4 ms·

Of course San Francisco is at the top of the list. This city seems to have de-evolved into one of the worst places to work in America, not even justifying the

Of course San Francisco is at the top of the list. This city seems to have de-evolved into one of the worst places to work in America, not even justifying the 2x or 3x national average wages. Its the perfect storm of Gen X tech scene who settled in the suburbs and Y and beyond who refuse to leave the city, turning even 20 mile commutes into 90 min plus Ultra-marathons. I regular experience 120 min commutes with the occasional 2hour 30 min each way commute. It has gotten to the point that I believe people are forgoing families because they simply don't have the time to get to work, work, and spend time with their kids, while still affording to live here. And no, natural market forces are not rebalancing this.

christophilus 10y ago
Yeah. I took a big pay cut leaving Seattle to move back to small-town USA and work remotely. I'm much happier with this arrangement.
- tsunamifury 10y ago
  I'm curious how big big is. 10's of thousands or 100's of thousands if you don't mind giving a range?
- jplahn 10y ago
  Curious where you were living in Seattle that the commute was so bad?
  - existencebox 10y ago
    Not OP; but as someone who recently bought a house near seattle and has started feeling the pain: I couldn't afford to compete in redmond proper/seattle proper (low end ~500k+, regularly escalated with 20+ bidders 100k+ in cash over listing) so I got a house out in the suburbs (duvall, off in the northeast about ~20-30 miles) for ~430k. Grew up/worked on the east coast for many years, and regularly lived 60-80 miles outside of cities but could rely on light rail to get in to center <40 minutes of very regular, very easy travel. Here, a fraction of that distance regularly takes me 60-70 minutes to drive. I'm VERY LUCKY that I have a bus route, so that I can at least work, but as others have said, if any of the 1 lane roads have an accident, my drive rapidly becomes 2 hours+. I have to wake up before 6 to avoid rush hour, and even then it's a coin flip. I would frankly never make this tradeoff again. I now burn 2-3 hours every day (assuming I get home at 5-6 and sleep at 10-11) this just ate ~50% of my leisure time for a given day. I fucking love nature, having a yard, having autonomy to run my house how I want, but this is slowly destroying my sanity as I go to sleep each night with an even more pressing feeling of "not enough time in the day" than I ever had in an apartment near work. I'm... not too happy with the job/home life tradeoffs that I've seen available thus far. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but in most cities with high tech job concentration and reasonable stability I don't see a way around having to live like this unless you happened into money. (I was priced out of Seattle even with over a decade of life savings)

christophilus 10y ago

Yeah. I took a big pay cut leaving Seattle to move back to small-town USA and work remotely. I'm much happier with this arrangement.

tsunamifury 10y ago
I'm curious how big big is. 10's of thousands or 100's of thousands if you don't mind giving a range?
jplahn 10y ago
Curious where you were living in Seattle that the commute was so bad?
- existencebox 10y ago
  Not OP; but as someone who recently bought a house near seattle and has started feeling the pain: I couldn't afford to compete in redmond proper/seattle proper (low end ~500k+, regularly escalated with 20+ bidders 100k+ in cash over listing) so I got a house out in the suburbs (duvall, off in the northeast about ~20-30 miles) for ~430k. Grew up/worked on the east coast for many years, and regularly lived 60-80 miles outside of cities but could rely on light rail to get in to center <40 minutes of very regular, very easy travel. Here, a fraction of that distance regularly takes me 60-70 minutes to drive. I'm VERY LUCKY that I have a bus route, so that I can at least work, but as others have said, if any of the 1 lane roads have an accident, my drive rapidly becomes 2 hours+. I have to wake up before 6 to avoid rush hour, and even then it's a coin flip. I would frankly never make this tradeoff again. I now burn 2-3 hours every day (assuming I get home at 5-6 and sleep at 10-11) this just ate ~50% of my leisure time for a given day. I fucking love nature, having a yard, having autonomy to run my house how I want, but this is slowly destroying my sanity as I go to sleep each night with an even more pressing feeling of "not enough time in the day" than I ever had in an apartment near work. I'm... not too happy with the job/home life tradeoffs that I've seen available thus far. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but in most cities with high tech job concentration and reasonable stability I don't see a way around having to live like this unless you happened into money. (I was priced out of Seattle even with over a decade of life savings)