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I don't think your math is mathing. To end up with $5,000,000 after 12 years at, let's say, a constant 5% annual interest rate, you will need to invest over $25K per month over that time, or $300K per year of disposable income, after taxes, living expenses and so on. You would have to be very high level even in a FAANG to be able to do that.

I know, I know, everyone on HN says entry level FAANG makes $600K/year and drives a brand new Porsche, but it's not reality.

by majormajor1 hours ago|

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Heh, it's much easier to drive a brand new Porsche than make 600K or save 5M bucks from a 9-to-5.

It was much much easier ten years ago, too.

That's one of the clearest examples of the difference between income-vs-wealth and the difference between "high cost of living" and "every expense is higher." If your higher salary offsets your higher cost of essentials of SV plus goes beyond that, a Porsche is much more relatively affordable to you than someome making the "inflation adjusted" amount in Ohio. (Or if you're looking to retire earlier, you can put more away for that too.)

In the last few decades the part you're missing in your math is that the trick is NOT to take 5% gains. Instead, keep it in the company. The wealth people have gotten from working BigTech hasn't been higher base comp or even TC, it's been specifically stock in BigTech.

In the last 15 years there have been several significant Big Tech valuation-jumps that have helped people save $$$$ too, but won't necessarily help the next round of folks. Amazon, Google, Meta are both up 10x since 2014. Apple is 20x+. So if you started then with an equity package worth 500k... 2022 was also a great time to start at Meta, and a decent (2x+) one at Amazon. 2020 even was a great time to start at Apple, up 6x since then. And before then, 2002-2014 was also a wildly good time to be at Amazon or Meta or Apple or Google. Better, even, for some of them!

So that's a good 25-years of wild gains. The "regular" employees who benefited from that timing are somewhat-understandably now saying just everyone can do that and have great results. I'm not sure if I'd make that bet myself in 2026 with the changes to things from AI. Though none of them are pure-SAAS that's easy to duplicate, so... maybe still go for it!

I think I'd be way too bored, though. Last time I considered a job offer from one of them, I just decided to throw a bunch into stock in the company instead and took a startup offer. It worked out ok as a hedge, if not AS good as taking the offer would've been.

by Aurornis55 minutes ago|

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The real “secret” to accumulating wealth in the past 10-20 years was timing. Getting the right job at a company with equity before the equity went up, then putting it into the stock market and real estate before those went up.

Some of those doors have gotten much harder to get through. The days of falling into a FAANG job by being willing to relocate to the right city and know enough to practice LeetCode for a few weeks have passed. It’s possible that the days of putting modest money into the S&P 500 and getting 8-9% year after year have also passed, but I don’t predict the future as well as I’d like.

by malfist2 hours ago|

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Staff working remotely in LCOL area can easily manage that if their lifestyle doesn't explode.

by 3 hours ago|

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by joshuamorton4 hours ago|

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I'm not sure that's quite feasible. 2-2.5M in 10 years is about the best I've seen excluding getting reasonably lucky with major stock jumps. You could juice that a bit further with really aggressive savings, but for most people, you're looking at 4-5M in income pre tax over that 10-12 year period (maybe a bit higher), weighted mostly toward the end, so without a ton of time for market gains to help.