qzw 15 hours ago

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. ā€” Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Good old Chucky D. was a financial guru before it was cool.

cbhl 16 hours ago

> how much could you conservatively make in a replacement job? If you set your current spending based on that level of income

I didn't love the numbers in the article -- they assume $500k total comp, but the levels.fyi heatmap from a few days ago shows SFBA median total comp is $263k, with 64% being base so $169k. Federal taxes are 64k, state taxes are 21k. That leaves you with maybe ~$80k in liquid salary.

A market-rate studio apartment is $2700-$3000/mo which is about $36k in annual expense. That's about half of your income. Add food and transportation and there's not much left to save for retirement or emergency fund.

If for some reason you are in the lurch and have to start driving ubers or working at starbucks, you're not going to be able to afford the same kind of apartment that you need to do hybrid work and join meetings at a FAANG job.

  • jerlam 13 hours ago

    Wouldn't your non-base salary (nearly $100k) be your savings/emergency fund?

matt3210 17 hours ago

RSUs and other vesting should be (as in, it would be nice if they did) prorated in the event of a layoff (assuming layoff here means no-fault separation).

  • brailsafe 13 hours ago

    That would be the only situation in which I'd even consider them part of compensation. If I can't use it to pay my rent now, it might as well not exist, given the likelihood I'd never be able to realize them anyway.

  • bigfatkitten 17 hours ago

    Sometimes it is if the company feels generous, though even in countries with strong employment law these benefits have no statutory protection.

    One of my previous employers had a rule where they would vest all of my RSU if I were to die while employed there.

    • sam2426679 4 hours ago

      I suspect most FAANGS have some kind of RSU vesting acceleration due to death. Amazon accelerates two years of RSUs upon death.

    • clipsy 16 hours ago

      > One of my previous employers had a rule where they would vest all of my RSU if I were to die while employed there.

      Idle curiosity: Was that in lieu of or in addition to life insurance? (Most of my employers have had free life insurance with a payout of a multiple of base salary.)

      • bigfatkitten 16 hours ago

        That's in addition. Just a goodwill thing that they did.

ilrwbwrkhv 11 hours ago

Yes, this is quite true and one of the reasons I left trying to find a job and start my own business. With the business you actually have control over your life. And now I crossed more than I could have ever gotten as a salary by doing my own thing.

agrtar 17 hours ago

We need more weapons for Israel and Ukraine, perhaps a good old fashioned war with Iran so that energy costs go up even further and we have nice stagflations like in the oil crisis in the 1970s.

Let the world burn so that Lindsay Graham and his ilk cash in while FAANG has major layoffs.

  • Jerrrrrrry 7 hours ago

    Ukraine is an investment, Israel is our military/diplomatic/stregetic "All lie" in the Middle East.

    And a proxy war between Isreal and Yemen with the US and "everyone else" tagging in and out depending on civil/political trife seems likely, until the area is glassed by India and Pakistan.

    • riehwvfbk 5 hours ago

      May someone "invest" by taking a short position on your life, the same way you are advocating for fighting until the last Ukrainian.