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

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

#191

Post by lazide »

lumost wrote: post #184
nasmorn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The private chefs and specialized tutors for niche subjects add up (I wish I was joking, not that I ever sent any of my kids to one).

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

#192

Post by lazide »

inejge wrote: post #177
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…

flying first class, flying charted, leasing a jet, owning a jet Perhaps counterintuitively, going from first class to charter/leased flights is a safety downgrade. Search for accident statistics on the NTSB site and you'll see that Part 135 flights (smaller aircraft, including business jets) have 3-4x the accident rates compared to Part 121 (large air carriers), arguably because Part 121 regulations are much more str…

You pay for flexibility in multiple ways.

Private helicopters are only slightly safer than solo parachute jumps.

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

#193

Post by ghaff »

FredPret wrote: post #181
ghaff wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Maybe?

Do something high-profile, considered influential, matches some mission you believe in, etc.?

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

#194

Post by lazide »

karolist wrote: post #79
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…

This, I can't believe all these "money doesn't bring you happiness after a certain level" tropes keep ignoring saving and investing angle, just lazy. Or accumulating wealth for your kids.

There is a counter fact - more money almost always means more motivated predators, and needing to modify lifestyle or behaviors to compensate.

It’s really scary how dangerous and destructive some people can be.

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

#195

Post by lazide »

bidandanswer wrote: post #187
nasmorn wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some people are just better about lying to themselves about it - the poor part of town literally depends on it.

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

#196

Post by lazide »

asadotzler wrote: post #149
srackey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A salary cap doesn’t change the market rate! It just obfuscates it. Salaries for public companies locked at 10M/yr? Ok, now firms have to compete on amenities. (Your current firm gives you a free car? Ours gives a jet, a personal Michelin star cook, and complimentary beverages)

Caps work. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in massively expensive fields like sports.

Salary caps in sports are literally just to enforce owner cartels and limit the ‘talents’ negotiating power.

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

#197

Post by novok »

asadotzler wrote: post #154
krupan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it was hacker news roughly 15 years ago that introduced me to Seth Godin. Or maybe it was Slashdot. Either way, there was a time when engineers were excited about starting businesses and were drinking up everything they could about marketing because we knew we sucked at it (and probably because PG told us to).

That time is not now. Now HN is half corporate boot lickers defending the status quo, like the temporarily embarrassed billionaires they are, while the other half are using HN as a political soap box to rail against San Francisco or the current federal administration or last year's HN icons who have since fallen off of the pedestals HN put them on. It's become mostly a joke where perhaps 1 of 10 comments are insightf…

So what is the next HN?

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

#198

Post by mullingitover »

Gormo wrote: post #151
mullingitover wrote: post #37

Beyond a few million a year, the rest of the comp is really providing something that's more difficult to purchase with money: power. So, while there's a diminishing return on the benefits of additional money in a person's life, a certain subset of people have an insatiable desire for more power. It's problematic in what's supposed to be a democratic society with a fairly flat amount of power distributed among citizen…

Money only equals political power to the extent that the political power itself is up for sale. Attempting to suppress the acquisition of money via political power will ultimately just create an alternate elite that denominates power via something other than money. The only solution is to reduce the reach of formal political power such that even if it is easier to manipulate it with money, it still can't be used to c…

> Fundamentally, no one is qualified to make decisions for anyone else in the first place, and the way we ensure the fitness of our civilization is to disaggregate and decentralize power.

This just sounds like one of the libertarian greatest hits, and this line of political philosophy is how you end up with bears taking over your town[1].

I think on the contrary, centralized power is necessary, and the solution to the problem of corruption is extreme transparency. Balkanized decision-making is entertaining, but not a sane way to organize a society. Pick competent people, give them the authority to make the decisions that are best for society, and surveil the living hell out of them while they have that authority to prevent abuses. It's not like corruption and abuse of power doesn't exist in small towns, on the contrary I'd say it's worse.

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

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

#199

Post by bobsomers »

wonderwonder wrote: post #55

This article is pretty shallow and sounds a lot like the people on Reddit calling for the removal of billionaires and how its the fault of the rich that they are struggling without acknowledging the amount of work it takes to become rich. The same people that minimize what people like Musk have accomplished. If I get paid more, I work harder. There is obviously a realistic limit on how hard I can work. The longer I s…

> The same people that minimize what people like Musk have accomplished.

Oof, I agree in general with what you're saying but Musk is a bad example. His companies have been successful in spite of him, rather than because of him.

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

#200

Post by qwerpy »

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

I used a very sterile, transactional description of it but there’s no denying that this is the case. Of course it’s not the only benefit, and it’s not what motivates the purchase in the first place.
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