It is not as lucrative as you make it sound when you have a mortgage and need to sell the stock to pay for expenses every year. A W-2 employee also has high taxes. |
That stock appreciation is taxed at capital gains. Recent grads who entered FAANG and are in their 30s are worth millions so long as they didn’t smoke crack in Bali. If they were smart they have a mortgage with a sub 3 interest rate in the Bay Area and will be cruising to FIRE at 35 if they want. Ask a law partner at that age when they can quit and be financially secure. |
This is hilarious. This poster watches too much TV or reads too much fiction or reddit and has no idea how any of these industries really work. LARPing at its finest. |
Am getting edgy high schooler vibes. |
Thanks for outing yourself as someone who didn’t have millions in their 30s. Why should someone listen to you then, other than as a cautionary tale? |
Thinking millions in your 30s is somehow a flex on a forum about NYC private schools is the biggest tell this is a LARP |
Lol. Definitely. |
If you are a big law attorney, you started at age 25 at the earliest. You didn’t receive an equity package and your tax rate will be high in a VHCOL city. You don’t have millions at age 30 other than what your parents or other family gave you. Or you spread your legs for it |
| Despite the sexism and rose colored glasses of the law hater who idolizes bankers (lol at thinking an associate in IB is a great outcome), corporate law is overrated as a career choice. I’m in my 40s, partner at a V50 (some here may scoff at that, I started at a much better firm and lateraled down twice for my marriage, I can assure you there’s a world of difference in demands). I fundraise for my boarding school class and my non-HYP Ivy, so I don’t live under a rock. A minority of my classmates are complete mess ups without any career or solid income (as in $150,000). There’s more of this than you may think if you didn’t go to an Ivy, they’re not rich either. Of the rest, many are trust fund babies who pretend to work in media or at art galleries or got a medical degree they didn’t use for more than a few years. The remainder are extremely ambitious and hard working and enter fields like finance law and tech. Without a doubt, I work longer hours and pack more in each of those hours than those in other fields. My work is more tedious, dull, and lacking in a range of responsibilities. The worst part is how hard it is to do something else. In tech you can always join a high risk start up, financiers can join a portco or a boutique or something to work less. If you’re at a big law firm you are as specialized as it gets and it’s not like you can just go join a small firm or go in house and be okay financially. |
| Harvard graduate here and I can say that an impressively large % of my classmates are also in this “without any career or solid income” category - a lot of the people on this board are in the age cohort that’s spent most of its adult life careening between global crises. |
And some people just like the law and don’t like finance or engineering or computer science. Different strokes for different folks. |
Appreciate your honesty, but why scoff at your former classmate for earning a measly 150k? I bet some of them are far happier and more fulfilled than they would have been pursuing a tedious, dull, inflexible career for 10x that salary. |
Yes. Between 08 and COVID, there were two major obstacles to long term career stability, let alone the more minor bumps like mass layoffs or industry downsizing depending on one’s profession. You could have made good decisions most of the time and be entirely out of luck. There is no substitute to saving young, investing, and living modestly. |
150k is a fine life and more than most Americans can fathom making. The issue is that most of these people I reference strove for much more, whether they actually put in the effort to achieve more is another matter. Their 20 year old selves wouldn’t be pleased with that outcome, and it’s not what people outside of Ivies think of as common (and it is). A few of them are happy, most are really disappointed if you catch them in a non sober moment |
| Wouldnt Harvard be the most likely school where this is the case- the single school with the richest alumni parents? |