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This question's gauche, but: given the prevalence of $400k++ comp packages for ~30-year-olds in Big Tech, why aren't there lots more "gentle[wo]man scholars"? i.e. people quitting to do non-remunerative creative projects I can think of some, but shouldn't there be thousands?

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Harry Tormey

| tormey.eth

@htormey

Jan 28

The answer for many is likely they purchased a home in the Bay Area and now have a very expensive mortgage to pay.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Jan 28

Right! The thing is… that doesn't seem to make this all that impossible? We have a nice condo in SF; our mortgage is ~$3k/mo. But an annuity which would pay that mortgage would only cost ~$600k; one could readily set aside triple that in a few years as a senior eng…

Travis Northcutt

@tnorthcutt

Jan 28

Wouldn’t it take ~9 years if you set aside all of your take home pay? Assuming net 50% total tax burden, and triple 600k is 1.8M So even if you set aside half of your take home, it’s 18 years, right?

Replying to

and

More like seven or eight, I think, with a fairly aggressive lifestyle and 8% returns on the savings I describe here.

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

· Jan 28

Replying to @Duderichy and @steveloh722

This is a good point. Maybe I'm being too optimistic. Let's see… lots of great group houses in SF for $1,500/mo. Say we cut discretionary to $2,500/mo. That's $182k/yr leftover. You'd need ~$1.2M annuity to maintain that lifestyle; that'd take ~6 years.

5:36 PM · Jan 28, 2022Twitter Web App

Replying to

and

Fair enough! Sounds like you have positive anecdata of people actually doing this 👍️

Replying to

and

I can imagine a lot of people not wanting to be in their 30s living in shared housing in the Bay Area. The better play if you wanted to do something like this would be to get a remote job that pays 85%-90% of that salary working from a lower cost of living area.

Rob Napier

@cocoaphony

Jan 28

Can confirm. Considering stock and bonuses, I probably make half what I would in SV. But I have a nice house I could easily pay off tomorrow, acres of forest, a creek, and I work out of my daylight basement. 20 minutes to restaurants, theaters, and an international airport.