How much are you making? I know that's a taboo question but your account is throwaway :-). I made $130k at a company called proofpoint with around 6-7 years experience as a software engineer and analyst, until I left tech.
My guess is upward of 500k
Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
221–230 of 418 posts
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#222How much are you making? I know that's a taboo question but your account is throwaway :-). I made $130k at a company called proofpoint with around 6-7 years experience as a software engineer and analyst, until I left tech.
In case OP doesn't give you exact numbers, you can probably make some guesses:
1. ~10yrs in a couple of these companies means they're likely at E5/E6 (+1 level if Amazon)
2. All those companies have had fantastic stock growth over the past decade and they compensate heavily in stock
3. Play around https://www.levels.fyi/ for those companies
So likely >500K W2 take home in recent years
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#223I was part of Intel's mass layoffs in 2016. I hated my job at the time, but looking back now I wish I was back in the spot where my compensation was not quite "ridiculous", but great.
I went to a startup after and it was terrible. Luckily I've transitioned to the parent company, but it's still not as ideal.
Can you deal with it for a few more years? Surely you can get to a point where you can retire early?
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#224I quit full-time work in 2001, after being burned out in the dot com boom. I did well for myself financially after the startup I was in got bought. The phrase "well" is of course subjective, considering that no colleague of mine quit. I left a whole lot of money on the table, but never once have I regretted it. I decided that the name of the game is to optimise quality of life. That means, infrequent brutal deadlines…
First, thank you for your answer. Second: > I have never learnt the art of work-life balance, but now I'm able to amortise it over the course of a year! I took a similar approach and realised that with my attitude towards work I'd need to reduce the contract lengths to a week max, which is obviously impossible, unless I switch careers completely. What I find really hard is to maintain a work-life balance in my _every…
This sounds like an emotional or energetic balance problem. Would you care to go into more detail? I have had the problems for a number of years, but the fluctuations (appear to) be decreasing.
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I envy the bubble you live in. If you have say $3M in the bank and you spend $50k / year then it lasts you 60 years doing nothing.
Beginning in 50s, health insurance alone is $25k per year in premiums with after tax money plus ~$13k out of pocket maximum per year. Don’t know how a couple can afford to forego that, especially if they have assets that can be taken, the hospital will come for them.
$25k is a bogus number. I know several self employed people. The highest earner is paying $900 a month and the other is paying $800 for 2 people. Another person I know who is 1099 and makes less than $30k is paying about $75 a month.
Personally I paid about $30 per month working part time as a waiter in college making about $20k a year.
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, that just sounds like the opposite of boring to me.
I wasn't debating the "interesting" part, I was debating the "I wouldn't call that stressful" one.
That’s great, and I just don’t see a stress dimension here.
-e- especially the necessarily stressful part of this role.
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a few years? What kind of lifestyle do you have that a few millions only last a few years? I really doubt with that math you would have been able to save a few millions in the first place, unless you won a lottery.
Typical cash plus equity for an experienced engineer is going to top $300k/yr at the low end. Million s might be an exaggeration, but it's certainly trivial to save well north of $1M in a decade on that salary, barring misfortune like a health incident.
>barring misfortune like a health incident.
Here is a reminder to everyone that a health incident is only a financial misfortune in the US.
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, if I didn’t have passive income sufficient to pay for all of my and my family’s healthcare, I wouldn’t feel economically secure in the US. And that means at least $70k to $150k in passive income per year.
That sounds very depressing TBH. With 70k passive I could retire in Hungary. Just by having $150k in your bank account would give you 5-8 years of runway in Budapest to live a very good life.
The $25k for someone making $50k is a completely bogus number. It’s likely a little less than half that for a family of 4 on a Kasiser healthcare plan according to google.
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#229I quit full-time work in 2001, after being burned out in the dot com boom. I did well for myself financially after the startup I was in got bought. The phrase "well" is of course subjective, considering that no colleague of mine quit. I left a whole lot of money on the table, but never once have I regretted it. I decided that the name of the game is to optimise quality of life. That means, infrequent brutal deadlines…
> That means, infrequent brutal deadlines, minimal (pref. zero) commute, opportunity to learn, and spend time with family and friends and be of use to society at large. This is what I'm aiming for in the near term, but how on earth do you find a position with infrequent brutal deadlines?
I have had exactly two hard deadlines in the two years I've worked at my current startup. One of those was brutal but the other was very fair.
I don't know if I have a trick for finding a position like this other than to pay close attention to who your manager will be and what _they_ value. My manager believes strongly in the mission of the company (decarbonize the electric grid) but also has young kids that he cares a lot about. He left big tech to work here. So his passion and his work life balance both "trickle down."
Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?
#230These kind of posts keep making me think I should go work for a FAANG so I can actually retire one day. Anyways, as someone on the other side, who has never worked for or applied to FAANG, I have a few reactions. First, your salary is absolutely ridiculous. I know hard working people who have built their own businesses with blood and sweat, and they still don't make as much as a slacker engineer at FAANG. So I'd say…
> mature tooling that exists at FAANG I never worked at FAANG but even after more than 10 years working in tech, it still surprises me how undervalued well working tooling is. I'm not talking about 100% automation with infinite possibilities. Just really basic stuff, like deployment or setting up a development environment. That should always be a no-brainer.
I used to work at Google, and I find the tooling much better on the outside. Heroku is much better than Google's deployment tool; Github is much better than their review tool.
The only things I miss are the snacks and the searchable codebase