The stark transition from employment to unemployment can be very painful in our industry, because it is a boom-bust industry, and it's not uncommon to go from making half a million dollars a year to having the most expensive cities in the world vacuuming money out of your bank account as fast as economically possible. When the money is coming in you feel like a rockstar-ninja-hacker genius. When the money dries up you start to wonder why you didn't just go into accounting.
It's surprising this is not more widely recognized. The majority of corporations need help configuring existing software, not developing and marketing novel software. Those new opportunities come and go. If you want stability, get a job in IT.
Recency bias, amplified by the age bias in tech. There are a whole bunch of people in this industry who just weren't around before the post-2008-great-financial-crisis-zero-interest-rate-money-firehouse financed an unusually long bull market and sent pay packages through the stratosphere.
I've been trying to reconcile a few observations that appear contradictory:
1. Inflation was significant. 150-250k is just the cost of a white collar with experience.
2. The skills required to be a top software engineer have increased. The field is much more competitive and has some extremely productive people at the top.
3. A significant number of my peers in software seem to think they can earn very high salaries forever, while working mostly remote, never touching weekends, never studying. That cannot continue forever.
4. Most engineers do not have any risk tolerance, and are not navigating the "7 years of plenty" for the "7 years of famine".
So what happens? Maybe inflation lowers everyone's standard of living, but they keep jobs, and nothing dramatic happens. Maybe there are big layoffs and rude awakening? Maybe it's the bottom 50% of quality that gets hit hard, and everyone else is fine?
Half a million dollars a year is a lot of money even in the expensive cities.
If you make that much and don't save a significant part of it, you're rather lacking in foresight. Go talk to the people earning five times less who live in the same city!
> Half a million dollars a year is a lot of money even in the expensive cities.
Absolutely. But depending on your perspective it may seem like an unfathomable amount of money where you start to drive lambos and have a private chef. It's not.
> If you make that much and don't save a significant part of it, you're rather lacking in foresight.
Agreed. I expect them to max their tax advantaged accounts, have significant equity in their house > 1.2 M house. Maybe have a rental property.
> Go talk to the people earning five times less who live in the same city
100k in SF or Manhattan? Sure that exists. But in some ways nothing lower than that exists. Anything lower is likely:
- an immigrant living a similar life style as their home country, which would not be accepted by the native population. (Many tenants in one apartment, possibly not legal housing, etc).
- workers who commute from a neighboring city.
- Students who are poor on paper, but have a financial safety net through parents.
I think this is very much US centric. The upside is much higher salaries. Clearly people need to plan for when it ends though. The industry is more stable in Europe and Australia. You don't get paid as much though.
