (gigatexal.blog)
| JohnFen wrote:
| 13 years and you only get $2M? No thanks, that's far too little
| for such a large ask.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Both my parents worked since their teens and hasn't reached 2M
| combined GROSS. Let alone net. 2M in 13 years is a dream for
| most.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I did basically this except that I already had ~4 years of work
| experience (all in startups) when joining Google, I "retired" at
| 33, and then un-retired at 39 to have kids and buy a house in the
| Bay Area.
|
| I wouldn't recommend doing it now, simply because "past
| performance does not equal future results". Joining Google in
| 2009 was an awesome move; the stock has roughly 15x'd since then.
| Joining Google in 2023 will probably not result in the same
| performance. Tech companies have this pattern of growing and
| growing and growing and then...dying. Just ask anyone that worked
| at Silicon Graphics in the 80s, Apple or Sun Microsystems in the
| 90s, or Yahoo in the 2000s. It's unlikely that Google will have
| the same growth or compensation in the 2020s that it did in the
| 2000s and 2010s.
| NumeroUnoUno wrote:
| I mean hindsight... why not just say buy a house when he was 20
| and then you'd be a multi-millionaire after 13-years.
| [deleted]
| gigatexal wrote:
| Or, how if you spend a ton of time living as a stoic, and focus
| everything on that next promotion you could have nearly 2M saved
| by your early 30s.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Ok this is extremely wrong on so many accounts.
|
| 1. Firstly how is it 4.6k / month, it should be more like 8-9k
| per month. I work in Seattle which is lower tax but also lower
| base and I get 8k per month as a new grad. So no you can easily
| save 4K a month, not 1.2k. The authors numbers are closer to that
| of a grad student that I also was.
|
| 2. Next, the main thing this article gets wrong, no you're not
| going to become a principal engineer in Google in 16 years. L5 is
| terminal in Google, though with recent level inflation, a smart
| ambitious grad can reach L6 in 6-8 years (though much longer is
| common). Anything beyond that is not guaranteed, even if you
| spend long hours working very hard. Google is annoying in the
| sense that the promotion is far more political than it needs to
| be with a committee and whatnot that I often find it to be a
| shitshow but even if you take a much more results oriented
| company like say Apple, going beyond ICT5 is not easy. As an
| engineer the main thing that gets you promoted, is either solving
| a really hard technical challenge that the rest of the
| organization was struggling with. By definition these problems
| are hard, long hours won't solve them. You also need to have an
| intuition of what's solvable and what's not, there are a class of
| technical problems in the organization which might essentially be
| impossible to solve with the current knowledge we possess and you
| can easily waste years of your life with nothing to show. I see
| few people who rise up like this and they are all exceptionally
| brilliant. The second way, more doable for the average engineer
| is to bring a product to the masses that's moderately to highly
| successful. This requires luck, timing the market and good
| management skills to get something out there, you need to be the
| reason Google chrome exists etc. Both these pathways require more
| than just hard work, they require you to pick up a lot of skills
| and most importantly they also require luck. Sometimes you can be
| brilliant, use the right strategy etc and still have your product
| fail/ not solve the problem.
|
| TLDR; going beyond L6 is not easy and most won't reach there in
| their career
| syntaxing wrote:
| One thing to note is that levels are triangle shaped. Not many
| break the L6 barrier. I know people who have been L5 for over a
| decade.
| TX81Z wrote:
| Nah. You just get a promotion every two years, and boom, CEO at
| 35. Simple!
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Maybe it's a mindset thing, but I can't think of anything worse
| than wasting ~16% of my life like this (average male lifespan in
| the US is around 79 years). You're sacrificing a fair chunk of
| your prime years in the hope that it pays off long term; imagine
| if you followed this and died at 40? What a waste of a life. Or
| what if you make some bad investment calls and it doesn't pan
| out? What a waste of your time.
|
| I made some good judgement calls and I've worked for decent
| companies where I'm not on a treadmill chasing every dollar; I'm
| still well paid to the point where I go on multiple holidays per
| year, own a majority of my own home, paid cash for our decent
| cars, and my wife has taken extended maternity leave because we
| can cope fine without her salary. AND I got to enjoy the shit out
| of those years.
|
| No way in hell I'd trade that for the two million.
| gigatexal wrote:
| You're far less hedonistic than the target for this article I
| think. I'm sure there's a balance, a sweet spot between
| investment returns and quality of life. Maybe you've stumbled
| upon it. But for me growing up working class poor this, if I
| could do it over again, I'd do this. I didn't get married until
| 29 anyway so I'm not too far off from the timeline I proposed.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Maybe you're right and I'm just not the right sort of person
| for this in many ways. However, I would question how living
| in such a way that you're literally counting every penny for
| so long would affect your relationship with money. It would
| be a crying shame to have worked so hard for so long to earn
| it and then not be able to bring yourself to enjoy it.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Paying cash for cars though? Everything I've read says that's
| not a wise use of cash. The asset loses a ton of value and by
| paying cash you've used it all chasing something that will
| never appreciate. That being said if you can get value from
| something for 10+ years that only needs upkeep and insurance
| maybe the savings pays for that? I dunno.
| nostrademons wrote:
| You pay cash for it and then run it into the ground. Cars
| will never be an investment (they're a depreciating asset,
| except in 2021), but this way you can keep your consumption
| to a minimum.
|
| I've got a 14-year-old Honda that I paid $14K for. That
| amortizes out to about $1K/year. Annual repair bills and smog
| checks are still way less than $1K/year (I think I spend
| amortized $200-300/year, plus vehicle registration renewal,
| which is less on super old cars than new). I hear there are
| people out there now who spend $1K/ _month_ on their car
| payment. It 's pretty nice to not have to deal with that.
|
| It's got plenty of life left too - I'm hoping to keep it
| until EV technology stabilizes a bit and then just upgrade
| straight to whatever EV gets it right.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| For starters I don't buy brand new, the family car was a low
| mileage, well specced 18 month old car. I'm not concerned if
| we lose a bit more money on it than we would have spent on
| finance; we can afford it. I worked for a bank for some time
| and it left me very much averse to using credit if I don't
| need to - I saw some horror stories there of people who ended
| up with so much debt that they would never clear it. Here in
| the UK it's ludicrously easy to get crazy amounts of credit.
| Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I like to own things outright.
| The other car is my fun car (2018 BMW M3), I don't see myself
| selling anytime soon.
| fragmede wrote:
| But to retire at _fourty_. What a dream. You get so much time
| back.
|
| Hey, different strokes for different folks.
| prepend wrote:
| Most people sacrifice the first 13 years for way less than $2M.
| This seems like a funny complaint.
| syntaxing wrote:
| I didn't find the tone of the article as a negative thing.
| Contrary, sounds more how to make the most of your "youth" to
| gain financial independence.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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