We also have impeccable uptime as you’d expect.

This is a super interesting question!

For me IDK if any amount of money would significantly improve my life. I’m not terribly materialistic and I’m happy with what I have/don’t feel like I immediately want or am missing something. I make good money and stash as much as possible while still enjoying nights out with friends and buying whatever I want.

I’m currently saving up a quarter million for a house down payment, and while it’s a lot of money my quality of life/overall happiness would be the same so I wouldn’t call the change significant. Things are really good in my life for once, and it’s nice to be able to recognize that. Thanks for the question it actually made me really happy to think about how lucky I am.

I hope others in this thread who need it can find some fortune in their future.

Is that actually a thing? Or just a joke?

Your perception of Google software engineers is way off. They’re more often than not some of the best software engineers in the industry because their hiring bar is very high, and they get paid like it. YouTube is an astounding complex problem to solve with thousands of moving parts and non-trivial problems. It’s honestly astounding people are able to build sites that complex, and that they’re not only common but extremely reliable.

The issue is there are even more extremely intelligent software engineers outside of Google than in, and many of them spend some of their free time working on FOSS projects including ad-blockers. It’s also almost always harder to be red team (attacker, or the ad-blockers devs) as opposed to blue team (defensive, or the people trying to stop them).

TamperMonkey (I’ve been told to use ViolentMonkey instead as TamperMonkey isn’t open source) and the script here. Then you can run a script to periodically log into your account in a headless browser and click the button. Unfortunately there’s no coupon API so this is the best solution I could think of.

Because they’re used absolutely everywhere, and often back large portions of Internet infrastructure. I’m a backend developer and we have thousands of “bots” running at any given time to keep our systems going. They generate traffic equivalent to thousands of people and are maintained by a 3 person dev team. This is for a relatively small company. When I was at AWS the scale was much more unfathomable.

Fidelity is who I use since they also have my portfolio, but SoFi and many others also provide similar services.

I really hate the phrase “bots” because it gives the appearance that they’re all useless and malicious. I guarantee you they lumped in the following extremely valid uses of “bots”:

• Automated personal scripts that many programmers use, these are technically bots. Hell, I use a “bot” to auto-clip digital Safeway coupons
• Moderation bots on sites like Lemmy/Reddit
• Archive efforts

Are AI chatbots bots? If they use a loose enough definition all this means is humans utilize fuck tons of automation over the Internet, both programmers and not.

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.

deleted by creator

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:

• $0 minimum balance, $0 in account fees
• No overdraft fees
• Minimum 4% APY on savings, minimum 2% APY on checking
• ATM fee reimbursement
• Instant transfers between your own accounts
• Access to direct deposits even while they’re still pending

Same. I play the same 5 games throughout the year and rarely buy anything, but a few games I’d been looking at went on sale. I could’ve pirated them, but it was just so much easier to click buy on my Steam Deck and instantly download and play them. Not to mention cloud saves for free, remote play, and the ability to dock the thing to my 65" 4k TV.

Steam has robbed me of more money than any streaming service ever could, and I’m not even mad because they provide the best service I’ve ever received no matter how many or few games I buy. They recently identified one of the biggest reasons for refunds and piracy being people who want to validate games will run well on their system, especially on Steam Deck. As a result they’re working on a demo feature so you can test a game before buying it.

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.

I think this is just a case of correlation doesn’t equal causation.

People in higher socioeconomic groups tend to consume mind-altering substances in smaller quantities, and often don’t consume the more harmful ones (i.e. cigarettes) at all. Largely because higher socioeconomic status is correlated with higher quality of life and less need to “cope”. As a result the negative affects are seen as less of a downside since the short-term positive mental effects are more impactful to those who have a lower quality of life.

In lesser words, people who have shitty lives are more likely to opt for less healthy habits to lessen suffering in the short term, despite increased risk of long term side effects.

Most people couldn’t care less if the person smoking on the corner is wealthy or poor. It’s gross either way.