>I used to tell people that first class tickets on planes are a waste of money because: You're still on a plane, it's still noisy, you just get better food.
You get much more leg room. You are getting much more space than an economy.
If you aren't tall and you stretch your legs from time to time, it's not a big thing.
Now, business class or whatever they call the thing where you can recline your seat almost horizontally, that's something. I can't really sleep sitting.
Good business class configurations allow you to lie completely flat.
Depending on the configuration you may have a real (narrow) bed feeling, or you may be lying in a sort of tube with not much space to move, but definitely completely flat.
If the price is not outrageous I always go for a business flight on long haul.
The price delta is usually in the thousands of dollars though. That said, especially for trans-Pacific I'll often try to get an upgrade using a combination of miles and dollars.
It amuses me that there are people think "nah I won't spend the extra $3k to make my trip livable" while working an industry where 30 year olds are paid $500k a year for writing a bit of javascript.
Why would the amount other people in my industry make have an impact on what I can afford? Much less whether I'd put up with a little discomfort for an extra $3k in my pocket.
Also funny how you yourself come up with the ridiculous salary of $500k, something ~nobody here will ever make, as the amount that finally makes $3k sound trivial to you. I agree with that much. That's the salary that would make me finally consider paying $3k for leg room.
Most people in tech are not making $500K to write Javascript or anything else. And, even if you make a fair bit of money, $3K isn't a trivial sum to make even 12-16 hours of air travel a bit more comfortable. (It still isn't exactly fun even up front.) I do sometimes use miles and a co-pay to upgrade when I can but, generally speaking, I can get a lot more bang out of that money on other things whether meals or other experiences.
That's limited to the US West Coast, almost exclusively.
You need to be level 7+ in a FAANG anywhere else in the world to make anything near that. And you definitely won't be there with "a bit of Javascript".
You get much more leg room. You are getting much more space than an economy.