Comment by omoikane
3 years ago
> enough money to work for 4 years and retire anywhere that’s not the Bay Area
Four years is probably optimistic, unless you got lucky with stock growth.
I searched for "average cost of living map" and found a site[1] that says cost of living at Santa Clara County is $138K. I then did a search for "average salary at Google" and one website[2] says it's $124K, which suggests saving enough money in 4 years on salary alone would be difficult.
You might think that working for Google while living somewhere outside of Bay Area would be a good way to save, but because compensation is dependent on where you live, this doesn't always work out.
[1] https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/budget-map/
[2] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Google%2C_Inc....
That's cost of living for 4 people, mind you:
> The cost of living for a two-parent, two-child family
The typical case is more likely single or DINK.
Manage the money well, throw in a couple of bonuses and a favorable liquidity event around y4 and it's plausible enough to become a motivator or rationalization, I assume.
The people building this ad tech nonsense make well over $124k. I'd wager that number comes from nation/worldwide salaries, and the folks that the original comment described aren't data center janitors or whatever. These folks get paid very well to insure Google dominance – in salary and in stock.
Thank you for bringing data to the discussion. I’m not sure that average salary is the right metric, however. The people inventing new adtech projects are being paid 4-5x that number based on my experience. Although anecdotes can only be trusted so far I guess…
That average salary must include non-engineers.
The average salary for a mid-career engineer at google is north of $300k if you assume no stock movement.
https://levels.fyi