| This is very much tech bubble thinking. Most developers in the US don’t work for tech companies and will never make ovdd $200K inflation adjusted. Developer salary is very much bimodal https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal If you are working for boring old enterprise companies like banks, airlines, insurance companies or even most YC funded companies, “senior” developers will top out at around $160K-$170K inflation adjusted in tier 2 cities. I spent my pure developer career [1] in Atlanta GA. Well known companies based there like Home Depot, Delta, Coke, and GE Transportation are paying their top developers around what entry level developers getting in BigTech. But choose your non west coast city and you will see the same. |
| Okay, assuming you could invest 100k out of your 170k per year into companies you know were doing well on tech from 2015, how much would you have ? (say: AMD, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Facebook) The answer is about 10M, which is not that far from what I estimated, even without including Nvidia. Now add in house price appreciation. There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs. |
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| ▲ | ahtihn 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, just save 100k out of your 170k comp, that's totally how normal people operate. And not only that, also pick the right stocks rather than just sticking everything in an index! Just magically turn 10x 100k into 10M! | | |
| ▲ | cwbriscoe 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I haven't got to 10m yet, but I saved 70-80% of my take home pay since ~2008 and I have enough to quit at any time and live the rest of my life without working. That is just by investing in the 3-fund portfolio and without the crazy SF salaries. | |
| ▲ | fooker 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You do not understand compounding growth. You could have looked up the numbers for indices yourself, but here you go - S&P500 -> ~4 million NDXT (top 100 tech) -> ~14 million. > just save 100k out of your 170k comp Yes, that was my starting salary, and that's almost exactly what I saved. This calculation assumes your salary is somewhat constant and maxed out as the person I was responding to claimed, but in my experience you can expect your tech salary to double every ~5-6 years. | |
| ▲ | fragmede 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Shit, dump that $100k into bitcoin at the low point of 2015, and you'd have $37 million today. Easy! |
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| ▲ | Marsymars 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs. Yeah, but there also isn’t enough wealth in the system for everyone to do this. Like suppose that a) we’re now at a reasonably correct valuation for Nvidia b) assume a hypothetical where everyone in the US had plowed all of their savings into Nvidia in 2015. Result: The market cap of Nvidia is still $6 trillion, and the median American owns less than $10k in Nvidia stock. | | |
| ▲ | fooker 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I meant everyone with a good tech job, not everyone in the country. About a 1:1000 ratio I'd guess. | | |
| ▲ | Marsymars 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sure, but there was nothing stopping people with $10k in savings in 2015 from buying Nvidia. If someone with $10k in savings had bought Nvidia in 2015, they’d have $2.5m today. But that only works for a relatively small number of people before the $2.5m is no longer $2.5m - they’re all drawing from the same $6 trillion pot. “Everyone with a good tech job” is accurate, but besides the point, it would work exactly the same if you limited it to “everyone who’s a plumber” or “everyone who’s a fedex driver”, but literally cannot work for everyone at the same time. | | |
| ▲ | fooker 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > it would work exactly the same if you limited it to “everyone who’s a plumber” or “everyone who’s a fedex driver” Yes, "Everyone with a good tech job" has a significantly higher chance of keeping or holding tech RSUs, and have conviction that investing in tech is going to pay off. > but literally cannot work for everyone at the same time Yes, that is how the world works. Anything that makes you successful would not work for everyone at the same time. | | |
| ▲ | Marsymars 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Yes, that is how the world works. Anything that makes you successful would not work for everyone at the same time. To me this reads as a particularly misanthropic view of the world that only considers zero-sum (or less than zero sum) actions. Any investments in yourself that aren’t at the expense of others (education, exercise, diet, therapy, living space improvements, etc., etc.) or investments in family and community, benefit both you and others and would work for everybody; indeed, many such investments would work better the more people undertook them, rather than the fewer. | | |
| ▲ | fooker 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you see the difference between > more and > everyone ? If more people bought Nvidia stocks, the value would be higher. If everyone bought, something would give (and that is exactly what we are starting to see). |
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| ▲ | matwood 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In GA, after taxes your take home would be ~125k. So you think someone can live in a big city like ATL for 25k/year? What if they have a family? Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar? The 125k also doesn't have healthcare deducted yet. Some of the comments on this thread highlight just how disconnected many people were/are from everything outside of the FAANG bubble. | | |
| ▲ | fooker 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less. > Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar? Yes, suppose spouse contributes to household expenses, but assume separate savings and investments for this calculation. Do you see you'd easily get to 100k saved? The difference between having a large fraction of your savings in your bank account versus invested for the last 10 years can be quite a few millions, which is what most commenters here are failing to see. I'm sure the story was different between 2002 and 2012, but that was not what I talking about. | | |
| ▲ | matwood 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ok, so you need 2 people working in tech making near top end salaries for the area? You do see how this simple idea of saving 100k/year isn't so simple for anyone outside of FAANG? | | |
| ▲ | fooker 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | What's a realistic number in your opinion? I managed to save about 100k per year in Denver and Salt Lake City with mid tier tech and govt lab jobs. I'm suspicious of the claim that Atlanta is significantly different. From what I have seen, it's usually bad financial decisions. And for context, saving about double that during and post COVID by obtaining a remote job where the employer does not discriminate by location too much other than for maybe career growth. |
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