Hi folks,
Background: I'm an experienced web developer with a wife and infant daughter, and we try to be Mustachian where we can. We currently live in a Cleveland suburb, where we own a decent home.
I recently saw an ad for
Triplebyte show up in my Facebook feed, and on a whim I clicked through and did their test. Triplebyte is a tech recruiter startup that does background-blind testing and interviewing to find development talent that might otherwise be overlooked, and fast tracks that talent to final interviews at their client companies (which now include Apple, Facebook, Reddit, and Stripe, among others, as well as smaller startups).
I was a bit surprised that I passed their test and was eligible to skip the phone screen and go right to their final interview.
This is pretty cool, but AFAIK all of their clients are in either San Francisco (they were previously exclusive to Y Combinator, a startup incubator out there) or New York City. It's a bit early to be thinking of this now, but if I do well enough on the Triplebyte interview, they will start setting me up to fly out and interview with companies in one of those two places.
There are two main issues here. There's the purely financial issue of whether my savings power will be increased if we move to one of the most expensive areas of the country. I'm hoping that with some enough income and the ability to find a place cheap enough, we can still do this. I saw a thread mentioning a bunch of towns in the Bay Area that *might* be cheap enough to make sense, but I'll have to examine this more if push comes to shove. I *really* don't like the idea that it could essentially impossible to own a house out there unless you're a millionaire. That said, if I can FIRE from the income differential within five to ten years, and then potentially move somewhere cheaper, it still might be OK to rent, assuming getting a two or three bedroom apartment isn't similarly stupid expensive in comparison to my income.
The other issue is family. My family is in Ontario, and my wife's family is in Pennsylvania. Where we are currently, her family is within about a one hour drive, and mine is within about a six hour drive (start running a Cleveland Lake Erie ferry already, please!) Obviously that won't be the case if we move to California. New York is still within driving distance but it would be a hike (roughly seven hours). I think whether or not this makes sense depends on the ability to get fairly frequent flights back to see family. This, of course, adds to the potential expenses of living in the area as well.
I previously interviewed with Google in Pittsburgh and while I didn't get past the final interview there (this time), we considered the idea of keeping our home and renting it out for an extra income stream (however slight, since we still have to pay the mortgage). Back of envelope calculations showed the numbers working out, but of course in California or New York, I'd be an even more absentee landlord, so I'd have to find a good property management company.
I'm not hugely attached to the idea of a new job at the moment; my current one is pretty good, with decent income and appears to be growing quickly. I have some concerns, but it's not a situation where I
need to leave right away.
What do you think? I'd love to work for a company like Reddit, but not if it costs my daughter the ability to see her grandparents, and only if it lets us save more money for (early) retirement and college. Is it possible? Do you have any ideas about making it possible?