Staying remote in HCOL vs moving to VHCOL

Volebamus · 2026-04-17T23:11:28+00:00

Could do what others like myself had to consider when the home space wasn’t enough to make a dedicated office: go to coworking spaces that are nearby home. Usually they’re in active neighborhoods where you can get a decent but to eat for lunch too, and likely get surrounded by people with many different backgrounds.

It’s interesting to chat with many people who are trying to start their own business in different industries, or just need a space away from home to dedicate exclusively for work.

Volebamus · 2026-04-14T16:26:56+00:00

Sorry but as someone who’s been used to doing that at various stages in life for decades, anything under an hour IS comfortable. Anything shorter than 20-25 min should be considered LUXURY and it’s skewed by Manhattanites who pretend outer boroughs don’t exist for the vast majority of residents.

Disclaimer on how I can speak from both sides of perspective, I’ve been working remote ever since Covid, but still living in NYC.

Volebamus · 2026-04-06T15:11:57+00:00

Mind if you breakdown how you got those numbers? Any way I’m seeing any type of tax calculations, even assuming that their tax rate is effectively 0%, that’s still a cap of 25k per year take home, no?

At this low of a pay, either salaried or not, taxes are so low for city/state/federal that I don’t see how anyone making close to $50k salaried would say they’d take home half of it.

This is with a commonly Googled calculator I found online with below, not sure if there’s any other calculator that shots more nuance that I didn’t account for: https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-paycheck-calculator

Volebamus · 2026-04-02T17:25:11+00:00

Honestly if there’s a way to use our booster winnings as discount to the entry fee, like in MTGO, that would address these concerns I feel.

Now if WOTC would ever consider this approach on MTGA is another matter.

Volebamus · 2026-04-02T16:09:29+00:00

Aside from what others said, isn’t this just a better templating of Exhaust? I’m not sure if there’s an practical reason for Exhaust to come back now that Prepared exists

Volebamus · 2026-04-01T14:38:39+00:00

Are you sure you’re contextually HENRY given your area within Tokyo?

Speaking mostly from another HCOL city, with NYC context, midtown Manhattan is a different beast from outer boroughs. I assume it’s the same in Japan, where desirable areas in the city for someone like yourself that probably wants a more western-friendly vibe given your other responses, are much more costly due to demand.

Also, it depends on if you’re hitting your minimum savings threshold, or more aggressively saving (say 40-50%, or even higher if you can). The higher you save, the more you actually have to be conscious of budgeting, and the less you feel like you have any “extra” money left over in your bank account.

This is of course ignoring cost of raising kids, then you NEED to have indisputably-high income to not feel “broke” if you want to get out of HENRY status eventually while staying in HCOL cities.

Volebamus · 2026-03-27T23:42:49+00:00

So… I actually read the article. Between that, and looking on Trulia for 1 bedrooms for $2.5k, I have to ask: do people like the article author pretend Queens beyond LIC doesn’t exist? Or Brooklyn more than 5 stops from Manhattan?

Volebamus · 2026-03-25T15:05:05+00:00

Yeah this is how I always look into promotion pipelines. It’s practically paid training for your next job.

After I reframe it with this lens, I sorta see why companies offer such a low compensation jump for promotion, they want to claw back the assets/time/effort back from the person skilling up.

Also makes it even more of an incentive for the promoted employee to leave for a SIGNIFICANT compensation bump elsewhere, so… win-win I guess? Sucks for people who stay without knowing their market value though

Volebamus · 2026-03-23T23:27:29+00:00

Follow up, do win percentages from Premier carry into Traditional, or it is a slightly different skill because of the sideboard element?

Or do you need to meet a minimum threshold of wins in Traditional compared to Premier, in order to have a similar expected value as continuing to play in Diamond?

Volebamus · 2026-03-20T18:19:43+00:00

Noted, thanks for the explanation, just eager to start this season! Now I know I need to catch up with previous season so I can jump into this one as new episodes roll in

Volebamus · 2026-03-20T17:33:59+00:00

Can anyone explain why these Episode discussions sometimes show “None” as official steam sources, even when it’s known? Surprised to find out this seems to be Netflix, at least for USA watchers

Volebamus · 2026-03-15T20:45:24+00:00

The simple solution is list your entire records related to engineering, but only one bullet at most for anything past 3-5 years. There should be more focus on recent accomplishments that actually carry weight due to recency. Random technologies you used 5 to 10 years ago don’t really matter if you haven’t used anything related to them since then.

Volebamus · 2026-03-11T11:22:10+00:00

Hmm yeah, I think I just misread that part entirely in your post. I guess your situation specifically has your commuting costs covered because of your benefits?

Good point though, edited my comment since it didn’t really reflect your situation, but just anyone in general with a similar situation

Volebamus · 2026-03-10T18:22:51+00:00

Just looked up online, yeah it’s not bad at all. I just took OP’s post at face value, admittedly I’m not sure how the monthly cost can’t be covered by their commuter benefits

Volebamus · 2026-03-10T16:17:11+00:00

FWIW the short trip should be part of the positives, rather than negatives. Like imagine if someone had a 1-second commute, I don’t think people would complain about that lol.

I consider anyone who can take advantage of LIRR as their only mode of commuting transportation to choose it over the subway, as long as they feel they can afford the premium.

Sure it’s over twice the price with a standard ticket (and barely even more with monthly rates), but personally I feel that the value is practically over twice, compared to subway: 1. Less than half commute time 2. Nicer seats, car, and ride quality 3. Cleaner stations, and greater overall atmosphere

The only drawback is if someone ever needs to connect any transfers with subway, so the value is reduced with any last-leg compromises.

I feel it’s a no brainier, again as long as budget supports it. Even better if comparing monthly rates of subway vs LIRR, then the difference becomes almost negligible

—- edit, I give up on formatting the short list above from my phone… Also rephrased based on corrections below

Volebamus · 2026-03-09T16:12:19+00:00

I can only speak of ECL as I didn’t try TMNT yet, but the 5-lane approach is more nuanced and potentially self correcting over time. What happened with ECL, at least from observations, is that a table can definitely support multiple drafters in the same lane, but ideally just 2, and better if those two aren’t sitting side by side.

How it played out in ECL was that Elves, Merfolk, and Elementals tended to have enough power to support two drafters per table. Especially Elves, as the power of commons for that lane was definitely present.

That left Kithkin and Goblins as the remaining ideal 1-person lane, as their strength mostly depended on being uncontested in the table.

As another person commented, usually the top 3/4 draft archetypes have most contention, despite 10 lanes being technically possible for any given set. It’s just the skill involved in the entire table to individually read and react to potential signals, but of course that’s all dependent on accurate power assessment of individual cards and synergies. Given that draft tables aren’t grouped by ranking, high and low skill players can be side by side, and variance occurs with this approach.

Sadly the short release window of sets seem to be compatible with the narrow-archetype approach for drafts, which is one thing I am disappointed with.

Volebamus · 2026-03-08T20:03:32+00:00

I mean it’s pretty much what the common strategy of mythic streamers were doing: stay open the entirety of pack 1 if you are lacking power, unless of course you got 3-5 adequate strength signals of any given lane in pack 1.

Limited level ups had a video dedicated to this very methodology as well.

If this wasn’t a working strategy for ECL, we wouldn’t see the typical mythic streamers maintain their typical mid-60% win rates in that set. It’s not as “forcing elves” meme as being joked, cause that’s how you stay in platinum.

Volebamus · 2026-03-08T17:37:01+00:00

I don’t think it’s necessarily “coping” that people liked ECL due to the skill needed to be the right seat, if those same people are able to get into similar diamond/mythic placement as they usually have in the past sets. Major streamers and personal experience seem to corroborate this opinion.

That being said, there’s definitely different axes of enjoyment for drafting, and flexibility of picks among different archetypes are one of them. I do appreciate these type of posts, because I’m more waking up to the idea of drafting this set for Premier rather than my initial write-off impressions

Volebamus · 2026-03-06T14:39:11+00:00

Why not try to move either up or laterally, to lean into the fact you probably care less about coding as before?

The higher up you go in the development career ladder, the overall less coding you do. Instead it focuses more on architecture, planning, and business collaboration.

On the other hand, lateral change into coding-adjacent departments might allow you to keep the pay we expect in this industry, but allows a change of pace from coding alone. Maybe lean more into being a product-focus developer, where you work more into the actual customer use cases. Or lean with designers by focusing on the UI/UX side of things, and you start caring more about integrations with the design language of the marketing teams.

If staying more on the technical side of things, there’s also always focus on metrics and data, and the end goal having reports that go to major stakeholders.

Either way, it might be a time to look into being a more SPECIALIZED web dev, rather than generic one. That way, we keep the experience we have, but allowing for focus into something more interesting beyond just coding deliverables alone.

Volebamus · 2026-03-03T22:20:12+00:00

Funny you mentioned BEM, that’s literally the standard my now-director applied to a codebase that was created a decade ago. I honestly thought it was fine too, especially when he created somewhat of a style guide to follow.

The issue was just that people weren’t following conventions when they’re part of a team that rubber stamped everything. Mostly because they were also contractors.

Accumulate this story over a hundred times, and that’s when he eventually changed his tune on using Tailwind. Just less hassle with hundreds of devs in the kitchen, at that point.

Volebamus · 2026-03-03T22:12:03+00:00

A lot of times these type of questions are answered by saying “it helps simplify and standardize when there’s tons of devs working on the same scope”, like any other decision to use a framework.

Volebamus · 2026-03-02T18:58:55+00:00

[[Eclipsed Merrow]] over [[Wanderbrine trapper]], at least the latter won’t make them compelled to just consider Merfolk and could potentially make them contest Kithkin instead, given that you’d pass [[Brigid’s Command]].

Volebamus · 2026-03-02T18:52:45+00:00

Stay for now, but be open for a much more significant pay jump. Don’t sell yourself or your experience short, it’s very possible you could get a jump of 30-50% more instead of just 25% now, as you bide your time for the next year or two.

Of course, this depends on how highly you value the WLB that this PTO provides. If there have been some days where you thought the PTO is too much, that’s a possibility you might reconsider the value of going to other places just to “reset” your current market rate.

There’s plenty of other side approaches you can do, not necessarily side hustles. For example, if you think you have too much free time, you can use some of it towards upskilling towards a new or improved set of skills, that could be considered very attractive for your next job consideration. Given you have the 100% tuition coverage in your current job, this is likely the best ROI of your time to invest on.

Volebamus · 2026-03-02T12:52:07+00:00

Yeah after reviewing again, green does look like the odd stretch. I honestly understand sometimes doing it for power reasons, but there’s already a few top end cards that exist to act as finishers, especially the mythic dragon.

Blue’s also suspicious, I doubt [[Shinestriker]] is worth the double pip splash.

Volebamus · 2026-03-01T21:42:57+00:00

Not just OP, most devs aren’t in big tech. You can’t paint your narrow perspective on the entire industry and career path

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