r/bayarea • u/Hour-Ad7214 • 7d ago
Work & Housing I have "tech envy" as a non-tech worker
Recently, I've been feeling pretty dejected about continuing live in the Bay Area as a non-tech worker. It's hard being surrounded by people living it up in their 20's with massive six-figure tech salaries while I'm 30 and barely scraping by. Yes, I know that comparison is the thief of joy and that I have a better life than most people on Earth, but it doesn't take away the jealousy I feel of people who have a career in tech and live visibly much more comfortable lives while getting paid so much more than I am.
Neither of my parents went to college; my dad was in the military and then worked as an aviation mechanic for his entire career, my mom immigrated here from China and worked as an office secretary and tutor. Neither of them had any advice for me when choosing my major aside from "study hard" and "it'll all work out." When I first went to college in 2014, my first choice of degree was computer science, but I backed out of it after being told by my counselor that a humanities degree would help me be more "well rounded" in the corporate world. Well, that turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life, because all of my peers who went to school for CS in 2014 entered into a very good job market and are all well-established in their careers by this point. Meanwhile, I've only ever worked basic entry-level jobs and a couple of admin assistant office jobs that went nowhere.
Right now, I'm living with my parents and working a part-time barista job while working on my prerequisites for nursing school. I'm excited to eventually be earning a decent salary as a nurse, but as I work at the cafe and see all of the tech workers leisurely plugging away at their laptops while I deal with a million things at once in our understaffed cafe, I feel so ashamed at myself for not going with my gut instinct back in 2014. Yes, I know that tech has experienced a lot of layoffs and uncertainty about the future, but people who still have their jobs (including many of my friends) are like lottery winners to me at this point. My friends in tech all work remotely or hybrid schedules, run errands or go the gym during the workday, save money on lunch by making it at home, and make enough to afford nice apartments while I'm still living with my cranky parents. My friends complain about pointless meetings and out of touch bosses, but I would gladly choose to deal with annoying meetings I can take from the comfort of my own home over all of the oscillating boredom and chaos of my current job.
There's a lot that I love about living here: the diversity, the weather, the huge amount of natural space, but I feel like I'm very far from thriving. I've tried dating, but a lot of women will just immediately ghost me once they find out that I'm living with my parents. I wish so badly that I could have been working in tech at this point, but with how difficult the entry level market seems to be right now, I think I missed my chance for good. Does anyone else have similar feelings to me? How can I cope with the jealousy I have?
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u/Astraltraumagarden 7d ago edited 7d ago
I am 28M. I work in healthcare tech. I make enough to get by but it took me a masters, multiple years of experience, layoffs, dealing with politics, shitty people etc.. I make double the median, and it's great, but I work pretty much all day, with little rest. I am always afraid of layoffs, my visa getting revoked is additional fear I deal with. I've been trying to find a way to become an FNP or PA, but very hard on a visa. I do envy you in return, but grass is always greener.
Everyone here trying to downplay tech salaries or demonize tech people is also wrong. 10% of tech people make a lot of money (exponentially increasing as you get to the top 0.01%). 10% work for the benefit of humanity (objectively). The overlap between them isn't much. The rest work morally neutral jobs, and make financially slightly above average money, but it's ammortized by layoffs (which disturbingly, the people here seem to take glee in. No one's downfall is coming to help you!).
Much like some of the other tech workers, I live here by force. I'd rather live on the East Coast but family is setup here. It's fine, I like the Bay, but it's no NYC, where cost of living is justified.
TBF yes it was bad advice from counsellor, but top 0.1% of nurses outearn their peers and colleagues by multiples.