How to break the infinite loop when the tech wealth game has no exit condition.
This exchange happened a few years ago, and salaries may have changed since then, but the story is timeless.
“In life, you should always look up, not look down!” Raj said.
I had just mentioned that, by most standards, we probably had more than most people.
It was one of the occasional times I had a sit-down lunch in the company cafeteria. I was at a table with Milena and Raj. Raj was a software engineer working closely with Milena’s group. I had interacted with him a few times before. He was always cheerful, helpful, and had a good sense of humor.
Raj had joined the company about ten years earlier, after completing a master’s degree at a Texas university.
Over lunch, the conversation had moved toward money, an evergreen topic in the Bay Area.
“I make peanuts here. I still can’t afford a nice house,” Raj said. “Schools in our district are bad, so we have to send the kids to private schools. The cost is insane.”
He continued, almost embarrassed: “My cousin sold his company and bought a three-million-dollar house in South San Jose. My best friend works at Amazon as an L7. I don’t even want to know how much he makes.”
He was shaking his head. “I’m the poorest of all my friends!” As to tease us, he added jokingly: “You and Milena are probably making more than me also!”
We all laughed.
Sassy Milena replied: “Maybe, but it doesn’t matter to us because Greg, the CEO, still makes more than we do. So, you see, that thing never ends!”
She was making a sharp point, and we all laughed again.
Raj sighed. “Maybe I should start a side business, everyone has one.” He was right, everyone seemed to have one around here: custom cookies or cakes, owning a nail salon, consulting on the side…the list of what could be an additional source of income was endless.
That was the rat race in Silicon Valley. Raj probably had millions in stocks and made about $200K a year. His wife also had an income: she was a developer in a start-up. But still, he felt poor because he was comparing himself only to those who had more, not to those with less.
And in the Bay Area, there is always someone richer than you.
Was it a California thing? A Silicon Valley thing? An immigrant thing? A combination of all three? Milena, Raj and I were both immigrants.
When lunch ended, we walked back toward our respective buildings. Ironically, Raj’s building was across the street, on a road lined up with a few RVs, permanently parked there. Probably many of these RVs owners had a job, not allowing them to afford decent housing. On rainy days, I could see huge blue tarps over their roofs, to protect them from leaks.
It seemed that from time to time, the city or very likely the company, would order construction on that part of the road. As to temporarily move the RVs away from campus. But they would return eventually.
As Raj walked away, I turned to Milena, “Raj looks at the mansions in Atherton, but he doesn’t see the RVs lined up next to his building.”
“He’s not the only one,” she said. “That’s what happens when people move here. At first, they notice everything. Then slowly, the conversations are all about money, housing prices, stocks… and the endless complaints about not making as much as someone else.”
Milena was right. I sometimes had the feeling the Silicon Valley tech bubble was made of the same people: engineers, mostly immigrants, all with $2 million houses, Teslas, vacations in Hawaii, kids in private schools. And yet, all complaining about how poor they felt compared to the neighbor.
I had been in Silicon Valley for a few years. Yes, the cost of living was among the highest in the country, but so were the compensations for tech workers. Of course, life was far from being perfect and without challenge though. And yet, I still thought I had more than most.
I realistically knew the fancy houses in Palo Alto will forever be out of my reach, and I still chose to see the RVs lining some streets, hoping no water was leaking in on rainy days, and that no children were calling them home.
The Infinite Loop and Where the Race ends
In tech, we are conditioned to constantly “level up.” We want to optimize our careers, stacks, and portfolios. But when we apply the same logic to our bank accounts, we create an infinite loop.
Only looking up isn’t ambition; it’s bad data sampling. You will always feel behind.
No matter how much faster you run on the corporate treadmill, the finish line keeps shifting further away.
Stop optimizing for “more” and start defining your “enough”, your own finish line. Otherwise, no matter how many millions you have in vested RSUs, you’ll burn yourself out playing a rigged game, because you never looked down or around.
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My Coworker Raj Was Probably a Millionaire. Yet He Felt Poor in Silicon Valley. was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
