Users flag stories, not the mods. If you have enough points, you van "vouch" for a comment. I don't know if it works at the story level. I don't see that option at least.
I seem to remember being able to vouch for stories. Maybe the karma limits have changed? Or it is also very possible I only remember being able to vouch for comments and confusing the two.
Does anybody have experience in China? I heard a lot that their train system is much better at this point. So, for example, the same distance will take almost two times less in China.
In my experience (primarily in the south), high speed rail in China is fast if you only consider station to station time, but the amount of bureaucracy at either end is comparable to flying. You can't buy tickets without ID, you can rarely find same day tickets, there's no option for standing carriage, there's numerous security checkpoints and lots of lining up. It's best to arrive at the station an hour plus beforehand with prebooked tickets. Meanwhile the stations themselves are often way outside the urban centers you probably wanted to visit and there's not much nearby to do that isn't overpriced shopping mall/chain store stuff. You also can't leave and reenter the stations at will, you have to pass through security each time, just like an airport.
I found traveling by slow train or long distance bus much more pleasant in China because you can just walk in, buy a ticket to wherever and head out the same day. They take ages and there are all the usual delays, but the experience is much less stressful and more comparable to the train experience people from other countries might expect.
All that said, I'd still pick Chinese high speed rail over flying just for emissions reasons if nothing else.
They have lots of options (fast/slow/sleeper/premium/etc..): https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/display.aspx?t... and also pricing is more predictable. In general, it's only a bit cheaper than flying but China rail stations are usually in the center of their cities, so you save 30minx2 vs the airport.
in beijing and in changsha the primary high speed railway stations are almost as far out from the city as the airports. shanghai is also at one of the airport (the one that is closer to the city at least). i believe several other cities are similar. the problem is that chinese cities are huge, so looking at the map it feels like the trainstations are in the city, but then the same is true for many airports.
The trains in China are amazing. Most of the current track has been built in the last ten years. They’re done connecting major cities, so now we’re seeing high speed lines to places like Beijing suburbs, which turn multiple-hour car rides into 40 minute train rides.
For trips up to about 1500km I’ll favor the train because it’s just more comfortable — security checks are sane, no luggage check, and more leg room. Beijing to Shanghai could be faster by train or by plane depending on which airport you fly into, and where your destination is within the city.
Beijing to HK is a different story. The fastest trains to Shenzhen (right across from HK) are currently 7h50m, compared to a 3.5 hr flight. An overnight sleeper is a good option, especially if you have 3 friends to travel with.
It’s brand new and they have put in place modern technologies everywhere. So it works very well.
Amusingly, China uses pieces of technology which were developed in Europe for its train system. Signalling is a good exemple (CTCS is basically ETCS). Europe is as usual deploying at a snail pace while China put it everywhere.
It was obvious from the start it would end up this way. China is an actual country while Europe is a loose collection of countries which don’t really like each other supposedly spearheaded by Germany which actually only cares about pushing policies in its own interest and actively hinder anything else, and France which remains stuck thirty years in the past and is actively being sabotaged by most of the things the EU forces it to do regarding infrastructure (more true in energy than in rail that being said).
The New York Central 999 broke 160km/hr in the 19th century. The US had commercial express train service running at similar speeds in the early 1900s. Outside the TGV Europe isn’t a few years behind they are like a century behind.
I guess it is a century behind because Europe hasn't scrapped their commuter rail for roads. I took a train from Manhattan today and its theoretical max speed is 110 mile/h, so the US has fallen behind Europe by your logic.
That’s non sense. TGV speed record is 320km/h by the way and 160km/h is a pedestrian daily occurrence on the French rail system. Meanwhile the US has somehow decided trains are for freight and as no decent rail system in place for travellers.
The discussion makes sense with China which is pushing forward quickly using new tech. The US is not even part of it.
It doesn't have much to do with "China being an actual country".
Germany alone is also an actual country and the trains inside it's borders are super slow.
In China and Japan, many long distance trains get 320 km/h average speed!
The German ICE "machine" could theoretically also do that speed but there are barely any tracks where this is possible, so the average speed is around 3x slower.
In France and Italy it is much better. TGV and Frecciarossa trains usually operate much closer to their specced speeds.
germany is making the big mistake of mixed use tracks. in china high speed tracks are dedicated to high speed trains, and a high speed connection means dedicated high speed tracks for the whole trip. germany is creating a patchwork of high speed routes thinking that this is enough to make high speed trains work.
The slowness regarding rolling out things like ETCS, ATS and standardised European infrastructure as everything to do with Europe not being an actual united political entity. As you rightfully pointed, some EU members rail strategy is very dubious.
I did a small survey around my circle and I got response that I did not believe. The majority of developers are using LLMs at least 10-20% time. There are some developers that more than 40% of their code are written by LLMs.
It would be great if stackoverflow and/or similar companies do the developer survey in the industry.
I think 20% is easily believable. LLM may not do more complex functions or work with your data, but a lot of the busywork of coding is done almost instantly. Just not having to look through library docs or sort through StackOverflow is already worth 10%.
I don't think LLM will replace software engineers anytime soon, as a whole, but removing the need for the bottom 10% is not a stretch at all. That has massive implications for salary, imo, except for the top end.
If we think about the demand and supply of the market, since developers will spend less time writing code, they will have more time to solve other parts of a project. This overall increase in productivity could eventually decrease the number of developers needed. In the past, if a project needed five developers, it could eventually be done by two developers. Hence, the market will need less developers than before.
the cost of fixing and maintaining the AI generated code will turn out to be enormous and a lot of code will need to be thrown away and re-written from scratch by experienced developers
It was only seven years ago that Google introduced “Transformers,” and today we see a completely different level of LLMs. Do you think this development will stop? Maybe it won’t be LLMs alone that do reasoning better than humans, but five years ago, nobody expected that we would have today’s performance.
the need for less developers will actually increase the demand because it will be easier for smaller companies or business not related to tech to have a software department.
I'm wondering if there is a research about which percentile of these two groups became rich:
People who started a company vs People who worked for Tech companies.
Unless you're very early (and/or very lucky), you can't get "rich" (i.e., can choose never to work again and can invest in many other things) as an employee (though of course a highly-paid employee can become very well off and comfortable).
Yes you need to be lucky to get super-rich as a founder too, but you have a lot more control, i.e., you make the primary decisions that determine whether the company will make good products that people will use/buy.
How rich do you insist on being? The bar to "can choose never to work again" is surprisingly low, it just requires a high savings rate which is quite achievable in this line of work.
“Never work again” money is crazy-high for younger folks (like, not already close to qualifying for Medicare) in the US, on account of the costs and financial risks of our healthcare system.
Most of the FIRE bloggers who bother to account for this—like MMM—have a (perhaps implicit) fallback plan of returning to work somewhere with decent health insurance if they or a family member becomes very sick, but that’s quite a gamble.
(Never mind that a bunch of those sorts have jobs and couldn’t remain comfortably “retired” without them—god I really hate that part of the blogosphere, “look it’s so easy you dumb idiot” but then you start reading between the lines and realize how much of it’s just a bit)
> “Never work again” money is crazy-high for younger folks (like, not already close to qualifying for Medicare) in the US, on account of the costs and financial risks of our healthcare system.
Exchange plans are fine enough, and like, they're not that cheap, but they're also not that expensive either. Depending on how much you make from investments on your never have to work again horde, you may be able to qualify for rate subsidies, and then it's even less expensive. In my county, if I were 64 years old, assigned male at birth, I'm looking at about $17,000/year for a Blue Cross Bronze plan (less costly options available), with $9,200 out of pocket max. Budgeting $26,000/year for healthcare means less than $1 M should cover you for life (assume 3% perpetual withdrawal rate). Rates are lower for younger people, but budgeting based on current costs for the oldest people should help the numbers work. Double the budget if you have a spouse; do some math if you have kids you need to cover until they become independent. Definitely make sure you work until you have earned Medicare eligibility, cause it'll be handy when you reach that age.
Is $1-2 M crazy-high? Kind of, but depending on what your annual withdrawal rate target was, maybe you can just say if you've got enough to pull $100,000/year, you're good on healthcare too. Hopefully most years you won't hit the out of pocket max.
> maybe you can just say if you've got enough to pull $100,000/year, you're good on healthcare too.
You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan. You’ll be burning nearly half of that (and spending all your free time trying to keep hospitals and insurers taking even more) if one of you gets cancer—or, if it’s you who gets cancer, you better hope someone else can handle that.
You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do, because your fund needs to last a lot longer despite inflation and such. $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
[edit] at constant 2% inflation (ha!) you need a very safe source of consistent (not average!) 6% returns to retire with 80,000/yr income on $2m, without eating into principal. Anything goes wrong (“whoops, ‘safe’ wasn’t as safe as I thought!” or “whoops, we had a year of 7% inflation and my investments didn’t benefit from that!”) and you can find yourself burning principal while your account value is already down. It won’t take a lot of that before $80k is no longer your safe-withdrawal amount. A couple such years and you may be back to work. 30+ years is a long time…
[edit edit] also damn under $10k max out of pocket on a family plan at the bronze level for $17k? I gotta get out of my shithole state. That’s better than our Gold plans (also our plans tend not to cover like 2/3 of area providers, which may include 100% of area specialists for certain situations)
> You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do
Solvable, including consideration of valuations via CAPE PE 10. Based on past data, the safe withdrawal rate (SWR) happens to be around 3.25-3.5% of assets to extend to a 60-year time horizon [1]
> at constant 2% inflation (ha!) you need a very safe source of consistent (not average!) 6% returns to retire with 80,000/yr income on $2m, without eating into principal.
For most of this research, "failure" constitutes running out of money. Preserving the initial portfolio value in inflation-adjusted terms can also be solved for. It takes the SWR closer to 2.8-3% for 60-year horizon with high equity valuation corrections.
> You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan.
Better to cap expenses and be ready to pay for it than live in fear. Save, invest, and move on with life.
> $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
Depends on how much money you need to spend every year to be happy. Sounds like you need a lot of it. For many, $2m would be fine, even with a very long time horizon. And if any problems crop up, there would be a 15-20 year warning during which a small income boost could top things up.
My budget includes the premiums and the individual out of pocket max. If that's not good enough, what number am I supposed to be looking at? My with a spouse budget is just 2x the individual budget, family out of pockets are usually around 2x individual in my neck of the woods, so that doesn't make a big difference; if there's kids, then it would, but the modelling there gets tricky because you've got to figure out what age you're kicking them off the plan (assuming they don't have a debilitating condition that leaves them dependent on you for their whole life... that falls outside my plan).
> You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do, because your fund needs to last a lot longer despite inflation and such. $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
The $2 M is the budged accumulation only to pay for premiums and out of pocket until you hit Medicare; and that's assuming a spouse. Budgeting that based on perpetual withdrawl rate gives yet another buffer, because it only has to last until Medicare eligibility age. Yeah, there's unknowns, but whatever. I'm not saying $2 M is enough to accumulate for early retirement. It could be, but a lot of people want to spend more money than that. $2 M doesn't generate that much income, so you'll likely qualify for health plan subsidies, which would help a bit too.
Edit: I used zipcode 98110, birthday for illustration 01/01/1960. Going into the less expensive side of my state, zipcode 99336; there's no blue cross out there, but the most expensive bronze plan for that birthdate is $14,000 / year with the same $9200 out of pocket max. And yeah, limited networks suck ... I'm not going to shop for hypotheticals there --- I'm pretty sure if there's no reasonable in network doctors, you can fight your insurance to get covered at a reasonable doctor, regardless of the insurance and state, and if you're early retired, you'll have time for it.
Some people think that if you can't spend a million dollars a year on healthcare for 50 years, you are poor. In a sense they are right, because nothing is more valuable than life, but if you lower your expectations beyond the tippy top 0.1%, and take up a nice hobby like skydiving or motorcycling, you can get by with a lot less.
In the context of this article we're talking about the difference between the kind of rich you become from founding a hugely successful ("unicorn?") tech company, vs working hard for a salary for years and saving hard. It's more a qualitative thing than a specific number of dollars saved from a salary.
I'm well aware that the definition of rich can be very different in other contexts. I'm talking about the context of this article.
Threshold for wealthy enough to "never work again" is actually very high if you have a mortgage and a couple kids you want to put through school, and are thinking about living past 75. Even here in Canada where healthcare is not really a cost, retirement and nursing homes constitute a huge expense that could go on for years in your last phase.
I'm sitting on the accumulated wealth of 25 rather up-and-downish years in this industry, 10 years at Google, an almost paid-off mortgage, and a decent lump sum I got from when Google bought my employer, I turn 50 this year, and there's no way I can retire. Not without selling my home and moving somewhere a lot cheaper (hard to find here).
Maybe I've made some bad financial choices (not that many), but mostly it's that compensation packages in our industry are set just high enough to keep people on the upper side of comfortable middle class.
If you don't own capital -- haven't invested in rental properties or starting your own business --getting out of the job market isn't really a thing before 65 for most people even in our very well compensated industry.
If I were single or it were just me and my wife, sure.
I've been through tldroptions, and looked at enough options agreement given out by startups in the last few years, to know that as an IC engineer... even if you are lucky enough to be part of the very few startups that have a liquidity event... you're likely gonna get $300k, $400k USD tops.
Unless you're 25 and can shove that in the bank without touching it at all... that's not the life changing event some people think it is. Once the gov't takes their share, it's enough for a house downpayment or a very nice car, and you're certainly not going mortgage free with it.
Hmmm. I don't know exactly what your personal financial circumstances are...but from what I understand salaries and benefits to be at Google, you're getting paid plenty, and it should be possible to save at least some of that. Do it for ten years, put it in a nice boring low-cost index fund, and watch the investment returns roll in, and you're looking at a pretty big nest egg by normal people standards.
Part of the complication is the insane housing price inflation that has happened in Canada, combined with the relatively lower compensation rates of SWEs here. Also I don't work at Google anymore.
Even very early these days won't get you much. Just a bit of a lump sum you could apply to your 401k/RRSP or whatever and inch you ahead by 5-10 years on retirement. If you got it early enough in your life (20s, 30s) that it can gain interest. VCs and founders are writing stock option agreements these days with very low ownership stakes for even very early employees.
Back in the early y2ks, and late 90s, yes, you could get rich and be up and out if you were lucky and played your cards right. Those days are done.
There are tens of not hundreds of thousands of people who could retire comfortably after working at Google, Facebook, Apple, MSFT for a decade during their growth years. How many startup founders can do that?
Sure, becoming a billionaire is a different story but who cares?
While agreed the chances are still low, if you joined Tesla or Nvidia in the last 10 years and especially before 2020, you very well and likely are rich if you're still working at either and kept all your stock.
Hell if you joined Facebook last year and got in when the stock was around 100, your initial equity grant just 5x.
You could have been investing in Nvidia the whole time.
Decision inertia means that employees often don't sell vested stock, and end up being lucky. Similarly, external investors aren't willing to put 30-50% of their networth into one bet and therefore miss out on the kind of luck that can set them up for life.
There is nothing that a lowly engineer at Tesla or Nvidia knows, that can't be found out by an external investor. They are operating in the same information landscape, but different outcomes when they give into decision inertia.
It's not about joining Tesla or Nvidia early. It's about betting on them.
I edited the parenthesised part of the first sentence from "and very lucky" to "and/or very lucky" to make allowances for your objection. And sure, you can always point out exceptions.
The real point is that it's misguided to try and compare percentages of tech company employees with percentages of founders; they're very different things.
Of course, out of all the founders of all the companies, a relatively tiny percentage will be vastly rich. And out of all the employees of all the tech companies, most will be quite wealthy and comfortable, and a small percentage will be vastly rich.
But that doesn't tell you anything about what is the most reliable path for any given individual to get vastly rich; it entirely depends on whether you're the kind of person you are how well you can learn how to build successful products and companies.
My guess is that it is much easier to get rich from working at a tech company and rising through the ranks. Being a FANG middle manager for a couple of years and managing your money well should put you in a very comfortable position. However, if you want to be private island rich, you need to do your own startup.
Certainly in my own circle, people who were fortunate enough to work at FAANG during the right window of time became comfortably rich. Many of my own investors just worked as engineers at Microsoft for the right decade and are worth tens of millions. They worked really hard and sacrificed a lot, but they got paid every step of the way.
Predicting which big tech company will do well enough in future to give you that big stock reward over time is a big gamble, but certainly a smaller gamble than doing a startup.
I know plenty of people who have joined half a dozen startups, none of which yielded any gain. And many entrepreneurs who worked super hard many times and have nothing to show for it but scar tissue.
Whatever you do, the best advice is to ensure you are enjoying the journey. Don’t waste your life just to be rich. That path nearly always yields a Pyrrhic victory.
it really depends on what you mean by rich: the surest path to end up with $2-5M over ~10 years is job at ~FAANG, do it well to get promoted, and manage your savings/investments well. that path is very unlikely to get you to $10-100M in the same 10 years, and starting a startup seems to be one of the best ways to do that.
According to levels.fyi, E5 at Google gets you $385k TC annually. If you save a third of that (which is not easy) for 10 years you get to approximately $1.3 million. Maybe your investments get you above $2 million, but it would really depend on what decade that was. If you had the Great Recession in the middle of that, not so great.
If you think it is easy to save more than a third of your income, remember you’ll have a federal marginal tax rate of 35% or higher, will probably have to work onsite in a HCOL state, and unless you’re lucky enough to live in WA, a high state income tax. Yes you can shield some of your income via 401ks and Roths, but for the former you’re going to get taxed on withdrawal, and for the latter you get penalized if you touch it before you’re 59.5.
Now if you’re dual cogs with no kids, maybe. If you do have kids, you’re not retiring until long after ten years.
This is very easy, actually. You just happen to like fancy things and houses, probably.
> Now if you’re dual cogs with no kids, maybe. If you do have kids, you’re not retiring until long after ten years.
I find it depressing that so many people use kids as an excuse to avoid facing their own problems with money and spending. Look deeper and you can find happiness with a lot less.
Actually I just looked at my last year at a FAANG in California.
I earned about $370 K (including 401K match). $135 K went to taxes (Federal, Social Security, Medicare, State).
If I save absolutely everything left ($235 K) for 10 years that gets me to 2.35 million.
The parent post mentioned saving $2-5 million. To get to $ 2 M I have to live off $35 K a year (I realize I'm ignoring investment activities).
EDIT: additionally to minimize taxation you’re probably doing some of that savings in a 401k. Let’s say $25k * 10 year (I was). But that actually creates a deferred tax obligation. Let’s say the tax rate you pay that at is 20% (very optimistic but by the time you pay it you’ll likely be used to living below the poverty line). That takes you down to $30k a year. Actually even worse the employer match is taxable when you withdraw it, so another deferred tax obligation means that to get to $2M (accounting for future tax obligations) in 10 years you need to live on $25K a year.
That seems challenging in Northern California. Also why would I want to do that? - living at that spending level is likely to affect my long-term health and happiness, so the motivation is not clear to me.
Of course, a bad market makes it longer, but the converse is also true: it's more likely a good market makes it shorter! (historically markets go up more than down, of course)
Add a spouse that also saves and invests, and you can have MORE than $45,000/yr of expenses covered within 7 years of earning at that rate. You can also back off to part time or have one spouse continue working after having kids, and all you need to do is cover SOME (not even all!) of your expenses.
> I want to do that? - living at that spending level is likely to affect my long-term health and happiness
The freedom of not dealing with "the cult of impact" [1] and other such silly things is amazing. Having a huge pile of money allows solid peace of mind in a way most people can't even conceive.
And finding out how much happiness you can get independently of spending money is truly eye-opening. Most people are too scared to even TRY finding fulfillment away from what society tells us is "fun".
> But that actually creates a deferred tax obligation. Let’s say the tax rate you pay that at is 20% (very optimistic
There are also ways to get at this money with almost no taxes paid later IF you are not working--look for "Roth IRA conversion ladder".
Also look into "Mega Backdoor Roth" for more tax sheltering.
> That seems challenging in Northern California
You don't have to retire to California. Just pay minimal costs while you're there. Many places in US are beautiful, have great infrastructure and health care, and don't cost as much.
And investment growth is a LOT; don't ignore it. And after just a few years of not working, unless you have a bad start you can probably live off of much more than the initial safe withdrawal rate.
By the way, student dormitory cost around ~200-300 euros per month. And semester fee costs 300 euros per semester (6months). In total, it makes 3900 euros. So, the train is not the most cost efficient solution, if you are young.
So is the university experience when you are the same age as most fellow students.
I don't think one or the other is a superior way to spend ones formative years, though doing the train thing might make more sense before going to school, as he may form relationships in school that he won't want to give up for riding a train.
Is not it similar in the west as well? If governments start cutting their budget deficits and subsidies, I assume we are going to have a lot of problems.
