What would it take for you to go from a job that you enjoy to a job that has a reputation of being stressful?
Posted by atomicbuster@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 80 comments
I feel like I'm at an inflection point in terms of my career and I'm curious how others would weigh opportunities.
Suppose you make salary X (likely top 5% in your area) and there's a job that you can realistically get that is 2.5X to 3X your current salary (top 1%). The current job is fully work from home, low stress, and you're very comfortable with the tech stack. But the new job is known to be more chaotic and stressful as well as more prestigious and cutting edge. You'll also need to travel to the office for around a week each month.
How do you weigh situations like this?
How highly do you value your comfort?
throwaway_0x90@reddit
Higher than any amount of money.
But life is complicated and certain sacrifices I could make if I can clearly see how it'd improve life for my family - but it has to be drastic. 3x my current salary would be pretty drastic I must say.
Like, let's say you do this stressful job for 3 years - and you end up saving enough money to send your 2 hypothetical kids to Stanford University to get Master's degree. If you hadn't taken this job, there was no way they'd be able to go get that higher education. Give that scenario, I'd do the job if it made the difference of my kids having a significantly better chance in life.
engineered_academic@reddit
Young with no family? Get that bread.
Older with family? Nothing can take me away from them.
SketchySeaBeast@reddit
I'm at a stage in my career where I don't feel the need to grow like crazy, but I still have a few decades left. I'm tired of stress. Unless it was "retire in 5 years" money, I wouldn't bother.
epelle9@reddit
FAANG companies can offer up to 500k for senior level engineers, that’s 2.5 million in 5 years, enough to retire on if you aren’t a big spender.
platinummyr@reddit
Don't forget taxes
epelle9@reddit
True.
Still, after raised and interest, it will likely be near 2.5 mil, at least 2 mil, on top of prior savings.
Not a lavish lifestyle, but enough to retire if that’s your goal.
Personal-Sandwich-44@reddit
Taxes, especially in the VHCOL cities that generally offer 500k for seniors, are really high. Lets do a simplified best case scenario, which is that you make 500k salary.
In NYC, your take home per year will be about 300k per year. After 5 years, even with interest and promotions, you're absolutely not hitting 2.5mill, and pretty unlikely to hit 2mill.
You literally also have to live. Even being frugal, you're not actually putting the 300k straight in the bank easy time.
Now, yeah, you can be remote and live at home and all that, which will affect things, but in this market I'd be surprised to see someone get a 500k remote FAANG job now, when they could just as easily get someone willing to be in person.
topboyinn1t@reddit
Maybe 4x salary
The_Real_Slim_Lemon@reddit
I have other priorities and commitments, if it’s stressful but still 9-5 - then I’d do it for the money or even the experience. If it’s the kind of place where I’d get fired if I didn’t work a 60 hour week - then I’m getting fired, so it’d have to be a buttload of money.
tikhonjelvis@reddit
I've found that stress and workload are very team- and context-specific. I've been more stressed out and unhappy on slow-moving teams than I have been on some much faster-moving ones. I'm sure there are still places where ≈every team would make me miserable—I'm not going to even apply to Citadel—but I would keep an open mind for places that are not so extreme.
EddieJones6@reddit
I’ve done this and I am interviewing at lower salary places again to go back.
Ok-Vermicelli-7807@reddit
Well... It's not worth it long term.
But was it worth making a ton more money for a little while?
poipoipoi_2016@reddit
I ended up in the psych ward where I was dragged by the cops twice.
I also lost 20 pounds in 24 hours multiple times (Water weight is weird man).
I still to this day have permanent medical issues which significantly constrain which jobs I can do.
_hypnoCode@reddit
If you're in the top 5% pay then doubling or tripling that realistically doesn't make a huge difference. You can put more in savings and take some vacation or buy a nicer car... but you're not making weekend yacht money.
Ok-Vermicelli-7807@reddit
Going from $200k to $500k a year is the difference between paying off your house in 10 years and paying it off in 2 years.
Your salary has increased by 2.5x, but your net income after your fixed expenses has probably more like 5x'd and all that extra money can go towards a mortgage.
Mirage-Mirage-Mirage@reddit
It can, but at the major cost of your mental and physical health, your relationships, your personal time, etc. As you get older, these things matter a lot more to you. To many, such a tradeoff isn't worth it.
_hypnoCode@reddit
Right, which is nice, but it's not as huge as people think unless you're massively in debt or something. You're still in the same social class, just with more vacations or toys. Especially if you're already at $200k+.
For most people it's a fantasy to have that kind of pay bump and probably equate it to winning the lotto of something, but I've been there and it's nice, but it doesn't really skyrocket you into a totally different lifestyle. You're not exactly going to be buying a $10million yacht that you don't have to maintain or going on luxury vacations with your family multiple times a year.
EddieJones6@reddit
No. I put on weight, I was stressed 24/7, I was short with my family… I ended up on verge of a breakdown. And no im not trying to just coast and complaining about working the occasional 50 hour week - this is constant 70 hour weeks and managers from multiple time zones pinging me at any hour about the current “high priority” item.
csanon212@reddit
35 is considered old in tech
atomicbuster@reddit (OP)
Yep, loved ones are definitely my biggest reason not to. It's a shame I wasn't able to do this while I was a little younger tbh.
Higgsy420@reddit
There's always someone wealthier than you. Chill out, enjoy your life.
martinbean@reddit
When I think of those jobs, I think of FAANG, and when I think of FAANG, I think of mega-bucks, and that’s what would make me jump.
abe_mussa@reddit
I moved to a place like you’re describing, and I’ve kind of just got used to it
Struggled at first to settle in, used to be worried a lot. Now I’m a bit more detached from it. Intense at times but it’s just work and once I close my laptop lid for the day it’s far from my thoughts
Also having a bit of a safety net in your savings account helps - whatever happens, got the essentials covered a little while
not_napoleon@reddit
It would have to be a lot more money for me. Like "realistically, you could retire in 3-5 years" kind of money.
Creepy_Ad2486@reddit
I would need 4x the money, so, it looks like I'm staying put for as long as possible.
AngusAlThor@reddit
Work high stress for 2 years, use the extra money to fuck off and travel for the 2 years after that.
ihmoguy@reddit
Work smart, not hard, because you may be dead in 2 years.
sotired3333@reddit
Or put it into an investment account and retire a couple of years early.
AngusAlThor@reddit
Not a bad idea, but I should say I have family friends who waited till retirement to do fun stuff, and are now finding their bodies aren't up to the adventures they wanted to have. So saving aggressively for retirement has its own risks.
espo619@reddit
My mother in law died of cancer a week before her pension kicked in. Nothing is guaranteed.
_TheGrayPilgrim@reddit
Add eating healthy and exercising to your retirement plan too
ramdog@reddit
Made a conscious effort to get back to this in the last two years and the benefits are almost as shocking as much I'd let things deteriorate.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
Depends on age and state taxes if your close to early retirement and this will put you over the hump, maybe
atomheartother@reddit
Literally nothing.
valence_engineer@reddit
I made the choice and, honestly, love it. I get paid a lot of money and get to work with some of the best people I've ever worked with on cutting edge projects. There is a lot of chaos as well but not all chaos is bad if you know how to handle it. I work smart, focus on what has value and relax when there is less going on. Some people work at full pace all the time which ends as you'd expect but depending on the company that's not needed. The company does have leadership that actually cares and communicates things very well.
That said, if I had to deal with bureaucracy or politics on top of the chaos then I'd probably quit. Not worth it for my sanity. Personally I know I can handle chaos and stress but not a sea of outright bad actors.
Calm_Masterpiece3322@reddit
It would have to be life changing money if the stress could potentially change your life
Calm_Masterpiece3322@reddit
You're essentially asking to put a price on your mental health. I'd say it's about $100k more per year
jeremyckahn@reddit
Easy question: Low stress job, every time. Money is not the most important thing in life.
Andrew64467@reddit
If I was in your position I’d stick with the lower paying chill job. I reckon I could earn more in the long run by not burning myself out. A career is a marathon not a sprint. Also I’m in a work to live not a live to work phase of my life.
Of course your situation or preferences may be different.
RunnyPlease@reddit
3x my last purely remote work-from-home salary would be in the $450k-500k range. There is no amount of stress that would make that not worth it. I would move to Kiev and write code in a children’s hospital for half a million a year.
The fact that you think “stressful” is working in the office for one week a month is laughable.
Beneficial_Map6129@reddit
you havent really been through a real stressful work environment then.
epelle9@reddit
Maybe they’re just good at managing stress.
I’ve been on very stressful work environments , working up to 12 hours a day in person in a distribution center, sometimes working graveyard shifts, sometimes with angry clients taking it out on you because bugs are wasting production time, and It was for much much less than 500k.
Fire forges steel, that helped give me skills and forged my personality that nows feels decently relaxed in any situation, I’d definitely do what most people here consider “stressful” for 1/2 a million a year.
Beneficial_Map6129@reddit
Just wrapped up a product release where I had to constantly nag our India team to finish their task along with like 5 other dependency teams scattered across the world. I slept 3-4 hours a day for a month straight and worked weekends and holidays as well.
I get paid near 300k. I feel underpaid.
There are definitely jobs that are not worth it
RunnyPlease@reddit
Its possible.
Or maybe it’s possible that OP is just describing a job. They didn’t mention safety risks, or working in a war zone. They’re not drilling for oil in Siberia. They’re not putting down a warlord uprising in Syria. They aren’t going undercover as a CIA operative infiltrating a Mexican drug cartel. It’s a job writing software with an in person requirement one week a month and some travel. Nothing seems out of the ordinary at all. It’s just a job.
I grant you there might be added stress above a squishy stay at home position, but it’s a dream job for 99% of people on the planet. It’s a question of trading comfort for a 3x increase in pay and what sounds like a major leap forward in future career prospects. Easy trade.
atomicbuster@reddit (OP)
That's about the amount and I agree that amount of money is a kind of a mindfuck.
The stressful part isn't the once a week in the office (with travel). It's from my research. I know they're a chaotic environment.
RunnyPlease@reddit
Apologies for the long response.
I was a software consultant for over a decade. Chaotic environments can be managed and in true chaos it’s easy to show your worth if you can manage to get anything done. If everyone around you is setting their own hair on fire and causing drama then you can be regarded as a top performer just by being professional, suggesting reasonable process improvements that result in measurable ROI, and documenting even your small successes and achievements.
Now I’m not going to kid you it’s hellacious to be in an environment with truly disruptive people. High turnover is a big problem at places like that, and it’s never the managements fault for some reason even when the person leaving cites bad managers in their exit interview.
You can expect things like wildly shifting priorities and needing to take over tasks from people that just up and leave without notice. The key there is to document every priority change, who made the change, and who is affected by it. Push out status to everyone affected by the change and make sure repercussions are understood.
“At 3:30 pm today I was told by Vice President of App Development Chad Johnson that I was to drop everything related to ___ and focus my efforts completely on _. This priority change will affect expected timelines for delivery of . If you have concerns about this plan direct them to Chad Johnson.”
That kind of communication can do wonders. Let them fight out priority. Treat yourself as what you are, a resource with a limited capacity for production. You are the manager for that resource.
It obviously won’t fix the problem, but when the shit hits the fan at least you have a paper trail. I’ve sent several of those shifting priority emails in a single day. Believe it or not they really help to emphasize the untenable nature of a situation by putting a spotlight on it and by attaching a name to it.
The status pushes also work great in a review to explain a lack of productivity if needed. The entire point of a project manager is to ensure productivity of a team by setting priority and assigning tasks. If you can document that that isn’t being done it’s pretty clear where the failure of the process is. And it’s not with you.
The real key to working on a project or company currently on a death march is to realize you don’t have to join the death march. Your self-worth and emotions are based outside of work. The people who crack on the death march are the people who view success or failure of a given task as a sign of their value as a human being.
“I haven’t pushed a single commit in 5 days because the GitHub account was frozen for lack of payment. This is going to show up on my performance review! I’m a failure!” If you think that’s your fault then you’re going to suffer. If you think that’s an accountants fault and has no bearing on your value to the company or as a human being then you’re probably going to be fine even if people are yelling at you and blaming you for a lack of production.
This is especially true if you can document the disruption and show what you did that was productive during the downtime. If everyone is stopped in their tracks and everyone but you just sits on their hands waiting for the situation to be resolved but you can show that you spent the time updating documentation, creating a test plan, creating user training materials, leading other devs in coding exercises, and things like that then you are lapping the competition while they are standing still.
If you know exactly what ways the environment is chaotic I can probably give you some more tips on risk mitigation techniques and strategies for staying out of the fire. Your call. DMs are open.
Just to go back to what I said before, it’s a personality thing more than anything. If you trust that your sense of self worth is strong enough to be detached from things like successfully competing tasks and the assumed camaraderie of your coworkers then you can be successful even if the company is floundering, the management is vindictive and ineffectual, and rats are deserting the sinking ship. You have to know that you are distinct from your job. That is a requirement. If that’s not your personality type then I’d say stay where you are and wait for something more fitting to progress in your career.
epelle9@reddit
Saved this, great comment!
Unstable-Infusion@reddit
That is my current salary range, and let me tell you, yes there is. It's just a number. It makes your retirement account grow faster but that's it. My life is the same as it was when i made 90k. The only reason I'm still here is that I'm very close to retirement.
RunnyPlease@reddit
You’re kind of proving my exact point. That is your salary rage and you are there despite the stress that’s aging you. Despite the discomfort and possible health risks you have reasoned it’s worth it and have supported the exact scenario.
The point of working is to make money. You want to retire and retirement is a financial status not an age. The quicker you get to that status the quicker you can retire. Unless the stresses and dangers of the job actually threaten your retirement ability the stress is worth it if it drastically shortens the age of retirement.
Also, I just want to point out that I’ve been poor. I’ve lived in a basement apartment with two roommates still barely making rent every week. Bad food. No savings. No hope. Living paycheck to paycheck. That life is more stressful than anything I’ve experience at any job where I’ve made more than $100k salary. And it’s not even close. If there is a job where the stress is worse than the stress of being poor then I haven’t seen it.
gomihako_@reddit
My current place is already a grinder so I'd take 3x salary as I doubt the work could be that much worse. Grind it out for a few years then go find another place. Avoid lifestyle creep and invest/save then just lean FIRE in my 40s.
shifty_lifty_doodah@reddit
Is it Facebook? Probably Don’t join Is it Amazon? Think hard about it
Overall my strategy is to just care less about the outcome and go through the motions. Be ok with failure.
If you can’t handle failure, don’t join a pressure cooker
platinummyr@reddit
No amount of money more than I'm making now would convince me to switch.
Dimencia@reddit
I'm never working in an office again, I don't care what they pay. Unless you're struggling to get by right now, what would you even do with the extra money?
epelle9@reddit
Retire early?
cougaranddark@reddit
The thing is, you can never be sure if a chaotic environment is going to lay you off, or effectively train you. So, if the only advantages they offer are more money and prestigious tech, you can't even be certain you will come out of that with worthwhile amounts of either. Even if they double your salary and you last a year or two...you could end up with an extended job search after a layoff that negates the financial advantage.
epelle9@reddit
Sure, there is a risk, but after two years at a prestigious company, you’d most likely be able to land a job without much issue.
atomicbuster@reddit (OP)
Yeah this is a good point. We all have a tendency to overestimate how green the other side is and our own abilities. I've been pretty conservative about my job changes in the past so I was curious how others have thought about it.
PuldakSarang@reddit
To be fair, if you could make it through the interview loop and for a high tech company for 2 years and get laid off, why wouldnt you be able to find a less prestigious, less paying job much quicker?
chaitanyathengdi@reddit
Depends on how stressful.
I have seen people being fed by others in front of their computers and people dropping dead in their cubicles.
I will not take a job like that no matter the pay.
Even if I were already in such a job I will not push myself to that degree. It's not worth it.
Bobby-McBobster@reddit
3X your current salary means you can divide by 3 the time before your retirement (likely more than that actually). Anyone would be a fool to reject that.
Awkward-Cupcake6219@reddit
Did it and regretted it.
New_Firefighter1683@reddit
Absolutely nothing.
I always valued work life balance, even straight out of college. I took a lower paying job (200K vs another offer that was 270K) because it was fully remote.
I spent the first 8 years of my career traveling and fucking around. I was in Vegas every year for AWS. I went to every conference I could find and it took me to Hawaii, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, etc.
Wouldn't trade it for anything.
But layoffs hit me. Next 3 jobs were all fully remote with very good work life balance in a tech stack I like, with a good eng team.
But mass layoffs hit me in 2023 and the job market was absolute garbage, so I took the first thing I could find. Took me 5 months to finally get something. This is the most high stress job I have ever been at. I'm gaining weight. My mental health is poor. I don't even have time to see my GF.....
Absolutely not worth it. It pays better than companies (in the current job market), but the pay is something I don't really care about... it's a DISTANT DISTANT 2nd consideration for me after WLB
Cool_As_Your_Dad@reddit
I would take the less stress job. Im older (47). Fuck stress give me chill job. Even for less money. As long as I can pay the bills and enjoy life then good
Higgsy420@reddit
My return to office rate is about 700% my current salary.
ben_bliksem@reddit
The only motivating factors for work known to man: - not sleeping on the street - a deep sense of purpose - enough money that made selling my soul worth it
Several-Parsnip-1620@reddit
Would need to pay a very high premium
rorschach200@reddit
If it's a retirement money - yes.
Count how much faster you're saving, not how much more the comp is, all after tax.
If your comp is going up by a factor of 2.5, you might find that after taxes and expenses the rate at which you're saving can be going up by anywhere from 4x to 10x.
Saving in 4 years as much as you'd otherwise save in 16 to 40 years?
Hell yeah.
If you plan to blow all that money on stuff or services, on the other hand, no, it's not worth it.
Trick-Interaction396@reddit
A had high stress job got a few years and it gave me a panic disorder. Took 5 years to get back to normal. Not worth it.
Beneficial_Map6129@reddit
7 inche- f-figures! i meant figures! 7 figures!
cerealOverdrive@reddit
I’d need to see retirement smack dab in front of me. I’ve turned down roles in the 100k-200k range so I imagine it would need to be something where I’d get a high amount of equity and had intense faith in an exit over the next few years
Maleficent_Slide3332@reddit
is so nice being able to do an 8 hour day and come back home to drink a beer and play some video games. I ain't about that stress life. I got into the business cause I like cause computers and technology not the bullcrap.
effectivescarequotes@reddit
I'm old, so money and health insurance. That being said, I have no loyalty and will leave at the first decent offer if the company is too stupid.
The other sad truth is the companies I like to work for are not sustainable. Eventually economic reality hits and they compromise their values because money. The problem is they don't recognize the change and continue to say they're different while laying off half the team. I'm good at surviving layoffs, but once they start, I find an exit.
Main-Eagle-26@reddit
Depends on how much learning opportunity there is from current job. It may be okay now but if you’re not developing and there’s no real support for career growth, it’ll be worse in the long run to stay.
hotpotatos200@reddit
3x my current salary for two years would more than pay off my house, which is the biggest line item in my budget, and set up a good chunk for retirement.
Then after two years, I’ve learned new things and can go back to the old job, or somewhere else, for less money because I don’t need as much anymore.
mxdx-@reddit
Think of the implications, how would it make sense to pull longer hours, the added stress and the chaos depends only on your level of passion towards what they're building.
I'm at a point in life where money and prestige isn't convincing enough to change something that works.
Unstable-Infusion@reddit
For 3x my current salary, i could retire within a year. Sure, I'd do it. I'm pretty good at my job, and with that salary, they'd have to really want to hire me, so it's unlikely they'd fire me within a year.
For less than that? No thanks. I'll just retire in 3-5 years or whatever.
Damaniel2@reddit
Nothing. I left a stressful job and took a (small) pay cut to do so - it's the best decision I've ever made.
At this point, I'm old enough and financially stable enough that quality of life far outweighs chasing ever-higher salaries (though in the 5 years I've been at my current company, my pay is up over 30% from where it started, so it's not like my income is stagnating either).
Extra_Ad1761@reddit
I feel like I've gotten a few grey hairs from being in a company where you always need to show you're making impact as well as doing oncall rotations and sometimes coordinating with overseas teams .
I used to work at a large but non tech company and it was so much less stressful and peaceful but a noticeable comp. difference when you include RSUs etc.
gimmeslack12@reddit
I honestly think chasing “prestige” is highly, highly overrated. More money is cool, but also one week per month is going to get old fast. If you have a family I’d say it’s not worth it.
Moloch_17@reddit
Depends on my age and family situation honestly. I'm young so I might do it. But I can feel myself getting much less likely to do that kind of stuff as I get older