They’re pretty basic here too. That doesn’t mean there aren’t scummy ass banks that still don’t offer them, and rely on the company name to get customers. Many old banks don’t offer most of this unfortunately, and most people don’t go looking for new banks often and get screwed.
I didn’t say I got a townhome for ~2k a month. The place I split with my partner is $3300 a month, and if I didn’t live with them I’d get a smaller, much cheaper apartment.
Edit: Alright everyone can go on believing you need a million dollars a year to scrape by in the bay area lmao. I’m done responding since everyone already has their minds made up about what it’s like here, and somehow saying I could get a studio or one bed for $2200 is the same as a whole ass townhouse.
I just hope more people can learn to be good with money, and we can stop this terrible capitalistic cycle of consumer over-spending and debt.
All fair points, and I’m definitely leaning more towards your viewpoint having read them.
I guess I’ve just never felt the need for them given I’ve been treated and paid well so far, and I really like the ability to just walk next door at a moment’s notice if I so desire. Not that I’ve ever not given two weeks, but the option to do so, and not feeling like I’m gonna be compensated less due to short tenure is nice. Not that unions have to operate that way, but historically that’s the case.
I’m glad it has worked well for you! I’ll definitely be more open to joining one in the future, and strongly consider it if the opportunity arises. Thanks for your perspective.
I live in the California bay area (not going to get more specific than that), and split rent of a townhouse 50/50 with my partner. I live in a stupid bougie area too, so I’m not doing myself any favors there pricewise.
You cannot get a SFH here for under $2 mil, and our townhouse we rent is worth well over $1 mil. I could easily afford the whole place by myself, but that would be financially irresponsible. I was very fortunate to be taught at a young age that being able to afford something does not make it a good or okay use of money.
If I weren’t living with my partner, I’d get a one bed or studio apartment for ~$2200 a month, or an extra $6400 a year. Unless someone took on a mortgage way larger than they could actually afford (again, a financial literacy issue), or has an extremely expensive medical condition, I have 0 idea how anyone could be paycheck to paycheck on $150k a year and unable to massively cut back. The world is expensive, but it ain’t THAT expensive.
My salary is $160k in the most expensive region in the country. My total yearly expenses don’t exceed $50k, $20k of which is rent. The rest maxes out my 401k and goes towards a house down payment fund. I have a $30k emergency fund in case I lose my job which gives me 9 months of runway.
I’m not a nomad by any means. I have very nice things and I spend a grand a month on wants (eating out, my hobbies, whatever else I impulse order from Amazon), but I’m extremely aware of all my purchases and budget out every transaction at the end of every week. Hell, I just spent $2k on Christmas to get my family very nice gifts, but I’ve been spending less and sacrificing wants the past few months to offset that to prevent lifestyle creep.
This is a financial literacy problem, not a $150k is not a lot of money problem.
ETA: I split rent 50/50 with my partner in the California Bay area for a decent-sized 2b2.5b townhouse. My friends who do have 5 housemates, as so many of you seem to think I do, pay $1050 a month in rent, or $12.6k a year.
Wholely agree. I live in the most expensive region in the US on $160k base salary. My total annual expenses (including vacations, wants, gifts) don’t exceed $50k, and of that $20k is rent.
Use a brokerage like Fidelity as your bank instead of these fuckers at Chase and BofA who don’t respect you despite you giving them your money.
Doesn’t have to be Fidelity, but in the current day if you’re not getting the following from your bank you’re getting fucked:
Unions can’t really prevent layoffs unfortunately, but can guarantee severances. However most tech employees already receive generous severance packages.
Software engineers also still sit at half the unemployment rate of the rest of the US despite the layoffs throughout this past year.
I’m very pro-union, I just don’t think they belong in tech given how much power engineers already have, and that power being entirely dictated by the ability to jump ship yesterday.
Couldn’t agree more as a software engineer who recently switched jobs. Unions are fucking amazing in most industries, but I can’t help but feel it would hurt workers more than it would benefit us in tech. You could guarantee 5% a year raises indefinitely and it still wouldn’t be enough. Even at companies where you consistently get 10% raises per year + bonus you can just jump and hit 20%+.
Software engineers can also have insane risk tolerance career-wise because we make enough money to build massive emergency funds and investment portfolios to fall back on if things go south. This is all without considering that sometimes you just don’t vibe with a team, or you stop learning and want to go elsewhere to expand your skill set. Under a union, which usually awards people based on tenure, you’d be punished for making these sorts of moves despite them making you a better software engineer.
Thank you! I’m already getting some great use out of it as my new company hired me largely because of my AWS experience. I also learned a ton there thanks to my exceptionally brilliant team so I can’t say I regret my time there even if it was stressful.
I did a lot of research a few years ago and settled on ProtonVPN. I won’t say anything authoritative regarding privacy as I haven’t done any recent research, but I’ve been very happy with the service so far.
I run a seedbox with all the traffic from qBittorrent tunneled through ProtonVPN and I’ve gotten up to 200 Mbps down through a few very healthy torrents before, and on dedicated speed tests I can pull down ~250 Mbps on my gigabit service. I’ve also never had it go down despite using the exact same server 24/7.
Their documentation is also amazing and they generate connection configs for Wireguard and OpenVPN on their website using provided parameters making it dead simple to get started.
Yup! That’s the bullshit part and what really grinds my gears when people say we’re just whining. I have 0 problem going to an office that I was assigned at my date of hire. What I have a problem with is 1) retroactively assigning offices to remote designated employees and 2) forcibly relocating people across the country for zero reason. They’re actively uprooting entire families and fucking so many people over.
I’m fortunate enough to have gotten another job before it impacted me thanks to referrals from friends, but not everyone is as fortunate.
I work at AWS (won’t after this Friday since I got a remote job), and while I’m pretty low on the totem pole, internally it is very clear what is going on. Leadership is slowly phasing out non-proximate workers. Why? No one knows really, but our best guess is unofficial layoffs and upholding commercial real estate.
It started with RTO 3 days a week for everyone except remote employees in May. Then in September basically all remote employees were forced to relocate to their team hub. This was as much of a shit show as you think. You were given 30 days to decide and 60 days to move. What people did was “decide” on the last day to move, and then drag their feet for the next 60. Then quit without notice as soon as they had another job lined up. Don’t get me wrong the market is rough, but 90 days is enough to find a job if you have halfway decent connections and AWS on your resume. By now my team already lost half of our devs (3/6).
More recently, in waves, they’re forcing people to relocate to team hubs. Even teams who were historically spread out across the US. I’m from the west coast but my team is in Colorado and the second I caught wind of this I grinded my ass off and got another job. When I told my manager he was very understanding but frustrated at the situation. My two teammates were even more frustrated, and one of them is on the west coast too. My team could be one person soon.
Didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant, but Amazon is nuking teams left and right like this and it will catch up to them. As a whole things are breaking more often in AWS systems than usual, and our service is starting to show cracks. Our reliability is down hard because we had a collective 35 years of knowledge leave our org. Almost all of whom were the team expert.
It’s not quite blockchain. It is incredibly useful in a broad range of applications, and has genuinely changed how millions of people work. Sure it’s not the magic bullet wall street thinks it is, but my work has been improved immensely through the use of generative AI. Especially with uniquely challenging software problems and niche questions.
I think it’ll be similar to VR. Extremely useful and interesting, but over-hyped and not going to penetrate our lives as much as most people think.
It is strictly due to power efficiency. ARM is insanely power efficient when put up against x86. Our phones run it, laptops are starting to run it (ever wonder why MacBooks have 20+ hour battery lives now?), hell AWS is switching their data centers to ARM because of the energy savings. It’ll save the world a lot of energy since 10% of our electricity is used for computers.
No one is forcing you to run out and buy an ARM system, and x86 is gonna be supported for a very long time. Software will be developed for both platforms in parallel as it’s going to be at least a decade before it reaches dominance.
Did you feel this was when we went from 32 to 64 bit computers? If so, we still write software for them even though many people, myself included, haven’t used a 32 bit computer since the 2000s.
Clocks use IIII instead of IV most of the time. This is completely normal and not at all out of place
Hell, I’m looking at taking a $30k total compensation hit and jumping to a remote first organization. Given I’m trying to leave for many other reasons, but if they weren’t remote first the decision would be much harder.
I really like the US take on this one actually. I’m pro ebike and absolutely love motorcycles, but 45 mph is too fast to not require a licence.
Here we have 3 classes numbered as such. Class 1 is 15 mph pedal assisted, class two is 20 mph pedal assisted, and class 3 is 28 mph and allows a dedicated throttle. Class 3 often has limitations for certain bike trails, but most class 3 comes have variable modes to limit them to class 1 and 2 speeds. Generally as long as you’re following trail speed limits you really don’t have to worry.
This part varies by state, but in general anything over 28 mph is considered a moped and requires a proper license. As an avid motorcycle rider I feel even 28 might be too fast for non-license, but I also understand keeping up with cars, especially in cities, is way safer so I get why the limit is a bit higher than you’d expect.