7 ms·

You realize that that sweet $140,000 Silicon Valley base salary at FaceGoogBox is worth less than that very middle class $80,000 in Atlanta, once you adjust for

• bitwarrior 11y ago
  According to Wolfram Alpha, $140,000 is equivalent to $85,000 in Atlanta, once you've adjusted for the cost of living. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$140000+in+San+Francisco+versus+Atlanta https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$140000+in+San+Francis...
  • chejazi 11y ago
    Wolfram Alpha needs better marketing. This tool is amazing.
    • rtkwe 11y ago
      I wish I could figure out how to get it to run each statement in parenthesis as a separate statement then combine them. A lot of time when I'm trying to combine a lot of different values it'll get confused and just evaluate one of them individually. Same thing with happens with units sometimes. Maybe I'm just not writing my queries just right but it's my major pain point with Wolfram Alpha.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  "Not living in Georgia" is worth a premium.
  • serge2k 11y ago
    I agree, no offense to anyone who loves Georgia. SF is too expensive though. I like Seattle just fine.
• acchow 11y ago
  > You realize that that sweet $140,000 Silicon Valley base salary at FaceGoogBox is worth less than that very middle class $80,000 in Atlanta, once you adjust for cost of living, right? You're ignoring equity here, which after a couple years will be more than your base salary anyway. With a total comp of $300k+, a lot SV workers don't mind paying $30k/year more in rent to live in the Bay Area. As many others have noted, it really is beautiful here...
  • ethanbond 11y ago
    A beauty that's getting harder and harder to appreciate. And that's not even exclusive to the Bay to begin with.
    • acchow 11y ago
      > And that's not even exclusive to the Bay to begin with. What other place is like this? I mean a lively, diverse city where everyone is from everywhere, mountains nearby, and 3000 hours of sunshine a year?
      • enjo 11y ago
        That's literally the sales pitch for Denver (we're working on the diversity bit). Although we get more sun.
        • acchow 11y ago
          Oh, and the warm winters bit :)
        • barkteryx 11y ago
          Came here to read this.
      • ethanbond 11y ago
        You mean where everyone is from an upper middle class family, a private highschool, and one of 20-30 prestigious engineering schools at which they studied under one of the same four degree programs, after which they decided to go and work at "this really hot tech company!" Boy that's diverse. The area basically vacuums everyone who fits the exact same mold from anywhere in the world – that does not make the area more diverse.
• baddox 11y ago
  > You realize that that sweet $140,000 Silicon Valley base salary at FaceGoogBox is worth less than that very middle class $80,000 in Atlanta, once you adjust for cost of living, right? I find that very hard to believe. If you make $12,000 a month in SF and spend $3,000 a month on rent (which is pretty generous for one person), you still have more leftover money per month than your entire paycheck at an $80,000 annual salary.
  • jnbiche 11y ago
    To be clear, I'm writing from the perspective of having a family with children. Believe me, I've run the numbers and there's no way I could buy or even rent a decent house there without a massive commute (which I can't stand). Glad to be proven wrong here. I'd go back and entertain offers I've had if I knew I was wrong.
    • baddox 11y ago
      Are there other family-related costs that are significantly lower in Atlanta than in SF? I'm still having trouble making the math work out.
      • palakchokshi 11y ago
        Consider daycare which ranges between $1500 to $2000 per month in SF. Nannies are $2000 to $3000 per month.
      • moultano 11y ago
        Childcare in the peninsula is hugely expensive even when it is available. 150 person waitlists for 50 kid facilities are the norm. A dirty daycare will run 2k per month, and a nanny around 3k. I'm not sure what the situation is elsewhere but I have to imagine it is better. Home daycares aren't available because no one can afford a home. The crazy prices lead to shortages of services because none of the people who would provide them can live there.
      • arockwell 11y ago
        Childcare is substantially more expensive and the public schools are not very good. You almost have to put your child in private school, and you are looking at $20k-$30k/year/child. The city is not very kid friendly in general.
• zippergz 11y ago
  I don't (and won't) live in the Bay Area, but I live on the west coast, in an area a lot more expensive than Atlanta. When I got serious about moving to a "low cost of living" area and started doing the math, I found it to not be nearly so cut and dried. While housing and taxes are cheaper, many other things cost the same or more. For example, it's often MORE expensive to go on vacation from a cheaper area because the airport is smaller and there aren't direct flights to as many places (granted, not an issue in Atlanta). And of course everything on the other end costs the same regardless of whether you're coming from SF or Des Moines. Buying a car costs roughly the same (sales tax and car registration may make a small impact). Gadgets and electronics cost the same. Food may cost slightly less, but not in proportion to the pay difference. Cable, internet, cell service, health insurance, etc. all cost about the same. When I put everything on a spreadsheet, the lower housing costs in other parts of the country didn't sufficiently make up for the drastically lower salaries. YMMV, but I encourage everyone to very carefully do the math before making these kinds of decisions. (I do think that SF may be a special case, since it's SO expensive, but even then it's worth doing the math.)
  • jerf 11y ago
    One thing I've noticed about cost-of-living discussions is that people fail to take into account that the cost-of-living isn't some abstract constant, but is still buying something "real". In general, which area has more crime: The 90th percentile cost of living area or the 5th percentile cost of living area? Which area has nice stores with a wide variety of organic fruits and veggies, and which area has stores where they can't afford to replace the floor tiles when they pop out? As you say, you can't just do a cost-of-living calculation blindly. That said, adding in those factors often makes Silicon Valley come out even worse. I've visited it quite a bit and it is not nicer enough to account for cost-of-living difference, unless you simply can not stand to live somewhere with less than perfect weather. But I think that's special to the Valley.
    • michael_h 11y ago
      Some would describe the 'perfect weather' of the Bay Area as 'tepid' or 'freezing cold'. It's a nice area for certain, but it makes me wonder about myself when I'm wearing a parka and everybody else is walking around with a scarf or light jacket.
• bsbechtel 11y ago
  >>If anything, we've seen recent evidence that SV salaries are "deflated" compared to other industries and areas of the country, due to collusion, frequent targeted hiring of very young, often naive grad, inflated time at work, etc. Conversely, they're also being propped up by the massive amount of VC money at play there, which is driving an arms race for programming talent not seen elsewhere around the country. I'm not saying you're wrong about your point about collusion, but there are multiple factors at play there.
  • ghaff 11y ago
    It's also the case that going back decades, moving to very high cost of living areas like Manhattan and Silicon Valley has tended to result in paying out relatively more for housing than salaries tend to increase. Yes, the situation today is particularly bad but such places have long been something of a "luxury location."
• mrits 11y ago
  I don't think anyone on my team in Austin makes less than $135K/year. I'm the youngest on our team at 33 though.
• waterlesscloud 11y ago
  Houses in downtown Atlanta haven't been $40,000 for decades.
  • jnbiche 11y ago
    That wasn't my argument at all. $40,000 was in reference to salary (ie, a $40,000 salary in Atlanta can get you the same type of house as $140,000 salary in SF). By the way, many here assuming I'm in Atlanta. I am not (and don't wish to be, because of the crazy traffic).
• etherealmachine 11y ago
  I call b.s. I pulled numbers off a few sites that estimate cost of living in Atlanta at ~$26k/year. Just ran my own numbers, and my own costs last year were ~22k. For reference, I live in Santa Cruz with that sweet job as FaceGoogBox. There are a few places I'd consider moving to for a $80k pay cut, but Atlanta isn't one of them.
• epa 11y ago
  It is not unusual for someone in that position to be renting an apartment for $1,000 per month which, accounting for the increased salary by living in the bay area less opportunity cost of buying vs renting in ATL, is still a net win for that individual in their stage of their life. They key here is that this person can buy the so-called $40K house after 1-2 years of saving and living here, where as you will still have a mortgage.
• encoderer 11y ago
  $140k is only a base salary at "FaceGoogBox" if you're relatively young in your career. And it overlooks the meaningful equity/bonus.
• dlandis 11y ago
  It's not really true in my experience. If you can live in the East Bay, there are definitely still really nice and affordable places to be found. Yes, the prices have gone up significantly over the past few years in the East Bay too, but it is still cheap enough where it probably will make the high Bay Area salaries financially worthwhile.