Aren’t you trading brake wear for transmission/engine wear?

I don’t think taxi and landing wear the brakes evenly. Landing must be something like 99% of the brake wear in <30 seconds of braking it takes for the plane to stop.

From the stats I’ve seen, the distribution is about:

SWE ~ 30%

Senior ~ 45%

Staff ~ 15%

Senior Staff < 5%

So the majority of employees are senior engineers with staff being achievable.

In terms of layoffs, the FANG companies really haven’t had any major cuts until after COVID. Although Amazon PIPs like 10% of their workforce every year or something.

The problem with interviewing is we haven’t found a better solution that’s scalable. I’ve got some idea for smaller companies but when you’re larger it’s a different challenge.

The hard part is getting an offer from a top company in the first place. It’s a lot of luck and the interview process is designed more to avoid bad engineers than it is to find good ones.

Getting to senior shouldn’t be too difficult for any competent engineer. Getting to staff requires significantly more effort.

Also until recently these companies never did lay offs. You had to be PIP’d before being let go.

The real trap is joining a startup. Unless you’re very early it’s a huge roll of the dice.

Oof Unity is just bad luck. Most other tech stocks have done well.

Most big tech will vest monthly/quarterly and you can setup an auto sell when your stock has vested. This is literally cash in your bank account every vesting period.

You got RSUs(restricted stock units) from a startup?

For startups those will usually be options (not RSUs) which do not materialize until an exit event. There can be liquidity events before exit as well if the company is doing well.

RSUs are usually offered by publicly traded companies and basically as good (or better) than cash.

RSUs aren’t imaginary. They can be sold for cash once vested.

And I was addressing this:

Hope you’re willing to relocate to SF and still spend 50+% of your income on housing you will never own.

If you get a good offer from big tech to move to a high CoL area, it can be worth it because the offers are that good. You will be able to pay off a home within a decade. Even if you start at entry level you will be expected to be promoted within a couple of years. For most hirees this will already make them senior. It’s expected that everyone can eventually make it to senior.

I wasn’t suggesting someone randomly move to SF without an excellent employment opportunity.

As for startup equity, one could argue it shouldn’t be considered part of total comp since most startups do not exit successfully and even fewer exit in a way where the payout will be comparable to a big tech salary.

Are we talking about the big tech companies or a SWE at a non tech company?

Because ALL the big tech firms will have similar levels of TC. For example a staff SWE at Google in SF will make $267k cash and $292k stock according to levels.fyi. This cash amount can reasonably be $6000 after taxes. Note that the stock vests monthly. You can literally auto-sell the stock for an extra 100+% cash every month.

Meta vests quarterly which is still sufficiently often and they pay even more stock.

Netflix is known not to grant stock but they will pay the equivalent in cash.

Amazon has a graduated vesting policy but the annual TC is still normalized.

If $6197 is your only form of compensation per two weeks, then that’s not a big tech salary. you can go make that outside a high CoL area. But if you live in SF, it’s a reasonable cash deposit for a staff SWE (except Netflix).

1. Ok if you’re considering a single income family then the numbers change since you’re paying more for housing but less in taxes. Say instead of 50% tax rate it’s now 45%, which is $330k take home.

2. Cash is only a portion of the total comp. You have to either consider publicly tradable RSUs or equity pre IPO. This can be 50+% of the cash salary. At staff or higher levels, this grows to 100+%. My assumption of $600k TC is a $300k cash and $300k stock, which is reasonable for a staff engineer.

$330k - $80k (housing) - $50k (expenses) = $200k

So with these numbers you’re still saving $200+k a year.

Note that if we’re talking dual income families, the numbers are even more in your favor.

The math still works out. $40,000/year on rent, 50% tax rate at $600k/year total comp for a mid/high level engineer (if you’ve been working for a while). So after rent you’re taking in $240k/year. Let’s say your other expenses are another $40k.

That’s $200k saved per year. In some places that’s your entire annual salary!

So you’ve saved $1m after working 5 years.

Realistically the equity is worth a lot more over time due to tech stocks generally performing well and long term capital gains.

Don’t forget those sweet RSUs too!

Isn’t this 🇷🇺?

U.S. aid has slowed to a trickle in 2025.

Is this different from the California law? Do you support that one?

Isn’t that how the proposed law was going to work?

They’ll use 1/1000th of an inch, a “thou”. But at that point it’s basically metric but worse.

I think you meant to respond a couple comments up the chain.

What does that have to do with orbits and reentry angle?

Low earth orbit is most survivable reentry trajectory… coming in at a higher angle significantly increases the heating.