If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important I would fully agree with you.
But it is.
I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.
So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice.
Choosing to earn less and hope for a lottery ticket win like being an early employee in a unicorn startup is not a real plan. It's wishful thinking.
I hate this is the world we live in and my soul dies a bit every day I have to waste my talents writing useless software, but there's no real choice.
> I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.
I work from home for a mid-sized company for <=40 hours a week. I turn off my computer at 5pm and don't think about work until 9am the next morning. I work with people I like and we get stuff done. And in spite of all that, we're hardly impoverished—my current forecast is I can retire 10 years early at this rate. Tech salaries are good everywhere in the US, they're just not as insane as they are in Silicon Valley.
I could probably retire even earlier if I were willing to enter the rat race, but I'd rather be there for my kids' childhoods than resurface from the grind just in time to send them off to college.
In other words, it's absolutely possible to choose to avoid it, and it doesn't even require much sacrifice.
For context outside of tech. I have a super flexible job with amazing benefits. I haven't missed a single thing my kids have done, unless I chose to.
And I'll work until I'm 75.
I say this not out of being bitter, but for the context that many (probably most) people who do what they love to do don't get the massive paychecks even mid-tier tech jobs get. Context is everything.
To be honest it vastly depends on what you expect to need in retirement. Based on my current salary and estimated retirement payment (which some online calculator calculated at ~2/3rds my income) I'm still slightly below what I should be saving for that. But by then I will both need more money to take care of family (hopefully) and less money since I should have long paid off my house and car by then.
My salary is much higher than household average but far from unheard of in tech. There are definitely some scrappy college grads getting offers higher than it. and I have 3+ decades to increase it.
If you’re lucky. Modern medicine still has yet to solve most major disabilities for people in their sixties. It will be hard to work if you’re suffering any of the innumerable disabling diseases. What will you do then?
Too bad by that time, someone will have figured out how to look up everything you've ever posted online to dig up insurance-invalidating comments like this one.
Hard disagree. Have never worked for "terrible big company" (though some mediocre medium companies!) But outside of the super high cost of living areas like NYC and San Francisco, it's trivially simple (if not easy) to live on $50-60K USD each year (adjust this number for inflation as needed) while still enjoying yourself, having high performance technology, doing some travel, etc. You can't buy every damn thing you want or live like a millionaire, but you can live a great life.
How many software / engineering jobs in the U.S., excluding terrible big tech companies, pay more than $60k USD per year?
Almost all of them. In fact, it's not hard to make well over $100k. And live on half that. So you don't have to work forever just because you're not making $500k USD each year at some huge terrible tech company.
$60-100k salary is not enough to support a family and retire; it's probably not enough for a single person to make meaningful progress towards retirement because at that level of pay home ownership is constantly out of reach and inflation outpaces wage growth. It's sacrificing your life so someone else can get rich.
In today's environment, home prices really seem to be getting nuts.
As I said, anyone in software is likely making over $100K. A $500K house with 20% down would have a P&I payment of $2,715 / month (at 7.2%, plus taxes/insurance.) That's less than $33K / year. (I bought my first house for $155K making $55K / year, and my second house for $390K making $100K.) If you're making over $100K, and spending under a third of it on housing, you should be able to afford to live, unless you're careless with your money.
I don't think I'm making any sacrifices in my life, because I don't think of the things you can overspend on as sacrifices. As I said, I eat well (at home and at restaurants), I travel, I have great technology / toys. And at 44 I have a 7 figure net worth. Because I'm still spending under $65K USD / year, I could likely live off investments in a few more years, though being in software, it's easy to continue contracting on my own terms and having extra money.
$100k for a down payment - how many years of saving does that take and what happens to that $500k price tag during those years of saving? One hardship like a medical issue, a setback in employment, or a child you weren't ready for, then what? And I'm not sure you could find a one bedroom, one bathroom for $500k in a city with tech jobs.
In places where houses are $500K, rent is probably $2000 / month. (More like $1200 - 5000 / month, but depending on the size, location, amenities, luxuriousness of fixtures, etc.) If you make barely $100K, and are spending $24K on rent, let's say you spend half of the rest on living. That leaves you with $38K savings per year. So it takes you 32 months to save up $100K for a down payment.
The secret is don't spend all of the money you make. Well it's not a secret, but it's also not "normal." It's culturally normal to spend all of your money, and then wonder why you can't build up savings. But if you're a software engineer with an income of 6 figures, you really should be able to figure out how to live a good life without spending every last dollar.
You forgot taxes. $38k - $27k in taxes = $11k savings. So 9 years to save up, by which time housing inflation will have taken the price to ~$700k. You are then $40k short for the down payment.
There are many people in software that are making under $100k
Anyone working in in a government position, or for a state university, or for a nonprofit is probably not earning $100k except maybe in high COL areas or those with quite senior positions.
Don't you think it's interesting that taxes dramatically skew the example?
Think about people earning $50k - $100k. 37 million households in the US. Another 34 million households earn less. 128 million households in America total.[1]
12, give or take 2, years into professional life, you sign a 30-year note and cash out all of your savings. Wages and cost of living won't be constant, but that's basically the optimistic case. Working 42 years to retire by owning one basic shelter.
To be sure if we want an example with someone making $80k after tax, we should really not be looking at houses above $400k. Yes, home prices are nuts, as I observed, but no one should be spending 5x gross income and 6.25x net income on housing.
In my own life, I spent about 2.5x gross income for both of my home purchases. And they were arguably more home than I needed. When I bought my first house, I was single, and I rented out the two other bedrooms. My spouse and I bought a house together, but ultimately could not have children, so the house is too big. (We also live on an acre and have a lot to maintain.) Now I know these Philly suburbs are nothing compared to California real estate, but it's still a medium to high cost of living area compared to the rest of the country, where we're minutes away from any kind of shopping or entertainment we'd want, and 45 minutes from the large international airport.
For sure the rising housing costs make it even harder for households making less than the median. I never argued otherwise. My point was about that which started this thread, that there is "no option" but to work for a big, awful tech company. I disagree, and elevated housing costs don't change that.
It took me about five years to save my down payment. I lived very frugally, don't have a wife, don't have a kid, I paid less than $20k on note for each of my cars, and do not have college debt. I'd say it's fairly difficult if you start moving any of the knobs I minimized or set to zero above. Even then, after my down payment money was tight for the first year because it was everything I had.
I got a mortgage similar to what OP mentioned but I have a veterans home loan. Most people I know don't have one of those, so their mortgage that was gotten at the same time as mine is closer to $4k/m.
>I eat well (at home and at restaurants), I travel, I have great technology / toys. And at 44 I have a 7 figure net worth.
You clearly don't have kids. and/or a spouse that depends on your income. The former drains your money very quickly, especially if you need services like daycare (if your spouse isn't a full time parent... so we're back to one income to support a family of 3+) or perhaps invest in private school. I wouldn't call either of those "overspending" depending on the area. And nowadays you may need to invest in a 529 for that kid's college...
It's already hard raising a kid badly. Raising one well is expensive.
>A $500K house with 20% down
how are you saving 100k on a 100k salary, on top of other savings for rainy days? do you just save for 5-10 years by throwing 20% into a savings account, on top of rent/utilities and other stuff?
Even then, the hard part is getting approved for the sale. The market right now is just absurd. Even if you can comfortably pay mortgage you may be outbid by some family or other person who simply buys the house in cash. You really can't keep up.
Home rates are closer to 8%. The redfin calculator puts a $490k home near me at just under $3200/mo with 20% down.
So over $36k a year. I'm in Washington, so no income tax. Let's say $100k income, single person. No pre tax deductions and you'll be bringing home $6200/mo. So over 50% of your take home goes to mortgage alone.
In your example, your home prices were roughly 3x-4x your annual income. Compared to your example of prices being 5x.
>Why on earth would a single person buy a 490k house?
I'm in California, so that's pretty much the bare minimum. Maybe if I go way out to the high desert area (we're talking 70+ miles from downtown LA), I see more 300-400k houses for 2 bed/bath. In my area (which is still pretty far from Downtown) it's 600k minimum.
70 miles from the downtown of a major city is still generally considered part of that city’s metropolitan area and prices reflect that. Still though getting a 1br condo in LA for 150-300k is more reflective of what it actually costs to get an affordable place as a single person in that area. Yes you have condo fees, but maintain a house comes with serious costs as well.
That’s the thing, if it’s a trivial expense then who cares, but when there’s more affordable options it’s hard to imagine why stretching yourself buying a house at that price would be a good idea.
255k for a 1,952 square foot place in Harrisonburg, VA 22802 is far more representative of most of the US’s housing prices. It’s a modest 50k population university town 130 miles from DC so not in the middle of nowhere but still cheap. https://www.redfin.com/VA/Harrisonburg/1036-Meadowlark-Dr-22... Plenty of places listed for less than that or far more, but in general there’s still a lot of options under 300k.
>getting a 1br condo in LA for 150-300k is more reflective of what it actually costs to get an affordable place as a single person in that area.
A house is a multi decade investment. Why would I buy a single shack if I want to perhaps have a family one day? Especially in this market? I don't want to own a house for the sake of ownership.
And yes, like anything else in life, you have super cheap deals and super expensive. I was using a very rough median pricing. Especially since the lowest cost houses likely mean you need to do the most work on it. I'm not a carpenter nor a house flipper, so that's not of interest to me (and I imagine many other people in tech).
Median pricing downtown is 1m for 2 Bed/bath. I feel the cost going down to 40-50% for going beyond what is considered LA county (which is huge, but not a 70 mile radius) seems to make sense. I suppose you can keep looking northeast towards Death Valley and find something at 200-300k, but you're legitimately getting towards food desert[1] area at that point. The high desert area is already pretty rural as is, unless you are a true hermit (or a stargazer) I can't imagine going further out and making it a 20+ mile drive to any and everything.
That phrase only refers to the distance from you to a grocery store. So, no you don’t need to enter food desert territory when you buy a house in one of the many smaller CA cities/towns.
Anyway, buying a house can be an investment but living in a larger one than you need is wasting a productive asset. If you have a 4 bedroom house you can rent out for 4k/month then living in it is costing you 4k/month the same way renting a place for 4k would be. There’s nothing inherently wrong with buying an investment house, but you shouldn’t be out anywhere close to the full monthly cost.
>you don’t need to enter food desert territory when you buy a house in one of the many smaller CA cities/towns.
You don't, but I'm talking about a very specific area of a very specific state (one larger than some countries) in a very specific location. One where I was in fact raised. You are free to instead go directly North to Bakersfield where prices rise slightly, or west to Thousand Oaks where prices go back to LA prices. I simply don't recommend East/NE of the high desert unless you are a huge fan of tumbleweeds and dust storms.
>buying a house can be an investment but living in a larger one than you need is wasting a productive asset
I don't really consider an extra room a waste. Even if I end up alone I can use that room as a gym or an office or just as storage (storage costs are also way out of whack these days. Owning an extra room is legitimately cheaper).
There's also the fact that half the rooms isn't equal to half the cost. It's more cost effective to add an extra room if you anticipate a family.
By waste I simply mean it’s consumptive. It’s obvious when you’re spending well above the norm on rent, but it doesn’t slap you in the face in the same way when buying a larger house.
If you bought in the past, you made it. That doesn't help the current generation.
Hundred year-old teardowns are two million in our neighborhood. 60+ y-o condos are $800k. Redfin est payment/mo: $5,974. Just the property tax and HOA fee is over $1,000 a month.
Middle class has been and continues to being squished and crushed, things are getting worse and worse if you haven’t noticed. And it’s not just in the US, but also other western economies such as Germany, France, UK, etc.
« Retire early » is the main part you’re missing from their argument, that implies saving large portions of disposable income. I always feel sad when people have high paying jobs they hate just so that « retire early » though, in a field like software engineering you can find a happy medium I feel like.
The happy medium for me would be working less than 20 hours per week. It's not about the work but about how much time it consumes. And part time software engineering jobs don't seem to exist... I would happily live on half my income for half my hours. But if retiring early is more realistic than that (and it seems to be), I'll take it.
It's possible much later in career when you establish yourself in a certain domain. You become valuable enough that you working half the time (or even just consulting) is more valuable than 2 other employees.
But people who can do that are also probably in positions to retire early already. Either with PhD's and 10+ years working on some now-extremely-valuable tech (think AI if you worked on it in the 2010's, or data science in the 00's) or some otherwise reputable name in their industry.
I live in Toronto. The lowest I've seen for a job listing at a tech-oriented small company was 90k on the low end(the job listing was 90k-120k), and this was for someone with 2 years experience. I've never seen a tech or tech-adjacent company offer 60k for even new grads. Most small companies I've seen offer for someone with 5+ years of solid experience a minimum of 120k USD. These are for remote jobs.
Well, not being able to retire at 60-100k is such an US problem... It is enough to easily retirely at whatever the legal retirement age is, earlier if I include all tue benefits my boring big corp job and collectively bargained salary provide.
As I've never raised my standard of living to spending over $100K / year, I don't exactly know what I'm missing.
I think more to your point, yes there is a choice - to make $500K at a "big bad tech company" and then spend like there's no tomorrow on things that you feel are worth spending all that money on, hoping that it makes up for the 40 hours you spend working (and maybe hating?) Or you enjoy your 40 hour job, make less, spend less. But spending money doesn't have a direct and equal correlation with life satisfaction. I spend about $65K / year (for two people, no kids), and I feel like I have an amazing life, and spending a bunch more money would, at best, have small incremental returns on life satisfaction.
I have also never raised my spending to anything close to that. Nor I have the choice of making $500k (I wish).
When I mention standard of living I don't mean spending like crazy. I mean not having to constantly worry that if you lose your job you can't make your mortgage in a few months.
I save around 50% of my salary and I'd save even more if I didn't have a kid and wasn't the sole provider in my home right now. Not because I wouldn't love to be living like a king, but because for me that's the only option I have to afford a life long term.
What if I die? What if I get hurt and can't work anymore? What if me or my wife gets sick and we can't treat it with the limited free healthcare we have access to?
Even barring that. I absolutely hate that I have to give away the prime hours of my day to ensure me and my family can simply survive. I don't want to do that forever. I'd much rather use all I know to build software that actually makes a difference. Read more, experience life more. Travel at least once in my life. Enjoy life while I'm not declining physically and mentally.
I could definitely earn less and live a less stressful life in a better company if I wanted to. But that's the kind of decision that will most likely come back to haunt me and my family in the long term.
Maybe I get very lucky and none of those things happen, and all the time I suffered through those soulless jobs was not needed. But in my view that's a risk I'm willing to take.
To your point, if you are talking about simply getting all that extra money and spend it all without a care, I agree. That's a choice but one I don't have the same sympathy for.
Living below your means is separated from your standard of living.
In a better world everyone should be able to live well without having to sacrifice as much.
Somehow we've convinced ourselves that it's always the individual's fault when they have to live with a worse standard of living to maybe retire one day.
I agree with you regarding the means of living but that's not what I said.
Accepting that you will have to work until you die is lowering your standard of living.
So is accepting that any emergency can bankrupt you or that you will never be able to travel, and so on.
For some reason people are conflating standards of living with irresponsible spending.
> I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.
I find it funny that the internet exaggerations have convinced non-US people that:
1. Doing a couple LeetCode problems is the only thing interviewers look for
2. Everyone here automatically gets a high paying FAANG-like job if they can memorize enough LeetCode problems
3. All of these jobs just write useless software all day and never really do anything productive
and
4. LeetCode problems are impossibly difficult and it’s a tragedy that anyone would be asked to code during a coding interview.
I struggle to read these threads any more because everything seems so stretched out of proportion from the real world. If your view of what US development or interviewing culture is like comes from HN threads, you’d probably be pleasantly surprised by what it’s actually like here most of the time. The weird catastrophizing that happens on HN and Reddit is hyperbole.
I haven't had a job interview without leetcode bullshit in about 15 years. And years before that.
Basically since Joel's posts in the early 2000s. He promoted a reasonable idea-that programmers should know how to program. Then B and C players rushed to make that happen!
Similar to how agile became the complete opposite of what it meant originally.
I was an interviewer at [FAANG]. I did 300+ interviews. At the beginning I asked tough questions since I didn't know better, but I quickly realized I was not getting the signal I wanted. So I changed and just asked simple questions that included writing some code. There was no gotcha, no need to know sophisticated data structures. Leetcode practice would not have helped much.
You may be focusing on the leetcode label, and not the rest of the fail-fast zingers that are ubiquitous. Only a subset are actual leetcode.
The first mistake and you're done, due to the high number of applicants.
If you've got networking to let you bypass the BS, that's great. But most interviews (by number) are "cold" interviews that conduct these almost exclusively. Due to lack of trust and extreme fear of failure.
The only offer I've received in years was because, while they did this type of test as well, they didn't take the results too seriously. One out of maybe a hundred attempts that year.
> I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.
> So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice.
Literally hundreds of millions of Americans retire on much less than than BigCo compensation.
> Are they retiring with the same standard of living they had before?
This is a strong indicator that choice is a factor, despite your protests to the contrary. But what exactly do you mean by "standard of living"? For example, when you're employed, you have to live where the jobs are, no matter how expensive, unless you can get remote work. Whereas when you're retired you can live anywhere, perhaps a place that is both less expensive and warmer.
Retired people seem less obsessed with collecting more material goods (which are often "labor saving" devices, of little relevance to those who aren't laboring) and focused more on enjoying life, traveling, spending time with family, etc. Is that a "worse" standard of living? And the children are presumably living on their own, so there's less need for bigger homes. (Who wants to spend a bunch of time, effort, and money maintaining a big house when you're older and also traveling quite a bit?)
> Can they sustain a medical emergency?
Have you heard of Medicare?
> But I'm pretty sure most can't.
Based on what? Do you have economic statistics to back up your belief?
10x? Financial independence is normally at least 20x, more like 30x.
> How is your nationality relevant to reading stats? If you don't want to, then just say that.
Sorry maybe I wasn't clear, but that's exactly what I meant. I won't dig into stats for the US because it's of no interest to me. That's why I mentioned I'm not from the US.
I know that for my country that's absolutely not the case and I'm pretty sure it's the same for most of the world.
> 10x? Financial independence is normally at least 20x, more like 30x.
You appear to be overlooking Social Security, which is a crucial source of income that all US workers pay into their entire careers. It's not just savings.
> I won't dig into stats for the US because it's of no interest to me.
Yet it's interesting enough to you to make baseless empirical claims about the US.
> I know that for my country that's absolutely not the case and I'm pretty sure it's the same for most of the world.
Since you're so adamant I had a quick search and it turns out I'm right.
>43.09% of American adults had no retirement savings
>23.15% of American adults had no (or negative) retirement savings even including the extended assets
> Since you're so adamant I had a quick search and it turns out I'm right.
No, you changed the subject. You said:
> You're telling me most retired Americans have more than hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings?
To which the answer is no, but you don't need a million dollars to retire.
Whereas your link is not about retired Americans, it's about UN-retired Americans: "Statistics are for households headed by adults aged 32-61 at the time of the survey".
I'm done with this conversation. Your games and lack of good faith interest are becoming very tedious to me.
Read the article. It's about people that will retire. Unless you're trying to be facetious and say they'll never retire, which I guess will be true for many.
> Read the article. It's about people that will retire.
Yes, and the point that everyone is trying to explain to you, which you refuse to acknowledge, is that in general, software developers in the US are doing fine. They don't need to "grind all the leetcode" and work for a BigCo. It's a choice not a financial mandate. Software developers, even outside of BigCos, are in the upper income brackets in the US.
I'm not saying that everyone in the US is doing fine as far as retirement is concerned, but the idea that software developers have to work for BigCos is absurd. I've never worked for a BigCo, and I'm doing fine.
Well now you're moving the goalpost. Your original comment mentioned hundreds of millions of Americans so it can't be only about software developers. That's why the focus changed to everyone.
Anyways, yes you have the choice of not working on big corps. My point is that it's not a real choice unless you want to accept all of the consequences of leaving all that money on the table. You have to accept the risk that you might be a few emergencies away from bankruptcy.
> yes you have the choice of not working on big corps.
Finally admitting the truth.
> You have to accept the risk that you might be a few emergencies away from bankruptcy.
Working for a BigCo doesn't magically protect you from emergencies. Accumulating $millions might protect you, but you don't just walk in the door of a BigCo and pick up your treasure chest. You have to work there for many years. In the meantime, you're subject to the same risks as everyone else. For example, lot of BigCos have been doing layoffs recently, which would put a big dent in the "for many years" plan. Also, if you suffer some kind of disability that prevents you from continuing to work, then you're screwed regardless.
Anyway, what makes you think you would be BigCo material? Not everyone is. The number of jobs is limited, and the competition is fierce. You might be able to get in the door by grinding leetcode, but once you're in the door you still need to make management happy in order to keep your job and win pay raises. The grind doesn't end.
God the amount of unnecessary hostility coming from you is absurd. From my original comment:
> So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice.
From the very beginning I said it's not really a choice, but I always acknowledged it. Whatever, your pedantry wins.
> Anyway, what makes you think you would be BigCo material?
I can't really know since I'm automatically excluded from it simply because of I don't live there (and I would never work with a visa, having a corporation ruling over my life). But it's very possible I wouldn't make the cut, or if I did I'd likely be another one writing blog posts like this one - assuming reality is how they portray it.
Technically I know I can hold my own, but that's not really what work is all about in my experience (barring few exceptions). Connections, ivy leagues, kissing ass, leetcode and other aspects that shouldn't matter are valued more than actually getting shit done.
But I'd sure as hell try because even though it's not a guarantee of protection, it's as close as we can get to it in a capitalist society. Money is, unfortunately, crucial.
>You appear to be overlooking Social Security, which is a crucial source of income that all US workers pay into their entire careers. It's not just savings.
I certainly am. I was taught as early as grade school (mid 00's) that Social Security would run out before I retire. I take that strongly to heart.
>Says you, but you apparently aspire to live and work here, so it's different enough.
Never said that. It's just where tech salaries are bigger.
>Have you checked North Korea?
What does this have to do with anything? Unless you're writing from North Korea, this is childish.
Apparently I hit a nerve and that was not my intention. My point was never specifically about the US but you keep insisting on it and have a bone to grind. That doesn't add to the conversation though.
> My point was never specifically about the US but you keep insisting on it and have a bone to grind.
You said: "I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37809983
> For example, when you're employed, you have to live where the jobs are.... Whereas when you're retired you can live... [in] a place that is both less expensive and warmer.
I think that it may be just the opposite. From what I've observed, access to good public transportation is a major contributor to quality of life in old age. In the US, that requires someone to live in a much higher cost of living location.
At least you have talents. Imagine being in your 30s with a family to support and no real career future - bad reviews, bad organizations structure, shitty technology/systems, and no skills to move elsewhere.
> If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important...
Money being important is not part of the world, it's part of you. You even say so a few lines later:
> ... I don't want to work forever.
So yes, you indeed have no choice but to treat money as important because... you've chosen to treat money as important.
I'm offering this in the hopes that you can stand back and look at your need from a distance. What are other ways to satisfy this need without you writing useless software _and_ without money being the main constraint? Get creative!
Money is kind of important, though, at least to those of us who don't want to depend on a soup kitchen.
Look, money isn't everything. This isn't a video game, where the highest score wins, and you chase points just for points. But money lets you buy things, and some of those things are important - food for yourself and those who depend on you, shelter, healthcare. (But there's a bunch of stuff that money can buy that isn't important, and learning to let go of those things is really healthy.)
So: Money is important, because some of the stuff it can buy is important. That's not going to change any time soon.
>So yes, you indeed have no choice but to treat money as important because... you've chosen to treat money as important.
yes, I have chosen to treat the ability to have a roof over my head as important. Rent in my area is 2000+ minimum so I at the very least am recommended to make 60k+ in salary to support that.
add on basic utilities (water, electricity, inernet), food above rice and beans, and maybe a little bit of premium entertainment and we're talking more around 70k+ a year. And this is all for supporting myself. If I ever want kids I either require a working spouse or to make even more money to support a full time parent. So yes, I'm talking more around 130k+ minimum. Not unreasonable in tech, but it sure does start to exceed the salary of many other industries
>What are other ways to satisfy this need without you writing useless software _and_ without money being the main constraint? Get creative!
With my current skillset? I suppose I embrace hustle culture and try to make a side income with my talents. try to make some small apps or games that give some continual income. Could also find an angle as a content creator. Both basically eat into my time since this is in tandem with full time work, so it doesn't really fix the problem.
Despite all the obsession with FAANG, I find it harder getting responses from small studios writing not-useless software. They want very experienced personell both for branding (how many new startups have you seen with pitches of "with talent from Apple, Blizzard, Deloitte, etc.") and the fact that they need someone who can architect a project from the ground up.
As much as people pretend, it is in fact not easy to just uproot your family and move across the country to work at a challenging startup. So there are good engineers that get stuck in BigCorp Jobs that do suck your soul, just like these online rants depict.
Even stepping back and forgetting the ranting. All big human organizations, eventually become bureaucratic, and locked into hierarchies, and have a difficult time making decisions. And all of these things make IT and writing software very difficult.
And, because of individual constraints on geography, family, etc.. good engineers do get stuck in these big organizations, and tend to suffer.
Of course it is. Taking leetcode job because you don't want to work forever is buying a lottery ticket. Maybe it's your ticket to financial independence, but maybe not.
The alternative, of taking a more normal job that affords you a higher day-to-day happiness level but doesn't pay as much is a legitimate other option. Plus, doing that doesn't exclude being able to achieve financial independence.
There's no right or wrong choice here. It all depends on your personal attitudes, goals, and tolerances. But there is a choice.
But it is.
I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever.
So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice.
Choosing to earn less and hope for a lottery ticket win like being an early employee in a unicorn startup is not a real plan. It's wishful thinking.
I hate this is the world we live in and my soul dies a bit every day I have to waste my talents writing useless software, but there's no real choice.