I have been working for over 17 years, and have had decent career / financial growth. I have saved about 250k and have about the same amount left to pay off in my mortgage. Have done a good job at work and been the top engineer of my team wherever I worked. I feel I am no longer motivated to work the same way and looking for something exciting. I am not sure another job in a FAANG company is going to make a substantial difference in my pay/quality of work. I get paid ~220k. Is it worth moving to another company so that I can pay off my mortgage sooner and be free to go after something exciting? Heard companies like Netflix and FB pay lot more and have exciting work. Is it true that Netflix/FB engineers get paid 450k? Glassdoor couldn’t help much.
You get paid 220k and saved only 250k in 17 years? How long have you been actually saving or earning that well? And yes L5 at G or L6 at fb can make half million a year.
It's the other way around, E5 at FB and L6 at Google. Google equity grants tend to be lower.
He said he also has about that much remaining on a mortgage, meaning he could have anywhere from $0 to $1M in home equity depending on what sort of house they have. Still low for someone who's been in tech 17 years, of course.
How much money in savings... Can be considered rich
Are you a SWE?
Yes
I'm so glad that we aren't getting mega rich working in the valley. The housing prices are ridiculous. Within maybe a year all the IPO dreams of home sellers and real estate agents will be shattered and I'll be able to finally afford a house.
no, if by "rich" you mean upper class
I've been working about 24 years. Always in tech. Always in the bay area. Never for FAANG. I don't feel like I ever made any real money in tech. I made paper millions, but it never panned out. Any net worth I have today is all from real estate appreciation and speculation.
The answer is no. You will never get rich working for someone else. This is of course excluding outliers such as people who initially founded a company. Get rich by these methods: 1. Entrepreneurship (doesn’t have to be tech) father does import/export and clears $4 million annually. His “TC” was already $1m at 29. Anecdotal evidence but many get rich in business. 2. Sales, mainly high ticket items like expensive software or things like MRI machines, Ships/Yachts, Planes, etc. commission let’s you clear $1m easily. 3. Investment banking (not recommended): yes tech tc is decent but banking salaries soar past $1m for mid level management (they call it Vice President in banking) and easily $5m-$50m+ for Managing Director). I put this career last because it’s not really an efficient way you sell your soul by putting in insane hours for the paycheck.
$1m is not "easy" in sales, nor "easily" $5m-50m+ for MDs in banking
tsukino: I completely agree with you and I didn’t mean to say the work is easy but the potential to esrn that amount of you’re good is there. A good SDE can get into FAANG. Someone with similar skill level can clear $1m in tc in sales. If not that much, approaching that amount.
No, never. The definition of rich (at least to me) is when your passive income exceeds your earned income. You can work to earn money to create passive income but working forever alone will never make you rich.
Of course the answer is yes but you obviously haven't been saving nearly enough. If you are in the Bay Area 220k isn't much and a FAANG salary would be much larger. If you save from 28 to 62 and just max out your 401k and get "ok" matching (another 5-6k/yr), with an annual return of ~8%, you should have over 4M by 62, when you retire. Do you consider 4M rich? I'm just including 401k matching, I'm not including any other savings/investments or RSUs, etc...
Yes, but only if you get hired as E6+ and can keep up that level of productivity, which isn’t exactly a walk in the park. As an even bigger outlier, I personally know someone that just got a ~1.5M refresher RSU grant a few months ago.
1.5M refresher for what level?
What does it take to keep up with productivity? Is it really that bad? Would appreciate some insights from someone who is living it.