The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing) • Hacker News Board

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#181

Post by FredPret » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:18 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #137

FredPret wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO picking between a $10m / yr gig and a $50m / yr one would have to have rather a lot of soft factors working in favor of the lower paid one to justify it.

Almost certainly a lot of that would be variable comp depending upon a bunch of things. And I could also imagine a $10m gig (especially with speculative equity) at a company with really exciting prospects could trump a $50m one for a stodgy company not going anywhere.

"Exciting prospects" in the context of a career means "is going to pay a lot"

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#182

Post by nasmorn » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:19 PM UTC

bidandanswer wrote: post #178

qwerpy wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my personal experience in my circle of friends in my expensive west coast city, there are very impactful differences between the lower end of annual household income (400K) to the upper end (1.5M). While everyone lives fairly comfortably and doesn't have much financial stress, there are things the upper end can do that the lower end can't: - Send the kids to private schools (more and more important as public sch…

> Have a vacation house, which enables building social capital through hosting friends Psychopath

It is unfortunately true. You cannot invite your social peers and pay for their lodging. It is only socially acceptable if you literally spend 3x as much for a rarely used guest room.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#183

Post by eurleif » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:22 PM UTC

jjcm wrote: post #122

lumost wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this over-estimates the amount required to live a luxurious life in perpetuity. Consider the case of someone wishing to live a luxury lifestyle in the trendy lower east side neighborhood of manhattan. We'll use a 1300 sqft 3 bedroom condo as a baseline. https://www.redfin.com/NY/New-York/455-FDR-Dr-10002/unit-B30... This condo will cost 8k/month with a 20% downpayment at todays interest rates, leaving our hyp…

If anyone wants an extremely simplified "when can I retire given x expenses and y income" calculator, I threw together one here: https://html.non.io/simple-retirement-calculator/ Screenshot with op's scenario: https://image.non.io/7865a80e-d1e7-4437-b983-9101ed023024.we... (assumes a 4% safe withdrawal rate, I suspect op is using 3%).

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#184

Post by lumost » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:23 PM UTC

nasmorn wrote: post #179

bko wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 1300 sqft apt isn't exactly lux with a family of 4. Plus public schools aren't great in most of the city and private will cost you 50k per kid, post tax. Then you have to ask what you're doing during the summer. Camp will cost you easily another 20-50k per kid. And your naive math of tax leaves out a lot city and state tax. There are a lot of expenses. The fire stuff you read about people retiring after a few milli…

Camp cost 20-50k per kid. Is that lobster camp? What are kids doing in a 50k camp? I am regular European and 50k is like an annual salary. Kids go to camps though but they are more like 700 a week. Let’s call it a grand. For 50k you can get a helicopter pilot license not a summer camp

Likely this is a summer at sleep away camp. Although tbh I've usually seen something closer to ~10k for a summer away. Presumably you could pay more for spending a summer in an immersive camp experience or do multiple high end camps spread over the summer.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#185

Post by pstrateman » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:29 PM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #156

jjcm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone wants an extremely simplified "when can I retire given x expenses and y income" calculator, I threw together one here: https://html.non.io/simple-retirement-calculator/ Screenshot with op's scenario: https://image.non.io/7865a80e-d1e7-4437-b983-9101ed023024.we... (assumes a 4% safe withdrawal rate, I suspect op is using 3%).

Thanks! It looks like I can safely retire in `null` years! I'll put the champagne on ice.

It looks to be inflation adjusted, so null means never since your safe withdrawal rate will always be less than expenses.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#186

Post by shrimp_emoji » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:33 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #155

lex-lightning wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have paid double my taxes over my career if the US would spend it on elevating the poor. But asking me to not retire, to give away my savings to very few people? What, that’s not ethical. What if I made a lot, but spend very little? Shouldn’t that weigh in, if your issue is consumption level? What if in my early retirement, I go around lifting people up in non-monetary ways? What if my job earned me a lot of…

My point is very simple and we do not have to discuss all the edge cases. Working x hours and consuming stuff that took y hours to produce where y is much larger than x is unjust. All the rest are details.

Are you saying time has objective value?

If it took me 50 hours to whittle a doll from a piece of wood, I deserve 50 times the hourly salary of whomever buys my doll?

I think that's really stupid, just like the labor theory of value.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#187

Post by bidandanswer » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

nasmorn wrote: post #182

bidandanswer wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have a vacation house, which enables building social capital through hosting friends Psychopath

It is unfortunately true. You cannot invite your social peers and pay for their lodging. It is only socially acceptable if you literally spend 3x as much for a rarely used guest room.

Not true. It's sad that you all quantify and gamify relationships.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#188

Post by cyanydeez » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #85

toast0 wrote: post #18

> After a million dollars or so in salary, the absolute amount that a person is paid has no real impact on their life. They can't eat more meals in a day or wear more shoes. What matters to the manager is the relative amount. Sure, nobody needs more than a million dollars in annual compensation (in 2024 dollars), but relative amount gets you to your never need to work again number faster or slower. You might still wo…

I think this over-estimates the amount required to live a luxurious life in perpetuity. Consider the case of someone wishing to live a luxury lifestyle in the trendy lower east side neighborhood of manhattan. We'll use a 1300 sqft 3 bedroom condo as a baseline. https://www.redfin.com/NY/New-York/455-FDR-Dr-10002/unit-B30... This condo will cost 8k/month with a 20% downpayment at todays interest rates, leaving our hyp…

what really needs to be said is that conspicuous consumption is expensive and generating a "Elon" affect where you simply can't do anything dumb for an infinite number of reasons is the trajectory of conspicuous consumption.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#189

Post by manuelabeledo » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:40 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #176

manuelabeledo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... without acknowledging the amount of work it takes to become rich Being rich has more to do with background, than work. > The same people that minimize what people like Musk have accomplished. The son of a property developer and part owner of an emerald mine, and a top model, no less. What I'm trying to say is that getting a jumpstart, while not guaranteeing a path to success, does provide a massive advantage ov…

Lets say I agree with you and Musk was given a large amount of startup capital (he wasn't). If I gave you say 10 million, could you turn it into 300 billion? 10 billion? 1 billion?

> Lets say I agree with you and Musk was given a large amount of startup capital (he wasn't).

That's relative and debatable.

Musk was born to a wealthy family, and had the opportunity early in life to move to California.

He founded his first venture the same year he arrived, in 1995. It was initially backed by angel investors, and then received a $3M investment just one year after. That's $6M adjusted for inflation.

Only an unfathomable small minority of the world's population, with both the money and the connections, are able to afford this.

> If I gave you say 10 million, could you turn it into 300 billion? 10 billion? 1 billion?

Maybe. We will never know, because I wasn't given the opportunities Musk had since childhood.

I have yet to encounter a rich guy whose parents weren't, at the very least, well off enough so he could go to good schools and live a relatively comfortable life. Most rich people I have spoken to are, in fact, quite disconnected from the struggles of being poor. Many would claim that they are either self made, or come from a lower middle class background, yet haven't gone hungry for a single day in their lives.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#190

Post by novok » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 10:41 PM UTC

Hahahaha, this is capital complaining about the increasing cost of labor because of supply constraints straight out, which has been increasing world wide recently because of super-ZIRP and COVID killing off a margin of the workforce. Will he suggest a cap and trade wealth tax over the estate tax limit while people are alive next? No.

The capitalist here is berating other capitalists for not having enough marketing savvy to get labor at cheaper prices. Seth is a capitalist, he treats his work as a business to build vs. a salary to earn. On top of this, Seth's business is consulting to other businesses about marketing, using the marketing techniques of saying something a bit wrong and agreeing with the common man about some stereotypes to enhance it's virality.

It comes to pure supply and demand, and they wouldn't do it if they weren't making more money off of it. It's never about what you "deserve". Anybody on a salary without significant equity ownership is labor, but it's expensive labor in this case. Because if the business could get equivalent quality labor at cheaper prices, they would!

He also knows that "Goldman Sachs" is about class, because they make their money via front office sales, and someone lower class is not going to make a good salesman. Anybody who can do spreadsheets, basic algebra and have a cocaine driven work ethic can do banker jobs, it's not a talent issue beyond insane work ethic and social skills.