Many are going to start their own startups and the seeds for the next Cambrian explosion are being cast today, just as they were in 2001–2003 or 2008. That said not all Big Tech employees can deal with the hustle required at a startup.
I’m skeptical that the same patterns we saw in the early 2000s are going to play out again.
Last time, tech was in its infancy. There was a small universe of people who understood baseline concepts like getting to product market fit, how to measure and implement growth patterns, etc etc.
Today these are practically household concepts, and they have been for years. There aren’t a few hundred other people in SV you are competing against, it’s the rest of the world.
On top of that, there’s a tried and true playbook that large tech companies quickly put to use to capture any remotely adjacent areas of product market fit.
I’m not saying there won’t be startups - there are today of course - but it also seems like there’s a lot of wishful thinking going on. (Among founders, VCs, and billionaires who made their money in the early 2000s too. It shocks me that many of them haven’t realized that the playbook that made them money in 2008 doesn’t make them special in 2023.)
Tech has been professionalized and nothing is nearly as easy as it once was.
> There was a small universe of people who understood baseline concepts like getting to product market fit, how to measure and implement growth patterns, etc etc.
I'm a PM and I think veeerrrryyy few people understand this, including many of my fellow PMs.
I think it's like reading a book about how to pitch a baseball. Knowledge and application are entirely different. Someone might be able to regurgitate the theory on how to achieve product-market fit, but put them in the driver seat of a real product and lots of people flounder.
One of the most common mistakes is simply delusion - the believe that your product is 'there' when it's not. I believe there's a cognitive dissonance that impacts the product owner - you kinda have to believe (or at least outwardly project) that your product is doing well.
> I'm a PM and I think veeerrrryyy few people understand this, including many of my fellow PMs.
Preach. And the universe of people who can actually do the work to start something and get it to PMF is a pretty small subset of those who understand the concepts in theory.
I would even go further and say that those who don't understand Product Market Fit but still can build, learn PMF by stumbling, falling.
Same sports analogy- it is better to be someone who can play (but doesn't know the rules) than someone who has encyclopedic knowledge on the said sport but cannot play (physical limitations).
Totally agree. Someone who just understands that you need to go talk to customers and actually try to sell whatever you're building ASAP is going to fare way better as a founder than someone who learned what PMF is during their MBA but doesn't want to get out and do the dirty work.
What do you mean by "better"? There's room for lots of people to have jobs off the field. Think about all of the support staff we never see on TV during the game. Or off the field even during the game. The announcer/sports commentator, the coach,
the physical therapists and doctors, the people that work the grounds. Stephen Curry doesn't work in vacuum and neither does Jeff Dean.
> there’s a tried and true playbook that large tech companies quickly put to use to capture any remotely adjacent areas
Hum... The reason why large companies have historically been unable to do that is because nobody in them bothers to do it, not because they don't know how.
And one of the consequences of a series of mass layoffs is exactly that people stop caring about things like this.
There's another set of large players who have sucked all of the air out of what could have otherwise been thriving, competitive categories with many players. Google with search, Amazon with eCommerce, Facebook with social. Yes there are maybe 1-2 counterpoints in each of these spaces, but they've largely been successful at leaving a lot of would be entrepreneurs avoiding these huge spaces because they know they can't compete.
Perhaps there will be higher quality startups… I don’t know, it feels like prior to 2020, the market was in overdrive and everyone’s ideas were getting funding under the hype growth path to monopoly strategy. And during this time, how many Forbes 30 under 30 people have been found to be incredible frauds, some of the biggest economics has seen? With money not as cheap, I do wonder what will happen. The startup “rules” for 2023+ seem a bit different now and hyper growth tactics may not work as well now (or be incentivized as much until late stage growth rounds…but I’m not an investor). Anyway, I’ll now lean back in my arm-chair…
I think you underestimate the effects of bureaucracy and sclerosis at large companies like Google, and the upcoming crackdown like the EU's DMA and DSA. Just look at how OpenAI basically stole Google's lunch.
Too early to spike the football over that, OpenAI got outfoxed on Dall-E illustratively and ChatGPT's best chance for monetization remains as a feature for MSFT services, not an independent entity.
Altavista wasn't a startup, it was a spinoff from DEC, a company that had its own issues with sales at the time, which led to their ignominious takeover by HP.
The same feeling of tech 10-15 years ago is what the current AI scene feels like. There's definitely an emphasis on higher education now, but outside of that look at what hackers have been able to accomplish just solo. It's a burgeoning scene with the potential to be as impactful as software was. Except now instead of if/else, it's going to be inscrutable arrays of numbers representing learned programs :D. It seems super fun and the barrier to entry is a lot lower than people think!
Then the company made a huge mistake letting them go, unless the company was just FULl of extremely talented engineers.. which statistically just isn't true.
Companies this profitable and large often actually overhire a small degree to deny the competition talent and to give a layer of people that can be laid off to boost profits quickly to make a board think management is good. Google or FB can lay off 5k people and not even NOTICE a change in productivity, but the boards eat it up.
You are making similar logical errors. You speak as if the most recent layoffs were simply firing the lazy employees.
AFAICT, companies are both jettisoning entire departments related to bad bets (or bad business models) and preparing for anticipated recession-level revenues.
Skills are not perfectly fungible. Managers making layoff decisions based on the roles/skills they need to keep and what budget they can afford. This necessarily means that some underperformers will be retained and many overperformers will be cut.
A lot of people seem to imagine layoffs happening (or that they should happen) according to some well-calibrated stack ranking at the company level. But that's not typical at all.
Sure some employees on PIPs or otherwise considered low performance may be cut regardless of role. But more typically projects get cut/defunded (whether in engineering or elsewhere) and those roles are eliminated or cut back. A good performer may have an opportunity to find a job elsewhere in the company but, in my experience, that's pretty hard given that any open slots were probably also closed as part of the layoff and everyone is pretty distracted anyway.
I sometimes wonder if the people who think companies are perfectly optimal have ever worked in a company or large organization.
It reminds me a bit of the argument against massive conspiracies to demonstrate how many people have to perfectly as an organization (leaving no evidence behind) and then have to stay quiet indefinitely. The larger the accused conspiracy, the more likely information is to leak.
Everyone in a team might know who the underperformers are. But team members and EM are kept out of layoff-related decisions, which are generally done by upper management with the help of external consultants. Those external consultants are about as good as a random number generator.
This is my experience. The last company I worked for that did layoffs while I was there was an example. None of the middle managers had any input in the firing decisions at all. They were just given a list of names by upper management. They were very upset about it, because they couldn't lay off people that were underperforming and were forced to lay off people who were critical or performed very well. Many of them said that it didn't appear that the decision-makers even looked at performance reviews, either. It appeared random.
People are also only fungible to a limited degree. Companies cancel projects, eliminate functions, and so forth. Especially in the middle of a large layoff there's often a limited appetite for finding a new home for someone who may be a high performer in the abstract but doesn't have a job any longer and may not be an ideal match for a position that already has someone doing it.
Its somewhat substantiated by the fact that getting into modern big tech is pretty much focusing on the interview process, which has almost zero to do with actual real world development.
Furthermore, having worked in big tech, most of the roles that are getting filled are essentially "busy work" - i.e here is a entire proprietary build system, barebones service and deployment pipeline, all you have to do is add logic. Someone who has worked in this type of environment isn't going to succeed at a startup where you have to build systems from scratch.
I agree that tech today is much more filled with “for the money” types - I’ve been lamenting this repeatedly.
I don’t agree that companies successfully filtered them out via layoffs. If anything it’s the opposite. One of the “skills” that help you avoid being laid off is to be good at office politics and gaining visibility (so the VP making the layoff decision knows your name). That skill seems correlated with ladder-climbing more than tech-enthusiasm.
Most of the 2022 and 2023 layoffs were for "Non-Technical" or "Tech-Adjacent staff". [0] [1] [2] [3] [4]
The market is still incredibly strong for SV caliber devs, and I see no signal it's going to slow down. If anything, it kept compensation for engineers from cratering by propping up the stocks.
You are out of your depth if you are comparing numbers, try interviewing in this market as a generic web dev and reality will come to you very soon.
SV caliber devs leaving US because they can find better paying roles internationally or not even looking due to fat severance/low pay in the bay.
Big tech employs more people than startups, which means it's more likely for someone to get a job at big tech than a startup. It's just a law of numbers and has nothing to do with whether they're suited for startup life or big tech life.
In addition, in the US, foreign students who just graduated are more likely to get a job at big tech than startup because more big tech sponsor H1B/Green card than startups. And the fear/circumstances around losing your immigration status means more of them might opt for big-tech than startup
Some of them are startup people, but the ones who have ground through a degree and leetcode before landing a job maintaining an esoteric part of Big G's internal systems assuredly aren't.
I’ve worked at “Big G” and a startup - big tech is a much more sane place to start a career than a startup. If you just graduated, it’s a good place to learn basic skills before considering a startup job.
Google for example is much more rigorous with code reviews and code quality. They maintain a high % test coverage, continuous integration and delivery… etc. startups can’t maintain those same standards and move quickly. learn the rules before you break them.
Losing a job, like any major life event, can cause a rethink on this sort of thing. The average age of a successful startup founder is 45 for a reason. Most of them spent some time employed in the industry of the startup. Before that, they probably bounce between a job and trying to make it on their own.
Not all big tech employees want to deal with the hustle required at a startup. That's why we're in big tech. Most of my teammates work to live, we don't live to work.
I used to be a hiring manager in robotics. It was _impossible_ to find good workers. Now, I am a laid off roboticist who found I had my pick of jobs at smaller companies who were suffering from big-tech's vacuum hiring policy. It was always just moat-making, until it got too expensive.
I mean yeah, that's one way to spin it. But it's interesting to observe the dynamics in the work force and how that benefits some smaller companies that were having a hard time hiring before.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments, flamebait, and/or snark? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Your other comments are good but the ones like that are destructive of the purpose here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit to heart, we'd be grateful.
If it's anything like 2011-2015 these former-FAANG employee heavy startups are going to be desiccated once FAANG decides to start hoarding talent again.
[Also, I’m wondering if FAANG are now more interested in hiring people with AI/ML experience (i.e. competition for the talent of the latest trend and so as to deprive competitors of the talent…)]
Far be it from me to try to change your mind here, but based on my first hand experience this isn't true.
Myself, and all of members of my team in my ___location, were laid off 2 weeks ago from one of the big 4 tech companies. Within the 4 people on my team one was stack ranked within the top 20% of the org of ~75 engineers earlier this year and another was in the process of being promoted. The other two were new to the team.
From a strategic perspective as a company, firing us can be considered trimming the fat, but it isn't a reflection on the quality of the engineers. It's a reflection on the leadership of the engineers and if they believe they will be essential for the operation/growth of the org over the next few years.
Before this happened to me I had the same mindset that you had here -- that there was some responsibility the fired engineers had for being fired. I can tell you, from the other side, that just isn't so. The world is bigger than any single person and this stuff happens regardless if you are skilled at your craft or even liked by your coworkers.
It's painful right now for everyone who has been laid off, but from a holistic perspective, I agree with this article. It will be interesting to see what all of these people do with their talents.
Exactly my experience. Most of the layoff sweeps are to eliminate projects or business lines, not people. Very few orgs got a "remove your bottom 20%" mandate, they just canned 20% of orgs.
There are still a lot of “boring” apps to build for regular people, I think. The classic problem of everything being in spreadsheets or tracked with paper and a clipboard is still totally real. You won’t be the next Google, it isn’t glorious, but it’s a viable and genuinely valuable way to build a business still.
One of the largest and more obvious examples in recent years was logistics. I’ve worked with a couple companies focused on this (as a contractor), and they make a lot of money from their customers by actually saving them considerably more money. One was specifically targeted at waste pickup and disposal businesses because their schedules, routes, and other variables were dramatically different from transportation of goods for example.
Then there’s a company like Roofr. They make it so SMB roofers can run their business more efficiently, generate more accurate quotes faster, and incorporate technologies like aerial drone photography to get quotes together far more professionally and correctly. Construction is a huge part of North America’s GDPs, so there’s a lot of money to be made in these niches.
I put boring in quotes because I think our industry is less excited about software like this, but I actually enjoy it a lot. I love highly focused and well-crafted software that makes a genuine difference for people who are otherwise not focused on using technology. It’s a way that software can actually improve work for people so I get a kick out of it. The feedback loop with customers tends to be tight and high quality too, so you can iterate quickly and make something awesome. This can be harder in the pure tech space, in my experience.
I think that's probably right. A ton of B2B opportunities in market niches that aren't well-served today. (Or could be served better.) I assume a lot of people would consider that boring but a well-targeted B2B coming from people who really understand the market space has a lot better odds than becoming the next B2C company that everyone is talking about.
New companies create new workflows. New workflows create new problems, which become opportunities for new companies. New companies create new workflows, which create new problems...
any examples? At this point, it seems everything has been already build (saying as a person who only worked in IT and don't have visibility on other industries, but would like to get some)
Everything was already built in 2005. It turned out that the more things are already built, the more things people build, and that requires building even more things on top of it...
Are you saying you think we are living in the best possible world and you see nothing to improve? Many people feel otherwise, and they are the ones launching companies.
This sounds like the modern version of the apocryphal 1902 quote of Charles Holland Duell (Patent Office Commissioner): "Everything that can be invented has been invented"
The economic climate has changed, but there are more problems to be solved today than ever before.
uh ya no shit. start-ups froth over having devs with experience at big tech co's so they can throw the logos on their decks. thank the lord the WSJ is performing society-driving journalism like this.
I mean, I do agree, but isn't this what journalism is? Reporting on the facts? It's a thing that's happening, ergo it's news.
If there's a shooting and shootings have happened before, is that not still news? It happened after all. It's got to be better than just ignoring things because it's status quo.
There is so much stuff happening that to come to the tiny selection you can stack the filters to the roof. The first one would be: What would the people paying our bills like to see? What does our network like? What is our political affiliation? Who and which companies do we like or not like? How much drama or feel good stories does our current audience need?
It's so refined there is pretty much no meat left in the sausage. It is an engineering project and you are the raw materials.
How many people since have reached adulthood and entered employment who might not have been aware of what came before though? What about the trends that you and others weren't aware of that happened prior to you reaching adulthood and caring about the news?
Just because something is a continuation of a trend doesn't mean it isn't somehow "news-worthy". The weather is entirely based on continuing trends over x periods—is there still value in knowing the weather? Of course. This is the weather of business. It's a "sunny day" in Startupville even if it's raining in Fortune500land, which is the counterpoint to the doom-peddling in other headlines.
Could this contribute to people's nostalgia that the past was so much better? Because they were not really getting all the news. My grandparents will swear kidnappings never happened in the 50s when they were kids. The reality is, they happened but were not reported as they are today. Does this contribute to their view of, "the wold is so much worst today!" Is the reality that, the world only seems worst, but in reality isn't much different? Do we really prefer a world where kidnappings are hardly reported and not have much of a far reaching effect?
Statistically speaking, in the US, high school students were much more likely to be murdered in the 1980s than now. But just try to convince today's parents of that.
I think it is notable if it’s happening in bulk. Now, it’s not a new phenomenon; it has happened before with major waves of tech layoffs. But not often enough that it should be treated as a law of nature.
American engineers are lucky to earn enough to be able to save up and do stuff like this, like on $200k you can save enough to really try a start-up for a year or two.
Whereas in Europe we're lucky to get $80k in the same jobs, and then the state steals half of that :/
I'm not paying the premium for health insurance, no. But I am paying 200 a month to upgrade to "platinum", I'm paying 400 a month because Blue Shield lists a lifesaving medicine I've been on for 2 decades as a tier 3 drug, so I had to battle with them for 3 weeks to get them to "cover" it at 400 a month out of my pocket. I then have a 4k per family deductible we need to reach on top of the drug co-pays. So when my wife thought she broke her toe it cost is 1500 out of pocket. This is the absolute best, top tier platinum" insurance afforded me administered by a "non profit" that was stripped of much of its non profit status for making billions in profit.
All that adds up to 7204 out of our pocket per year before any sort of catastrophic or even regular event like childbirth.
This is the big thing. The bigger salary more than covers the difference. And it's not just tech. Nurses in the UK make 25,000 pounds per year, nurses in the US make $85k or more.
I would rather have the higher salary with student loans, my own health insurance, and no subsidized childcare than make 25K GBP (at a higher tax rate!)
Exactly, it's not unheard of for police officers to make up to 300k a year, including overtime, here in the bay area. Starting pay for many "regular" jobs is well over 6 figures here
Fine as long as you're able to keep earning said salary. It's the state you end up in when you're not for whatever reason that's arguably the big difference. My own partner's a nurse and has gone through extensive periods where her income has been low or non-existent and while it wasn't really an issue given the presence of my salary to fall back on it's not hard to see how difficult things might become esp. if there were no/limited government subsidized healthcare and high levels of student debt (again, thankfully not such a problem in Australia - even as a foreign student, as she was, there are measures in place to ensure they don't saddle themselves with unreasonable debt. Citizens can often pay off higher education fees within a few years of graduating, and no repayments are required in years your salary is below a certain threshold)
Even with best-in-class health insurance in the US, one "gotcha" leaves you with an unpayable bill. Usually, your company provides health insurance. Health insurance != health care. Larger companies (I assume this translates to tech) will also usually have a clinic on-site for smaller things and it's heavily subsidized or free.
None of this prevents you from 6-figure debt for something like a difficult, but largely by-the-book, birthing experience or a car accident.
Generally it's out of pocket maximum to a point, like $250k. Then it's normally split, something like 80-20, where you have to cover 20% of the bill. That seems like a lot until you have something like cancer, where you need surgery plus chemo in the same year, which adds up quite fast.
> Generally it's out of pocket maximum to a point, like $250k. Then it's normally split, something like 80-20, where you have to cover 20% of the bill.
Not since the Affordable Care Act of 2010. It got rid of benefit maximums and implemented out of pocket maximum. An out of pocket maximum up to a limit is a contradiction. The situation works exactly opposite, you first pay 100% up to deductible, then you pay a proportion according to your copay, then you pay 0% after the out of pocket maximum.
Annual out of pocket maximums are typically $5k to $10k for individual/family at any half decent employer.
Yes, but it can be tens of thousands in many cases, and it does not cover many things that it should, insurance companies put deliberate effort into screwing people put of their claims.
It is next to unheard of to have an extremely large bill if you have good health insurance. Even if you do, at tech levels of salary, if you were to effectively save the extra money, you should have no problems covering it.
I wish. My wife and I both work at different big tech companies as developers and the only thing health insurance does is guarantee we won't go bankrupt in the event of an emergency. Last month on top of spending several hundred on the monthly insurance cost, I spent $300 on rather mundane pediatrician appointments for my two kids who had ear infections. Ironically I had much better healthcare coverage when I worked at a steel mill.
Depending on the plan, you may still be on the hook for part of your premium. And if you have any dependents (kids, spouse, etc.) the cost of their premiums is fully your responsibility.
Is $160/week just for your coverage? I've worked at small startups and medium sized public companies, and my healthcare coverage costs have been far less than that.
It depends. I work at a tech company as an engineer and insurance eats about $1K/month. My employer contributes only about $400 to the plan.The total plan cost is $1.4K. Keep in mind, while I pay this just for insurance, I am waiting to get a $3,000 dollar bill from the hospital (still!) for when my daughter had to go to the ER in December.
Dental coverage is not available in many places with nationalized healthcare, such as Canada, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, and de facto uncovered in the UK. You must pay with a private plan or out of pocket. Only a portion of costs is covered in France, Denmark, and Belgium while the patient must pay the entire amount upfront.
Germany has a situation similar to the US where basic care is fully covered, but more complicated care is not fully covered.
Yeah, dental plans are honestly kind of stupid. They typically have a MAXIMUM amount they will cover, after which you have to pay out of pocket. Which.. is not what I purchase insurance for. I purchase insurance to cover me for the huge bills I can't afford that would destroy me.
That said, if my employer is going to subsidize it, I'm going to take the free money.
My manager moved from the US to Sweden, said he got about 60% in Sweden. His Wife isn't working in Sweden yet and they still have more money on pocket. Very anecdotal and might be inflated one way or the other. But I'm not so sure it's as clear-cut as some might think. Unless you're the top X % raking in the biggest $$
You don't have to be top X%. If you are single and graduating college, you will absolutely net more money in US in the tech sector, way more if you are exceptionally skilled.
After that, it depends on your living situation and family situation. Of course 200k in California with 3 kids and a house is likely going to be less than what you could make in EU.
For anyone working in big tech it is very clear cut from a financial perspective. That isn’t the only consideration for sure, but it’s wishful thinking to believe otherwise.
In countries with socialised health insurance systems any political party that threatens to take it away (or defund it) tends not to get chosen at election time, strangely enough.
Visas, different languages, and family mean that people often don't really have a choice. Likewise, most employers only provide insurance from a single provider.
In France, apparently you can go on unemployment for 2, up to 3 years to start a startup. With up to 80% pay.
In Germany you can get 6 months of unemployment insurance when starting a startup out of unemployment. Or get 6 months paid when starting a startup out of Uni. Then you could get various public funding opportunities like a startup bonus (for example 50K public funding for 50K private investment in an innovative company in Berlin).
- the culture is not the same as the US. French people tend to be very financially risk-averse
- the VC eco-system in France exists but it is trash
- people who have the skills to create startups in France tend to do it outside of France because they will have access to better capital/labor markets (for example, DataDog and Docker both have french founders)
> - people who have the skills to create startups in France tend to do it outside of France because they will have access to better capital/labor markets
There are a lot of French people here in the bay area.
From what they told me, it's actually easier to come to the bay area, navigate through the US immigration system and get funded than get funded at home. Not only that, some startups got funding from VC funds with LPs... from France!
Also, how easy is it to fire people in France? If it’s difficult then startups will be much more reluctant to hire in the first place, and founders to embark on the whole startup adventure which necessarily implies a lot of hiring/firing.
There is no such claim. Id claim that a system that helps all of of society by providing health, employment, income, childcare, housing and transportation security isn’t necessarily completely toxic for a small number of Startup founders, as a system. Since it also may help founders to an extent. Its about individual risks that are possible.
The problem in Germany and France is the VC and business culture, but thats not primarily a result of income taxes.
Because in France, in order to hire someone you need to have a shit ton of cash on hand... and then if they suck, you can't just fire them. It's too expensive to start a venture, so the folks that are willing to risk it leave in order to do so.
Because tech talent is cheap for the amount of productivity in US with ability to fire at will.Ease of fooling and swindling people if you have the right connections.
In Europe shit that gets you into jail is a just a small monetary fine in USA.
Not to mention that in Germany many University students not only get free schooling, but also housing AND a monthly stipend. Essentially UBI for students!
Definitely not really true. Under 15% of students receive BAFÖG [1]. No idea where you got the idea that German students get free housing at many Universities as that couldn't be further from the truth considering that there are only enough rooms for around 10% of all students [2] and those are definietly not free, although pretty cheap. However many struggle to find an Apartment, especially in bigger Cities like Berlin or Munich.
I said many, not all :). You're right, housing isn't free, but if you get student housing it's usually less than the monthly stipend thus free for the student.
not really. The average monthly stipend (that only 15% even get) is 579€, which is arguable not enough for rent in most bigger Cities (and that is ignoring that you also need to eat).
The vast majority of students are either financed by their parents (the stipend is dependent on their income and if they earn more than a certain amount they a legally obligated to help their child) or by themselves. In Germany the university is mostly free (a couple hundred euros a semester), but most definitely don't live for "free".
IMHO it is the worse time to start a startup. You should do it while still in the uni so that you can get all kinds of help. Equally good seems some actual experience(?) People have been writing software and running businesses for a good while. Maybe they know something?
Just to add a non-snarky reply: I agree, we are lucky, but I fear (especially based on the replies to your statement), the majority of American engineers would prefer things to be more like they are in Europe.
"There are dozens of us!" that are aware of how lucky we are!
Sure. But if you want to complain that europeans don't build these sorts of products as some sort of reason why they should expect lower pay, you need to engage with the fact that people living and working in europe are building these products.
I live in a high cost of living city. Texas has no capital gains tax, no income tax, and I don't own a property (obviously I see this through higher rent at $1450 for a 1x1. I pay the 8.25% sales tax and my highest income tax bracket is 23%. I am nowhere near 50%.
On the flipside, we have no health insurance when we're laid off, and even getting the sniffles costs a fortune. As for layoffs, last I checked Europe has meaningful worker protections. Neither do we get six weeks of vacation over here. Parental leave (unless you're FAANG) is iffy. Unless you happen to conform to a demographic shape, you'll get treated pretty shittily by everybody, including the state.
But if you like living without a net in exchange for high pay, by all means, come over here.
On an income of $200k in California, for example, your tax rate is something like 8% (marginal). If you total it up with federal taxes, it's something like a 27% tax rate.
Most likely your parent misunderstands the _marginal_ income tax rates.
That said, income tax is not the only kind of tax. In the US, federated government entities mean a mesh of taxes accumulate. Income tax + Payroll Tax + Social Security + Medicare + Property Tax + Sales Tax aggregate. CA and NY are a little higher than other competing states, but not by much.
While the overall isn't as high as 50%, at $200k, your marginal income tax rate is 42.75%, a sales tax rate of 10%, and a property tax rate of 1.25%.
So, after $185k, while you've probably already paid 7% ($14k prop) on your home, and probably another 1% (2k sales), leading to what could be considered 50.75% tax.
Wow and you have an appreciating asset(not really) and are buying stuff. It's way lower if you have a corp/LLC and just expense stuff along with reloc and depretiation.
That said having a job sucks anywhere as you are the tax base.
That appears to be the effective rate for income tax, but there are also sales taxes, "stamp" tax on things like houses and cars, excise taxes (especially on fuel), property tax, and inflation. I'm pretty confident you can get above half at a high income in California, New York, or especially Massachusetts.
You do get something for that, but it is surprising (to me anyway) for example how similar the percentages of GDP spent on social welfare are between the blue U.S. states and Australia, and how much more the Australians seem to get for the money.
> You do get something for that, but it is surprising (to me anyway) for example how similar the percentages of GDP spent on social welfare are between the blue U.S. states and Australia, and how much more the Australians seem to get for the money.
Most social welfare programs that people can get in NY are niche. You generally have to meet certain demographic requirements. It also takes years of paperwork and waiting to get into anything if you aren't a single/battered mother.
I paid well over 40% of my income in taxes and had no hope of ever accumulating any assets or meaningful retirement and zero safety net if anything went south for me. My friends in Denmark and Sweden only paid a little bit more for what is effectively a cradle-to-grave nanny state. And they all manage to own their apartments.
That's a bunch of stereotyping. I work in the telecom industry and live in a place without bay area or Seattle type cost of living. I get 15-days caregiver leave, 12 weeks paternity leave and 20 days of vacation. A sr sw engineer where I am at will get about $175k with bonus. A staff engineer will make about $300k with RSU. It's not Big Tech but definitely better than what Europe has. Again not being in the bay area helps. I have a very flexible work schedule and a pretty awesome work life balance.
Don't go by what the media portrays. Your comment makes it sound like Tech workers can never take vacation or have kids. It couldn't be furthest from the truth.
There is no great source on the details across the nation, but there are a hodgepodge of municipal-level studies that shed a light.
There were roughly 20k gun homicides in the US in 2021[0]. It's been fluctuating between 10k and 20k over the past five decades or so, with the last few years seeing a quick increase and seeing a (hopefully) local peak in rates.
In one study in San Francisco, ~70% of gun homicide victims had a criminal record, and three quarters of that figure knew the suspect[1]. A similar study in Milwaukee found that ~90% of both victims and suspects of gun homicides had a criminal record[2], and the top two reasons identified of the circumstances behind the homicide were arguments/fights and robberies. There are other studies done at local levels in many other places with similar results.
A DOJ study notes that three quarters of all gun homicides were during the commission of a (different) felony[3]. And you can query the CDC WONDER mortality database[4] yourself to see that gun homicide rates in "large central metro" areas are twice as high as those in medium, small, or non-metro areas, and that men 15-34 years of age comprise the majority of gun homicide victims.
So, perhaps my "gang-on-gang" statement wasn't really accurate (since a "gang-related" incident is loosely defined), and I'll leave the "vast majority" determination to you; but the point is that most gun homicides occur among the "criminal element" in "bad parts of town", and is not really relevant to life as a software engineer.
Exactly, the reason "active shooter" situations frighten ordinary folks is because they're the rare type of shooting that can victimize you even if you're law-abiding and don't live in a very high crime area.
In 2020, 687 people were killed in railway accidents in the EU, being Poland the country with the highest number with 148 fatalities, followed closely by Germany with 137.
Trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.
there's a lot more than I would have thought in the US.
Railroad deaths totaled 893 in 2021, a 20% increase from the 2020 revised total of 744 and the highest since 2007. Nonfatal injuries totaled 5,781, a 4% increase from the 2020 revised total of 5,544.
wow, I guess mass shootings are no problem at all and when they happen we should be like, "so what? 3000 people died of cancer today, who cares if some kids got their faces blown to pieces". thanks for clearing that up! problem solved
It's possible to think it's not ok but also so vanishingly unlikely to happen that it's not a useful comparison point for quality of life in Europe vs America.
For me, "never get sick or have any kids or anything" is a much stronger point against life the US - these are issues almost everyone has to confront.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I promise you I have never thought that HN was "sophisticated". This is an internet forum.
> I'll keep matching the energy I see here
The problem here is in the "I see". People don't see their own negative contributions clearly. We overestimate the bad that others are bringing and underestimate our own by 10x or more. This is why it always feels like the other started it and did worse [1], while we are merely reacting, defending ourselves, or (to use your word) matching. We all have this bias, which means that if all you do is match what you see, you'll in fact be escalating and worsening a downward spiral [2].
What you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) should instead do is consciously adjust for objects in the mirror being closer than they appear [3]. That is, if you make a point of responding with less negativity than what you see others as bringing, it may be possible to partly compensate for that bias. In that case this crude and unsophisticated blob of internet humanity may at least manage not to burn itself to a crisp [4].
(I'm sorry for footnoting my own past comments - it's an embarrassing practice but it's the only easy way I have to link people to past explanations. Such links are helpful for clarifying and also for depersonalizing; they quickly make it clear that all of these issues are systemic and have been the same for years.)
Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological (or, god help us, nationalistic) flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
In Germany, it's not the social system per se but it's aoparent utter ineffectiveness. We're paying more and more every year but the state/public system seems to fail everywhere and worse so than the year before. It's like the money is completely sucked up by some unproductive black hole.
And no, it's not because of reduced taxation from rich to working class, or missing taxes on property or some other policy. These policies didn't change that much in the last decade or two. Yet throughout the last decade the state and social security systems had record income, record levels of employment and managed to run down pretty much every part of the public system from education, over healthcare to defense. The money just vanished.
I am very much convinced that Germany as a whole doesn't have an income problem, but a spending problem.
That is, in my opinion, by far the strongest argument for lower taxes. The money we (the US) do spend in education/healthcare/infrastructure is already poorly utilized, why would we want to spend more and end up like that?
To simplify it dramatically with an example, I'd rather pay $3 on the toll road and $50k for a surgery myself than pay $10 in taxes towards the road and $100k in taxes towards the healthcare system but receive both of them for "free".
I understand the advantages of a social safety net, I do. But misappropriation of someone's hard-earned money is frustrating as well.
> I'd rather pay $3 on the toll road and $50k for a surgery myself than pay $10 in taxes towards the road and $100k in taxes towards the healthcare system but receive both of them for "free".
That would be a nice scenario to choose to be in.
However, the US _government_ pretty much spends more per-person than those countries with a social net [1]. So in reality, you're paying those taxes of those social countries and also getting to pay private insurance ontop of that. Although current taxes are lower than the social countries since the government's expenditures are debt financed but if the USG were to stop they'd have to raise taxes to pay it with revenue and then you'll be really wondering why you're paying the same in taxes as the EU and not getting EU benefits.
Healthcare is its own issue in the US, as I think the general populous is on average a good bit unhealthier than the average Norwegian, for example. I think it's a combination of poor health education (which also goes back to spending) and culture.
US cities were based around cars in 1990. But today, the thinnest state (Colorado) is heavier on average than the fattest state in 1990 (Mississippi, also today's national leader)
Walking is obviously better than not walking, but something other than cars is to blame for the ballooning of the American public. 75% of America is either overweight or obese right now. That alone puts you at risk for about a million health issues and diseases.
Yes, but suppose there's a "road company" you'd have to pay a toll to. Obviously they love profit margins and since they're a monopoly (they own the road) the toll would soon balloon to $20 then $35 then $100.
I think landowners should declare a value for their property, that is used for taxation, but also allows anyone to immediately buy the land from you at that price. This would allow rival road companies to quickly purchase the land necessary to build an alternative road. Such wasteful duplication would rarely happen in practice, though, because the knowledge that they do not have a guaranteed monopoly, that another company can build an alternative road if they charge exorbitant fees, will keep the charge to use the road reasonable.
>I think landowners should declare a value for their property, that is used for taxation, but also allows anyone to immediately buy the land from you at that price. This would allow rival road companies to quickly purchase the land necessary to build an alternative road.
I don't really think "Yankee Swap" is the best model for land management, my guy.
If they do that for long enough though they go out of business. There is not really an equivalent to going out of business in government, or at least the bar is much higher for it to happen (I.e. violent revolution).
> There is not really an equivalent to going out of business in government, or at least the bar is much higher for it to happen (I.e. violent revolution)
There's absolutely an equivalent, publicly elected officials lose re-election campaigns all the time.
Is a failed government policy generally stopped and corrected by an electoral change in practice? In my experience this almost never happens. Whereas if a company goes under, whatever failed action it was taking just stops happening. Not equivalent IMO.
Agreed. There is very rarely a sober look back on any government policy to see if it actually met the objectives it set out to achieve, and at what cost.
The harder it is to create a startup in an area, the less competition you’ll have there. Things like regulation and labor protection laws have the unfortunate side effect of discouraging founders to embark in the "startup adventure".
The IRS recently got a significant amount of funding, and call times went down by a lot.
There are certainly inefficiencies out there, and we should always be trying to root them out, but sometimes if you starve an organization of funding, it doesn't perform very well. Shocker!
Well, if you understood what we already spent on healthcare you'd know that we spend more per capita than everyone and we have an entire industry whose whole existence is siphoning off their cut of profit from every little transaction.
So yeah, I'd rather have single payer healthcare, and we can just fire all of the leeches.
> The money we (the US) do spend in education/healthcare/infrastructure is already poorly utilized, why would we want to spend more and end up like that?
The whole point of a single-payer system is that you will spend less, by virtue of the government using its single-buyer negotiating power to push down prices.
And also by virtue of firing all the useless parasites and middlemen that create, consume, and shuffle the mountains of paperwork that surround US health insurance, advertising, billing, etc. Unsurprisingly, these middle-men don't look kindly upon being eliminated, and have somehow convinced half the country that if it weren't for their heroic efforts, grandma would never get a cardiac shunt, and that the world would literally end if Medicare was actually allowed to negotiate drug prices.
So, you'd have to show that since, let's say 1940, the QoL of Americans has improved as a direct result of lower taxes.
We should be able to look at things like salary, cost of living such as price of homes, education, and food all improving against inflation. So, unless you can do that, your argument for lower taxes is baseless and without merit.
> But misappropriation of someone's hard-earned money is frustrating as well.
Hard-earned money that is earned because of the society supported by the taxes that person pays. Without that society, you would not be earning the same amount. No hard-earned money is earned by an individual in the US.
So because the government is perceived to be bad at stuff, we should instead redistribute (an even greater part of) the wealth to rich people, because they do a really good job bring societal good with their piles of gold?
For a fair comparison of health care costs, you would need to know how much that $50K surgery would cost the German government. US health care costs are notoriously high.
As long as we're making up numbers though, I'd rather pay $3 for surgery and $3 for road taxes and then have the state pay me $50k in unemployment while I'm recovering from surgery. The reason we have to make people miserable is because of cries about inflation if we just give poor people money but it turns out greedy white collar crimial capitalists are really the root cause.
If the last couple of years proved anything, it's that money is all made up. It doesn't mean anything, like points on HN or Reddit karma. You happen to be able to use money to trade for goods and services, but outside of that, it's a made up numbers game, like Monopoly.
There's this really bad logic that seems to govern social spending everywhere, and it states that if a program doesn't work very well, the problem is obviously inadequate funding so increase that. Over and over and over. The end result is this black hole you talk about, endlessly sucking up money.
No one stops to ask why the program or government office doesn't do it's job well, the issue is funding!
This is a misunderstanding. These people are not "delivering service". They are doing "governance and administration". And administration size on Germany is acting like a ratchet: growing sometimes, but never shrinking.
The problem isn't spending it's the effectiveness of it. The last thing that you want to do is have the government cut spending because it doesn't get rid of the corruption it just cuts the stuff that helps people.
What are you talking about? The US has one of the most progressive tax systems, and like 50% of people don't even pay income tax. The government wastes money and the medical establishment is corrupt -- but that has nothing to do with rich people living off of the poor. The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries.
> The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries.
You probably mean the US/Canada. 'America' includes South America for which this is not generally true.
However, replace 'America' in your sentence with any developed country and the statement is indeed generally true. And thusly of little value to this discussion.
Specifically it doesn't change the fact that the poor in the US are much poorer that the poor in most (possibly all?) developed countries. [1]
And I do not mean this solely in the sense of pure numbers as in e.g. [2]. But rather what it means to be poor.
I.e. how dignified or undignified a life do the social support systems of a country and the view of the resp. society on the poor allow you to live, should you fall in that bracket?
It's more tiresome that US citizens claim the term and do not understand the issue with it. [1]
As a European traveling to South America frequently it is very obvious to me why all my friends there take issue with this. As a European this is also not my fight but I do take sides nevertheless.
From my post getting three down votes, two of which I must assume stem from this topic at least, I dare only conclude that the sensitivity is mutual.
So probably worth understanding and showing some consideration. Beers!
America has always been a make it or break it place with most people not making it.
I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out that has been our schtick for hundreds of years. It's the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantee.
> It's the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantee
Absolutely.
> most people not making it
By any metric, there's at most a handful of countries where the median person is as well off as in the US. I struggle to say that most people aren't making it here; or if they really aren't, then not making it in America is better than making it in most other places.
This is really a different issue; tech salaries in parts of the US really are substantially higher, and that has fairly little to do with the differences in government policies in the areas you mentioned.
Eligiblity for Medicaid is limited, and many important groups are "optional" which essentially means "no, if Republicans control any branch of your state government".
Yes. In Texas, you need to be pregnant, have a child under age 18, blind, disabled, or over 65 to qualify, in addition to the income requirements: https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/1640%7D
I'd love to move, but getting a green card is a nightmare.
I don't want to work for 5 years trapped with one employer and facing deportation with a matter of weeks if I lose my job, on an L-1 visa (and to do that I'd still have to find a position to move to in my company).
Not true at all. In fact the poorer you are, the better health care you get - all free. It's the middle class who get crushed in America. $2000/mo insurance with $5K deductibles for a family of 4.
People are often unaware of this. I was really surprised to learn that my health insurance was completely free in WA (Apple Health/Medicaid) when I quit my job. Health insurance affordability is really U shaped as you're implying and that chasm can be hard to cross.
Average salary in SV is 115k, 22k in France. USA live off its neo-colonial digital empire, not through the exploitation of blue collars. When any digital company out there pay 30% of what they earn in tarifs on cloud, ads, servers, licenses, app revenue, patent litigation, …
So, you compare the averge of France, a cpuntey not known for high salaries, as a cpuntey to one of the highest paid regions in the world? SV =|= blue collar, the rust belt and Detroit are blue collar.
Exactly, and my wife and I spend easily tens of thousands a year out of pocket for things that would be "free" or close to free in the EU. Things like healthcare, transportation, childcare, etc. Its not uncommon for health plans have a 10k deductible per year, 20k for the family.
And yet you do not hear of normal people in the EU going bancrupt over medical expenses or not taking an ambulance because they cannot afford it. Funny, isn't it?
But you do hear a lot of them complaining in different ways about how they are oppressed. I won't even give citation apart from [1]. So nope, not funny.
Man, the French have been rioting for weeks over raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, after raising it from 60 to 62 and incurring similar riots about twelve years ago.
In comparison, when the French Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, the life expectancy was about twenty-two years shorter than it is now. One would think it's reasonable to raise the retirement age a little to fit that.
You change to median in the whole USA and median in the whole Europe then? Still the same conclusion. SV tech engineers arent rich because someone's is flipping their burgers. Someone is flipping an engineer's burger in France, in Detroit, In Tehran. So blue collar exploitation exists everywhere and cannot explain the outrageous salaries in SV.
It's the cost of living. The cost of living in the SF baybarea is 79% above the national average. A living wage is simply more here because it costs more to live here.
If all the major employers in the area cut wages down to $80k, wouldn't the cost of housing be forced down too? Who can buy a house for 2.2 million when making $80k.
And on a side note, there are many companies in the area that pay $80k and less, oil change mechanics for example. So it's not like you MUST pay that SV wages because cost of living is high.
I have a feeling it is due to high demand for those workers.
It doesn't work that way, you can't control markets from the top down. You are right, it's a supply demand thing. A company needs to hire 100 engineers with a specific skillset in x number of months, so they come here where there are enough engineers to hire in that skillset in the local talent pool, then they make offers to engineers until they get enough engineers, if they don't get enough they need to increase their offers. It's a simple market like any other. It's simple, yes the cost of living on the middle of nowhere Ohio is less, but you can't hire 100 engineers with specific skillsets and experiences, you need to move them there, or build them from students. So a person living here wouldn't accept an offer that doesn't allow them to live and thrive near their workplace. If the cost of living were less they would be more willing to overlook the compensation for other factors, but for most tech workers who are not independently wealthy because the cost of living is so high, it forces us to expect compensation that is aligned with that high cost of living.
Also, SF is already over 60% rent controlled housing, so the cost of living for over 60% of the population is already being artificially reduced beneath the market. It's also interesting to note that the income level to qualify for rent controlled/stabilized housing is 77-160k a year depending on household size.
It's astonishingly expensive to live here compared to much of the rest of the country
Due to moral and ethics of course. I can't go to a burger flipper restaurant without a bad feeling if I know that the person working behind the counter is basically a modern slave and also works 40h but doesn't have any rights at all.
It's hard for me to say 'i want worker rights' and ignore everyone around me.
And as a backup mechanism: guess what? It can happen to you. But also your family or friends might be in the position. So it is also beneficial to fight for this for your friends and family.
It's the same shit with equal pay: I would have less strss if my wife would earn similar to me so I don't have the pressure to always work in my job to make it for my family.
And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event?
But those jobs should be automated so no-one has to do them.
And that process should be supported by a high minimum wage - hitting the employers, not taxing productive work to provide tax credits to subsidise such terrible jobs.
Automation leads to more high-tech jobs and investment, and higher productivity, which leads to higher wages as companies compete for highly skilled employees, etc.
Economic mobility and productivity is the key to prosperity.
> And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event?
This is sadly the same in Europe, as dentistry mostly isn't covered under public healthcare in the UK and Sweden for example. So we pay almost 50% tax just to be in the same position!
But I support universal healthcare (including dentistry and opticians), it's a critical part of economic mobility. People can't move jobs or take risks if they'll lose healthcare coverage.
Thank you for posting this. This is both staggering, and also highly informative. It's clear this is crushing the US middle and lower classes.
I've seen a recent trend in churches, where they use their excess funds to buy people's medical debt out of collections and forgive it. It's the best thing I've heard in a long time.
I also have been recently battling with Blue Shield of California (but they're all bad). They were denying me my medicine, in a similar way that Cigna was proven to deny claims by ProPublica recently. I also found out that a few years ago Blue Shield of California was stripped of its non profit tax benefits because it had billions in surplus that it was just sitting on, you know, making profit. Since then they seem to be spending money to out their names on things like opera houses in SF and advertising, but not putting it to work in the community to make real impact.
I propose we create a movement that demands that insurance companies use their excess profit, etc. to buy people's medical debt and free them of it. How do we get this movement going? Blue Shield of California alone has hundreds of millions a year in surplus, that would buy out billions of dollars in medical debt for people and completely change many people's lives for the better.
> I propose we create a movement that demands that insurance companies use their excess profit, etc. to buy people's medical debt and free them of it. How do we get this movement going? Blue Shield of California alone has hundreds of millions a year in surplus, that would buy out billions of dollars in medical debt for people and completely change many people's lives for the better.
Blue Shield of California had a net loss of almost a billion dollars in 2022[0]. Should they do the reverse in that case and put their excess loss by putting more people in medical debt?
No, they should do a bunch of internal audits and clean house and go bankrupt if that's what's in the cards. Mismanagement has consequences.
As you pointed out, they are being run very poorly, while the top executives still take home million dollar salaries (1) and have been spending money on things like the Blue Shield Field Club at Oracle park.
If they do the work, I'm sure they can do right by the general public and their customers, they are currently not. They have a 1.1 star review with 800 reviews on Yelp, it's lower than the San Francisco DMV which has 1.8.
Surveys of people "considering" or "planning" to do things are notoriously inaccurate. You have to look at the number of people who actually did do the thing in question.
Your source shows ~375k to 2m non-business bankruptcies filed per year over the last twenty years, not all of which is primarily due to medical costs (but there appears to not be a definitive source of data on this), out of a population that went from 282m to 331m over the same time. So 0.1-0.7% of the population files for a personal bankruptcy every year for any reason, which is a far cry from one quarter of the country being on a brink of a medical bankruptcy.
Everyone knows healthcare costs are problematic in this country; no need to resort to hyperbole. Let's stick to the facts.
It's reality, not FUD. Emergency rooms not being able to turn you away when you have a heart attack isn't healthcare. Healthcare includes being able to go to a doctor before you get to the point of emergency for preventative care.
Healthcare should also include taking care of yourself, but somehow we've gotten to the place where only a quarter of the population is at a healthy weight.
Cue some until-now-insulated Big Tech workers getting a huge dose of culture shock when they see how work is done somewhere without their own money printer.
Most people who work in ‘big tech’ have previously worked elsewhere.
Having worked both in small (<100 people and sometimes <10 people) startups and now in Big Tech(TM), it’s not necessarily clear to me that one’s better than the other. They’re different, but working in a startup is not clearly _worse_.
Personally i find startups better to work at. Instead of being a cog in a machine that takes years to “approve” what’s actually needed for the task at hand or having some inexperienced “cio” worker dictating what os or kit you can use you actually get to play with modern tech and do fun things. Even as a manager it’s more fun.
I'm with you. But this is a matter of personality and preference. It's not that startups are objectively better or worse -- it's that startups have different tradeoffs.
I've worked at everything from a 20K person company to a 5 person company and there are pros and cons with probably a lot more variance as you get to the smaller end of the scale. And people have different priorities and even a given person can have different priorities and preferences depending upon where they are in life.
Words have meanings and slapping the "hate" label on anything you find mildly distasteful leads to disingenuous discussions. The parent comment is being dismissive at worst.
Assuming you're not sealioning, FAANG employees have a reputation for being entitled: see the famous "What, sushi again?" quote.
