$2M is not a starter home. The national median home price is $230K. It's only that high because 4-5 states are dragging it up. Keep in mind that is the median. There are homes that can be had for less. Nice homes. Buying a house in one of the most expensive markets in the entire nation (SF, NYC) as your first home is a choice, and perhaps not a particularly wise one.
Where I live in, in Charlotte, NC a $1-2 million home budget would buy you a literal castle. Here is one on zillow not far from me for $1.2M it's a 6 bed, 7 bath, 7500+ Sq ft castle on an acre and surrounded by forest while still being only a 20 minute drive to the heart of the city.
For a much more reasonable $250K you can easily get a nice 2-3K sq ft 3-4 bedroom home with a quarter acre lot, nice fixtures and a 2 bay garage. This is in the 15th largest city in the US mind you. Better deals can be had elsewhere.
His point still stands though, we are doing things to maximize money because we are hugely indebted from students loans, rent, and medical bills. Scott Galloway mentioned in a podcast how he went to business school and paid $1000 in tuition and got a job after graduation that paid $100k. That's a 100:1 ratio that you can't find today. Today that same business school charges $70k and you get a job that pays $140k, that's a 2:1 ratio.
He also talked about how he was able to buy into amazon stocks when it was $60. If you are just starting your career you're jumping into a world where everything is at an all time high, that includes housing as well, every decent asset is currently at an all time high and we know that there's no room for us.
So we're left out of the big party, and we're scrunching to try to survive as we cope with our depression and anxiety about what an insecure future we have with climate change looming in the distance. Yes, take a job for the money. It's the only chance you have.
I think some of the context is lost here. The GP was talking about banking jobs with CS applicants not really passionate about CS. The majority of banking jobs are in NYC, so there really isn't really a huge choice. If you're applying for a CS job (not IT) in banking, almost the entire job market is in NYC.
My argument was that of course students are not passionate, they are worried about student loans, homes, rents. (Fun exercise go to the same Zillow link and try to find homes in NYC max $250k. Then, on what you find, look at the transportation options are into NYC.)
I'm glad you brought up NC because it has a decent sized banking sector but also offers great QoL.
I actually left NYC and took a super-interesting job a bit north of you in Virginia. Homes are affordable, QoL is great.
There is a catch though: there arent all that many other interesting jobs in tech (as there were in NY/SF). The startup scene is tiny. There are few FAANG jobs here though Amazon is supposed to come soon. There are some awesome CS research-type jobs, in govnt labs.
There are lots of interesting consulting jobs to be fair, as well as FAANG SE jobs. There are lots of interesting data-type jobs in Intelligence. There are also tens of thousands of totally dead-end tech jobs where you do nothing all day at government offices. A friend told me he's been waiting two months to get approval to install a pip library on a government machine. Another friend works on ancient systems.
Good QoL - absolutely.
Good home prices - absolutely.
Jobs i'd be passionate about - some, hopefully more coming with remote.
Am I obsessively passionate about the work here? No, i'm mostly enjoying the outdoors.
Where I live in, in Charlotte, NC a $1-2 million home budget would buy you a literal castle. Here is one on zillow not far from me for $1.2M it's a 6 bed, 7 bath, 7500+ Sq ft castle on an acre and surrounded by forest while still being only a 20 minute drive to the heart of the city.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14001-Grand-Palisades-Pkw...
For a much more reasonable $250K you can easily get a nice 2-3K sq ft 3-4 bedroom home with a quarter acre lot, nice fixtures and a 2 bay garage. This is in the 15th largest city in the US mind you. Better deals can be had elsewhere.