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My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

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Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#121

Post by dsomers »

sneak wrote: post #100
bjornsing wrote: post #51

> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had. This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.

One of the biggest tragedies, in my view, is what a lovely place Europe is to live, and what utter lack (seemingly for no great underlying reason) of class mobility exists there.

What an absolute joke. The United States has terrible class mobility compared to the Netherlands or Germany for example. You don’t have anything to support what you said other than a skewed perspective created by American centric media.

Edit: I guess the down voters here hate facts. The US scores lower on social mobility than the majority of European countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#122

Post by darkwater »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #105
bjornsing wrote: post #51

> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had. This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.

The modern "progressive" thought-process is to feel guilty about having a good education. I went to private school in the UK and the only thing I feel is infinite gratitude to my parents for forking-out the money to send me there (they were not rich, they were both teachers).

No post body was provided.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#123

Post by bradlys »

xvector wrote: post #19
uyt wrote: post #15

I think people who are graduating now will have a hard time replicating this. My cohort (now in our early 30s, cs majors from a top school) were incredibly lucky because we were in a permanent bull run so as long as we were invested in almost any tech stock, we did well. Almost all of us hit one million mark before early 2020 and that became 2 million at the end of 2021. I would love for this to continue forever but…

Golden handcuffs are a good thing. It's such a first world problem to complain about golden handcuffs. "Oh no, I'm making $300k/yr over my nominal market value!"

The golden handcuffs are only handcuffs if you’re in a terrible environment. I’ve walked away from a 7-figure TC. Handcuffs be damned. I wasn’t going to take the abuse anymore.

Some people don’t have the strength to walk away and instead will obsess over money for anything. It’s funny how I’m sure people would require much bigger numbers if they were given an offering where they’d have to go to a terrible prison for 2-3 years in their prime years.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#124

Post by 1ris »

sneak wrote: post #100
bjornsing wrote: post #51

> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I’ve been very privileged, especially in the educational opportunities I’ve had. This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.

One of the biggest tragedies, in my view, is what a lovely place Europe is to live, and what utter lack (seemingly for no great underlying reason) of class mobility exists there.

Like everything, it's very different across Europe. Best case, social mobility is pretty good. Worst case it's a little worse than the US.

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-social-mobility-among-poorest...

>In Germany, it would take a child whose parents' earnings are in the bottom 10 percent of the population six generations or 180 years to reach the average national income.

>The average across the entire OECD, a group of 37 industrialized countries, is five generations. Children in low-income families in Denmark would need two generations, while children in the United States would need five generations.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#125

Post by georgeburdell »

htormey wrote: post #120

This is very similar to my story. I moved to America from Ireland in 2007 after graduating with a degree in cs. I did a year in grad school before working in tech in the Bay Area for more than a decade, including at two companies from FAANG. I also ran a consulting business and for the last 3 years worked at Coinbase. I don’t consider myself in anyway special. I know many people from Europe who went down this path. T…

>I don’t consider myself in anyway special

As someone who has within the last few months failed three FAANG on-sites and a Coinbase phone screen, I’d say you’re special.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#126

Post by htormey »

georgeburdell wrote: post #125
htormey wrote: post #120

This is very similar to my story. I moved to America from Ireland in 2007 after graduating with a degree in cs. I did a year in grad school before working in tech in the Bay Area for more than a decade, including at two companies from FAANG. I also ran a consulting business and for the last 3 years worked at Coinbase. I don’t consider myself in anyway special. I know many people from Europe who went down this path. T…

>I don’t consider myself in anyway special As someone who has within the last few months failed three FAANG on-sites and a Coinbase phone screen, I’d say you’re special.

I hate tech interviews. If it’s any consolation, I remember when I interviewed at Apple, I failed 10 interviews for multiple teams over 2 years before I got my first job.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#127

Post by darkwater »

sneak wrote: post #95
pyrale wrote: post #58

Turns out, earning half a million dollars every year makes it easy to be a millionaire after a few years.

Your flip comment seems to belie the fact that he's only earned at least a half a million dollars for one year. Most of his years he earned substantially less than that. The majority of his NW comes from investment and savings, not income. The point of the article is that cutting expenses, saving, investing wisely, and aggressively pursuing pay raises can yield a few million well before retirement age. These sort of…

So you have to not enjoy the best years of your life and spend time and energy keeping track of investments to... get bored as hell later because your brain is so used to just work and save and nlt enjoying life that you will feel guilty spending that money? I want to retire at 55 but I'm really skeptical about the FIRE community, especially by the ones in their 20's

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#128

Post by marcellus23 »

darkwater wrote: post #122
CodeGlitch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern "progressive" thought-process is to feel guilty about having a good education. I went to private school in the UK and the only thing I feel is infinite gratitude to my parents for forking-out the money to send me there (they were not rich, they were both teachers).

Quoted post unavailable.

It’s also not his fault at all.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#129

Post by goodpoint »

yholio wrote: post #16

TLDR he rode the tech bubble, lived frugally and poured his savings into what happened to be a very favorable stock decade, which together with his tech stock options from employers made him a multimillionaire. Not to disrespect the effort that went into this, but let's make this very clear: this type of trajectory is only possible for a very limited few, in a particular moment in history. Everything seems to indicat…

Also you need to be extremely lucky to be born in the right country and the right area, have a healthy childhood and access to learning, have no physical or psychological illness, have no moral qualms with working for those companies, and the list goes on.

> this type of trajectory is only possible for a very limited few

We are talking 0.1% of human population if not less.

Re: My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer

#130

Post by berdario »

mmarq wrote: post #101
merrvk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax in the UK is absurd (for what most actually get out of it)

In the UK, the stronger drag on wealth accumulation for the poor is the absurd taxation on the middle incomes (50K+), especially given the very low level of service of public schools, healthcare system, childcare, etc…

Agree that the stronger drag is the cost of childcare, but the poor don't earn 50k+

In fact, if you earn 50k as a single without dependants (or if you are a couple with 2x50k income) you're definitely richer than the majority of folks.

Also, the UK tax system is incredibly generous to high income folks: 40k+ tax exempt pension contributions, 20k ISA allowance, 12k cgt allowance. It means that you can accumulate a good chunk of capital before you'll even have to start paying taxes

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