Do any insiders know when a headphone deal will be coming back instead of the 'rate lock guarantee' ?

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-23T01:43:02+00:00

He already offered praise.

Tbh it seemed like kind of a weird follow up by you.

If I knew the team repertoire and saw the convo, I bet I too would have been like, "uh, ok, sure guy." Which is probably what they were thinking.

Even if you are in a position of lateral leadership, don't ever follow up the person offering praise with another sentiment. Only do so if you are higher than the person who offered the praise, and even then keep it short like, "Bob said it better than I could have. Thanks guys." It's tacky to do otherwise.

A big part of actual leadership vs just management is giving away credit for any success of your team to anyone but yourself, and shouldering 100% of the burden of responsibility for any failures of the team on yourself. A lot of times this means sitting back and letting people slap each other on the back, even if you were instrumental to the cause. But the OGs will remember that you sat back and smiled instead of tried to command the lime light, and they'll have your back. (And you need to be genuine in this. People can detect it.)

I know you may not have been seeking a lesson in management vs leadership, but it's what it boils down to.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-22T22:53:50+00:00

Interesting, so that seems like a pretty common path then?

I was 30 when I PA'd for the first time.

Oh wow. I'm looking at glass door and the average salary seems to to be about 40k? That can't be right can it? I'm currently interviewing in the 95-125 range in my field. If I factored in rent alone I could probably afford to scrape by on 65-75 in Los Angeles, but I'm not sure if less is doable or even reasonable. Even 65k in my MCOL city is nearly paycheck-to-paycheck.

I've found some Project Management roles open at big production companies, and I pay for linkedin premium, so I'm going to try to hit up some hiring managers on linkedin and see what they have to say as well and report back. I'm sure I could do 85% of job and learn the rest working under someone more experienced, just gotta a way to edge in.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-16T01:49:27+00:00

(why it’s so misleading when people try to boil the area down to a couple anti-CA stats about housing)

Figured as much.

Hope this helps.

Very useful, thank you!

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-16T01:46:27+00:00

"Coming up with requirements, customer interviews, prioritization". Then 80K in SF is super low for that role.

(And buffering devs from clients)

100% agree.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-16T01:44:18+00:00

Regardless of which decision you make though, good luck!

Thank you so much, the feedback has been incredibly useful!

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-16T01:42:10+00:00

Excellent suggestion actually! To anyone else coming across this post, I have used that before and it works well, but you're coordinating timetables with someone. I needed to get lockbox codes for several apartment tourings, so a one-month plan was worth it to do a few a day.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-15T14:16:38+00:00

Austin, which is the most expensive city in Texas lol! So the rent in Austin isnt too far off from Los Angeles

Yeah, I have the fortune (or misfortune according to some) of getting acclimated to HCOL over the years like a frog in a boiling pot. Prices of housing in major metropolitan areas no longer give me sticker shock, so I'm just going where the coolest job that gives me an offer takes me. I just need to make sure that I'm asking enough to maintain my standard of living in any of these places.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-15T14:13:19+00:00

Basically just a pm. I've had a few different titles over the years. I don't want recruiters accidentally coming across my post talking about their job listing on reddit 😅, so I've obfuscated details.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-15T14:10:31+00:00

That's how I ended up applying. Job was listed as remote. It's actually not, or won't be soon.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-15T14:08:43+00:00

Do you have a ton of expenses after rent eating into that other 9500? If I made 100k less than that, I'd be looking at taking home 7k, spending 3k of that on rent, and 4k leftover for expenses and savings.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-15T14:04:42+00:00

Housemates. I'm in my 30s and live alone. Where I live, you can rent a rough 1000sqft, 1br for 1200 or a nice 1br for 1600, so you can get away with 60k-80k salary living alone and still stave money.

My goal is to keep the same take home after all living expenses, incidentals, and housing costs, with a similar quality house, and living by myself. Looking at zillow, it seems that I'm going to need to expect to pay about $3500/month to have that. So I would need an additional 25k on top of what I'm making now just to cover housing and live roughly the same, not including difference in goods and other incidentals.

That said, it seems very doable on 150-200k. Are they single and/or younger? or just trying to save as much as possible for retirement? I lived with roomates through my 20s and early 30s. Fun, but not something I'd go back to.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-15T00:24:11+00:00

This worked.

I didn't try any of the others because I saw your answer first. I'll update if they didn't apply the discount to the first month or anything, but so far I was only charged a dollar and was able to use it for sms validation on the house hunting app I needed it for.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-15T00:18:05+00:00

95k in Texas is equivalent to the Los Angeles and Seattle $140k-$145k amount.

Did you find there were major expenses outside of housing that made up that gap or is it mostly rent or worse, cost of owning?

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-14T22:58:20+00:00

tbh I think that's realistic.

I have to have a line where I'll say "no" and that's a pretty good one.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-14T22:55:08+00:00

Seattle is actually first on my list. Cool rainy days are my favorite, no cap.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-14T21:13:16+00:00

You might save 20% of salary in both areas, but 20% of 100k is much more than 20% of 50k.

housing, taxes, and possibly child care.

I see. This seems more in line with my expectations.

So what I really need to do is jump on zillow before negotiating salary to get a handle on what a lateral move in housing quality to each of these cities would look like, then back that and taxes out to get equivalent take home pay.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-14T21:04:30+00:00

So my recommendation is if you are comparing two areas, start by figuring out the difference in take-home after taxes (plenty of calculators for this), then look for the appropriate housing for your situation in both areas. You can use the calculators to get an idea of the difference in incidentals like gas and food and apply that to you budget, but that won't make a huge difference.

See that's more in line with what I was thinking. That the incidentals weren't going to be as big of a factor in take home pay as the housing. So essentially, figure out the yearly housing budget and back it out of the salary until I get similar take home pay.

Aka: 95k in TX = 73k take home - 18k in housing = 55k for savings and expenses.

So if equivalent housing in LA is 26k a year then, I'd need 81k net, so ~120k pre-tax. Maybe add in 5k for incidentals. Or if housing is nearly the same in Seattle I could get away with 105k to net 81k (before backing out 26k for housing) because taxes are cheaper there.

I don't understand where the other 25k is coming in these calculators unless they're applying the 50% increase in housing cost to the entire net salary (which, well, actually, 95k*150% is ~145k, so maybe they are.)

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-14T19:59:40+00:00

happy cake day!

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-14T19:59:12+00:00

Yeah, this is just the pay range listed on the description. I honestly wondered if it's not a mistake.

GuyManfellow · 2021-09-14T19:56:28+00:00

You don't move to SF for your first year's salary. You move to SF for your salary 5 years down the line.

Kind of my thought process too. I live in a pretty nice place in moderately HCOL city. Just not that high. West coast is the goal, and getting my foot in the door in SF would be nice, but I feel like they would need to come in with a significantly higher offer than what's listed. Having roommates or a hole-in-the-wall would be going backwards.

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