79 replies
1d3h
Wild. I vaguely remember this founder spending an obscene amount of money on some boutique firm to give homepage a small update.
Seems he exited the Google grind about 6 years ago. I guess salaries were between $180-250K during that time frame.
Google grinder for 6 years: $1,080,000-$1,500,000
Entrepreneur: “$920k over four years (with sale)”, but doesn’t include the 2 bombs he had prior to successful exit.
(None of these figures taken into account taxes or benefits)
Seems like he took an L, but in the end at least he didn’t end up in the salt mines. The education of learning as you go is truly underrated though.
This mindset assumes that the only measure of success is monetary. If he left Google to try and get richer than staying at Google, then sure, he probably lost.
However, he kept trying again before job hunting or returning to big tech. This tells me the monetary factor was smaller than something else.
You mention the underrated educational experience in your last sentence, but there's so much more than that. He was probably never worried about his autonomy, being laid off, working with (or for) people he didn't want to work with, corporate politics, or anything else corporate bureaucracy introduces. This likely freed up his brain to be more creative and actually be used to 100% of its capacity.
I believe the obsession with TC in tech is highly problematic and there are a lot of talented folks optimizing for promotions via internal politics, rather than solving real problems for real people.
I also wish healthcare wasn't tied to employment, but that's a post for another time.
How is healthcare tied to employment? Isn't it available to buy on the open market?
In US buying medical services without insurance is very expensive. You choices are:
- get health insurance from your employer
- get covered by insurance of your spouse
- buy insurance from your own pocket
- don't buy insurance and risk loosing a lot of money in case of health emergency
My wife runs her own consulting business, I’m taking a break from tech work. This means we buy insurance on the federal marketplace (healthcare.gov).
It is expensive, but not insanely so. Family of four, living in Oregon, non-smoking, our premium is ~$1k/month. Granted it’s a high deductible ($12k), but it protects us from the kind of catastrophic emergency that could wipe out our savings. We are fortunate to not have expensive, ongoing conditions.
Granted, $12k/year is a lot for less affluent families, but government subsidies can bring the premium down considerably if your income is low enough.
And while the coverage is far inferior to my old FAANG luxury health plans, it still works well enough.
Family of two, living in the EU, non-smoking, our premium is ~€0/month. Granted it's a €0 deductible, but it protects us from the kind of catastrophic emergency that could wipe out our savings.
Are you unemployed? Otherwise, this is just not true. Assuming OP and his wife earn average incomes for academics in the US, they'd pay 2x ~920 USD per month in Germany, totaling 80% more than the premium and only 9% less than the worst case scenario of OP having to pay the full deductible.
Average salary for a full professor in the US is $129K, which would put it closer to $800.
That being said, the average professor salary in Germany is around 84,000 Euro, so it's closer to $560 a month.
You also ignore that after the high deductible is paid in the US you're still paying co-insurance and co-pays. (I love how US health insurers describe these as "your contribution" to your healthcare costs, as if you weren't already paying premiums and deductibles, but the magical insurance fairy is...).
Yeah but you need to put the 1k OP pays into the context of US salaries, not German salaries.
Healthcare delivery in the US is — not good.
Absolutely, that's why you hear about rich Americans traveling internationally to have their medical procedures done.
But after taxes and lower salary, I bet you're more than $12k/yr behind an equivalent US employee's net earnings yes?
Yes 100%. You can make 50k as a developer in London or 250k in California.
This is flat out not true. Your health insurance is paid by your employer, and it's not at all cheap. If you were self-employed, you would be paying for your own health insurance. This is de facto the same system as in the US, except it's a criminal offence not to purchase insurance.
In the next-door Czech Republic, it's even mandatory to buy health insurance if you're unemployed, unless you go and register with the 'Ministry of Labour' (which requires you to spend inordinate amounts of time jumping through insane bureaucratic hoops, and is ultimately time limited). Consider for a moment the effect of these laws on people with mental health issues, the homeless, and itinerant minorities like the Roma.
Had a tough year out on the streets, but now getting back up on your feet? Congratulations, here's your back-debt for the 'public' health insurance you failed to purchase, you criminal. Want to take a few months off between jobs? Gotta go down, in person, to your local health insurance office to purchase yourself some public health insurance. Want to start a new business, but haven't made a profit yet? No worries, here's your 'minimum rate' of mandatory health insurance - prepare to shell out several thousand euros a year and spend time every quarter filing paperwork with the government health insurance bureau.
There are excellent public health care systems out there (e.g. Australia, and probably the Nordic countries) but much of continental Europe has truly terrible ones. And that's before you even discuss the difficulty of securing a doctor, or the actual quality of medical care received.
Taxes you pay pay for this, or your employer pays it instead of paying you.
Now you can argue that health care costs less on a per basis, or even per productive taxpayer basis, but that's a different matter. Maybe the US could recreate your healthcare COST system, but it doesn't have to also take on your payment system (tax instead of direct)
Your premium is paid by your employer. Please revisit the statement when you are self-employed.
Also, turns out there is a deductible if you don't want to pay a fortune for self-insurance.
Well, at least there is in Germany. And the premium ends up being ~$1k/month.
US health insurance is crappy in many ways, but EU health insurance isn't a magic fairy unicorn either.
:). If only people in America understood how they are being scammed by the Health Insurance Mafia.
I had the misfortune of suffering through a multiple sclerosis diagnosis when I was just 18-years-old, and the bottom line cost for that (only outpatient care) was approaching $50k in 2001. I imagine that price has more than doubled since. It caused my financial condition and professional development to crash and stall just as it was beginning. It’s impossible to know what might have been, but I sincerely believe that my circumstances, and the limited options for mitigating their long term effects, cost me (and by extension, society) at least 10x that initial bottom line cost in missed opportunities, and lost productivity/wages.
What makes the issue so terribly entrenched, apart from our peculiar association between health insurance and employment, is how utterly opaque everything about healthcare costs are. Both systemically, in that it’s much more difficult to craft policy, as well as practically, in that for many (most?) individuals it can be impossible to know in advance how much any given course of treatment might cost, and no opportunities for “shopping around” or price comparisons.
For most Americans, and companies, I think our healthcare system is essentially a very short-sighted and inefficient tax. For others—people in situations such as mine, and very probably for a meaningful portion of the ~30M-50M Americans still uninsured/underinsured—it’s an unreasonably high burden that accounts for so much more than just the money spent, and a constant specter clouding their lives in uncertainty and risks. For the self-employed and entrepreneurs, it’s a crucial consideration that defies simple calculations, and just by the averages will have prevented a significant number of potential endeavors from ever leaving the initial planning stage and/or denied startups access to otherwise valuable talent. We should be pursuing bigger picture policies, and while I’m not arguing that the federal government is a good answer to everything, it’s clearly the answer to this kind of management of universal needs with clear societal benefits.
Sorry for the lengthy comment, my hamster brain was apparently restless. For anyone who did, thanks for taking the time to read.
Thanks for sharing your story.
It’s a tragedy that universal healthcare and tougher regulation against unhealthy food is still not achieved.
If you don’t mind me asking, what advice would you share to deal with such diagnosis and making it through?
In other words, buy it on the market, like the GP said.
With ACA subsidies, you'll never have to pay more than 8.5% of your income in premiums for a mid-range plan. And that's in the worst case -- it'll typically be less (if you make less, you'll qualify for larger subsidies or free healthcare, and if you make more, the proportional cost of insurance premiums will be lower).
In the US there is the affordable care act from ~2013, where anyone can purchase insurance from a pooled market subsidized by the government up to a certain income (50k I think). But that is also impacted by the state you live in, as the states negotiate the contracts paid by federal dollars (I know it's effed up). So the ACA is cheaper on the west coast than it is in Alabama. Today, a "gold" policy for a single man in his 40's is about $900/month through the ACA. The cheaper "emergency" plans (aka "trash" plans) appended by Trump are still a few hundred dollars, but cover almost nothing.
I now pay $120 for me and my wife for a plan that is better than the $1000 plan through the ACA in Oregon because I'm no longer self employed.
That's almost a 10x difference.
After working for myself for 12 years, hustling consulting and contracting gigs, I'm way happier working for a company that pays well, has great benefits, and I always know I have a paycheck coming.
I have a feeling your employer is paying the difference, so basically you're paying one way or another.
Exactly this. People feel like wages have not been increasing. In reality wages have been increasing, but employers are passing most of the increase over to health insurers.
No feeling that is the reality. But corporations get steep discounts. They pay about half to a quarter of what I would pay on my own.
Look at box 12 code DD on your W-2. That is the total amount you are paying for your health insurance (it’s just that your employer is paying it directly). It’s still counted in the cost of employing you though, obviously.
Assuming you have a silver or gold level plan, total cost to insure you and your wife is the same on healthcare.gov or if your employer buys it.
The only broad savings are if your employer is self insuring and their risk pool (employees and their families) are disproportionately low risk (young and single).
It is much lower than what I would pay on ACA.
I wonder if your employer sponsored plan is not ACA compliant.
Health insurance has a 2% profit margin, and premiums are tightly regulated by state insurance commissioners. So a wildly different premium indicates a change in coverage, or a change in the underlying risk pool.
For an annual out of pocket maximum of $10k to $18k and age rating factors capping age 64 premiums to 3x age 21, the minimum bronze/silver monthly premium should be somewhere in the ~$400 to $1,200 depending on age. For example, see NJ’s premiums here:
https://www.nj.gov/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcrates20...
Employer-offered plans tend to be extremely good value, so the vast majority take advantage of them.
I was paying <~$300/mo on that plan. I now pay over $700 on a directly-acquired plan. So that's problem one.
The bigger problem, IMHO, is that quitting means changing your insurance, which isn't just a financial change. It can also end up requiring you to change medical providers, which is no small deal!
This adds massive friction and stress to the act of quitting/changing jobs, a major source of leverage on the employer's side.
And that's to say nothing of the fact that it's effectively an overly burdensome tax on new entrepreneurs. It's a reinforcement of the concept, "you have to have money to make money".
JMHO on the topic; for reference, I'm a new entrepreneur very early in the process. I'm just lucky enough to be able to risk the attempt.
This is relatively small pickles. Your employer paying a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars on your behalf if you are old, per month. You can buy the same on healthcare.gov
You actually can’t. There are off market and on market plans. Even though it’s by the same insurer, on market insurance is only taken by 50% of the places that take the off marketplace plans. Been down that road a few years ago and it was a disaster. Ended up getting a great plan for my company through the state chamber of commerce.
In my experience in west and northeast coast states, the plans are the same assuming they are ACA compliant. The employer even shows the same gold/silver metal level labels when you select a plan, and I’ve always had BCBS plans, which has the same networks via employer or via healthcare.gov
They only things that I expect to change are total premium, deductible, out of pocket expense, copays, and network. Otherwise, the coverage itself is dictated by the same law.
I can see right now that the BCBS gold HSA premium from my employer (total, including employer portion) is the same as the BCBS gold HSA available on healthcare.gov.
I think it will be (much) more expensive, but I am not an expert.
The healthcare available on the open market wasn't good last I checked. The premiums were much higher than what my employer and I pay combined, the max out-of-pocket was worse, the deductible was worse, the coverage for uncommon medications was nearly nil, and so on.
Your employer typically pays the major of the premium.
Money is time, and time that is free to choose is more freedom to spend your time how you please, and work on things that may not need to have a financial half.
"More freedom" sounds amazing right up until the point you remember that you aren't getting a salary every month but still need to pay rent and buy food and stuff...
Pro-tip: use a portion of your freedom to exchange goods and services for money to pay rent and purchase provisions from Food & Stuff®.
“…it’s where I buy my food, and most of my stuff.” ~ Ron Swanson
Holy hell the pessimism in this thread over a life-changing amount of money for 99% of people.
You should feel privileged that you've never been "stuck" at a job that you don't find personally interesting and stimulating. Wasting your life to see the number in your bank account increase.
Half a million isn't really that much.
less then quarter mill after taxes.
This is capital gains, meaning 15-20% in taxes. Nowhere near half.
Why is it capital gains?
Because he is either selling his shares in the company, or the individual assets owned by the company, either way it should be taxed as capital gains.
20% + 10% state income tax for many here
spoken like an employee ;)
welcome to the world of capital gains and QSBS!
I moved country before selling my first business for that reason.
might have been QSBS, so no taxes < $10m
Half a million dollars would be a life-changing amount to the vast majority of the American population.
I would be very curious how life changing that would be for the average HN user.
It's pretty close to my FIRE number. Of course, I don't live in an expensive city.
I don't make FAAANGGGG money, but I'm a pretty well paid programmer for this area and that amount would pay off the balance on my mortgage. Hell, I'd be completely debt-free if someone threw half a million in my direction and have enough left over to buy the wife a top of the line pickup truck or two. So yeah, I'd definitely consider it life changing.
But to an experienced programmer making a fraction of that a year at Google, it's not that much.
For someone being so pedantic about a half million dollar payday I would've expected you to consider that any amount above or below that is technically "a fraction."
That's 10 years of work for the average american.
It's more like 2-3 years in this industry.
But only a few years of work for author.
You could start planning your FIRE with $500k.
It’s 18–24k per year in perpetuity. You can have a decent living on this much in a sizeable part of the world. Not in SV though. But still, it’s nothing to sneeze at.
It's not just half a million, he made more in business profits before the sale.
HN moment
Assuming he was a senior SWE, he would have made around $400k / yr staying at Google.
I suppose if he can parlay this outcome into an L7 role at Google, E.G, then in another 6 years he would break even (compared to staying at L5)
$400k for Senior is an outlier.
According to Levels.fyi - and my personal contacts - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... Median TC - something just-south of $300k TC (not salary) is more likely.
Furthermore, the higher you go, a greater proportion comes as RSUs, not cash - even if it was $400k TC, a good chunk of that is money you literally can't spend for a couple of years.
RSUs aren't really a big deal due to the way it vests.
But you're right that the TC of the average Google (or even FAANG) job has become somewhat mythical on the internet lately. I'm in a Slack where people have been asking about offers and TC for a long time. There are a lot of disappointed people who think they're walking into $500-600K job offers only to realize that they're "only" getting $300K from multiple companies.
Honestly quite frustrating, given that $300K with excellent benefits is an incredible job offer, but these people have been primed for disappointment due to unrealistic expectations.
As a counterpoint, $500k+ is definitely achievable if you're interviewing as an L5 at a FAANG. It has been for a few years, actually. Of course you'll need to negotiate, maybe have a few counteroffers, but it's doable.
I get being disappointed about $300k. Many companies are offering that for non-seniors (Google L4 equivalent) now. I distinctly recall TikTok offering well north of $300k cash for just 2 YoE a few years ago, and Meta offers have risen similarly.
I'd also be pretty sad if I interviewed elsewhere as an L5 and got offered less than what I made as a 2 YoE L4 (and many years ago, prior to inflation at that.)
Oh dude, Levels is so out of date! Don't actually use it for serious negotiation. Levels systemically removes "outlier" offers, and people with good offers don't post until they leave 2 years later. So there's a huge lagging+dampening factor when you use Levels. It should be more of a "minimum offer" calibration.
$500k for senior (L5) is kind of the expected offer these days. If you are interviewing at FAANG you are doing a huge disservice by using Levels and settling for $300k when you can pretty easily get $500k.
I joined a FAANG a couple years ago at $550k TC or so at 4 YoE for senior. It's grown to about $950k due to stock growth. I'm not sure what you mean by "I can't touch the money for a few years," I get a portion of it every few months.
Vesting for each grant starts at one year and is monthly after that. So you're really only waiting one year for the first big chunk of stock to be liquid. 400k TC at Google means that you have 400k (pre-tax) liquid at the end of the year (depending on the stock price, which has historically gone up).
It's goofy to see people talking numbers and completely disregarding the mess that is Google's culture right now from the mass layoffs.
Everything has non-monetary costs associated with it. Chasing L7 means more politicking and less actually making things if I understand it correctly. Maybe that's invigorating to some people (am convinced people get off on fighting over artificially scarce resources), but I don't understand them one bit.
With promotions, equity, and stock price growth (+220% over the last 5 years), probably closer to 2 or 2.5M of Google income.
Stock price growth isn't a huge distinguishing factor unless you're acknowledging that we're looking in hindsight and expect that he would have been one of the employees to leave those equity grants in GOOG shares and never touch them. Anyone can convert realized gains to Google stock (including the slightly better GOOGL shares instead of the GOOG shares most employees get from their RSUs), and the fees for converting unrealized gains to Google stock aren't enormous compared to a 26% annual return.
You're right it's not huge but (in hindsight) it's not negligible either. Because the vesting schedule is 4 years for each grant, the employees have no choice but to leave the shares in GOOG for 1-4 years.
I also remembered his post about dropping $50k on the site redesign*
I actually thought it was a big W for him when I saw this post. But I guess, if you consider the opportunity cost of Google employment, it's a financial L.
* https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot-redesign/
Based on my reading here he was just offered a no-interview re-hire at Google, and decided not to take it. So calling that and L or W seems to take too few factors into account.
I don't think he took an L at all. He now has successfully built, and sold a company. While being a dev at Google is somewhat elite, the number of people who have executed a successful sale is a tiny fraction of the number of FANG devs (or whatever we're calling FANG now).
There is a very high probability he gets offered a CEO position at some company that is looking for an exit path. That type of thing will usually come with a nice salary and a minimum 7 figure payout on exit.
As of this specific date, his bank account might be slightly lower than had he stayed at Google. 5 years from now it will almost certainly be significantly higher, and if it is not, it is more likely because he chose a path that he preferred.
Pretty sure indiehackers don't get offered CEO positions.
Also 100% sure that his next business will be many times more successful than Tiny Pilot.
This is so strange to read.
He learned and experienced so much more than he could have at Google. He actually built and sold a profitable company.
What’s life if we reduce it to how much money we could have earned?
This was basically a sponsored super MBA with 250k annual stipend.
What’s really wild is when people assume that everyone shares their value system
It also appears you haven’t met anyone truly wealthy, because I can tell you they don’t share your point of view
Your numbers come out to $250K/year at Google and $230K/year as an entrepreneur. That's a small price to pay for this kind of real-world education.
There's no guarantee his next business will be successful -- but there's no guarantee that those kinds of Google positions are going to keep existing, either.
On the other hand, there's also the chance that his next business could be massively more successful because of lessons learned, and open the way to much higher amounts than he could have been earning at Google were he still there.
Overall, I think it was a massive win for him. And it may have been more beneficial to society than the work he was doing at Google.
Should be a tax advantage to the non-grind income. $920k with 20% fed + 5% state capital gains tax?
That’s the hint you aren’t comparing like kinds.