Billionaire Math(apenwarr.ca)

26 pointsby avinasshletztes Jahr8 comments

https://apenwarr.ca/log/20250711

8 comments

> software developers nowadays fall mostly in the top 1-2%[1]

> [1] Beware of estimates of the “average income of the top 1%.” That average includes all the richest people in the world. You only need to earn the very bottom of the 1% bucket in order to be in the top 1%.

This doesn't seem remotely accurate, unless the sources I'm using are way off. It's reasonable to to point out that averages can be deceiving, so I'm using the median instead: at $133k/yr[1] the median software engineer in the U.S. is not even in the top 10% and would need to triple their income before becoming the lowest-earning 1%-er[2].

As an engineer who makes a bit less than the median I'm far from destitute, but the author and I are not in the same club.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

[2] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-perce...

ferbivoreletztes Jahr

It's just the usual elitism. If you don't make as much as an L6 in Mountain View you must not be a real developer.

PaulHouleletztes Jahr

    The dangerous ones pick ever loftier goals (colonize Mars) 
    and then bet everything on it. Everything. Their time, their 
    reputation, their relationships, their fortune, their companies, 
    their morals, everything they’ve ever built...

That's not Musk. I mean, if it was Musk he'd be a much more wholesome character. He'd realize that there are at most 3 chances to go to Mars in a two-term presidency and he'd better keep everybody sweet. He wouldn't be digging tunnels under Las Vegas and buying Twitter and picking the fights he does. He'd be cultivating an image the way Warren Buffer did that opened doors and didn't open them. He shouldn't be thinking about tapping people's brain, he should be thinking about finishing the job that Eric Drexler started because that's the critical path to "disturbing the universe" but no full self-driving will be available in 8 weeks...

Zuckerberg with VR might be a better example. When it comes to his existing platforms he seems to be "careless", my take is that's he's even "careless" about the aspects in which his VR platform is already successful (a game store) because he's wishing for something else. (I get pinged with notifications on my phone about a game that's 50% off and I want to buy, but it doesn't drop me to a landing page for that game but rather to a disorganized home page which I find really tiring to engage with) You hear here and there he's got a boyish interest in Ancient Rome or UFC or something like that, but unlike Musk he doesn't seem to be whole-heartedly into anything and when shareholders slap his wrist over being distracted by AI he half-heartedly looks like he's pivoting into half-heartedness but boy he's got a genius for acquisitions to reinforce his monopolies or just plain acquisitions of monopolists (Luxotica) and he scares me about as much as the witch in that Narnia movie who looks more like a junkie than anything else.

closeparenletztes Jahr

>We programmers, we 1%ers, are in the top percentile of capitalism high scores in the entire world - that’s the literal definition - but we keep fighting with each other to get closer to top place. Why?

>Because we forgot there’s anything else. Because someone convinced us that the score even matters.

Because we want homes near the offices we're required to work from in order to maintain those capitalism high scores, and those homes are a fundamentally zero sum resource.

Supermancholetztes Jahr

Arbitrary scale:

https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...

> I should move from New York City back to Montreal and then stop worrying about it forever. ... My numbers aren’t that different from the average Canadian or (especially) American software developer nowadays.

Yes, they are.

I'm not in the 1% - even if I was, splitting between my dependents we're not in the 1% again. If we get sick, we have to worry about money. If 2 of us get really sick, we're broke. I feel like the blogpost is blowing smoke from the start.

akomtuletztes Jahr

Those in the top 1% have at least $50M in assets.

closeparenletztes Jahr

One big thing going on here is programmers are young and TC has taken off relatively recently. Programmers are in the 1% by income much more often than by wealth.

camgunzletztes Jahr

Man, apenwarr for prez. In a weird ass climate of ICE raids, military flexes, AI grift and intense income inequality he drops this gauntlet. I love it.