Comment on Pluralistic: The enshittification of tech jobs
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 weeks agoPease tell me you know of someone where this actually was true: that they made crazy money and they’re set for life.
Because, based on 30 years in and a complete lack of knowledge of anyone who got out and retired early, either personally and via someone I know, I conclude the only people for whom this worked were C-level. Even the smartest man I know didn’t cash in and get out.
I do know someone who retired at 48, though. He was a heavy duty mechanic. Paid off his house in a town he chose specifically for location, and bikes and kite-surfs all summer and skis all winter.
Yeah, mechanic. Union. Half pay for life is still half pay, but it’s FOR LIFE. He won.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I know many personally that earned this kind of money.
Yes, but only for some of those because most chose lifestyle increases instead of savings. So I know tens of the folks that can retire right now and have more than twice the median income of the USA for their entire life without running out of money. This means they’d have a couple million in the bank. This would be an annual retirement income of about $80k-$90k/year USD for one person (thats also without any Social Security benefit added on top yet). Many times a married couple both work in tech so that would be household retirement income of $160k-$180k/year for as long as they live (again I’m not even adding in Social Security benefits in this yet) if they chose to retire early. These folks have another 7 to 15 years in the workforce if they choose to retire in their mid 60s.
Thats not “chartering jets to Monaco” money, but its a very comfortable retirement. That was realistically attainable for lots and lots of people in tech after working for 15-25 years.
There were lots of IT jobs that paid decently (not amazingly) and if you worked for that one company for 20 years you would NOT have the money I’m talking about. To get this in IT required chasing newer technologies (or sometimes chasing specific older ones), and changing jobs frequently, usually every year or two but sometimes as short as only a few months. The trick is (which took me longer to figure out than I’d like to admit) that corporate annual raises were minuscule. You’d work your ass off for maybe a 2%-5% raise each year. Whereas if you did the exact same work and effort and changed jobs your new employer would give you essentially as low as 15% and sometimes as high as 400% salary increases in a year. You can quickly imagine that you only have to do this a handful of times for your annual salary to be huge. Think about how long it would take you to have a million dollars if you were making $180k to $400k and invest that savings ten years ago.
I know many one that has actually chosen to retire early even though many have the funds to do so. When you’re at the end, you’re at your peak earning phase. So working just a few more years means massive increases in retirement income. This is the bit of a trap that keeps you working voluntarily. Sometimes retirement gets forced early with RIF/redundancy/layoffs in your 60s and you may not be able to get another tech job however.
The even more risky path if you want the many multimillionaire path, is you started your own business. High risk of failure, especially tech types that don’t know the business side, but for those that have the right partners/help and can thread the needle, this is the tech path to the tens of millions of dollars of wealth.
I’m talking all non-C level here, just technologists/individual contributors. At most they might be project or tech leads, but they’re still not executives. I don’t know the executive C-level advancement track so I can’t speak to it. Maybe the folks you know were the ones Doctorow was talking about. If the smartest man you know didn’t know to trade up or cash out, then maybe he was one that was in it for “vocational awe”. Do you have any knowledge as to why he didn’t trade up or cash out?