101–110 of 252 posts
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It's vastly easier to become a millionaire in finance than in tech.
I agree. I am an ex-trader in his late 20s, and most of my peers who stayed in finance have at least a million dollars in savings+assets.
>> The focus in Silicon Valley on long-term compensation is also important. Nearly everyone wants to get rich but they’re willing to wait to do so. Conspicuous consumption isn’t that cool; not too many people drive Ferraris or talk about their vacation homes. Instead, they talk about how healthy they are, their diets, or the climbing gym.
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On the living part: My folks live in Concord and their next door neighbor just moved into assisted living at 95. Her house sold within a week for 700k to a young couple. It's a 3 bed 1 bath single story in Concord with drainage problems, mind you. Lets do the math here shall we: What is the mortgage and taxes(thanks prop13) on a place like? Well, at 4.05%, good credit, and 15% down, it's 2857.80/month just on the loa…
If it's so bad, why aren't people moving out of the valley?
No. The reason why Silicon Valley works is because of the intense greed that it provokes amongst everyone that comes here. Maybe "greed" is too strong of a word, because people aren't necessarily selfish, maybe "money-focused" is probably more accurate. And because anyone can come here and become a millionaire/billionaire, it draws in an immense number of hard-working people which just generally increase the level of…
I strongly disagree that the high cost of living is beneficial for startups. Keep in mind the very term Silicon Valley comes from chip companies (Fairchild, Intel, etc.) who came to SV because it was cheap, open farm land . There isn't a business in the world that doesn't want to optimize on costs. Take a look at a modern SV company now: Apple. It creates lots of jobs in SV, but far more in China . SV succeeds in spi…
You're absolutely right. High COL is good for well-connected people who get funding easily for stupid startups, because it makes the labor pool more captive. It's bad for the quality of startups.
Take a look at a modern SV company now: Apple. It creates lots of jobs in SV, but far more in China.
And then the murderous, unionbusting thugs who run the sweatshops buy real estate in California, pricing the locals out of their own housing. It's the circle of life... ?
No. The reason why Silicon Valley works is because of the intense greed that it provokes amongst everyone that comes here. Maybe "greed" is too strong of a word, because people aren't necessarily selfish, maybe "money-focused" is probably more accurate. And because anyone can come here and become a millionaire/billionaire, it draws in an immense number of hard-working people which just generally increase the level of…
All this is part of the reason why I've strongly been thinking of going back to school to become a doctor. What follows is mostly a rant, just to be upfront about it. It's a really radical transition, but I really, really dislike the city-centric focus of software engineering. I hate the idea of being a contractor (I just want stable, life-long work), and I can't tell you how tired I am of crippling traffic causing m…
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I agree. I am an ex-trader in his late 20s, and most of my peers who stayed in finance have at least a million dollars in savings+assets.
Is there a 'too late' to get into finance? I might have to change my focus. All this JavaScript and Objective-C can stay a hobby.
I don't think there's a "too late", but there's a different skill set you need, especially to get a good job in finance.
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All this is part of the reason why I've strongly been thinking of going back to school to become a doctor. What follows is mostly a rant, just to be upfront about it. It's a really radical transition, but I really, really dislike the city-centric focus of software engineering. I hate the idea of being a contractor (I just want stable, life-long work), and I can't tell you how tired I am of crippling traffic causing m…
This sounds like a fairly idealized vision of what working in medicine is like. I have heard doctors say the same sort of thing about being a software developer. Is the grass really greener?
A doctor who isn't interested in any of the benefits of the career that I listed may indeed end up resenting their choice to take on a lot of debt (and study for at least seven additional years) just to end up in a big city alongside programmers with no debt making a similar amount of money.
Like I wrote, if you're motivated by money, medicine is a fairly bad choice. How many doctors are neurosurgeons? About half a percent. Of those, how many are department chairs? Just a handful.
If you want few working hours, medicine is probably a bad choice. How many doctors are radiologists who co-own a business and take half the year off? I don't have a percentage for this one, but very few. Most will work 50-60 hours a week.
How many programmers know that their startup is still going to be around in 40 years? Very few. How many programmers have the option of working where they want without taking a pay cut or working as a contractor? Very few.
The grass certainly isn't always greener. If it were, then I might have picked law, or architecture, or construction, or any of a vast number of other options. But none of those fits the list of criteria that I now know are important to me in life (but may not be important to you).
I can't get over this. This is like a used car salesman telling you not to worry about the cost of the car, just to remember that there are free weather mats included!
I feel that there is a connection here as to "why Silicon Valley" works from the perspective of VC's in a position to influence founders. However I'm not feeling particularly eloquent today and haven't fully formed these ideas.
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Housing cost is the #1 reason I moved away, and the #1 reason I stay away. I lived in Mountain View 2007 to mid-2008 for my job at Google. We were renting a house close to campus at the time and contemplated what it would cost to put down roots and stay -- most likely buying a condo or house. Every time we ran the numbers, it made no sense, so we voted with our feet and moved back to Chicago. I would love to live in…
While the cost of living here is brutal, it seems a lot of people are stuck here due to the supply of tech jobs. It would be a lot more risky to live somewhere that does not have such a supply. As someone with a solid software background, if I were to wake up tomorrow and find myself without a job, I'm reasonably sure that after at most a few months of searching I could line at least something up. If that happened in…
Right now I'm reasonably confident that I can go from being dumped out of my contract to having an equal (or higher) paying contract in a matter of a 2-3 weeks. If (when) that changes, I'll pack my family up and move, probably to Chicago. It's easier and less stressful to save a few months' worth of runway earning $120k in Chicago than it is earning $150k-$180k here. If other personal issues weren't impeding it, I'd already have done so, but circumstances are more likely to keep me here for at least a few years. The hot market here won't last, and it seems to me the hottest parts of the job market now are becoming even more narrowly focused on a segment of the labor market I'm simply not a part of (young, willing to work 50-60 hours a week for no overtime, below-market compensation + an equity lottery ticket and kitschy foosball-table nonsense).
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It's vastly easier to become a millionaire in finance than in tech.
Can you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested in hearing from someone with experience in both industries to weigh in on this. Especially once the risks on both sides have been calculated in, since otherwise the comparison is largely meaningless.
Traders who top out at $500,000 per year are considered failures. Quants and programmers often get to (and, sometimes, past) that level, but more slowly (maybe 35-45 on average; obviously, there are outliers who get there faster).
For a contrast, the mediocre engineer gets such a small amount of equity that it's less than a finance bonus at liquidity. Then there's dilution and cliffing. Sometimes engineers (usually, ones who joined early and were later judged to have "too much" equity) are pressured into non-exercise of options on reputation threats (i.e. "you're fired, but if you don't exercise your options on that 2%, I won't have to give you a bad reference.")
Finance is harder to get into, but once you're in, you have a certain status that Silicon Valley just doesn't give to engineers except for a couple hundred with international reputations.
There's also much better career planning in finance. Don't make any obvious wrong moves and you will move forward. It might not happen as fast as you'd like, and you probably won't get to the $50M net worth level, but you can make a decent life for yourself and you won't be tossed out like yesterday's garbage at age 40.
Finance does have a lot of job volatility. The business is cyclical and layoffs happen. That said, so do startups. Finance compensates you for this risk by (a) compensating you well, and (b) being professional about it when layoffs happen, so your reputation is intact. The slimy tech companies, on the other hand, don't compensate your risk except with platitudes about "changing the world" and, when times are bad for them, hide layoffs with stack ranking and dishonest PIPs.
I will probably try to go back into finance in a year or so, honestly. (I'm already putting out feelers.) Tech is a nice idea, but the software industry, as it actually is with the "agile" micromanagement and the stupid startups and the general incompetence of its upper management (I won't call them "leadership" because they're not) is basically a waste of time for talent. At banks, I know that many of the MDs are at or above my talent level, and that almost all of them worked really hard to get there. Non-techs (including executives) in tech companies are basically 95% morons because the capable non-techs generally have better options in other industries.
It's hard to go back to finance, from startups, because the typical startup CV has a high jobs-to-years ratio and finance is still pretty bigoted about "job hoppers". (Finance is meritocratic once you're in, if you get a good job, but getting in can be a hassle.) In startups, one job per 2 years is normal; in finance, it fucks you in the ass if you change jobs that often.