> It is true that working for free is bonkers. Priority number 1 is always rent, at minimum cover that so that business is priority 1.
You can work "for free" if investments cover all your basics ... so only bonkers under the assumption that you haven't taken care of your basics already.
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.
> 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.
> if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard?
I don't think you get it. The way this stuff is done is just as described - totally blindsiding, and potentially flat-out gaslighting. There's no actual metrics or data until they fabricate a paper trail and force you out.
You don't win these things. Rather, you take your money and go elsewhere. Then turn down the subsequent job offers you get from them, using them only as leverage to juice your pay elsewhere with a competing offer ;-)
But it sounds like he won? He got his $200k and found a new job before any PIP was implemented? Why would his manager have been upset if they were actually trying to force him out?
Surely HR knows how long it takes to exit someone and if they wanted to keep the $200k they would have started the process earlier?
The manager wasn't the one doing the forcing - the overall stack-ranking system was, and the manager was just employing the required level of doublethink to convince themselves the employee was both suitable for firing and also worth trying to retain.
I disagree, this is not some junior manager drinking the company cool aid. They are a middle manager with hundreds of indirect reports - in HR, no less - fully aware of what they're doing and with a metric to hit.
So they lined up potential candidates, made them the same deal and tested their level of docility and loyalty to himself. Some of the candidates demurred and they got the boot, the author played the loyalty game and then "backstabbed" his superior and screwed the stats.
So, good? The employee recognizes that the employer is just screwing around with everyone, seems like a FAFO situation; I hope Amazon has this happen endlessly.
To the point here: I think people think these managers are in a position of real power. They are not. They are cogs in the wheel as are their subordinates. It's entirely possible this manager wasn't even the one doing the direct ranking, sometimes this roles up to levels beyond where the manager can give real input. Someone has to get pipped as the system demands it, it happened to land on the person in the article. The manager is then trying to get them out of it because they believe they don't actually require the pip.
So this is both a failure of the manager (it is their job to navigate the system and boost their reports during stack ranking), and also a failure of the system as a whole (this person probably shouldn't have been pipped).
I don't think it's so much doublethink as it is this manager is trying to balance competing interests in their very immediate sphere.
How can they be maintaining these completely antithetitical interests, like wjy do they want to arbitrarily fire the person at all if they have already evaluated that person to be worthy of retention? Why is this even on the table in the absence of any failure to meet whatever metrics?
Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition?
I assume there are different competing priorities at play that converge in particularly dumb ways sometimes.
Some stakeholders latched onto the idea of churning some % of staff each year in an effort to, I guess, eventually filter the entire human population for the best possible employees.
Some people want to make it look like their HR team is doing a lot of useful stuff.
Some people want to boost their own department's metrics.
Some people want to work with a team to achieve actual business goals.
> Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition?
This has always been my interpretation. The "everybody is replaceable" mindset comes from Amazon retail warehouses, and bled into the rest of the company.
> Why would his manager have been upset if they were actually trying to force him out?
The manager made up reasons to place this person in the lowest rating, threatening w/ a PIP. Why? Perhaps to have a warning on file. Perhaps to try to persuade an even higher level of performance than what they'd previously considered excellent... who knows.
The manager being upset shows the PIP threat wasn't justified, as you noted. You don't get upset when a non-performer chooses to leave. Why would anyone continue to work under a manager that unjustly threatens them, or tries to motivate performance w/ fear? No, leaving was the right choice, even if they "won".
To me, it sounds like the manager is the one who really needs to go. Perhaps this really isn't Amazon policy at all, and this manager is being overly tyrannical and training his staff to be the same. We'll never know. On the other hand, Amazon never said what the "number of inaccuracies" were. It could very well be this tale is actually very close to policy too. Heck, it could be the actual policy exactly... zero IS a number after all.
His manager was likely upset because the guy left before he was put on the PIP and so wouldn't count towards the HR VP's (and by extension his manager's) 6% goal.
Most people are probably going to eventually leave their company anyway. If they can do so more or less on their own terms, that counts as more of a win than a loss.
> What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?
> ... for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
> The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.
> ... We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while.
"Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren", Keynes, 1930
However I would note actually many people have chosen to do exactly this and our abundance sustains them sufficiently. But the enshitification of literally reality itself makes it impossible for most people to see beyond the human hamster wheels we’ve built for ourselves.
> Android (and I believe iOS does too) enforce that.
This is absolutely not true. Android simply detects that there has been no progress on the UI thread "for a few seconds" before force-closing the app [1]. By this time, the interaction has been janky/frozen for WAY too long. If you have seen bad iOS scrolling and lock-ups, you know this as well.
I have worked on mobile software for these apps that have billions of users. When I pointed out how much stuff ran on the UI thread, there was a collective "this is just the way it is" response and life went on.
It's super-depressing.
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[1] "Performing long operations in the UI thread, such as network access or database queries, blocks the whole UI. When the thread is blocked, no events can be dispatched, including drawing events.
From the user's perspective, the application appears to hang. Even worse, if the UI thread is blocked for more than a few seconds, the user is presented with the "application not responding" (ANR) dialog."
Attempting a network operation on the Android UI thread will throw the android.os.NetworkOnMainThreadException exception, and has done since API 11 (Honeycomb) in 2011.
You can work "for free" if investments cover all your basics ... so only bonkers under the assumption that you haven't taken care of your basics already.