I had a bunch of thoughts before scrolling through, and honestly they're jealous and mean and ungrateful and sour grapey thoughts. And then I saw the actual pictures of their friends! And they had...
Exemplary
I had a bunch of thoughts before scrolling through, and honestly they're jealous and mean and ungrateful and sour grapey thoughts. And then I saw the actual pictures of their friends! And they had pictures of cat doors! And their kids' rooms have cat doors so their kids can get cat cuddles! (actual cat > CAT cables)
It's a really cool house, and what I appreciate most is how they were able to bring in Jade's dad to build a home for their kids together.
I'm reflecting back on the house I'm currently living in with my family: it's smaller than 1400sqft, but it's a lot roomier than for the previous occupants' bigger family. And they didn't even have indoor washrooms when they started out! I also remember the story of the first time my dad saw a fridge: he thought it was a magic chest that seemingly never ran out of food no matter how much his host pulled out to feed him. As he sat in Mr Wong's kitchen eating the magical never ending stream of food, in his swim trunks and nothing else to his name on this earth, I think he would look at pictures of my current house with as much wonder and amazement.
So after an attitude adjustment, yeah, this is a super cool house and Kenton and Jade seem like really cool people. Being able to hang out with friends from middle school is such a blessing, they're definitely, definitely worth literally making room for in one's home in whatever capacity. Those friends had been sleeping on floors and maybe lugging rigs/peripherals and eating pizza/ramen together playing DOOM 2 all night long. More than anything I want to enjoy that kind of time again :)
Yeah... I'm the same as you (exactly 6 spots as well). The first thing I think when I look at this website isn't "I wish I had the money to build all this" (even though I don't), it's "I wish I...
Yeah... I'm the same as you (exactly 6 spots as well). The first thing I think when I look at this website isn't "I wish I had the money to build all this" (even though I don't), it's "I wish I had the gamer friends to make it even worth dreaming about." Now that's the impressive part. Like my friends, these people seem to have kids; where do they find the time!?
Absolutely it. Kids require a massive time and labour investment no matter who they belong to. If people are living a pre-kid lifestyle post kids, it's likely not because of their superhuman...
Absolutely it. Kids require a massive time and labour investment no matter who they belong to. If people are living a pre-kid lifestyle post kids, it's likely not because of their superhuman ability to hustle, organize or anything like that.
It’s funny. I’m unemployed and even though I know I’m just goofing off I’ll do two things in a day and still manage to find scheduling conflicts. I guess it’s effort optimization.
It’s funny. I’m unemployed and even though I know I’m just goofing off I’ll do two things in a day and still manage to find scheduling conflicts. I guess it’s effort optimization.
Aside from the color of the wood paneling both in the game rooms and living rooms, which I always find cheap looking, this looks to be a well designed house. It'll cost a pretty penny, but there's...
Aside from the color of the wood paneling both in the game rooms and living rooms, which I always find cheap looking, this looks to be a well designed house.
It'll cost a pretty penny, but there's something awesome about being able to build it to your own preferences without worrying about the cost. I'd love to rewire my entire home to include cabling everywhere, but I quite frankly do not have the money so the first floor has limited wired connections available until likely forever.
At first I thought "wow cool". Then scrolled further and I'm very sorry to be a debbie downer but then the only thing I could think was how big the wealth gap is. That one room with the gaming...
At first I thought "wow cool". Then scrolled further and I'm very sorry to be a debbie downer but then the only thing I could think was how big the wealth gap is. That one room with the gaming pc's and everything probably cost more than I have ever had in total. It's not gold toilets level but you aren't going to see such shameless luxury outside of the top 0.0001%
I don't know why you went with 0.0001% -- was that deliberate or just a random number? To be considered part of the top 1% in terms of net worth in the United States, your estate would need to be...
I don't know why you went with 0.0001% -- was that deliberate or just a random number?
To be considered part of the top 1% in terms of net worth in the United States, your estate would need to be worth approximately $9.7 million to $10 million as of 2024.
Top 1%: Approximately $10 million
Top 0.1%: At least $50 million
Top 0.01%: About $227 million
Top 0.001%: Roughly $1 billion
0.0001% cannot be accurately estimated due to a lack of information.
Not only that, but they even listed the costs on the site after all the pics: $75k isn't an absurd amount to have spent, and a 7 digit house isn't necessarily all that crazy either, especially for...
Not only that, but they even listed the costs on the site after all the pics:
The 22 game machines (including monitors, cables, and peripherals) cost about $75,000 in total. The house overall was a 7-digit number. Sorry, I'm not comfortable being any more specific than that.
No, I definitely find this both absurd and crazy. $75k is four times what I get in a year. I don't even want to do the math for how many orders of magnitude more a 7 digit house is. And I can't...
No, I definitely find this both absurd and crazy. $75k is four times what I get in a year. I don't even want to do the math for how many orders of magnitude more a 7 digit house is. And I can't believe that this isn't definitely a 1%er house. So more than 1 in 100 people in the US lives like this. That is absolutely insane to me.
Why is this acceptable? The inequality is nauseating.
They both work in tech, and both work/worked at Cloudflare. This house and all the tech in it isn't all that extravagant considering their jobs, what they likely prioritize in their lives, and...
They both work in tech, and both work/worked at Cloudflare. This house and all the tech in it isn't all that extravagant considering their jobs, what they likely prioritize in their lives, and what sort of entertainment they clearly prefer.
As for wealth inequality in general, and in the US especially, yes, it is absolutely nauseating. But these people aren't the ones that deserve the blame or we should be angry at, IMO. They're likely only upper-middle class ($150-200k/yr household income). They're not billionaires (like Matthew Prince is, who owns Cloudflare) who make more money in an hour (even when they're asleep) than most people do in their entire lives. Those are the people we should all be truly furious at, and encourage our governments to tax the absolute shit out of, so that that level of individual wealth cannot ever be accumulated by anyone ever again.
My wild guess would be at least triple that income, given that Kenton Varda was also an early engineer at Google and probably has substantial wealth from Google stock alone. He's also pretty high...
My wild guess would be at least triple that income, given that Kenton Varda was also an early engineer at Google and probably has substantial wealth from Google stock alone. He's also pretty high up at Cloudflare and likely has a management-level salary.
Also, this is the second gaming house Varda has owned. Here's the first one.
But I agree that this amount of wealth is not that unusual. There are lot of rich people in the US.
America’s millionaire population grew 7.3% in 2023 to 7.43 million people, according to a report from Capgemini. Their combined fortunes grew to $26.1 trillion, up 7% from 2022. Capgemini defines millionaires as those with investible assets of $1 million or more not including primary residence, collectibles or consumer durables.
Mass affluence is definitely an issue as far as housing affordability is concerned. Billionaires aren't the ones buying all the houses in Silicon Valley. What would they do with them? People buy single-family homes because they need a place to live and can afford a very nice house.
Also, the people that sold the houses to newly-minted millionaires are doing very nicely, too.
Edit: Kenton describes where he got the money in more detail:
I (Kenton) started my career at Google in 2005, which was a pretty good time to be there, even as a junior engineer. They gave me stock, and that stock went up. With no family and no hobbies aside from video games, money piled up in my bank account. After 4-5 years of saving, I was able to make a $200k down payment on a $1M construction loan (later converted into a mortgage). In many places that could have bought a mansion, but in Palo Alto it got me a tiny sliver of land and a 1400 sqft house. Still, I considered myself rich.
Then things got weird. The success of Google, Facebook, and others in Silicon Valley had produced a large number of people in the area with a lot of money, ready to buy houses and start families. Meanwhile, NIMBY policies were blocking all new development. As a result, Palo Alto housing prices, already high, went bonkers over the course of the 2010's. My house, which had cost me $1M, became worth over $2M.
This is absolutely unfair! I built the house so that I could throw parties and play video games with my friends. These do not seem like activities that are supposed to make money. But it made me a million dollars in profit. What?
It seems pretty typical for people who got in at the right time: making money as a software engineer, and in stock options, and in real estate. This isn't genius investing, it's just how it goes with certain kinds of privilege, almost by accident.
(And it's possible that this is the right time, too, for some people.)
Fair enough, I didn't know much about who he was other than what he listed in this post. But even earning triple the yearly wages I estimated isn't completely insane though, and it's still orders...
Fair enough, I didn't know much about who he was other than what he listed in this post. But even earning triple the yearly wages I estimated isn't completely insane though, and it's still orders of magnitude less than what Matthew Prince likely earns a day from his investments alone.
p.s. As an aside, I personally believe that $300-500k/yr is the absolute maximum anyone should be allowed to earn, @smoontjes. Nobody should need more than that, and redistributing all the excess wealth above that amount (esp from the billionaire class) could significantly raise the standard of living for everyone else.
I agree in the sense that these are definitely windfalls. For someone from a middle-class background, feeling like you don't really deserve it, compared to how other people in your family do,...
I agree in the sense that these are definitely windfalls. For someone from a middle-class background, feeling like you don't really deserve it, compared to how other people in your family do, seems common? (I remember reading articles about that back in the dot-com days.) Sometimes people will try to tell you that you're somehow being exploited by your employer, but, nah.
It makes sense to tax windfalls. Progressive income taxes are a pretty good way to fund the California state government. State income varies wildly from one year to the next, depending on the stock market. That's a source of trouble, but a good problem to have to try to manage.
I mean, I also work in tech, and, accounting for purchasing power between where I live and the US, 75k is still roughly a year's salary. For me, that would be an obscene amount of money to spend...
I mean, I also work in tech, and, accounting for purchasing power between where I live and the US, 75k is still roughly a year's salary. For me, that would be an obscene amount of money to spend on this sort of luxury - that's the sort of money that I would use to buy a house in the first place, let alone kit it out in this way.
You're not wrong that this is a systemic issue, and that these guys in particular are not to blame for it. But these people are able to afford this extreme luxury because they profit off that broken system. And yes, billionaires profit even more off it, I don't disagree, but the idea that if only we tax them hard enough we'll end up with an equal society is absurd. Wealth inequality stretches across vast swathes of modern American (and European) society, and we should be critical of all of it, not just the socially accepted supervillains.
$75,000 is a somewhat low starting salary for a software developer in the US, especially in Austin. Some people I went to school with who graduated in 2022 got starting offers of twice that much....
$75,000 is a somewhat low starting salary for a software developer in the US, especially in Austin. Some people I went to school with who graduated in 2022 got starting offers of twice that much. There are users here on Tildes whose first tech job out of college paid more than $200,000.
That's just how lucrative tech work can be in the United States. That's why computer science is one of the fastest growing majors in college. People see how obtainable a comfortable, middle class lifestyle is with even a mid-tier tech job, and they want that for themselves. Basically, they want what their grandparents and great-grandparents had, and tech work is one of the few "safe" pathways to still obtain that.
To be clear though, the owners of this house are definitely above average successful for tech workers. Yes, they've been in the industry for 20+ years, but they also got very lucky with some stock holdings that likely boosted (doubled, even) their wealth.
Yeah, my buddy in Phoenix has them for his patio too. I much prefer dry heat, but when it can get that insanely hot during the day, it's a bit much even for me, and so the cool misting is...
Yeah, my buddy in Phoenix has them for his patio too. I much prefer dry heat, but when it can get that insanely hot during the day, it's a bit much even for me, and so the cool misting is appreciated. :P
I'm sorry but the comment above ignored almost everything I say to focus on one tiny bit of it. I was venting about inequality, not discussing relative metrics or anything of the sort..
Exemplary
I'm sorry but the comment above ignored almost everything I say to focus on one tiny bit of it. I was venting about inequality, not discussing relative metrics or anything of the sort..
I had a bunch of thoughts before scrolling through, and honestly they're jealous and mean and ungrateful and sour grapey thoughts. And then I saw the actual pictures of their friends! And they had pictures of cat doors! And their kids' rooms have cat doors so their kids can get cat cuddles! (actual cat > CAT cables)
It's a really cool house, and what I appreciate most is how they were able to bring in Jade's dad to build a home for their kids together.
I'm reflecting back on the house I'm currently living in with my family: it's smaller than 1400sqft, but it's a lot roomier than for the previous occupants' bigger family. And they didn't even have indoor washrooms when they started out! I also remember the story of the first time my dad saw a fridge: he thought it was a magic chest that seemingly never ran out of food no matter how much his host pulled out to feed him. As he sat in Mr Wong's kitchen eating the magical never ending stream of food, in his swim trunks and nothing else to his name on this earth, I think he would look at pictures of my current house with as much wonder and amazement.
So after an attitude adjustment, yeah, this is a super cool house and Kenton and Jade seem like really cool people. Being able to hang out with friends from middle school is such a blessing, they're definitely, definitely worth literally making room for in one's home in whatever capacity. Those friends had been sleeping on floors and maybe lugging rigs/peripherals and eating pizza/ramen together playing DOOM 2 all night long. More than anything I want to enjoy that kind of time again :)
I'll leave my comment because I do stand by it, but just want to say that this is a nice comment and you are a kind person
Agreed on this. The cat litterbox room under the stairs is a super good idea
Jesus, and I thought retrofitting my house with cat6 drops across 6 rooms was impressive.
Yeah... I'm the same as you (exactly 6 spots as well). The first thing I think when I look at this website isn't "I wish I had the money to build all this" (even though I don't), it's "I wish I had the gamer friends to make it even worth dreaming about." Now that's the impressive part. Like my friends, these people seem to have kids; where do they find the time!?
Their friends probably also have lots of money to pay for conveniences that make it easier to get away from their kids.
Absolutely it. Kids require a massive time and labour investment no matter who they belong to. If people are living a pre-kid lifestyle post kids, it's likely not because of their superhuman ability to hustle, organize or anything like that.
I feel this in my soul. Three kids later I can't believe I used to think I was busy.
It’s funny. I’m unemployed and even though I know I’m just goofing off I’ll do two things in a day and still manage to find scheduling conflicts. I guess it’s effort optimization.
I mean, it is. Good job! 👏
Nice. Come do mine? 😅
Not my house, but a cool one
Aside from the color of the wood paneling both in the game rooms and living rooms, which I always find cheap looking, this looks to be a well designed house.
It'll cost a pretty penny, but there's something awesome about being able to build it to your own preferences without worrying about the cost. I'd love to rewire my entire home to include cabling everywhere, but I quite frankly do not have the money so the first floor has limited wired connections available until likely forever.
Zillow reports the house is estimated at $4million, property bought in 2019 for $2.75million
At first I thought "wow cool". Then scrolled further and I'm very sorry to be a debbie downer but then the only thing I could think was how big the wealth gap is. That one room with the gaming pc's and everything probably cost more than I have ever had in total. It's not gold toilets level but you aren't going to see such shameless luxury outside of the top 0.0001%
I don't know why you went with 0.0001% -- was that deliberate or just a random number?
To be considered part of the top 1% in terms of net worth in the United States, your estate would need to be worth approximately $9.7 million to $10 million as of 2024.
Top 1%: Approximately $10 million
Top 0.1%: At least $50 million
Top 0.01%: About $227 million
Top 0.001%: Roughly $1 billion
0.0001% cannot be accurately estimated due to a lack of information.
Not only that, but they even listed the costs on the site after all the pics:
$75k isn't an absurd amount to have spent, and a 7 digit house isn't necessarily all that crazy either, especially for a new build in Austin. BTW, here are more pics of the outside of the house, from the architect's site:
https://vardaarchitecture.com/Project-Gallery/Residential---Austin,-TX/1/caption
And while very nice, that is definitely not a 1%er house, let alone a 0.0001%er. Not even close.
No, I definitely find this both absurd and crazy. $75k is four times what I get in a year. I don't even want to do the math for how many orders of magnitude more a 7 digit house is. And I can't believe that this isn't definitely a 1%er house. So more than 1 in 100 people in the US lives like this. That is absolutely insane to me.
Why is this acceptable? The inequality is nauseating.
They both work in tech, and both work/worked at Cloudflare. This house and all the tech in it isn't all that extravagant considering their jobs, what they likely prioritize in their lives, and what sort of entertainment they clearly prefer.
As for wealth inequality in general, and in the US especially, yes, it is absolutely nauseating. But these people aren't the ones that deserve the blame or we should be angry at, IMO. They're likely only upper-middle class ($150-200k/yr household income). They're not billionaires (like Matthew Prince is, who owns Cloudflare) who make more money in an hour (even when they're asleep) than most people do in their entire lives. Those are the people we should all be truly furious at, and encourage our governments to tax the absolute shit out of, so that that level of individual wealth cannot ever be accumulated by anyone ever again.
My wild guess would be at least triple that income, given that Kenton Varda was also an early engineer at Google and probably has substantial wealth from Google stock alone. He's also pretty high up at Cloudflare and likely has a management-level salary.
Also, this is the second gaming house Varda has owned. Here's the first one.
But I agree that this amount of wealth is not that unusual. There are lot of rich people in the US.
The U.S. added 500,000 new millionaires last year as AI fueled markets
Mass affluence is definitely an issue as far as housing affordability is concerned. Billionaires aren't the ones buying all the houses in Silicon Valley. What would they do with them? People buy single-family homes because they need a place to live and can afford a very nice house.
Also, the people that sold the houses to newly-minted millionaires are doing very nicely, too.
Edit: Kenton describes where he got the money in more detail:
It seems pretty typical for people who got in at the right time: making money as a software engineer, and in stock options, and in real estate. This isn't genius investing, it's just how it goes with certain kinds of privilege, almost by accident.
(And it's possible that this is the right time, too, for some people.)
Fair enough, I didn't know much about who he was other than what he listed in this post. But even earning triple the yearly wages I estimated isn't completely insane though, and it's still orders of magnitude less than what Matthew Prince likely earns a day from his investments alone.
p.s. As an aside, I personally believe that $300-500k/yr is the absolute maximum anyone should be allowed to earn, @smoontjes. Nobody should need more than that, and redistributing all the excess wealth above that amount (esp from the billionaire class) could significantly raise the standard of living for everyone else.
I agree in the sense that these are definitely windfalls. For someone from a middle-class background, feeling like you don't really deserve it, compared to how other people in your family do, seems common? (I remember reading articles about that back in the dot-com days.) Sometimes people will try to tell you that you're somehow being exploited by your employer, but, nah.
It makes sense to tax windfalls. Progressive income taxes are a pretty good way to fund the California state government. State income varies wildly from one year to the next, depending on the stock market. That's a source of trouble, but a good problem to have to try to manage.
I mean, I also work in tech, and, accounting for purchasing power between where I live and the US, 75k is still roughly a year's salary. For me, that would be an obscene amount of money to spend on this sort of luxury - that's the sort of money that I would use to buy a house in the first place, let alone kit it out in this way.
You're not wrong that this is a systemic issue, and that these guys in particular are not to blame for it. But these people are able to afford this extreme luxury because they profit off that broken system. And yes, billionaires profit even more off it, I don't disagree, but the idea that if only we tax them hard enough we'll end up with an equal society is absurd. Wealth inequality stretches across vast swathes of modern American (and European) society, and we should be critical of all of it, not just the socially accepted supervillains.
$75,000 is a somewhat low starting salary for a software developer in the US, especially in Austin. Some people I went to school with who graduated in 2022 got starting offers of twice that much. There are users here on Tildes whose first tech job out of college paid more than $200,000.
That's just how lucrative tech work can be in the United States. That's why computer science is one of the fastest growing majors in college. People see how obtainable a comfortable, middle class lifestyle is with even a mid-tier tech job, and they want that for themselves. Basically, they want what their grandparents and great-grandparents had, and tech work is one of the few "safe" pathways to still obtain that.
To be clear though, the owners of this house are definitely above average successful for tech workers. Yes, they've been in the industry for 20+ years, but they also got very lucky with some stock holdings that likely boosted (doubled, even) their wealth.
Knew it was Austin area when I saw that misting fan. All the bars with decks have those around there.
Yeah, my buddy in Phoenix has them for his patio too. I much prefer dry heat, but when it can get that insanely hot during the day, it's a bit much even for me, and so the cool misting is appreciated. :P
Exaggeration proves the point - Danish proverb
Exaggeration betrays the point when discussing relative metrics.
I'm sorry but the comment above ignored almost everything I say to focus on one tiny bit of it. I was venting about inequality, not discussing relative metrics or anything of the sort..
Just goes to show how ridiculous wealth inequality truly is.
And insanely lucky, Google stocks and before the housing price boom.
The wealth gap - a conversation that we in the west have been having and not having in earnest for decades.