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The Real Silicon Valley

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Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#91

Post by SatvikBeri »

dxbydt wrote: post #84
michaelochurch wrote: post #69

I really wish there was a way to: (a) have the autonomy and interesting work of a startup tech founder (while a full-time technologist, not a manager) but (b) without the extreme income variance. If your job requires you to take personal loans, there's something wrong. I also think there are a lot of people who have the talent but not the ability to afford the risk. The extreme income variance is a bug, not a feature…

you are looking for a rose without the thorns:) you'd be better off with a lily ( ie. straight job at big-co/small-co, no income variance )

There's plenty of in-between. The key concept is career capital.

Career capital is basically how much a company values you. You can more or less trade career capital for things like money, promotions, freedom, etc.

Different companies will let you trade career capital for different things. Small startups generally grant more autonomy and less cash. Investment banks will let you get plenty of cash, but all the career capital in the world won't buy you autonomy.

The mistake most people make is that they don't consciously invest their career capital. They take raises and promotions when they should really be negotiating for more freedom and interesting projects.

If you want to love your work, figure out

1. How to become extremely valuable and earn lots of career capital,

2. What you want to spend it on. There is usually a constraint in your life-feeling that you don't have enough freedom, enough cash, etc. Spend your career capital on your biggest constraints.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#92

Post by imperialdrive »

oscargrouch wrote: post #36

I quit my TI job, lost my beautiful fiancee, lost my friends and came back to live with my parents, and all of this after thirty.. Im pretty sociable guy.. and had a very rich and good social life before all this.. Im living in Brazil, without access to this garden of VC funds you guys have in the Valley.. But i live in front of a beautiful beach, where i go out everyday to run, and let some stress behind me.. Im sti…

Well put - life, the pursuit, the lessons, and mainly all the fell good times to be had... for some reason running along the beach is something I relate to the most. I'm taking a year off after directing start-up operations for almost 10 companies in 15 years... so much learned but so nice to be away from it all too. Thinking of getting out of tech and using the people skills learned along the way to do something in manufacturing or research/education. Anyway, thanks for sharing. Good luck.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#93

Post by oscargrouch »

SeoxyS wrote: post #74

If you're buying into the Silicon Valley hype, and then get disappointed, you're doing it wrong. Silicon Valley is not a place that's amazing a first, and then awful once you fail. It's simply a place that happens to have the highest concentration and best resources for building tech companies. Ultimately, though, surviving Silicon Valley comes down to one simple rule: don't build stupid shit. Work on a business , ge…

I think this is a "Show me the money" effect.. People read news about 1B instagram deal.. and think about doing something similar.. to become the next startup billionaire

I think this is not the right reason.. you need a lot of emotional background to support you when things get ugly

entrepreneur are masochists, they have fun doing it.. this billionaire wannabe with the silly idea, won't stand still

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#94

Post by Alex3917 »

arbuge wrote: post #43
noname123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better way to make money is to take out a personal loan for 100K, same opportunity cost of two years of programmer-salary on startups. Buy out of the money options on small-cap pharmacuetical facing FDA decisions, you have the ability to also make $10 million overnight with 30% success. Go for insider-tips to max out on your success.

Wouldn't the insider tips be illegal insider trading?

IANAL, but I don't think it would in this case. Insider trading generally applies to using private information held by the company. But in this case what you're looking for is information from the CRO or FDA.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#95

Post by 001sky »

acchow wrote: post #68
jcdavis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is way overly pessimistic. At 100k total taxes (Federal+CA+SS+Medicare) are in the 30% range. That leaves 30k to spend (not too hard for a single 25 year old assuming you don't have lots of student loans, even in SF) and 40k to save. And this ignores tax-advantaged savings

At 100k, take-home pay is $65,278. Closer to 35% "total taxes"

well, your lease is $25k, so $40 saved == is naked, barefoot, hungre and not yet even at the office =D

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#96

Post by hazov »

michaelochurch wrote: post #88
dxbydt wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are looking for a rose without the thorns:) you'd be better off with a lily ( ie. straight job at big-co/small-co, no income variance )

I don't think it's an unreasonable possibility, actually. What I'm describing is an R&D like environment. There's no reason autonomy has to come with the extreme and mostly random income volatility of the VC-istan ecosystem. It's not that I want zero income variance. How many people would want to live in that world? I don't. It's that I'd be willing to give up the upside over $50 million in exchange to never have to…

Academia is like that if you choose your field of research well.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#97

Post by sayemm »

kloncks wrote: post #76
sayemm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the rational way to play the game then is to make that $200K, then stretch your reach and make $1M, and so on... until you've taken care of the money problem. Then that's when you're ready to start taking shots at the big opportunities, without being motivated by money or being held back by it.

I would argue it's easier to go all with a smaller hand.

Easy, but a lot higher-risk. It takes money, resources, and connections to actually do big things, and past wins improve your execution ability and chances of success.

But prescient market timing greatly skews the odds in your favor and gives you a huge edge too -- I think that's apparent in all the startup successes that started off with a small hand.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#98

Post by patio11 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #69

I really wish there was a way to: (a) have the autonomy and interesting work of a startup tech founder (while a full-time technologist, not a manager) but (b) without the extreme income variance. If your job requires you to take personal loans, there's something wrong. I also think there are a lot of people who have the talent but not the ability to afford the risk. The extreme income variance is a bug, not a feature…

I really wish there was a way to: (a) have the autonomy and interesting work of a startup tech founder (while a full-time technologist, not a manager) but (b) without the extreme income variance.

Bootstrap a product business, optionally with a side of consulting. It is pretty much exactly what you want.

The downside insurance doesn't work like "sell all upside", though -- it just means that it takes you N years to reach the relative position with regards to $1 billion that Mr. Swing For The Fences is on day 1, but when that day arrives, you'll have five or six figures of recurring income in your back pocket.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#99

Post by bokonist »

bokonist wrote: post #29
noname123 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found some Mass. bonds (because it's my home state, so tax-free for both federal and state) yielding 6.43% just now, with expiration date of 2029-05-01 and with credit rating of AA+ http://massachusetts.municipalbonds.com/bonds/issue/914440KJ... . Also can also buy some REITs with annual high-dividend yield of 17% such as AGNC or NLY. These are a bit riskier due to fluctuating principal out on the open equity market.…

Can you actually buy them at that price? Don't they get auctioned off, and so that the actual yield is lower? From reading that web page it looks like the effective yield was only 4-4.5%

UPDATE: as svachalek points out, the 4-4.5% is not even the right yield. That is 4.5% interest per year, but if you pay $110 for the bond, you will only get a principal returned of $100, so the effective yield-to-maturity is even lower.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#100

Post by joonix »

natural219 wrote: post #49
seiji wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has mentioned taxes yet. I assume your "making 100K" is the salary. The pre-tax salary. Taxes will chop that pretty much in half. So if you save $40K/year, you get to live off of $10k in the second most expensive MSA in the US. Good luck.

You and I are looking at different marginal tax rate tables if you're talking about US income tax.

  Annual Gross Pay	$100,000.00
  Federal Withholding	$19,794.50
  Social Security	$4,200.00
  Medicare	$1,450.00
  California	$7,257.14
  SDI	$955.85

  Net Pay $66,342.51
http://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/netpay/us/california/...
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