5 ms·

Up-voted, Are average SF rents that high? Boston is probably less than half that cost, with salaries comparable to the west coast and similar cultural events an

Up-voted, Are average SF rents that high? Boston is probably less than half that cost, with salaries comparable to the west coast and similar cultural events and excellent public and private schools. Weather is not that great though. Genuinely asking - So what makes SF so worth it, that it justifies its high cost of living? in comparison to other top class states, is it just the weather?

x0x0 11y ago
jobs. You can be a half-assed engineer here and be employed; if you're good, you have dozens of choices of place to work. Whenever I ponder leaving (and I'm a data scientist, so more specialized) I look around at cities like Salt Lake or Denver or other places close to good skiing and see like 3 employers. Total. What happens if I don't like my job / my boss changes / whatever? I'd probably have to move. It's just a ton of risk for the employee. And not just jobs, but other people who do the same thing that you can learn from. And full stack: from the people building javascript libs to new programming languages (swift, rust) to chips (Apple, Intel, hardware startups), etc. Proximity to the outdoors. If you want great surfing, hiking, skiing (well, ex the drought years), climbing, camping, etc -- it's here. And the state is dry, so no mosquitos or flies. ie it's much more enjoyable to be outside than in the midwest. It's fun to be outside 340+ days/year. Non-competes are invalid by state law. And this isn't a theoretical problem; I had a job offer withdrawn in NY because the new employer's counsel determined they were covered by then-current employers non-compete contract and they didn't want the hassle. People who view quitting their jobs and starting companies as merely modestly crazy/risky, instead of something only a lunatic would do. Oh, and as for your average rents: yes. You can get cheaper rents, but at the price of shitty public transport, a terrible commute, and a lack of local services where you live. Which is particularly punishing if you don't own a car. sf as a city is run by worthless idiots who decided to play city, so big pieces of it have terrible (unreliable, slow, unsafe, etc) public transport (yet it manages to be some of the most expensive transit in the nation as the cherry on top). Plus there are 3 public transport systems that essentially were built independently and operate without any coordination, two of which only serve pieces of the city (muni, bart, caltrain). And until the age of uber a taxi system that specialized in shitting on their customers. Because where, besides sf, would a taxi that actually comes be worth paying a 50% premium ala uber when it debuted? So yeah, wildly incompetent city government.
- whitenoice 11y ago
  thanks but I find none of those unique to SF, you can get the same in other top cities. I don't know about Denver but in Boston/NY you have tons of good job opportunities, excellent engineering and scientific community with top firms/startups and excellent eng, business, and med schools. Close proximity to outdoors (New Hamshire, Maine). No doubt there are more startups/jobs in SF but at the same time it seems that its very exaggerated.
  - x0x0 11y ago
    I don't know about Boston, but Maine is not in any sense close to nyc. I think the difference is distance. In sf, world class skiing is 3 hours away; the beach is 20 minutes in much of the city; great hiking is across the bridge in Marin or south along 1, well under an hour away. It's not a trip; enjoying the outdoors takes an afternoon. I have an acquaintance who works near the presidio and surfs over lunch. When I lived in Manhattan, you could definitely get to the outdoors, but it wasn't anything like this close. As for jobs, I disagree. see eg: machine learning, nyc: 1 responsive ad (plus ads for jobs in sfbay, nonresponsive android stuff) http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learning http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learn... same search, sf: 10-15? http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learning http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learnin... indeed has similar ratios. As for jobs in general, if you're a good js or rails engineer with a reasonable network of friends / former coworkers, starting now at 6pm Tuesday night you could have interviews on Friday, maybe even on Thursday. And start a new job next week. I believe there's a qualitative difference.
    - quicklyfrozen 11y ago
      How many jobs if I'm getting close to 50? :-)
      - x0x0 11y ago
        on the peninsula, plenty; in sf, work for a larger company or at least not for yc-aged / early 20s founders and you'll do ok my oldest coworker, and this was at a < 10 person startup, was not a founder and was a line level search engineer and over 65.
kec 11y ago
Thing is, salaries aren't comparable. My first job out in the bay area paid almost twice what I was offered by companies in the Metro Boston area.
- whitenoice 11y ago
  Tech companies in downtown, cambridge pay pretty well. If your talking about metro west then I'm not sure. Twice would be too much, I highly doubt bay area pays 200k base on average.
  - kec 11y ago
    Well, all I can really say is that among my friends who I've spoken with about this, those of us out in the bay area are making (including stock and bonuses) about 40% more than those who work in tech in metro Boston. It's more than enough to compensate for the higher cost of living.

x0x0 11y ago

jobs. You can be a half-assed engineer here and be employed; if you're good, you have dozens of choices of place to work. Whenever I ponder leaving (and I'm a data scientist, so more specialized) I look around at cities like Salt Lake or Denver or other places close to good skiing and see like 3 employers. Total. What happens if I don't like my job / my boss changes / whatever? I'd probably have to move. It's just a ton of risk for the employee. And not just jobs, but other people who do the same thing that you can learn from. And full stack: from the people building javascript libs to new programming languages (swift, rust) to chips (Apple, Intel, hardware startups), etc. Proximity to the outdoors. If you want great surfing, hiking, skiing (well, ex the drought years), climbing, camping, etc -- it's here. And the state is dry, so no mosquitos or flies. ie it's much more enjoyable to be outside than in the midwest. It's fun to be outside 340+ days/year. Non-competes are invalid by state law. And this isn't a theoretical problem; I had a job offer withdrawn in NY because the new employer's counsel determined they were covered by then-current employers non-compete contract and they didn't want the hassle. People who view quitting their jobs and starting companies as merely modestly crazy/risky, instead of something only a lunatic would do. Oh, and as for your average rents: yes. You can get cheaper rents, but at the price of shitty public transport, a terrible commute, and a lack of local services where you live. Which is particularly punishing if you don't own a car. sf as a city is run by worthless idiots who decided to play city, so big pieces of it have terrible (unreliable, slow, unsafe, etc) public transport (yet it manages to be some of the most expensive transit in the nation as the cherry on top). Plus there are 3 public transport systems that essentially were built independently and operate without any coordination, two of which only serve pieces of the city (muni, bart, caltrain). And until the age of uber a taxi system that specialized in shitting on their customers. Because where, besides sf, would a taxi that actually comes be worth paying a 50% premium ala uber when it debuted? So yeah, wildly incompetent city government.

whitenoice 11y ago
thanks but I find none of those unique to SF, you can get the same in other top cities. I don't know about Denver but in Boston/NY you have tons of good job opportunities, excellent engineering and scientific community with top firms/startups and excellent eng, business, and med schools. Close proximity to outdoors (New Hamshire, Maine). No doubt there are more startups/jobs in SF but at the same time it seems that its very exaggerated.
- x0x0 11y ago
  I don't know about Boston, but Maine is not in any sense close to nyc. I think the difference is distance. In sf, world class skiing is 3 hours away; the beach is 20 minutes in much of the city; great hiking is across the bridge in Marin or south along 1, well under an hour away. It's not a trip; enjoying the outdoors takes an afternoon. I have an acquaintance who works near the presidio and surfs over lunch. When I lived in Manhattan, you could definitely get to the outdoors, but it wasn't anything like this close. As for jobs, I disagree. see eg: machine learning, nyc: 1 responsive ad (plus ads for jobs in sfbay, nonresponsive android stuff) http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learning http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learn... same search, sf: 10-15? http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learning http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learnin... indeed has similar ratios. As for jobs in general, if you're a good js or rails engineer with a reasonable network of friends / former coworkers, starting now at 6pm Tuesday night you could have interviews on Friday, maybe even on Thursday. And start a new job next week. I believe there's a qualitative difference.
  - quicklyfrozen 11y ago
    How many jobs if I'm getting close to 50? :-)
    - x0x0 11y ago
      on the peninsula, plenty; in sf, work for a larger company or at least not for yc-aged / early 20s founders and you'll do ok my oldest coworker, and this was at a < 10 person startup, was not a founder and was a line level search engineer and over 65.

kec 11y ago

Thing is, salaries aren't comparable. My first job out in the bay area paid almost twice what I was offered by companies in the Metro Boston area.

whitenoice 11y ago
Tech companies in downtown, cambridge pay pretty well. If your talking about metro west then I'm not sure. Twice would be too much, I highly doubt bay area pays 200k base on average.
- kec 11y ago
  Well, all I can really say is that among my friends who I've spoken with about this, those of us out in the bay area are making (including stock and bonuses) about 40% more than those who work in tech in metro Boston. It's more than enough to compensate for the higher cost of living.