<story><title>My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer</title><url>https://software.rajivprab.com/2021/12/26/my-path-to-financial-independence-as-a-software-engineer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deanmoriarty</author><text>I do not understand why articles like these consistently score poorly on HN? Of course it’s all based on luck, but that doesn’t make it an uninteresting read. I admire the diligence of the author, and how well they played the lucky cards they were given.&lt;p&gt;I am frequently in awe when reading technical articles on HN, with people advancing the state of the art in some technology. Those people also are incredibly lucky, because they were born with massive talents that, through sacrifices and education, they transformed into life achievements.&lt;p&gt;As an average software engineer I was not lucky enough to be born with cognitive skills that will ever allow me to reach those technical highs, but that is not a reason to crap on it saying “Just luck! Just genetic&amp;#x2F;environmental luck!”.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I don’t typically read from others: “It’s easy for you to rewrite the Linux kernel in JavaScript over a weekend, your work is just luck because you were born a genius in a developed country so all your achievements need to be discounted and you have no merits!”.&lt;p&gt;I suspect when it comes to compensation talk people tend on average to get more bitter than they should otherwise be.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I take this to heart because I made significant sacrifices to immigrate to the US and, while I was immensely lucky to succeed in the endeavor, most people I know would have never taken those uncomfortable steps (leaving family behind in a different country, sacrifice personal space by frugal living in a HCOL area as opposed to a LCOL area with a house and backyard for the kids, …), yet they will happily “complain” that my compensation is much higher than theirs, and that there is no merit to it, rather than simply admitting that they willingly chose a different path in life, but they could have chased my same opportunities with largely the same financial outcome.&lt;p&gt;If I was reading this article and I was not a tech worker in the US but interested in getting those compensations, my first reaction would be “damn, let me research what are the options for legal immigration to the US and let me start down a path that has good odds of me landing a tech job over there within 5-10 years”. It would not be “let me complain on HN how the country I am a forever-prisoner in has a 90% effective tax rate so that I feel good about my situation”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sakopov</author><text>Well, ultimately it&amp;#x27;s about the advice here. If someone asks you how to achieve financial independence and you tell them to just make half a mil working at FAANG, your advice is going to get filed under the &amp;quot;no shit&amp;quot; folder. I also don&amp;#x27;t quite follow how the author claims to have achieved financial independence while relying on a $600K&amp;#x2F;yr salary from Amazon. This isn&amp;#x27;t the type of content folks usually expect. I think for most people it&amp;#x27;ll be about using their salaries to their potential via smart investing and compounding, while focusing their free time on generating alternative streams of income which will supplement their existing salary. I think this is the foundation of most &amp;quot;financial independence&amp;quot; stories. With that said, I do think that the article is very inspirational to most engineers on here. I&amp;#x27;m a fellow immigrant who has achieved a bit in my life in the US, but not nearly as much in terms of salary. I&amp;#x27;m still grateful and very content knowing that the ceiling is as high as I pretty much want it to be.</text></comment>
<story><title>My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer</title><url>https://software.rajivprab.com/2021/12/26/my-path-to-financial-independence-as-a-software-engineer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deanmoriarty</author><text>I do not understand why articles like these consistently score poorly on HN? Of course it’s all based on luck, but that doesn’t make it an uninteresting read. I admire the diligence of the author, and how well they played the lucky cards they were given.&lt;p&gt;I am frequently in awe when reading technical articles on HN, with people advancing the state of the art in some technology. Those people also are incredibly lucky, because they were born with massive talents that, through sacrifices and education, they transformed into life achievements.&lt;p&gt;As an average software engineer I was not lucky enough to be born with cognitive skills that will ever allow me to reach those technical highs, but that is not a reason to crap on it saying “Just luck! Just genetic&amp;#x2F;environmental luck!”.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I don’t typically read from others: “It’s easy for you to rewrite the Linux kernel in JavaScript over a weekend, your work is just luck because you were born a genius in a developed country so all your achievements need to be discounted and you have no merits!”.&lt;p&gt;I suspect when it comes to compensation talk people tend on average to get more bitter than they should otherwise be.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I take this to heart because I made significant sacrifices to immigrate to the US and, while I was immensely lucky to succeed in the endeavor, most people I know would have never taken those uncomfortable steps (leaving family behind in a different country, sacrifice personal space by frugal living in a HCOL area as opposed to a LCOL area with a house and backyard for the kids, …), yet they will happily “complain” that my compensation is much higher than theirs, and that there is no merit to it, rather than simply admitting that they willingly chose a different path in life, but they could have chased my same opportunities with largely the same financial outcome.&lt;p&gt;If I was reading this article and I was not a tech worker in the US but interested in getting those compensations, my first reaction would be “damn, let me research what are the options for legal immigration to the US and let me start down a path that has good odds of me landing a tech job over there within 5-10 years”. It would not be “let me complain on HN how the country I am a forever-prisoner in has a 90% effective tax rate so that I feel good about my situation”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rexreed</author><text>The reason why I think these articles score poorly is because I think my reaction is like most reactions (not all, but most). I read the article, saw the salary table, did an eyeroll, and then skimmed the rest. The article can be summed up as &amp;quot;get a high paying job in a career that requires technical skills, save more than you spend, and invest what you save&amp;quot;. Did I miss anything in that summarization?</text></comment>