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Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#181

Post by eddsh1994 »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #151
eddsh1994 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay $3k per month for a 1 bed flat which comes out as 20% of my household income - I don’t feel poor out here with a postdoc wife and my own salary that’s not FANG. Life in a nice part of Palo Alto. The HN bubble is a bubble, I wouldn’t worry about it.

What's the square footage on that flat, if you don't mind, and is it detached? Just trying to get an idea of the market. Still ~half my bizarro world number though, hot damn.

750 if I remember right! It’s in what I can only describe as a holiday resort looking apartment block, with a dog park, swimming pool, and fire pit area.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#182

Post by tristor »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #131
ivraatiems wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because 99.9% of the population work for a CEO making millions of dollars a year, not $191k at a startup.

Jeez, how much freaking money are programmers paid in SV that they'd be unhappy earning $191k? I live in probably the most expensive country on Earth, Norway, and at that wage I could work for 10-15 years, and with some smart, fairly conservative investing, assuming good times in the markets I could easily get retired at 40-45 if I wanted to. Granted I live and generally prefer a very frugal lifestyle even when I am…

> Is there something I'm missing? Is rent in the valley $80k a year or some bizarro world number?

I moved from a LCOL where I paid $1200/mo in mortgage + escrow on a 2600sqft 4br house, to a MCOL where I pay $3600/mo in rent for a 1200sqft 3br townhouse. The Bay Area is a HCOL in the US, for a similar property what I have now, it'd be $5k-$6k/mo in rent, plus everything else is also more expensive. Back of napkin, $191k/yr is roughly $128k/yr after taxes, which is roughly $10800/mo after taxes. If rent is $6k/mo, utilities are $400/mo, a car fully laden is $700/mo, and food is $1000/mo, you're left with just $2700, and I'm ignoring significant other expenses. If you have a child (which I do), childcare in SFBA is around $2500/mo, it's around $1800/mo where I'm at now.

Best case scenario, you can save $2k/mo, which puts you ahead of the majority of Americans. You're also renting, which has a continually rising cost which you have no control over. To buy a house you need 20% down to get a traditional mortgage, a typical (for the rest of America) home in SFBA is $3M on the low end, but probably closer to $4M. To save up the $600k you need for a down payment on a $3M house, it'll take 300 months saving $2k/mo, which is TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. So it'll take you 25 years, just to save the down payment so you can get a 30 year mortgage for a house in SFBA on $191k/yr. In 25 years, that $3M house /will/ be at least $5M just due to inflation, which means you're hitting a moving target, if you predict the rise and target it for savings, now you need 500 months or just shy of 42 years to save the /down payment/.

The SFBA is nearly the most expensive place on Earth to live. Norway doesn't even come close.

I make >$300k/yr in an MCOL, I did an analysis and determined if I wanted to move to the SFBA without a massive sacrifice in quality of life for my family, I'd need to earn at MINIMUM $700k/yr to match what we already have, and more realistically closer to $900k/yr. $191k/yr is not even worth considering in SFBA.

EDIT: That said, if this was a remote offering, that's a very decent salary in most of America, and Oxide is a very interesting company with people working there I'd love to work with just so I could be surrounded by their brilliance.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#183

Post by bcantrill »

lsj0627 wrote: post #180
dang wrote: post #153

" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

I'm sorry for any trouble I caused here. I have no affiliation with the company, but just came across this company/its post and thought "Interesting! I wonder what HN readers will think."

Not your fault -- the title you put on it wasn't unreasonable, it's just that tensions are running high and there is a tremendous amount of mistrust out there. I think dang's guidance is really good in general: by using the title on the piece, you let the piece speak for itself. And there's definitely a reason I didn't title the piece this way!

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#184

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

eddsh1994 wrote: post #181
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the square footage on that flat, if you don't mind, and is it detached? Just trying to get an idea of the market. Still ~half my bizarro world number though, hot damn.

750 if I remember right! It’s in what I can only describe as a holiday resort looking apartment block, with a dog park, swimming pool, and fire pit area.

That actually sounds really nice at that price point.

750 is a pretty damn big one bed(room?) apartment for sure, and with the perks, prime location and presumably high end building standards, the price seems very reasonable. Probably similar to what I'd have to fork out for a much more central apartment in Oslo, at a similar size and standard.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#185

Post by bcrosby95 »

nebula8804 wrote: post #163
bcrosby95 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make 150k in LA, with 3 kids, and am the primary income earner. It kinda depends on where you live, LA is a big place with a hugely varying cost of living. I live in the suburbs and it's enough. If I lived in Venice I couldn't afford rent.

How about Echo Park. I wanna be around people somewhat near my age range to help stave off(but not eliminate) my crippling depression.

If you're single you can probably find a place you could afford to live in.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#186

Post by [deleted] »

bcantrill wrote: post #183
lsj0627 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry for any trouble I caused here. I have no affiliation with the company, but just came across this company/its post and thought "Interesting! I wonder what HN readers will think."

Not your fault -- the title you put on it wasn't unreasonable, it's just that tensions are running high and there is a tremendous amount of mistrust out there. I think dang's guidance is really good in general: by using the title on the piece, you let the piece speak for itself. And there's definitely a reason I didn't title the piece this way!

[deleted]

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#187

Post by lsj0627 »

dang wrote: post #153

" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Thanks for explaining! For future reference: would it have been OK if the post had the same title, but I left the URL box empty and placed the URL in the Text box along with a few sentences for context?

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#188

Post by steveklabnik »

tristor wrote: post #182
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez, how much freaking money are programmers paid in SV that they'd be unhappy earning $191k? I live in probably the most expensive country on Earth, Norway, and at that wage I could work for 10-15 years, and with some smart, fairly conservative investing, assuming good times in the markets I could easily get retired at 40-45 if I wanted to. Granted I live and generally prefer a very frugal lifestyle even when I am…

> Is there something I'm missing? Is rent in the valley $80k a year or some bizarro world number? I moved from a LCOL where I paid $1200/mo in mortgage + escrow on a 2600sqft 4br house, to a MCOL where I pay $3600/mo in rent for a 1200sqft 3br townhouse. The Bay Area is a HCOL in the US, for a similar property what I have now, it'd be $5k-$6k/mo in rent, plus everything else is also more expensive. Back of napkin, $1…

In response to your edit, only about a quarter of the company is in the Bay Area today.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#189

Post by tristor »

steveklabnik wrote: post #188
tristor wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there something I'm missing? Is rent in the valley $80k a year or some bizarro world number? I moved from a LCOL where I paid $1200/mo in mortgage + escrow on a 2600sqft 4br house, to a MCOL where I pay $3600/mo in rent for a 1200sqft 3br townhouse. The Bay Area is a HCOL in the US, for a similar property what I have now, it'd be $5k-$6k/mo in rent, plus everything else is also more expensive. Back of napkin, $1…

In response to your edit, only about a quarter of the company is in the Bay Area today.

That's great to hear. My comment was more to put into some real numbers the cost of living in SFBA for the grandparent, since they seemed to be under some illusions. In most of the US, that's a very decent salary and would be more than doable, I think in the Bay it's only possible if you already own a home and/or are separately independently wealthy. Which honestly, is fine, more people need to not live in SFBA and live in the rest of the US, even in major cities, which are massively better from a COL perspective.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#190

Post by lsj0627 »

sidlls wrote: post #115
armadsen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a software engineer, live in an area with a way lower cost of living than the Bay Area, work for a company almost exactly the same size, and $191k would be a significant pay cut for me. It really isn’t a lot depending on your role, level of experience, etc, and that’s extra true for the Bay Area.

You're an extreme outlier, then. Most Bay Area software salaries are going to cap out around $190k - $230k range, except at FAANG or FAANG-like companies.

This is roughly the Senior (5-10 YOE) salary range at Bay Area startups post-Series A.

Staff-level or higher starts at around $230K and occasionally reaches $275K.

The salary data comes from researching roughly 250 Bay Area startups. I'm personally defining startups as some combination of: Series A - D, founded post-2015, less than 100 Engineers.

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