Unless you've worked for a payment processing company, or for a major retailer that does a lot of payment processing, you have no idea how much fraud or attempted fraud happens in transactions (you can even see it as a small retailer if you are getting sales online and say you'll ship international).
A credit card number is a symmetric secret that's printed on the outside of something that you hand to strangers all day. That's not exactly best practice.
If we moved to a PKI where the private keys live in secure enclaves, you could cut that fraud down significantly. But that won't happen, because then how would they justify the fees?
Doesn't that just trade one symmetric secret for another? (your password)
I suppose it's a little better because you probably haven't written your password on the side of your card, but everytime I have to go through it it feels like I'm getting phished. Also, SSL seems kind of messy for the job. You've already got the processor as a third party, now the CA's are a fourth party, plus whoever gets to install certs on that device as a fifth...
You could just have the card sign the transaction and have the merchant send that signature to the clearinghouse. For online orders, your phone could just be the payment terminal, and still the secret on the card is the signing key.
But none of that actually helps unless you deprecate the insecure stuff.
> Everything is outrageously expensive
> Middle class gets crushed
I moved out of New York City in 2020. The overriding reason was not this, it was just a fluke that I got a very compelling out of state job offer in 2019, and they requested I move in 2020.
However, I am making about about $150-$160k as an SWE, and it goes a lot further here (although having to spend $700-$800 a month for a car, which I did not have to do in NYC, bites into that a little). I have a new, big, apartment with a front door to a tree-lined street in a nice walkable neighborhood near my workplace for less than $2000 a month. In New York I would have an older, smaller apartment on a higher floor in not as nice of a neighborhood for more a month.
I know people say to move to the Bay area because that's where the action is for tech jobs and where you make connections etc., but I don't see why not take a step on a way for a decent paying job in a cheap city where you can accumulate savings while your skillset is increasing.
The juniors/associates I work with making <$100k a year say they can barely afford their expenses now here. I don't know what they'd be doing in the Bay Area or New York. They have roommates too.
I saved up a ton of money down here, and gained experience as well. If I move back to New York (or to the Bay Area), I do so on surer footing - I have a lot of money saved up for a rainy day now.
It also makes for a situation where those with lower income - even associate/junior SWEs at Fortune 100 companies - can't afford to live in cities like NYC, San Francisco etc.
I've worked at hedge funds for over 10 years, I make FAANG money... and yet, I lived in a 1 bedroom rental without washer/dryer into my mid 30s. Unit hadn't been renovated since the 80s.
My boss did similar until he nearly lost his mind WFH with a working spouse and toddler all running around the room.
Meanwhile my current team is remote and my 24 year old coworker in Miami rents a 2 bedroom with his non-working wife. This is, I cannot stress this enough.. completely unheard of in NYC.
This is a pretty reasonable approach but I would caution against potentially being too overly-conservative in eventually moving to the bay/NY if career ambition is a goal. What's often missing in these budgeting numbers is the intangible variable of a far lower ceiling of income potential that you have to trade off. How does the calculus change if say there is some probability X of reaching a potential far higher than 150-160k, as tends to be the case in these HCOL areas?
In New York City five years ago I was switching from one IT career to another (Unix sysadmin to programmer), and was working part-time for a very small startup that had run out out of seed money, while interviewing for more lucrative positions (which I found four years ago). The founders were working a day job, and funding me out of pocket, which was to the tune of $100 a month. For a variety of reasons I decided to do Postmates deliveries, one reason being the flexibility.
Running around Manhattan on cold November nights five years ago, I began to appreciate the $100 a month I was getting programming for this small startup at my desk at home or in their co-working space. If you don't have a bicycle or car, you pretty much need a metro-card, which goes to your expenses. Sometimes orders came in right away, sometimes I'd be sitting around for over 20 minutes waiting for one. The food pickup location was always within half a mile of my location. The quickest pickup offer to delivery for me was 23 minutes, longest was 52 minutes. With waits of up to half an hour before a next offer.
Deliveries usually paid a little over $4, but there were bonuses of $2 for some deliveries, and you'd be paid for long distances or long waits for food. You would also get tips (up to $7).
As I said, I was getting paid $100 a month to do some programming for a small startup, which seemed very little, but it was a lot easier than how much time and effort it took running around Manhattan to earn $100 from Postmates.
About six months after doing occasional Postmates deliveries I was making over $60 an hour programming for a multi-national.
I live in a metro area of the USA, but not one of the 20th largest ones. I started making any kind of real salary (meaning over $2000 a month) in programming in the spring of 2019. I now make base over $130k a year, and bonus/stock will be about $30k this year, so about $160k a year total compensation.
In 2009 I was making $90,000 a year as a systems administrator (was a sysadmin from 1996 until 2009) and was going to school at night, but the recession killed my job and I went back to school more full time then.
I don't have my degree in computer science yet, although I have a few more classes to go. I am not currently enrolled.
There are about 20 programmers in my larger group. I would say there are about 4 programmers here that are clearly better than me. I am pretty easily better than 10 other programmers here. So I am in the 50%-75% range of ability where I work.
A guy I am friendly with who started programming in 2000 and knows my main language and framework told me he is making about $30k less than me and his bonus will be smaller than mine. He knows my main language and framework much more than I do.
I already has a broad array of skills - Ansible is too new for me in terms of devops/SRE which I never went into but I know all the old-line sysadmin things going back to SunOS IPX machines. As well as the command line, MySQL, other toys; can talk about Turing machines somewhat, I forget what the pumping lemma is other than it puts something in the middle of other things or something, or about the sudoers file
Right now I am learning my main language better, learning my framework better, learning core programming things better (like how every language and framework seems to be becoming more functional), learning git better etc.
I am kind of on a leetcode to FAANG (or something similar) train, although I am in no rush. I doubt I will interview anywhere this year if my company situation remains as it is, which is good. At some point I might find that I can't grow any more where I am - or things could go downhill for reasons outside my control - which is why I am improving my skills to be a more attractive candidate where even a FAANG might hire me. So a ~$250k total comp. at a level 3'ish FAANG role is my current goal in the next few years.
