My initial offer was $400k total comp (E5), so I didn’t really consider FIRE as an option in the near term considering my spouse is a full-time parent and this area is HCOL.

I’m nowhere close to $5m, and I’m hoping to leave Meta in the next few months. But I’d love to be able to “retire” and work exclusively for companies that match my morals.

I figured the amount I’m donating doesn’t make a huge difference to my FIRE date

That 200k is a reasonable amount to start withdrawing from a 5M portfolio (exactly the 4% rule from the Trinity study [1]), but you’ll want to adjust it for inflation every year. My favorite tool for planning these strategies is TPAW Planner [2], which visualizes the distribution of withdrawals under various market outcomes. It’ll also suggest a portfolio of stocks and bonds that’ll be safer than just T-bills, which have a high risk of not beating inflation.

1: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates

2: https://tpawplanner.com/

If you ever actually see the work or something charities on the ground and the people they help you might change your mind very quickly. They certainly do more good than another million in some index fund.

Fly-by snark is an interesting choice.

What were you hoping to achieve with this comment other than making a person who is being vulnerable to anonymous internet denizens feel worse?

I guess you were among the ones applauding when Elon put USAID "into the woodchipper"?

I think if something happens in the universe, It probably has its function, otherwise it wouldn't exist.

If there was no reason for it to exist, it wouldn't. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's a question of accepting the construct of existence as what is not what I hope it could be under different circumstances.

There's probably an evolutionary reason why we need people who don't get paralyzed by second and third order effects.

It's the material reality of what people live through. When one is entirely alienated from the product of their own labour, what do they care for the mission and culture of a company who will fire me at an irrational whim? Better to have a vibrant life outside of work to keep oneself sane.

[dead]

BTW, I appreciate people's candor, and don't want to spoil it, but I feel obligated to point out, to people criticizing big-tech employers, that HN pseudonymous/anonymous identities aren't very secure...

You might have a good amount of faith in dang (as do I), to not, say, let the investment firm sell HN account identity info to data brokers.

And HN is almost unique among popular sites, in not running any apparent third-party trackers at all.

But HN occasionally turns on Google reCaptcha, which I suspect could unmask most pseudonymous/anonymous identities here. Especially since it wasn't expected.

Unmasked, along with their entire past and future comment history, of which Google and other tech companies might have firehose feeds.

(I've emailed hn@ my concerns about people not expecting big-tech trackers on HN, but I suspect that HN is occasionally in a difficult position, due to attacks.)

Saying "fuck you" after having fuck you money is just fun. I don't see any bravery to it.

I mean, from the post it sounds like they already have a bank account large enough to say what they want without any repercussions having any side effects, such as unemployment.

Also, not all future employers are totally worried about that, especially when those that were doing the speaking have a very wanted set of skills. Quite often the future employer is like "Oh yea, everyone knows Meta/FB is balls, glad you pointed it out", especially in the case they are much smaller than the mega company.

> Plus there’s the usual angle of people not wanting to hire someone that’s willing to publicly trash their current employer. Will you be as vocal next job?

Someone at Meta saying it sucks publicly and that they no longer want to be there would be a positive hiring signal for many people.

I don't understand the mindset of being surprised that people are honest about their own opinions about their work. I don't have any uniquely bad concerns about my employer so I don't think I've ever written anything like the GP, but I have spoken honestly about my past experiences. If we can't be honest about how we think and feel about something we spend the majority of our time and energy doing, aren't we just being oppressed?

I work in integrity (keeping bad stuff off the platform). My job is to reduce the harm Meta causes. So I'm at peace with myself. I don't think I could work in any other area of Meta though.

Actions speak. Of course they do.

If you look at HN salary threads and self-reported salary websites, then everyone in tech makes $700K, drives a Maserati and owns a vacation home in Tahoe.

Given it's like 30 years of my salary I'd probably be willing to be miserable for a number of years.

Totally understandable, and probably another reason why morale is so low, as employees watch the stock price and their personal fortunes fall.

I guess it depends - if the miserable conditions and work I was doing only affected me, maybe a couple of years. The problem here is that Meta is a company that actively does harm to the world. They've contributed to genocide in Myanmar, harmed children, and overall have been a net negative on society. So my answer to your question, if we're strictly talking about Meta, is none. I would never work for a company like Meta because I value other humans more than money.