patrick.net

thomas.wong1986 says

no this is the real nonsense...

"A family buying the school premium for the school district will sell for a premium as well."

As if now its set today, prices never go down..ever, will always be higher.

This is actually a keen observation; everyone seems to assume that these good school districts are somehow statically good - as though thy weren't being progressively chipped away at every year by layoffs and budget cuts and the higher cost of living in the tony areas surrounding the school - which I can only assume would gradually undermine the morale of the teachers actually providing the education. Public schools get the shit end and I cannot see any reversal of this trend in the cards. At least with a private school education, you are ensuring a baseline of QC to some degree because you are actually PAYING the staff a decent wage that keeps better pace with COL.

I'd bet these schools that everyone pays a premium for are, to a large extent, enjoying the ratings they receive on account of ambitious knuckle thwacking parents who pay for after school tutelage and spend every other hour grinding their kids down with "If you keep on doing ________ you'll never get into a good school. You'll never work for Goldman Sachs!"

SFace says

I find TW's statement's to be unbearable.

Your living in a dream land... your making some crazy claims that typical employee is being minted as millionairs every quarter.

Tell me your the Stock Admin working at Apple and have insider information I might just believe you.... else your just another dot.com cheerleader.

JodyChunder says

"If you keep on doing ________ you'll never get into a good school. You'll never work for Goldman Sachs!"

Pressure at such a young age.. leads to consequences...

JodyChunder says

At least with a private school education, you are ensuring a baseline of QC to some degree because you are actually PAYING the staff a decent wage that keeps better pace with COL.

At the very least the publicly disclosed private school costs (on their websites) can be used to some fashion to gauge what that 'price of an education is'. At that point you can shop anywhere in the valley for a home.

thomas.wong1986 says

Your living in a dream land... your making some crazy claims that typical employee is being minted as millionairs every quarter.

Tell me your the Stock Admin working at Apple and have insider information I might just believe you.... else your just another dot.com cheerleader.

Again this is not the court of Thomas Wong, get over it.

I never made any such claims anyway other than a lot of people earned a lot of stock awards @ Apple and lots of money are cashed out and many more on the way, perhaps the most lucrative ever. It was the claimed controller who cited that Steve Jobs didn't give stock awards and cited none was given, obvious BS.

B.A.C.A.H. says

That said, for us non officer kinda folks, at best the RSUs are more like something to get new furniture with, or add to the annual IRA contribution, or (for some, not for us) maybe a DOWNPAYMENT on a car. Just as often, it's less than that.

based on SFace world view... must be that fancy $25,000 Italian furniture or maybe $100K new BMW M5 class or maybe $50,000 deposit on your childs future Stanford U. education fees.

Yea... we are fucking Millionaires... taking baths in french Champagne.

SFace says

It was the claimed controller who cited that Steve Jobs didn't give stock awards and cited none was given, obvious BS.

60 minutes the same week he died.. in his own voice. You may find it stated in his biograghy as well.

He disliked what he saw back in the early years how people became greedy and childish.. buying expensive toys and getting plastic surgery... and that was back when they had their IPO.
That was not his idea what he wanted for Apple culture.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/Tdo_05d9rf8

thomas.wong1986 says

Yea... we are fucking Millionaires... taking baths in french Champagne.

Took a bath in tomato juice once. It actually did feel sorta decadent.

thomas.wong1986 says

Pressure at such a young age.. leads to consequences...

Debauchery is the word!

JodyChunder says

I'd bet these schools that everyone pays a premium for are, to a large extent, enjoying the ratings they receive on account of ambitious knuckle thwacking parents who pay for after school tutelage and spend every other hour grinding their kids down with "If you keep on doing ________ you'll never get into a good school. You'll never...

It's not to a large extend. It is to the only extent.

All that pressure to be a high performer can sometimes lead to unintended consequences.

(I deleted the links to the articles about specific suicides here because it was a little bit too personal, with names, etc.)

thomas.wong1986 says

60 minutes the same week he died.. in his own voice. You may find it stated in his biograghy as well.

He disliked what he saw back in the early years how people became greedy and childish.. buying expensive toys and getting plastic surgery... and that was back when they had their IPO.

I tell my wife I work out at the gym, every night, pushing hard.

But when I come back home a fatter ass after a reasonable amount of time, results speak louder than words.

I don't care what Steve jobs thinks or what was reported, the result is Apple handed out more stock awards in absolute $$ value than any company in this world. That is the bottom line.

A couple of my colleagues have gone to Apple over the last couple of years. Apple most certainly does grant stock awards and allow option sales. Both are based as a percentage of salary, and some are awarded as a signing incentive. The amounts are none of my business and I have not asked for specifics, but they have described them as, "generous." These are hardware engineers with 3-4 years of experience. Their base salaries are in the $115k neighborhood, and there are cash bonuses on top of that. The bonuses and RSUs ate performance-dependent.

So, there are not millionaires being minted daily, but folks like that could save and qualify for a jumbo loan pretty easily. If it is a DINK couple with 2x that income, it is even easier.

My $0.02.

thomas.wong1986 says

drew_eckhardt says

I have no experience with Apple specifically, although I'd expect them to be competitive with other large tech companies with 4-year compensation packages including $250-$300K worth (at grant time) of RSUs (where share prices can double or triple as they vest) to engineers with over a
decade of solid experience.

$250,000-300,000 Unless your a VP is just Laugable!

I know people got 200k rsu from google as sign-on last year as level 5 position. Suddenly, wages in some have caught up big time with inflation here. Think 120k-130k base used to be the norm for non-managerial mid career, now 150k seems to pale compared to last year offers. Again, that is biased to my sample size.

bmwman91 says

A couple of my colleagues have gone to Apple over the last couple of years. Apple most certainly does grant stock awards and allow option sales. Both are based as a percentage of salary, and some are awarded as a signing incentive. The amounts are none of my business and I have not asked for specifics, but they have described them as, "generous." These are hardware engineers with 3-4 years of experience. Their base salaries are in the $115k neighborhood, and there are cash bonuses on top of that. The bonuses and RSUs ate performance-dependent.

So, there are not millionaires being minted daily, but folks like that could save and qualify for a jumbo loan pretty easily. If it is a DINK couple with 2x that income, it is even easier.

My $0.02.

These numbers are similar to what I have heard as well. Salaries have gone up recently at several companies to around the 125-130K level for starting senior engineers which are just out of school PhDs or Masters + 4 yrs of experience. At this level, RSU/options tend to be around an average of 30K per year apart from bonus which also tends to be around that number. So someone around early 30s in places like goog,aapl,intc etc should be able to pull in close to 200K gross. So DINK with two engineers should cross 300K easily at the housing buying age of early 30s.

This salary increase is probably also why the rents in the apartment complexes are now 2500 for 2BR on average.

thomas.wong1986 says

$250,000-300,000 Unless your a VP is just Laugable!

One step below principal engineer in title. Where you might get to after 10-15 years in industry doing significant things without moving into management or taking a non technical job that doesn't pay nearly as well because you've burned out or won the startup lottery and decided something like acting might be more fun.

Many technically qualified people also feel that's not enough to compensate for employment at the big companies that make such grants.

drew_eckhardt says

Many technically qualified people also feel that's not enough to compensate for employment at the big companies that make such grants.

Yup. At some point, people realize that they need to stop trading every moment of life for money & career experience and leave some time for living. A couple of my friends at Apple basically say this, "Well, I just want to survive here for ~2 years without totally burning out. With that on my resumee, I can get a job anywhere I want after that." They are learning world-class engineering skills there for sure, but trips to China every 3-4 weeks & being on-call on weekends gets old fast. One of my friends has it figured out though, and she works 9-5, few weekends & rarely goes to China now (EE HW designer).

SFace says

But when I come back home a fatter ass after a reasonable amount of time, results speak louder than words.

Uh just so you know dude, women like men to have chubby asses

B.A.C.A.H. says

That said, for us non officer kinda folks, at best the RSUs are more like something to get new furniture with, or add to the annual IRA contribution, or (for some, not for us) maybe a DOWNPAYMENT on a car. Just as often, it's less than that.

These comments are more consistent with my 16 year career in technology. My wife is an engineer with a PhD and so I also got to see what her signing bonus and compensation was like when she got a job with one of the sexiest companies in the Bay Area.

The idea that RSUs or ISOs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars are regularly given is mistaken. This is more on the order of what happens during IPOs. Remember that RSUs and ISO are priced according to the market price at the time they are granted. So this type of compensation is at the mercy of the market. This also means that for a company like Apple or Netflix, employees have done very well in some cases. Others, not so well. Look at how much Apple and Google stock have gone up and down the last eight years.

This might explain it. Apple is now bigger than the city of Chicago and the same size as Switzerland
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46606766

FunTime says

The idea that RSUs or ISOs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars are regularly given is mistaken.

Yep.

I work in the trenches, so does my partner. Over the years, year after year (though not every single year) our employers have granted NQ, ISO, RSU. Public companies, private ("pre-IPO" for the Hipsters), big companies, small companies, middle sized companies. Companies on their way up, and also on their way down.

Sounds like you know, and like I know, and like another person (thomaswong86) who (claims to have) actually worked in such organizations knows.

Yep, working on the technology teams inventing, refining, manufacturing the stuff, or in my partners' case, doing the bean counting.

SFAce may be a cheerleader, and may be making Big Talk about the streets of Santa Clara County being paved with RSU/ISO/NQ gold, but those of us who work in the trenches know what is true.

But his cheerleading makes "fun reading", doesn't it?

thomas.wong1986 says

He disliked what he saw back in the early years how people became greedy and childish.. buying expensive toys and getting plastic surgery...

Uh, one of the first things Jobs did was lie to Woz about how much money they made on Breakout, and buying himself a sportscar. Then abandoning his girlfriend and their baby.

Yep. Jobs wasn't the saint some people portrayed him to be.