> The offices are like Disneyland for tech folk. Vast open stretches of adjustable desks....
I kinda stop reading and just started skimming after that.
I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
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Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#32I work remotely for past 5 years. Nothing beats that if you have small children.
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're working a high-end job (one that not many people would qualify for, presumably), making well over $100,000 per year (FAR above the average family income in the US), then why should you settle for a near-poverty lifestyle?
I'd hardly call buying a car that's less than 40k "near-poverty.'
It's not that, it's the part about having to live with roommates in a tiny apartment. I did that in college. Why would I want to go back to that lifestyle? Why should I? If that's all you can afford by working at a super-high-end job these days, then what is the point? (Again, remember that $100k is well above the average family income in the US right now; a single guy making that much should be able to live very, very well.)
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#34This guy would get DESTROYED over at /r/personalfinance
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#35> I’d been granted a few thousand shares when I got hired, and after the company had its IPO in 2012, I sold all the shares that had vested. … We could finally rent a house for just our family, no roommate. In order to afford that, selling stock became necessary every quarter it vested. Obviously, this is not the path to financial security, but when the sum of money that lands in front of you isn’t life changing, you…
>What‽ Selling capital in order to finance daily survival is terrible: the entire point of a working life is to accumulate capital in order to finance a retirement.
And yet people do it all the time. Not to mention the billions living hand to mouth.
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
"a niceish $40,000 car," ish. High on the list of signs that you've bought far too much into lifestyle inflation is thinking that a car costing 70% of the US median household income is only "nice-ish."
The author and I both make the same, about 90th percentile income for the nation so we "deserve" 90th percentile cars, which is probably much more expensive than $40K. I mean $40K isn't even enough for a fancy pickup truck or fancy SUV. I thank God every day that I don't live in California, so my standard of living at the same income is awesome and times are great for my entire family. All because I won't work in CA.
It's all dropped down the endless real estate rabbit hole in the Bay Area.
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#37I think the point is: his salary while not high by SF was high in nearly any other location in the US. In any other location, he and his family could live how they wanted. In any other location, have a $40,000 car instead of a $10,000 or less car is a perfectly reasonable. In any other location, eating out more than once a month would be perfectly reasonable. Having a expensive hobby racing cars is reasonable, just n…
So basically he sold his stock options to buy a 40k car.
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#38> I’d been granted a few thousand shares when I got hired, and after the company had its IPO in 2012, I sold all the shares that had vested. … We could finally rent a house for just our family, no roommate. In order to afford that, selling stock became necessary every quarter it vested. Obviously, this is not the path to financial security, but when the sum of money that lands in front of you isn’t life changing, you…
People want the nice things their parents had, but not on the same timeline. They don't realize that nice things take a while to accumulate.
Yes my parents drive a Prius. But growing up in a family with 5 other siblings, they pretty much drove beaters. And our house started with, as we so fondly called them, the seven ugly carpets of the world. And those were slowly replaced over time. The house we lived in until I was one had slanted kitchen floors - just throw a towel at the correct wall if you spilled.
The point is that our parents affluence isn't the result of a general rise in affluence - it's accumulated. But we often don't think about that when making our early financial decisions.
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#39I was quite sympathetic until I hit the mini-bio at the bottom: "Matt Kulka works for Local Motors in Phoenix, Arizona. He loves to drive cars around race tracks, his expensive hobby that he just doesn’t want to kick."
For me it was: "My salary was about on-par with what I was making at my last job in Phoenix — just barely breaking into the six figures — but housing costs were significantly different." Who in their right mind would move to the Bay Area on a Phoenix salary?!
Two reasons:
Stock Options
Work at Facebook
Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's not exaggerate. $100K/year in the Bay Area (as a single person) isn't living it up, but it's not "a near-poverty lifestyle." It's a "living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," lifestyle but it's eating good food with a roof over your head. If that sounds like poverty, well, you should see real poverty sometime.
""living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," but it's eating good food with a roof over your head." That sounds like me as a part time student / part time grocery store minimum wage shelf stocker around 1990 in the greater Chicago land area (well, within a very distant orbit of Chicago). I suppose most people would have considered me very poor at that time. I wa…
> In summary it sounds like if you work full time plus at Facebook in CA (admittedly in 2016),
I don't know by direct experience, but I hear even entry level hires are doing significantly better than $100K at Facebook.