https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/elon-musk-used-to-say-he-p...
and if the info about the actual architecture of GPT-4 is legit, OpenAI might not have as much of an edge on the competition as they'd like people to believe. So that equity might not be worth quite as much as they think and explains why they so cagey about it in their paper on it. And why Sam Altman is calling for restrictions on research to slow down competitors
https://twitter.com/soumithchintala/status/16712671501017210...
That's getting close to some Nuremberg level shit. Not yet there of course but consider when the next pandemic rolls around and the anti science propaganda will be produced by these how many will die?
We know manually produced anti vaxx propaganda killed about 300 000 people in the United States (source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/05/13/1098071... ) , what it'll be next time?
Or by living in someone's backyard shed: https://news.stanford.edu/2021/05/04/revealing-complexities-...
Or by sharing one-bedroom apartments to split rent, and eating as little as possible, to afford closer housing and reduce commuting costs: https://www.reimaginerpe.org/20-2/Goldman
There's a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to most companies, even if they are in the same "local market" [0][1] (Some use the term "dark matter devs" but I know it has another meaning [2]). These guys tend to fly under the radar quite a bit. If you are in a tier 2 market or company, your chances of attracting one are close to nil. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally).
FAANG companies have internship pipelines, with bonus for returning interns. These guys are off the market years before they even graduate.
[0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...
[1] http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/
[2] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...
I don’t work at a FAANG so I could be totally off but I think there’s only about 1,000 L6+ at google [0] and they employ the most. So it’s not thousands of people at this level within a company. Maybe only a few thousand in total of all companies in the US.
[0] https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-are-at-each-level-of-t...
Especially if you're American. Gallup [1] reports:
> The median annual household income worldwide is $9,733, and the median per-capita household income is $2,920
Even among developed nations, Americans get paid more.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househo...
* The Bay Area is a place where you can make $100k a year and be classified as low-income [1].
* Tech employees tend to live low-key lifestyles that don't really show how much they're making. I know people who make $500k and still live with roommates.
* Income inequality and progressive politics combine to make people less reluctant to talk about their TC packages, unless you're also at a similar socio-economic level.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/under-100k-low-income-s...
To put some real numbers on it.
My 30 year fixed 3.5% mortgage all in from 2016 - 2021 was $2185 and that included the FHA PMI since I only put 3.5% down. I refinanced in 2021 to a 15 year mortgage and bought points and got rid of the PMI. My house is now worth close to twice that.
My mortgage? 1.97% fixed 15 year - $2550 and $1575 of that goes toward principal. My total household expenses as of March 2020 when I was making “only” $150K with my wife working part time making $25K was around $6000. We were bringing home after taxes and before retirement savings about $10500 after maxing out my retirement savings it was about $9300 a month.
And if you haven’t noticed, people are moving away from the west coast and office occupancy is down - that doesn’t bode well for home prices long term.
Our lifestyle is a little different now (see below). But out of my base income which is still only $160K - and my wife no longer works -with the rest coming from RSUs, we still manage to pay all of our expenses and I’m able to max out my 401K.
(>>36306966 ).
I don’t think people who have been in the tech bubble understand how easy it is for a two income earning family to accumulate wealth where one is making your standard enterprise dev tech salaries in a major non west coast city.
Most couples I know our ages where one is a mid career developer also has a spouse working making at least $70K (the average salary of a college grad). You can do quite well in most cities with a household income of $220K.
If you’re younger and single making $135 to $170K - typical for a developer with 5 years of experience outside of the west coast - you can find an apartment or buy a condo in the city for $2500/month.
$39k/yr may not give you a life of luxury anywhere in the US, but there's certainly people surviving on less - and surely if you were OK on $60k/yr cost of living in the Bay Area it wouldn't be hard to find parts of the US where $39k/yr stretches further than $60k does there?
Of course there's many people who wouldn't want to move to a cheaper area, and especially anyone who is able to earn $500k/yr is likely to choose to work longer before retiring to not have to be as frugal - but "nowhere close to retirement money anywhere in the US" seems way off. I'd even be surprised if $1.3M wasn't significantly greater than the median amount of pension + savings owned by Americans at the point of their retiring.
edit: Actual numbers back up my assumptions above, for example "According to the Fed data, the median net worth for Americans in their late 60s and early 70s is $266,400. The average (or mean) net worth for this age bracket is $1,217,700, but since averages tend to skew higher due to high net-worth households, the median is a much more representational amount." from https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-of-americans-a... or similar at https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewrosen/2022/06/16/are-you-... etc.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/california-popu...
And house prices are declining in Seattle.
https://www.king5.com/article/money/economy/seattle-housing-...
Why live in a high cost city when more jobs are remote?