It amazes me that high paid SV techies won’t pay more to fly in premium or business

Not everyone on hackernews is paid SV salaries?

That plus flights from Australia are expensive enough in economy, business class is easily 4-10x that cost.

When I fly transatlantic I don't mind paying to get an exit row or bulkhead seat, but even just premium economy is a much more significant increase in cost over economy, at least flying from Canada.

I remember being a high paid techie getting 19 hours of paid work done between Melbourne and New York, on a laptop in economy (and a long layover in LAX due to a storm). It was fricking glorious, most productive day of my life.

Not everyone on here is necessarily from SV?

Business class flights from Sydney to San Francisco cost A$6k, 6-10x as much as economy. Flights from Sydney to Europe are more like 3-4x (A$7k vs A$2k) but still ludicrously expensive. Good luck convincing your company to expense that for work trips, and most of us don't have SV salaries. Honestly, I still manage to get some work done on long flights, the more annoying thing is flights which don't have power outlets or WiFi.

If you are a point hacker you could spend the points on upgrades (which tend to give you better rates than buying base tickets) but then you're paying for a minor comfort improvement that you wouldn't pay for normally -- which is a textbook example of induced consumption and is playing into exactly how airlines want you to use points.

It’s incredibly expensive on international flights, right? A 12 hour flight sounds like something that would cost thousands for business class.