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How the Valley treats experienced people

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#271

Post by LyndsySimon »

mbrumlow wrote: post #246
dnautics wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't understand the math here. If you are in your 20s, single, and making six figures, you can rent an apartment with three other people in the bay and pay like 1-1.5k in rent and it's quite nice because you have so much extra capital to spend on top of saving. And there are things to spend it on here. Heck many in their thirties do this.

Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k Or live in a nice area for 800 a month. Or live in a shit area for 400. SV math does not work out. You are taxed to much. Pay to high rent and have the pleasure of needing a shit map to walk in your city. I keep seeing this same argument about getting to pay 1.5k to live with a bunch of other people to save s…

> Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k

Or in my case, a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of $850.

We paid ~$125k for ours, in a semi-rural area, last year.

It blows my mind that people would prefer to live in the Valley or elsewhere. I put in my five years in a higher COL area (Charlottesville, VA) to build my earning potential - and then I moved back to where I grew up as soon as I was confident that I could hold down a well-paying remote dev position and could get another one if the need arose.

The disparity between the coasts and "middle America" is insane. Working for a company based in the LA area, I make literally 2-3x what my colleagues are making working for local companies - while my employer pays me probably around half of what they'd have to pay for similar talent local to them.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#272

Post by ianai »

pvarangot wrote: post #220
slics wrote: post #88

If one thinks 35+ is to old to code, well I have news for you. At 35+ you learn how to manage time and prioritize better. Life throws another ranch in your bucket of problems, marriage and children. When you are young, you are hired as an engineer to work 40 hours, which we all know very well that working for startups that means 80 hours or you are not putting good effort. Well with a family that’s not possible, as y…

I'm 34, left my 7 years relation two years ago, am gay and never thought I could have kids and am not planning on having kids any time soon. This kind of thinking about that the traits that one develops with age and experience only come about with raising a family kind of worries me, I have a pretty good idea on what I'm missing on since absolutely all my good friends from university and most of my close friends from…

I'm in a similar position. I think the parenthood decision should be discussed much more seriously. Society does itself a disservice every time it erects expectations on people solely by sex, age, race, etc.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#273

Post by selectodude »

mbrumlow wrote: post #246
dnautics wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't understand the math here. If you are in your 20s, single, and making six figures, you can rent an apartment with three other people in the bay and pay like 1-1.5k in rent and it's quite nice because you have so much extra capital to spend on top of saving. And there are things to spend it on here. Heck many in their thirties do this.

Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k Or live in a nice area for 800 a month. Or live in a shit area for 400. SV math does not work out. You are taxed to much. Pay to high rent and have the pleasure of needing a shit map to walk in your city. I keep seeing this same argument about getting to pay 1.5k to live with a bunch of other people to save s…

> SV math does not work out

Sure it does. For one, they're taking home an extra thousand dollars per week in SV even after all the taxes. Also, they don't have to live in Birmingham, AL or whatever the hell.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#274

Post by LyndsySimon »

cenal wrote: post #205
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, 1 person who knows AWS well today can do things that would take huge capital investments and a team of 40 people 20 years ago

True but you can roll your own infrastructure for much less than it cost 20 years ago. Smart companies rely on cloud up to a tipping point. Then it becomes more cost effective to put in your own infrastructure. AWS and other cloud providers lure customers in with low costs but they get stuck paying a fortune as they start scaling.

I agree.

At a smaller scale, I love Heroku for prototype apps, and I would absolutely use them for a startup - right up to the point where I'd be paying the equivalent of 1-2 full-time devops engineers. At that point, it becomes worth it to hire them and transition away. AWS has a similar value proposition, but the tipping point is higher; I'd estimate it at around 15-20 FTEs in Amazon charges before it starts to make sense to leave.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#275

Post by selectodude »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #189
badpun wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if I'm just a lousy human being, or are these startups full of cheats. For me, working 25-30 hours a week (really working, not pretending to work or sitting disengaged in meetings) is probably a long-term maximum of sustainable effort. How the hell are these people working 80 hours a week?

They aren't, or if they are there's probably drugs involved. In the 80s, it was cocaine.

Now it's adderall.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#276

Post by user5994461 »

humanrebar wrote: post #98
user5994461 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you recommend to handle that? I find it difficult to hire senior developers for junior positions with the salary that goes with it. The biggest obstacle to middle age workers who are shifting career is to be unable or unwilling to take the paycut and downsides that come with a fresh start.

> I find it difficult to hire senior developers for junior positions with the salary that goes with it. Make the offer. If they turn it down, let them know they can change their minds later. I always tell engineers looking for jobs that saying "no" is the employer's job. It goes the other way too. Offer the engineer the associate engineer job (or whatever the title is). Let them counteroffer or decide it's a bad fit.

I find it difficult to handle in practice. That requires to adjust the interview and the rating, to conclude that the guy should join as a junior, instead of being rejected.

But there is no shortage of new graduates and juniors with too little experience. What if the company already stopped hiring juniors because they are too many and there are not enough senior to train them? We have no job to offer at that level, it's not about age.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#277

Post by freyir »

It’s a bit scary to hear these stories, especially as I squandered 20s getting a PhD, and most of my 30s living paycheck-to-paycheck at a non-FAANG R&D lab that pays peanuts. I’d love to move to a better-paying company, but it feels almost hopeless when I walk into a SV tech office and I’m the oldest-looking person there in my 30s.

That said, I’ve been interviewing developers over the last few months, and it’s hard to find good older developers on the SV job market (especially at a non-FAANG R&D lab that pays peanuts). We mostly get new college grads who are completely inept. I’d like to think the good older devs are gainfully employed somewhere.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#278

Post by molson8472 »

alanning wrote: post #74

I wonder if part of the issue is a kind of unspoken fear that the “dream” outcome may not be as common as people want to believe. If I am a young developer with more stock options than salary I want to believe that I will have the option of retiring early. Seeing older devs who were not able to “cash out” plays poorly with that narrative.

Nailed it.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#279

Post by austincheney »

All I can say is thank god I don’t work in the valley.

Some people actually enjoy programming and don’t have equity. Not everybody who programs is a high school drop out entering the ground floor some trendy ad-based social start up. Some of us actually solve real problems.

EDIT:

If I had to guess at the quote the article author was looking for I would guess it is this: https://www.cnet.com/news/say-what-young-people-are-just-sma...

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#280

Post by rayiner »

dominotw wrote: post #260
rayiner wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers are part of society and have to accommodate peoples' human functions. Requiring employers to make bathrooms available and giving bathroom breaks is reasonable, as is requiring employers to provide say parental leave (even if childless people can't use it). Setting working hours that can accommodate having kids is another reasonable thing--expecting people to regularly be in the office after typical daycare…

> requiring employers to provide say parental leave You pivoted into govt laws on employers. That is not what we are discussing here though, I was referring to "values" that employers come up with voluntarily. I don't have any issues with clearly laid out govt policies. > Setting working hours that can accommodate having kids is another reasonable thing I don't disagree with this as long as everyone can use this flex…

By "requiring" I mean in terms of social expectations, not government laws. Many policies, e.g. lunch breaks, are "required" by social norms, not law. (Only a minority of states require lunch breaks; bathroom breaks are not required for the most part either: https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/labor-employment/b/...) E.g. Most tech companies offer far more than the minimum FMLA required leave. That reflects "'values' that employers come up with voluntarily." That's also based on social expectations--a tech company that only offered the legally required minimum leave would get a lot of bad publicity for violating social norms, even though it would be legal to do so. Finally, it's not "discriminatory" even though childless people can't take advantage of such leave.
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