67 ms·

Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

• tatterdemalion 10y ago
  Bay Area tech is a gold rush, and Triplebyte sells shovels. Of course you'll strike it rich.
  • microDude 10y ago
    Nailed it.
• ammon 10y ago
  When people compare salaries / the cost of living in different cities, they often fail to account for the fact that many people don't spend their entire salary in the local economy. If you are trying to save money (or pay for college, donate to a cause, or buy a Ferrari) this costs the same no matter where you live. You should only apply the cost of living adjustment to housing (and maybe food). When you do this, living in the Bay Area starts to make more financial sense.
  • 2bluesc 10y ago
    I agree 100%. Right now in SF and get paid relative to SF. If one day I return to the Midwest (or almost anywhere else) what I have in the bank has more buying power.
  • gricardo99 10y ago
    When people compare salaries/cost of living in different cities, I think they probably look it up online, where the data is already summarized. The cost of living comparisons I've seen are comparing the "local economy". They compare the cost of: housing, food, transportation, health care.
  • rizzom5000 10y ago
    Don't forget taxes. Your taxes are 25% higher in San Francisco compared to Seattle.
    • linkregister 10y ago
      Which taxes? Marginal California income tax + MediCal is about 13% at the $120k bracket.
      • geldan 10y ago
        Seattle has no income tax, and sales tax doesn't apply to most food from the grocery store, so taxes in Seattle really depend on how you choose to spend your money.
        • seanmcdirmid 10y ago
          Washington state will ding you in other ways to make up for the lack of an income tax...e.g. more property tax.
          • hacknat 10y ago
            Actually Seattle's property tax is pretty good. You wouldn't believe how unprogressice WA is in practice.
  • cmdrfred 10y ago
    Never thought of it that way. Percentage of income consumed by state and local taxes, housing, etc compared and average gross income would show the whole picture.
  • mrkurt 10y ago
    We lived in the Bay Area for 3 years. Prior to that, I agreed with you. Living there changed my mind. More of our salary went to the local economy than I expected. We have a bunch of kids, which amplified the effect, but I am astonished at how much money it took to not feel like we were struggling to stay above water. Babysitting, gas, food, clothing, activities were all extremely expensive. Even insurance was high. The things that didn't go to the local economy still cost more — because taxes. We bought a car from Minnesota and paid a huge amount of excise tax to the state of California. Almost everything we ordered from out of state was subject to high local sales taxes. Income tax didn't help either — our higher salary put us in a higher tax bracket. The top $50k of salary only netted us $25k in buying power, which was eaten up by rent.
    • nostrademons 10y ago
      There's a stage-of-life effect. Bay Area is great for young people, where cost of living is a much lower proportion of income. All the excess goes straight into savings or discretionary consumer goods, where a Bay Area dollar is worth just as much as a Rust Belt dollar. It's much less great for a family, where you have additional food, housing, childcare, and health costs that rise along with cost of living.
      • mrkurt 10y ago
        I don't think that's entirely true. Housing and food are still the highest spending categories. Most of the excess goes to taxes, I think. Families just make it more obvious that's happening.
        • chrisweekly 10y ago
          Childcare exceeds all other household expenses (incl housing) in a huge % of families. Wish I had stats to cite, none avlbl atm.
          • mrkurt 10y ago
            Oh yes. That wasn't a factor for us (stay at home parenting!) but school expense would have been if we'd tried to get our kids good schooling.
  • twblalock 10y ago
    Yes, this is absolutely true. Your car, clothing, computers and gadgets, and most of your groceries will be a lower percentage of your discretionary income in the Bay Area than in most other places. Your housing and gasoline will cost more, and maybe your car insurance. However, the caveat is that housing is so expensive here that it's difficult to save up for a down payment on any kind of housing on a single engineer's salary. A 20% down payment on pretty much anything is more than $100k, and even a highly paid engineer will need a long time to save up that kind of money while also paying high rent. An 80/10/10 mortgage or some kind of mortgage with PMI is easier to achieve, but those have significant drawbacks. So, if you have significant cash savings, or a home somewhere else you can sell, you can achieve home ownership in the Bay Area (but it will probably be a smaller home than the one you have now). If you don't aspire to home ownership, you'll be fine too -- a software engineer with an average salary can afford to pay rent here, and people who say otherwise are simply incorrect. But if you are just starting your career and move to the Bay Area planning to buy a home anytime soon, you're going to be disappointed. Given that many people predicate their quality of life on home ownership, that's a pretty big caveat.
    • nostrademons 10y ago
      It takes about 2 years to save up $100K on a typical Bay Area engineer's salary, if you're fiscally prudent. Figure that $150K/year after taxes is about $110K/year, and live on $60K/year. That's eminently doable even in the Bay Area. The problem is that $100K is a very low estimate for a down payment in the Bay Area these days. Most people I know are getting parental help to put down $500K down, because with housing prices running around $1.2M, that's what's necessary to get under the $700K jumbo mortgage threshold.
      • st3v3r 10y ago
        >It takes about 2 years to save up $100K on a typical Bay Area engineer's salary, if you're fiscally prudent. Read: Don't have a family and don't do anything special, like take vacations. Also, average rent is $3600/month. That's over $43k a year. That leaves $17k for everything else, following your plan.
  • alexhutcheson 10y ago
    Lyman Stone has a good blog post[1] suggesting that it's rational for Millenials loaded down with student loan debt to live in high cost-of-living regions, for exactly this reason. The high nominal incomes give them more power to repay their student debt, which is not cost-of-living adjusted. [1] https://medium.com/migration-issues/millennials-have-less-debt-more-debt-burden-88950a7ee9c0 https://medium.com/migration-issues/millennials-have-less-de...
    • amorphid 10y ago
      This worked for me. I borrowed way too much money going to school. As a fresh MBA grad in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California, with few marketable skills, I couldn't find any career options that would offer a starting salary that came close to covering my costs. My big break was finding a job in San Francisco. I charmed my way into an entry level sales gig with a base salary of about 35K USD (in 2004), and was soon making at a 70K-ish "annual run rate" (stealing that from startup PR lingo). And that job did all of the lead generation for me. I wasn't able to find a job like that outside of a big city. Even when I was homeless for a bit a few years later, I chose to stay in San Francisco over moving in with my suburban LA parents because there I saw more opportunity in San Francisco. For me, it was riskier to play it safe in the burbs than hustling in San Francisco. It's better to burn out than fade away. The way I see it, if you wanna make it as a professional, and you don't have a reasonably understood career path to follow, it makes sense to go where the money is. You can live financially cheaply in most places, and you'll have to decide how much you're willing to work for it. For me, living in San Francisco is, and has been, worth it.
  • sulam 10y ago
    Which leads to a funny observation -- I have never seen so many expensive German automobiles in cheap apartment complexes in my life. Driving elsewhere makes you wonder where all the fancy cars went.
    • ohwello 10y ago
      And how many of those fancy car owners complain that they can't afford the down payment for a condo?
• rememberlenny 10y ago
  This point is interesting: [3] We find that engineers often under-value startup success (growth rate, revenue) when looking for jobs, and instead place an emphasis on brand-recognition, or whether they find the subject area exciting. Now, I don't mean to judge anyone for this — working in an areas of passion may be great choice. But if your goal is to maximize your financial outcome, looking at startups more like an investor and picking a company in a big market on a promising trajectory is likely a winning strategy. The Bay Area, with a large number of startups, is probably the best place to do this.
  • ammon 10y ago
    You might expect that companies in big markets with great growth would be more competitive (more people would want to work there, and it would be harder to get an interview / offer). But we see that this is often not the case, making it a great strategy. Our next blog post is going to be about this (how engineers decide between offers, and how they can perhaps do it better)
    • derefr 10y ago
      When I, as an engineer, look for a new job, I never even run into growth/revenue figures. Companies like to put those numbers into the decks they show investors, sure, but I've never seen a company put them into the job ads they run. It's hard to compare what you don't know. Also, a lot of the time when I'm working at these startups as an employee (rather than a founder), the ongoing success and cashflow of the business are made utterly opaque to me and every other employee. Which means, if a potential hire came and asked me whether the company I'm working for has good growth/revenue... I wouldn't be able to tell them. I'd have an impression, but it'd be just that: an image created by the salesmanship of the business side of the company. Which means that asking others when I'm looking is just as useless.
  • AceJohnny2 10y ago
    > username: rememberlenny What about Lenny? You aren't referring to "Lennie" from Of Mice and Men, are you?
• michaelchisari 10y ago
  I ended up in Los Angeles because, despite being an expensive city, rents were cheaper than the Bay Area, and the salaries being offered were equivalent. I have a great place in LA that would easily be 50% to double the price in the Bay. This wasn't the only reason but it was one of the biggest. Another reason being that I wanted to work in tech as it relates to media and content, and there were many more options to choose from here.
  • sbov 10y ago
    Same, but I bought a house. Just outside of LA there are cities with some of the best public schools in the state (and some the country), and you don't have to pay $1.5 million+ for a house in the district.
    • falsestprophet 10y ago
      Which cities?
      • ethank 10y ago
        Woodland Hills, West Hills, Calabasas, South Pasadena, Granada Hills, Simi Valley, Burbank and Glendale.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    • amyjess 10y ago
      I'm seriously considering moving to the San Gabriel Valley for when I have to move next year. Specifically, I intend to rent a house. Monterey Park is basically my ideal location, though I'm plenty willing to live in some of the other nearby suburbs. For example, I saw a really great house in Temple City listed on Zillow, and I came really close to asking for a transfer to my company's LA office because of it (and the only reason I didn't is because our LA office is at LAX, and I'm not looking forward to that commute... I'll have to change jobs or go remote if I want to live in the SGV).
  • 10y ago
• framebit 10y ago
  State and local taxes are a big concern that didn't get any mention in the article.
  • taormina 10y ago
    Especially given that Seattle is the primary city they compare to SF.
  • ammon 10y ago
    Totally fair point. CA state income tax may take an additional 13% out of the Bay Area numbers. I'm adding this into the post now... Thanks for pointing this out!
    • framebit 10y ago
      Cool! Interested to see your take on it!
• x0x0 10y ago
  The article is poorly argued. Paragraph 2 -- if you pick a winning startup (uber, etc) then the bay area is great! Well, yes. The problem is picking that winning startup, and really, if you're good at that, stop wasting your life as an engineer and go invest money for a living. We shouldn't expect eng to be able to pick better than vcs, and their hit rate isn't great. It also uses pre-tax salaries, not after tax salaries, where Seattle has a large advantage; even at $120k, you get $5k more in cash in Washington state. Which may not sound like much, but you should view it not as 5/120 but as 5/80 (roughly your take-home pay). The discussion of housing (where exactly is that sub $800k housing in sfbay) ignores commute times and costs. Sure, if you want to live in outer sunset or east bay and deal with horrid commutes, there's cheap housing. If you want to live within 30 minutes of work, housing will likely be much more expensive. The author also pays no attention to the effects of having to reset your social network / family to exploit moving to sfbay, banking the higher salary, then moving away. That's a large price to pay if your plan is to get to your mid 30s then move elsewhere. And hard to achieve buy-in from significant others who may similarly not be stoked about losing all his/her friends. And finally, it finishes with a discussion of the two most generous employers, google and fb. Who, yes, are generous but also not representative.
  • derefr 10y ago
    I don't know if the article was really talking about "winning" startups. Growth+revenue aren't really representative of whether a company is "winning"—they're just representative of a company that's properly doing the thing investors want it to do, growing at the expense of all else. If you're an investor, you need a company to succeed in a long-term sense: to pay out at the other end of the bet that started it. That's hard to predict: it's like looking at the fitness of animals in an ecosystem and trying to predict which one will end up with the most great-great-grandchildren. But if you're an employee, you just need a company to be growing, and to be throwing money around in the process of doing that. You aren't looking for a fit animal, you're looking for a fat animal. Animals might get fat before they get fit, as before puberty in mammals—and investors try to encourage startups to "bulk up" to kickstart their metaphorical puberty. But unhealthy animals also get fat, and to a predator, they're just as edible. If your goal is to "eat a lot of salary", you just need a company who's known to be throwing their fat around, not a company who will dominate their niche and sire a thousand children.
• hiram112 10y ago
  It all depends on your own situation. I, myself, moved from the Midwest to a very high COL East Coast city 7 or 8 years ago. My salary has pretty much doubled, though I imagine at this point it is about $40K more than I could get back home. But I live very frugally, and I have saved a lot of money. The plan is to soon get out of here and buy a nice place somewhere cheaper (South or Midwest) with cash and not worry about making the same salary. OTOH, I think many people end up losing out financially in places like NYC and SF. If your salary is only $40K more than it would be in Omaha, after taxes, you're probably looking at only $30K. If you rent a typical corporate apartment, you're probably now underwater. I think we're going to start seeing more and more people refusing to move to SF, NYC, and DC if salaries don't allow similar lifestyles as $20K less in middle America.
  • logfromblammo 10y ago
    I have already blacklisted SF, SV, and NYC for cost of living reasons, DC for typical job quality, and Chicago and Detroit for corrupt and bankrupt local government. The spouse has blacklisted St. Louis for arguably insane reasons, but it's out of bounds nonetheless. That leaves plenty of places to live, but not very many that are well known for having a lot of good software jobs. I don't really want to live in a broom closet with 3 other people that already get on my nerves in the space we're in now. It doesn't matter if you are willing to pay me more if I can't maintain the same standard of living on that.
    • mariojv 10y ago
      Boston could be OK. Cost of living isn't spectacular, but it's much cheaper than the Bay Area, especially if you don't live in the city proper.
• JKCalhoun 10y ago
  If you plan on buying a home it is worth considering the future when you decide to (semi?) retire from Corporate and sell the kid-raising home. Cashing out in Arkansas means you can move to ... a cheaper part of Arkansas. Cashing out in Silicon Valley means you can go about anywhere.
  • mrkurt 10y ago
    Arkansas and other places where land is effectively free work differently than California. You buy a starter home straight out of college, maybe you improve it, it'll probably increase in value marginally over the next 5 to 7 years. Then you sell it and put what you've "earned" into your next house. My friends back in Oklahoma are on their third or fourth houses (we're all around 35) at this point. In the Bay Area, you probably don't buy a house until you're 35. In fact, you have to get a bit lucky to be able to do it then. Houses aren't retirement plans in most places. And I think that's good.
    • logfromblammo 10y ago
      If you have ever seen hermit crabs do a multiple shell swap, that's about how it works. In areas where housing is cheap enough to have younger homeowners, the sale of a big home can often depend on a chain of other sale contingencies that depend on whether a first-time homebuyer can scrape up a $15k down payment. So you have the 1/1 homes for young singles, 2/1 homes for young couples, 3/2 and larger homes for families, and then maybe a step-down option for empty-nesters. My chain broke in 2007, when I got canned in a buyout, had to move to find work, and couldn't sell either the 3/2 or the previous 2/1 (rented out) at a decent price, and all my accumulated equity vanished. I would probably also be on my 3rd or 4th house by now if I hadn't been busted back down to tenant. I definitely can't afford SV home prices, even with a higher salary. I need at least a 3/2, and don't have enough millions in the bank to get one anywhere near SF Bay. Homes aren't the retirement plan around here, but the retirement plans definitely factor in not paying rents or mortgages after about age 55.
    • TulliusCicero 10y ago
      Yeah, but in the bay area you can live in a small apartment, save a ton of money that you put into stocks, and then eventually use those investments to buy a house outright in a cheaper part of the country when you move. > Houses aren't retirement plans in most places. And I think that's good. Absolutely; the fact that they've worked that way in some places is completely poisonous. For one thing, it's obviously not sustainable; you can only have the inflation-adjusted average value of a home double so many times before it's literally impossible for anyone but the actually wealthy to afford. Secondly, it creates a strong incentive to oppose building more housing, which causes all kinds of problems.
• thinkpad20 10y ago
  > At Triplebyte, we help engineers around the country (and world) get jobs at top Bay Area companies I admit that I stopped reading at this point. Maybe I read that wrong and they meant "in addition to other areas", but from the way it's written it sounds like a conflict of interest. It's going to be difficult to make an objective assessment of the pros and cons of living in the Bay Area if your business depends on people wanting to live in the Bay Area.
  • minimaxir 10y ago
    This post appears to be the result of a recent Triplebyte hire for a writing position: https://medium.com/@ammon_b/become-a-writer-at-triplebyte-9ff0000fe486 https://medium.com/@ammon_b/become-a-writer-at-triplebyte-9f... > Examples of topics we would like to cover include the salary differences between the SF Bay Area and other locations (does it make sense for engineers to move to SF?), the prevalence of remote work (is it harder or easier to get a remote job?), gender/age bias in hiring (How common is it?), and how credentials impact hiring decisions. We have insightful data on all these topics.
  • kipukun 10y ago
    Reading the article, they analyze data they show on charts. You could make the same conclusions they're drawing by also looking at the charts. Sure it's a shameless plug, but it definitely doesn't discredit their analysis.
• jjtheblunt 10y ago
  No.
• wlk 10y ago
  I use this website to compare costs of living between countries and cities: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp Here's example for Seattle and SF: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=Seattle%2C+WA&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... I'm wondering if anyone could comment if those numbers look accurate for those cities.
  • seikatsu 10y ago
    See also: * https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/san-francisco https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/san-francisco * https://teleport.org/cities/san-francisco-bay-area/ https://teleport.org/cities/san-francisco-bay-area/ * https://nomadlist.com/san-francisco-ca-united-states/scores https://nomadlist.com/san-francisco-ca-united-states/scores
  • basetensucks 10y ago
    I paged through - the rent price estimates in Seattle strike me as low. Obviously I don't have strong statistics to back this up but when I looked for one bedroom apartments a year and a half ago everything was at least $1700 and many were not in the city center. Prices have increased considerably since then.
• timothycrosley 10y ago
  The smartest thing would be to start in Bay Area, and then transfer to Seattle at the same pay rate.
  • balls187 10y ago
    Because Seattle companies don't understand cost of living?
    • timothycrosley 10y ago
      Because you're working for the same company, in the Seattle office. Additionally, a lot of the difference is from income taxes that you no longer pay - something that companies take into account when making the initial offer, but not generally when doing transfers.
      • balls187 10y ago
        If you got a boost from transferring from San Fran to Seattle, overtime it would even out during merit pay-raises. Companies that are large enough to support development offices in both Seattle and Bay Area, are large enough to have a very formalized process for raises, which take into account your current pay vs the local market rate for that position.
        • timothycrosley 10y ago
          From what I've heard from friends at big companies, the primary variable in the merit process is your current Salary - it does take the other things into account, but almost never enough to make as much of a difference as your current Salary. That's why people stress that it's so important to negotiate your starting salary higher, and not expect to get paid better once in the company.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • stephencanon 10y ago
• jasonjei 10y ago
  I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. Wouldn't it make sense for people to work anywhere? Haven't Bay Area companies heard of something called the Internet? If you have to have people in the office to make sure they're working, you already have a fundamental hiring problem.
  • mcpherrinm 10y ago
    I want to work with my team in person. That has nothing to do "making sure they're working". It's just easier, for me, and presumably many others, to be able to collaborate in person. Maybe there's a future where seamless video conferencing, Beam robots, and better text communication could replace in-person conversation, coffee and lunch chats, and other office-place experiences. I've tried, and I don't think we're there yet.
    • lostcolony 10y ago
      But that provides a better incentive for remote teams. I agree that teams work better in person, but when you have separate teams, working on only tangentially related things, it makes sense to separate them out. Obviously for small startups this doesn't make sense. But mid to late stage, opening a satellite office for development somewhere else seems like a no brainer. I assume I'm missing something though.
      • VLM 10y ago
        Two mythologies Our secret sauce is one thing. Exactly one thing. What do you mean "tangentially related" we'd outsource anything unrelated. The exit strategy is to be bought by a multinational megacorporation not to have two offices, or even ten. There's sort of a financial fund raising dead zone between having one office and being purchasable and having 500 offices and buying little companies. Very few companies jump that gap and its safer to try and get bought that to try and become Google2.0
      • DasIch 10y ago
        It does make sense to separate teams who do different things but these teams do have to align and communicate occasionally. Meeting up in person in a meeting room is an incredibly convenient way to do that.
• harterrt 10y ago
  It looks like the salary differential of $33k listed in the article is gross earnings. After taxes this would just barely cover the rent differential of $1.5k/mo ($18k/year). Note that this is the best case scenario according to their estimates. What troubles me is the use of median rent to compare housing costs. As rent increases, renters are likely to downsize offsetting some of the rent increase. I'd be willing to bet Seattle renters are able to get more space for the area's median rental. Accordingly, the salary increase probably doesn't cover the rent increase for a similar sized home.
  • linkregister 10y ago
    How would a renter effectively downsize if the entire market is increasing? Is this the typical reaction from those who can afford it?
    • harterrt 10y ago
      A renter can get get roommates or landlords can subdivide properties further. Renters may also consider increasing their commute time.
    • sjg007 10y ago
      2bdrm to 1brm, 1bdrm to studio, studio to van.
      • shemnon42 10y ago
        van to nap-pod
    • OmarIsmail 10y ago
      Compromise on neighbourhood. If you're in SF instead of living in the nice areas, go to Tenderloin, Hunter's Point, etc. You can find great deals in those areas.
  • ammon 10y ago
    EDIT I incorrectly multiplied the tax rate to the salary difference, and said that this was a 5$ difference. This is totally wrong (as multiple people point out below). I'll leave my original embarrassing comment as a cation to not write stupid things :) == I just added in a mention of the tax difference. But the numbers are 13.3% in CA vs 0% in WA. That's significant, for sure. But 13% tax on $33k is about $5k. I don't think that changes the conclusion that the salary difference does (in many cases) cover the housing costs. You're likely correct about the price for a similarly sized home. People who want large homes should probably not move to the Bay Area.
• tn13 10y ago
  For the following reason: 1. Bay area is extremely tolerant of immigrants and of different people. 2. Bay area is an excellent place for raising kids. The opportunities for your kids to learn are simply endless. There are excellent colleges near by and some of USA's best high schools. 3. Your experience as a programmer in bay area will always be valued more than your experience in Denver other things being same. 4. Job hopping is easier, finding another job when fired is even easier. 5. Skewed gender ratio means women might get more attention. 6. Networking opportunities are unparalleled in the world. Disadvantages: 1. If you don't like racial, ethnic diversity then you might be uncomfortable in bay area. 2. If you are a single male finding a girl would be harder in bay area. 3. Competition is cut throat and sometimes it is stressful. 4. Job security is less as there are more people out there who can replace you. 5. California's tax policies and other government policies are very tyrannical and sometimes pure nonsensical. The Liberal state is far too liberal with your money. 6. Housing is bad. 7. Everything is expensive.
• jeroen94704 10y ago
  This article seems to assume you're single and not in a hurry to start a family. I'd be interested to read an article "Does it make sense for a programmer with a wife and kids to move to the bay area". I secretly suspect the answer will be "no", since no matter how you slice it, a 4-bedroom house in the Bay Area won't be reachable until you are well on your way to, say, 40 or so.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • DarkTree 10y ago
    Yeah I agree. I am single, healthy, and car-less. I pay $1500 a month rent for a pretty nice place, and have a avg software engineer salary, and I feel very comfortable, even paying for a large student loan. The real kicker is that I was living in this same situation for $50k salary before it doubled, and still felt I had some disposable income that I could save up. However, I can't imagine still feeling comfortable having all of the expenses that come with a family. I think that's what triggers the threshold for that extreme cost of living in SF. But again, for a young person with a tech salary and the very minimum in financial obligations, I think living here is easily doable.
  • superqd 10y ago
    I interviewed over phone and skype with a Bay area company not too long ago. In between interviews, since things were going well, I started looking for places to live. I have 2 kids, and currently live in a 4200 sq ft house in Texas. I was more than fine with downsizing, but not at the cost of eating up all my salary to live with my family in an apartment that was barely acceptable when I was single. My kids are currently in a top school district here, and to send them to a top (public) school in the Bay area was insanely expensive. The salary I would have received ($130k range) was no where near enough to get me into a 2k sq ft home near good schools. As I researched areas, I just couldn't understand how the salaries were so low, and the cost of homes/apartments so high. But if you have no family to support, take on roommates and are fine with 500 sq ft to live in, then it will be mostly ok to live there.
• linkregister 10y ago
  Mixing median rent and average (mean) salary is confusing. Why not go with median salary?
• robrenaud 10y ago
  It's kinda bad that the article fails to mention the possibility of working at Google or Facebook in Seattle. You can get nearly as high comp without the taxes and high housing costs.
• aecorredor 10y ago
  "drone programming in Clojure" this...hahaha
  • tom_b 10y ago
    I laughed too - but also wouldn't mind working professionally in a Clojure-oriented shop despite having some freedom to use Clojure now. But I'm a lone wrangler of parentheses in my current role and if I could (in my location) join a team of better Clojure hackers, I think I could take my skills up a level or two even if all I had was the opportunity to talk shop in the hallway.
• imagist 10y ago
  Headline follows Betteridge's Law.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • bbcbasic 10y ago
    Hardly. Betteridge's Law requires the answer to be a definite "no". E.g. "Is SpaceX planning to put a dog on Pluto?"
    • jack9 10y ago
      The answer "it depends" is a cop out. There's no analysis, because even a cursory look gives a logical answer. Moving to a high cost area to gamble for a position that might help your career in the future, given any unemployment for more than a month makes the living arrangement untenable, is a high-risk gamble. The idea that working for a big company changes your employment chances is about the same as what school you graduated from. It gets you an interview, you were probably going to get anyway in another geo-location. In a lower cost area (even relatively lower like Los Angeles) you end up with lower chances for a startup (with a brand that might eventually become household) but the experience isn't much different and landing your interviews are a cakewalk…talent pools are smaller everywhere else in the world. The positions you might qualify from, are about the same from some no-name sports gambling company as "I worked at uber for a year". Your experience at your role is what matters, you're a worker not a business consultant. The answer is a definitive no, and the headline is baiting a false equivalence, hence Betteridge.
    • imagist 10y ago
      My point is that the answer is a definite no.
• tom_b 10y ago
  Interesting that Bay Area hackers make more than local hackers when they relocate outside the Bay Area. FTA: A 2015 report by Hired found that when engineers from the Bay Area relocate to other areas, they out-earn engineers on the local market. Experience in the Bay Area seems to advance careers. Engineers moving from San Francisco to Seattle make an average of $9,000 more than others who get offers in Seattle. This Bay Area premium is even higher in other cities: $16,000 in Boston, $17,000 in Chicago, and $19,000 in San Diego. [found slide at http://get.hired.com/rs/348-IPO-044/images/Hired-State-of-Salaries.pdf http://get.hired.com/rs/348-IPO-044/images/Hired-State-of-Sa...] Bay Area hackers are more valued in different markets than local hackers. I would love to see the raw data for the "relocating" hackers and local hackers. Is it a question of applied experience opportunities in the Bay Area hackers? Is just startup afterglow? Are relocating hackers better than average pre-Bay Area experience to begin with and this shows up when they migrate away from the Bay Area?
  • colechristensen 10y ago
    It could be as simple as Bay Area hackers being accustomed to higher salaries and negotiating higher (or not accepting lower offers) even in places with cheaper living expenses.
    • eloisant 10y ago
      There is that, and the fact that in the eyes of prospective employers Bay Area experience is highly valued. Honestly I don't think experience in Bay Area is necessarily better, there are great teams in Europe/rest of US and shitty teams in SV, but for some reason there is this Bay Area "halo". Source: I've relocated to Europe after 3 years in Silicon Valley.
      • kevinskii 10y ago
        Maybe European companies see a Bay Area "halo," but I wouldn't say the same about American companies. My company has software developers in Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, and Sunnyvale. From what I've seen it's a lot easier to bullshit your way into a senior software role in the Bay Area than it is elsewhere, so the rest of us tend to be a bit wary of the ones we don't yet know well.
• plandis 10y ago
  This doesn't factor in stock compensation AFAIK. For instance, I started at Amazon at around $90k in salary plus signing bonus of $20k so like $110,000 my first year out of college back in 2013. I made about the same in 2014. In 2015 I got promoted to SDE2 and my salary is closer to $118,000. But additionally I also got like $60k in 2015 in stock and this year my stock compensation is just about $100,000. I'd imagine this is the case for a lot of tech companies so comparing salary alone probably isn't going to make a good argument one way or another. Also taxes. WA has no state income tax so add an additional 10% income buying power
  • nkassis 10y ago
    But there has also been an incredible growth in amazon stock value during that time. This isn't going to be typical of someone starting to work for Amazon today (or another tech company) as your stock grant was most likely calculated at a much lower stock price then it is now while theirs would be calculated on today prices and we don't know how the future will go. Experience definitively varies.
    • dingdongding 10y ago
      You're underestimating Amazon. I still think it can achieve same returns if not more in next 4 years like last 4 years
      • user5994461 10y ago
        Tell that to the LinkedIn employee whose stock went down ;) Stock is hit or miss. The big 4 had tremendous growth in the past few years and that made some people lucky. Don't count on that again in the future.
      • nkassis 10y ago
        Not underestimating, worked there and believe in the company. But speaking from experience, the stock can take dives from time to time based on market whims as it happened when I left and t my RSU vested below their estimated price. Which sucked as I needed cash at the time to move. The thing is you can be lucky or unlucky with RSUs during short or long term periods.
• bcheung 10y ago
  One thing the article is missing and not factoring in is home ownership. It can be a tremendous form of "compensation" as well provided you can weather out any downturns (10 years will probably be sufficient). With high salaries you have high tax brackets. Probably 40-50% total marginal tax rate with state, federal, and all the misc taxes. Being able to subtract your mortgage interest and the fact that your "rent" is going to pay down equity, on paper at least, your living costs are actually lower. Even more so if you have roommates. Factor in 4-10% appreciation with leverage (10% down = 1000% leverage) so that becomes a 40-100% annual ROI. Work in the bay area for about 10 years when you are young and then sell your house. You can buy another house somewhere cheaper for cash and then retire. Might also be possible to just rent out the house in the bay area. The rent should cover rent some place cheaper and have plenty of additional cash flow to live on each month.
  • rconti 10y ago
    Well, they mentioned home purchase prices, but they also think the Seattle Metro area has average $400k houses which anyone living there would laugh at. Somehow I think "metro area" in Seattle has longer commute times than "metro area" in SJ or SF. There's just no way the average in Seattle metro (with equivalent commute) is half.
• tedmiston 10y ago
  Counterpoint: Globalization is real. Top tier accelerators accept companies from outside of the Bay Area and tech hubs these days. You can work for a tier 1 early to mid stage startup in a tier 3–4 startup ecosystem if you look hard enough (I do). (The Triplebyte recruiter didn't seem super enthused with that being my response to why I didn't do their process.)
• Henchilada 10y ago
  This whole dialogue shows a very laborer-centric view of the world. What is missing from this entire conversation is the concept of being an employer/founder or independent consultant. If you want to bootstrap a startup, the Bay Area cost basis is going to destroy your nest egg until you can raise capital. Also, this conversation implies that you are employed 100% of the time, ignoring any cases where you quit, are fired, or the "rocketship" startup you joined doesn't work out.
  • GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    Considering that we're posting on a platform owned by venture capitalists, I think the more labor-centered posts we get the better.
    • draw_down 10y ago
      Yeah, I'm not really seeing that as a negative.
  • dantillberg 10y ago
    To add a personal case: I lived in Boston working full-time (and all the time) for about seven years before getting sick and having to take a year off of work. When you game out salary vs cost of living for a region, you tend to make an assumption that you'll be employed 100% of the time. But once you break that assumption, it can change the dynamics considerably. The $2000/mo you spent comfortably on rent while working full-time quickly becomes an uncontrollable drain on savings when you stop. For me, I decided to move to a place (CO, an hour north of Denver) with a lower cost of living (and for me, a better quality of living, too), a place where I could live comfortably even if I didn't (or wasn't able to) work full time all the time. And if I do work full time, I could potentially "retire" in my 40s if I wanted, where "retire" probably means "work on whatever I want without needing to get funding," and/or "be a parent," etc.
• DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  Yes absolutely. For career opportunities alone, yes.
• dustinmoris 10y ago
  So a recruiting agency who makes money from placing applicants in the Bay area, a place with a shortage of developers, writes an article to convince more developers to move to the Bay area ? Yeah, totally trust their data and the data they selected for this article!
  • dongslol 10y ago
    So, do you actually see something wrong with/missing from their data?
    • mtrpcic 10y ago
      "You don't know what you don't know". We have no idea how they selected, curated, pruned, or otherwise "cleaned" their data set to meet their needs. What we can say, definitively, is they DO have a bias to encourage more developers to move to the Bay Area. "Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say." - William W. Watt
    • cryptozeus 10y ago
      "If you are interested in moving to the Bay Area and joining a successful company or a tiny startup, Triplebyte can help you find a job. Give our process a try here. " Conflict of interest
    • thedufer 10y ago
      I didn't get very far, but their first section has a huge disconnect between data and the text. Text: > So assuming you’re looking throughout the Bay Area for a good deal and you’re comfortable renting rather than buying a home, as most of us are during the early stages of our careers, higher Bay Area salaries at least cover the costs of higher rents. Data: > engineers at top tech companies in the Bay Area stand to make between $15,000 and $33,000 more per year than engineers at top tech companies in Seattle. and > median rent is about $1400-$1500 a month (or roughly $17,000-$18,000 a year) higher in the Bay Area than in the Seattle metro area Somehow $15k-$33k marginal income "at least cover" $17k-$18k. That's just outrageously untrue, even if you ignore the fact that it fails to cover any of the numerous other ways that SF is more expensive (food? local services? CA income tax?) or the fact that you have to pay taxes on the extra money (which brings $15k-$33k down to $10k-$22k, assuming a conservative marginal tax rate estimate of 35%). Even assuming they aren't missing anything, cherrypicking data, etc., their data doesn't come close to supporting the claims they're making. Claiming bias seems like a pretty generous interpretation here.
• joshlittle 10y ago
  I always feel like these articles are one sided - jobs and money. Those things make life easier but ultimately are not the things that make life worth living. This article hits on none of the reasons I moved here after several prior extended stays in the City. For what I want out of life, it absolutely made sense for me to move here - even with only $2K in cash, no job, and no place to live at first. I came here for the things you can't easily put a price on - like the weather, local arts, music, and culture. Also driving into the mountains, or down the coast of California. Chicago is no slouch for fun but cold days like this make me glad I'm not waiting for the 'L' outside anymore. SF weather is generally magical. Being in a top US city still gets me direct, reasonably priced, and frequently scheduled nonstop flights to family/friends in places like Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Seattle - not always attainable in some of these smaller tech hubs (like Portland, or Austin.) When people move here, there is a constant worry about how much money they will make or what company they work for - I didn't sweat it. Within a month after arriving, I landed a great career. I spent the last two years exploring other hobbies and interests, and nurturing healthy new friendships. Biggest tip I can give - It's nice to get to know people who've been around here for a while, they've seen it all before. Show an interest in your local community. Volunteer your time but branch out of tech. Get to know people here in all walks of life; show compassion You just may be liked enough by some old school San Franciscans that refer you to one of their friends; who rent you their old place (with parking and views on Twin Peaks) for $1200. It worked for me. San Francisco is not an expensive city because of tech alone, it's always been a bit on the expensive side; as there's no place in America like it. Of course this is my experience. I merely bring it up just as a reminder that there's so many things to focus on when decide whether or not moving here is worth it. The questions that guided me in my decision to move here were: What are my goals long-term? What made me decide to move here? What is my contribution to the local community and society - outside of working in tech? Will I ultimately grow as a person; both personally and professionally? Is there enough other activities around that will keep me from being bored that I'll enjoy? My $.02.
  • rconti 10y ago
    Well, their entire goal was to determine whether or not it was affordable/made financial sense.. But as a fellow bay area resident, I can't disagree with you on quality of life. Holy crap, direct flights are critical. My family lives in San Diego now, and they have to multi-hop to go ANYWHERE. What a bloody nightmare. I fly nonstop out of SFO or SJC any time I travel. Last time I needed to take a connection, last week, was a total nightmare. Flight into Chicago delayed due to equipment problems, would have missed connecting flight, rebooked through Houston, THAT flight was delayed due to other issues, missed my connecting flight, spent hours waiting for rebooking and luggage and hotel vouchers. Just enough time to take a shuttle to the hotel, grab a crappy post-10-pm meal at the motel diner, sleep 6h, get up before daylight to catch ANOTHER flight, which finally got me there. You can tell I'm still not over the miserable experience of having to fly somewhere without a major hub.
• bandrami 10y ago
  DC/NoVa is hurting for programmers. Particularly if you can get a clearance, there's no shortage of work out here, at a (somewhat) cheaper cost of living.
  • develprofthngs 10y ago
    That's nice to hear. I've recently been contemplating moving from the DFW area to the VA area to be closer to family. Would also love some land/trees, which is lacking around here and becoming even harder to find.
  • ryandrake 10y ago
    I lived in NoVa for a bit, and found that employers would strongly rather you already have clearance, and don't really care if you're clear-able. Most places I looked had no uncleared work to fill so they'd literally have to hire me and sit me behind a desk doing nothing for months waiting for my clearance. That was usually the deal breaker. I'm currently probably not clearable anymore (married a foreign national) so it's less relevant for me now, but I agree it's a nice area.
    • bandrami 10y ago
      That's definitely true: coming in with a clearance has a huge premium. But being able to obtain one has a premium too.
  • vonmoltke 10y ago
    My direct experience is that the companies that cover cleared engineers pay slightly below average salaries and jack shit for variable compensation (bonuses, stock, and such). Plus, you can't talk about all the best work you did when you interview elsewhere, so you sound like a faker to interviewers. I'm glad to be free of the shackle of my clearance.
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  Not if rent/property prices are a major economic factor for you. Obviously you can find deals if you know someone or get lucky, but housing prices have gone back to pre-recessionary craziness. As a homeowner I regularly get mail from real estate agents offering to get the best price if I want to sell; over the last 5 years prices in my neighborhood have increased 300%. Yes, three hundred per cent. A small one bedroom apartment in this nice-but-not-fancy North Oakland neighborhood typically starts around $2000/mo. There's just too much money chasing too few housing units, and while I am seeing a fair amount of new residential construction in the last few years it's only a fraction of the amount demanded.
• dongslol 10y ago
  As a college dropout, I have nowhere to go but the Bay Area, where many startups don't care much about credentials. Everywhere else does.
  • BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    Not necessarily. Most technology companies I have found won't care too much about credentials. It all depends on what you're applying for. For instance a finance or insurance company may still care but the makers of New App 13 probably don't. Now the government still cares. They care a great deal which kills prospects around the MD / DC / VA area. I was a contractor with only a 2 year degree so most companies were legally not allowed to charge more than about a junior level's worth when I first started. That was difficult. It was even more awkward when I was in charge of leading the technical side of a multi million dollar government project and my company couldn't bill for me beyond a Software Developer 2. The Bay area mostly doesn't care BUT (and this is a HUGE BUT) many companies, like Google, make their hiring determinations based on the knowledge of very scholarly topics. So it's kinda indirect.
  • gdulli 10y ago
    I've done well without a degree in Cambridge, MA of all places. The problem solves itself in any market with a lot of tech companies. If some companies are leaving good talent on the table, others are going to pounce on it.
• josh_carterPDX 10y ago
  As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, but moved to Portland about three years ago, I can tell you there is a stark difference in ecosystems. However, if you are a young up-and-coming programmer coming out of school, it makes complete sense to move to the Bay Area. If you're an Actor you move to L.A. to get your big break. If you're a programmer, you go to the Bay Area to work for a big firm that will help build your reputation and resume. For people later in their careers who have "been there/done that" it's less about what you can do for a company and more about what you can do for yourself. People later in their career tend to think more about their quality of life after spending years grinding it out in markets like the Bay Area. I know it's the big reason I moved to Portland. I love the tech community here. It's much more collaborative. The salaries may not match what you get in the Bay Area, but what I lose in salary I gain in not being stressed all the time.
  • chrisper 10y ago
    I agree with you, but only people who want to make big buck should move to the Bay Area. As you concluded later, money is not everything. I am young and about to finish school, but I am moving away from the Bay Area and even move to a different country. I do not care about the high salaries here, as I just do not like the lifestyle here. So, I'd say that the Bay Area is for people who do not mind having to work 24/7 (mind work, not physically being in the office 24/7). Mostly, this is people who love tech a lot and want to innovate all the time (start up people). I for one care more about less stress, less inequality, etc. and decided that the Bay Area is not for me.
    • skylark 10y ago
      My experience doesn't line up with your preconceived notions of the Bay Area at all. I've worked at three different jobs in San Francisco, and all of them were standard 9-5 jobs. I've worked weekends under 5 times. Most of my friends are in the same situation. Sure if you want to work at an early stage startup, you can grind yourself into a paste. But there are plenty of jobs here where that's not the case.
      • 10y ago
• Mz 10y ago
  My favorite line from the article: (Perhaps you have heard about...) ...the guy on Reddit who calculated that it would be cheaper to commute daily to the Bay Area from Las Vegas by plane than to rent an apartment in San Francisco? However, I am going to nitpick the title: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area? This question really ought to be: Does It Make Financial Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area? I will also suggest that there are facets to this question that really are not covered by the article. I am keenly aware of this because I returned to California as soon as I could for health reasons. My health is simply better here ("here" being California -- I am not in the Bay Area currently). My condition can be very expensive and very debilitating when it is not well controlled. So, while I am horrified by real estate prices out here, for me it makes more financial sense to be here than to be someplace that keeps me too sick to work while running up medical expenses. There are many reasons to want to live in a particular place. While criticism of the insane cost of living and insane pace of inflation is totally valid, I think it is problematic to boil down a decision about which job to take or where to live to these (specific) financial metrics (of salary and rent). Life is multifaceted. Such decisions do not hinge entirely on money.
• danwalmsley 10y ago
  I did the math on this about 1.5 years ago and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it. I was, at the time, in a CTO-level position at a VC-funded startup and so had plenty of opportunities in the Bay, but in the end opted to live in a quiet country town about 2.5 hrs drive away and work from home in a lower-key role. I have a 3yo kid and another on the way, and I do not regret my decision for one second, particularly when I hear horror stories from my stressed-out friends in SF/SJ. Also we can easily pay the mortgage on one salary and my wife is able to finish her PhD without us going into debt. For us, it wasn't just about salary vs cost of living, but also about the stresses of big city life, competing for limited places in overtaxed childcare, sitting in traffic for hours every day, and being surrounded by other parents enduring the same tortures. No thanks.
  • willholloway 10y ago
    He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for thay are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
    • softawre 10y ago
      I get that. But weighing family > enterprise is pretty easy to do.
  • shostack 10y ago
    Where did you move out of curiosity?
• gregatragenet3 10y ago
  Go to the bay area, spend a few years becoming ridiculously skilled and invaluable to your organization. Then tell employer you'll be moving to X and telecommuting. X being somewhere with a lower cost of living, and someplace you love (nice beaches, near family, etc).
  • dingdongding 10y ago
    Sean. Is that you?
• nsxwolf 10y ago
  I'm married with 4 kids. We like living in roughly 3,000 square feet of housing with on roughly a quarter acre of land, so I'm going to guess in absolutely no universe could it ever make sense for us to move to the Bay Area.
  • TulliusCicero 10y ago
    Depends. My old boss (also married with 4 kids) did it. He lives in Pleasanton in order to afford a house and commutes to Mountain View. Has to get up very early to beat the traffic though. The upside is that, while I obviously don't know exactly how much he makes, from what I know about people at his level at Google, he is undoubtedly doing quite nicely.
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      Pleasanton is extremely expensive due to its top notch public schools. Your old boss was doing extremely well if he could afford a home there.
  • duderific 10y ago
    You are correct sir. My 1200 sq. ft. house in the mid-peninsula area, in a very mediocre neighborhood, is currently valued on Zillow at approx. $1.1M. 3000 sq. ft. homes around here barely exist, but you're probably in the $3M range for that kind of place.
• khana 10y ago
  Pretend you live in the bay area and use Skype.
• uiri 10y ago
  The salaries here do cover the higher cost of living, and if you are able to capitalize on the additional opportunities that are uniquely available here, you could end up doing much more than covering costs. This conclusion is patently false. The article mentioned but failed to calculate California state income tax. That $15k-33k salary differential is going to be eaten by at least $12k in California income taxes. That leaves $3-21k to cover the additional rent expenses which is $250 - $1750 per month. The difference in median rent is almost $1500 per month. The article itself already admits that Seattle is better if you wish to own rather than rent housing. EDIT: The salaries at Microsoft (Redmond) are comparable to the salary figure for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, and Uber. The salaries at Amazon are $5-10k lower but make up for the difference in stock. I'm estimating stock and cash bonus to be 40% of salary (which is conservative for Google and Facebook, I think). California state income tax on $160k is $12k.
  • nostrebored 10y ago
    It's like the author didn't even crunch the numbers. The same for stating that the facebook salary from the bay area is higher; 249 * .133 + 18 = 51.2, suggesting that a Microsoft engineer makes more in take home pay than a comparable Facebook engineer at Level 3.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• sealthedeal 10y ago
  "The Bay Area in the early 21st century has produced an astounding number of successful tech companies. Uber was valued at $60 million in 2011 and at around $68 billion in late 2015 [1]; Stripe at around $500 million in 2012 and $9 billion during its most recent funding round; and Twitch at just under $99 million in September 2013, before Amazon acquired it for $970 million less than a year later." ^^^ Is not a selling point. Those are anomalies. How about the hundreds of other companies that are going under consistently everyday in the bay area. If I want to work for startups why would I not move to some where like Austin Tx? Get good experience, have a reduced cost of living, and have no state income tax?
• kin 10y ago
  It depends. If you're just starting out, it could make sense to move to the Bay Area to work for a big name company that will teach you a lot and make you look better on paper. You'll even get a higher salary to use as slight leverage when you decide to work in a different city. Yes, rent in the bay is expensive. But, at least a lot of things will cost the same. An Apple product will cost the same whether you live in the midwest or the bay. A vacation will also cost the same no matter where you live. Just a different perspective of looking at this argument.
• makecheck 10y ago
  When I started my career I ended up in Austin, Texas. At the time, I didn’t know much about the place (and it was much smaller than now) but it really is a serious tech hub. Even at its current absurd rate of growth and increasing cost of living, it is more affordable than the Bay Area and has enough else going on that it isn’t an exclusively tech climate. Politically, Austin is like a blue bubble in a red state so it is more California-like in that sense too.
  • TulliusCicero 10y ago
    The bay area is a blue bubble in a blue state.
• platita 10y ago
  Doing some goal factoring and trying to really understand what reasons would keep you in Bay Area is a good excercise. I'm guilty of noticing being stuck in this artificial prison quite late myself. :) https://medium.com/teleport-stories/another-kind-of-silicon-valley-exit-bafc108e3647#.coymq2x7g https://medium.com/teleport-stories/another-kind-of-silicon-...
• alex- 10y ago
  I moved (internationally) to the bay area. In my specific circumstances I would not say that it was financially clearly a good thing to do, due to the MUCH higher costs of living. However as a place to live it is quite nice. Technology is everywhere. You can go to a free meet up and literally see the creator of the language doing a talk (e.g. Guido tomorrow with the baypiggies). It has A LOT of opportunities to pursue the career that interests you. It's warm, close to the coast and a manageable drive to skiing in Tahoe. Some times it is not all about the profit loss.
• WhitneyLand 10y ago
  Does this article have anything insightful? It's easier to compare against Seattle: The housing is still very expensive, and you get only half as many sunny days. Why not compare to someplace like Austin? Most people can afford a real house, it's very sunny, great grad school, great culture, great startup scene. The SV big company advantage is not true. Most of the same big tech companies have a presence in Texas. And guess what. If you work for Microsoft, Amazon, etc, you get all the same stock compensation, same retirement matches, and your resume sparkles just as brightly. The biggest advantage for SV that they don't even mention is making deals. VCs/Funding, partnerships, contacts, etc. All of these exist elsewhere just on a smaller scale. However this stuff is mostly an advantage if you start a company. TripleByte's case is pretty weak.
  • TulliusCicero 10y ago
    Austin's tech scene is weaker than Seattle's, and it's missing certain amenities that strong programmers in the US seem to like, like decent transit (Seattle isn't great but it's decent), being in a politically progressive state, and having lots of interesting outdoors stuff nearby. Also the weather between Austin and Seattle is basically a wash, while Austin is sunnier it also gets very hot in the summer.
    • WhitneyLand 10y ago
      All good points. But please note Austin is very progressive. It's an oasis of free thinking within a conservative state. Also the utility of transit is location dependent. Would I live in Manhattan and own a car? No way, but Texas cities are very spread out. Most parking is free and everyone has a garage. The outdoors are mostly great, but I admit tall mountains and ocean cannot be beat.
• marcfawzi 10y ago
  Bay Area is unqiue.
• pfarnsworth 10y ago
  If you are young, single and in tech, then it makes sense. You don't care if you share an apartment or even a room, you'll make good money and you'll acclimatize to how ridiculous the prices are over a few years. If you are older, and you have a spouse and/or kids, then it makes less sense. It actually makes no sense if you're coming from a low cost area, and more sense if you're moving from NYC to Bay Area. If you're coming from a low cost area, you will suffer, because even if you owned your house outright, if you sell it it may be a decent downpayment, and then you'll have to spend a lot of money on mortgage. Plus school, commute, etc. I wouldn't recommend it in that situation.
• blazespin 10y ago
  Living in the bay area is not necessarily expensive. I pay like very little in rent. It all depends on how you want to live.
• pdimitar 10y ago
  > It’s easy to hear data and stories like these and conclude that programmers moving to the Bay Area are suckers. After all, salaries have not risen by 70% in the past four years. But what this analysis misses is the extent to which this place and time is exceptional. The author lost me right there, even though I did make an honest effort to read the article to the end. (1) There are plenty of "brain centers" in the world. The fact that they don't tout it day and night makes them no worse than the Bay Area. In fact, as an European, I am more likely to move to Gothenburg, Oslo or even Reykjavik than the Bay Area -- on this basis alone. Most of us Europeans strongly dislike touting. In fact it says a lot to me and many others how the Bay Area gets the most press coverage of being the "tech innovation center of the world". Center of what? The 99% of failed startups that want to disrupt markets that didn't exist yesterday? Center of "work 16 hours a day for the measly promise of 1% equity if we ever take off"? (2) "Amazing place and era to live in" is a good inspirational motto... and it only works until you get your first burnout and wish to just make good money and be at peace, and have time for your other hobbies, significant other or whatever else. I feel sorry for all the tryhard after-teens who are about to find that out the hard way. (3) Company valuations in billions rarely mean anything. I am too lazy to dig around but I clearly remember there were cases of several companies being valued close to 1 billion, only to be sold for ~30 millions several months later. This is hype, it's produced by the investors and VCs themselves, they profit from it, and it has almost zero real-world credibility. I might be oversimplifying this; but I am convinced I am not that far off. (4) The historical flashbacks only make the author want to desperately justify how cool is it to live in the Bay Arean. No, sorry; I'd honestly prefer 14th century Venice compared to San Francisco. There were tangible things to see there, for example Michelangelo's art. What can SF show you? Zombified devs hurrying for their commute, hellbent on zombifying themselves even more in the name of a cause that's 99% likely to fail?
  • TulliusCicero 10y ago
    > In fact it says a lot to me and many others how the Bay Area gets the most press coverage of being the "tech innovation center of the world". Center of what? It's the center of successful consumer-focused tech companies. A huge percentage of the megahits of the last couple decades have come out of the bay area.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ww520 10y ago
  Move to area of high cost of living for work. Retire to low cost area.
• _lex 10y ago
  This analysis is very low quality. Engineers move to the bay area not for salaries, but for equity and RSUs. It's not unusual to make your salary again in RSUs, which are usually not that risky. Equity is a mixed ball, however. But these two factors are the unique element in the Bay area, and why you should move there. If you are an engineer in the bay area without loads of equity or RSUs, you're getting ripped off.
  • jknoepfler 10y ago
    The analysis is low quality for a lot of reasons... 1. It motivates moving to sv because there are "lots" of successful startups. Is the rate of successful startups higher than elsewhere? 2. Average reported salary is a garbage statistic. Compare median values, between jobs of equal "status" (Google != j-random shipping company... Compare Google sv to Google Seattle within job title groups)
    • tedmiston 10y ago
      > 1. It motivates moving to sv because there are "lots" of successful startups. Is the rate of successful startups higher than elsewhere? Probably, yes, but hard to say since a 2–3x "acquihire" can be a big success for another a city but considered a failure in SF, so how "success" is defined is different. Even with that, the probability of hopping on a rocketship is still very low < 1%. It might be higher in the Bay Area than elsewhere, but I felt the article was disingenuous if the intent was to suggest an engineer has good odds of picking the right rocketship at the early stage. It's not science.
• bkbridge 10y ago
  As a New Yorker, all we're hearing here is LA, LA, LA. Just a heads-up. Smoke a joint in NYC, spend a night in jail. Smoke a joint in LA, change the world. How I look at it all. We got Brooklyn, and that's about it.
• brilliantcode 10y ago
  I'm just not sure if the cost of living is worth the pay increase both from a service provider and business owner perspective.... Arguments like network effect, "being in the ecosystem" or near physical vicinity of other SV startups seem to be the face value but these are only superficial items. I almost feel like with the connected world, as long as you are in a fairly crowded North American city, it shouldn't matter....unless your customers were all focused in SV area. I'm not a city slicker or a instagram traveler so please feel free to offer any alternative view. Maybe being in SF is important but I'm too biased (haven't left Vancouver for 20+ years)...
• hrshtr 10y ago
  I have been in Bay Area for little over 3 years with a fairly stable company. The opportunities are many in all technical fields(pro) but again it comes with the cut throat competition(con). One has to compete with people from FB/Google or new grads who have mugged all DS questions. My interest to stay in Bay Area is with the hope I could be able to join one of the companies which will be Uber/Airbnb of tomorrow and gain great experience and $$$.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• fortytwo42 10y ago
  What about taxes in cA?
• ap22213 10y ago
  If you want status, sure. But, if you're relatively good and want money, then no. Economics is about supply and demand. And, every city in the world wants high-end developers. Many companies are willing to pay a lot because they have a shortage. But keep in mind that they're looking for someone who's good in more than just programming.
• nfriedly 10y ago
  I spent a year in the Bay Area before moving back to Ohio, and this rings true: > ...when engineers from the Bay Area relocate to other areas, they out-earn engineers on the local market. I think that part of it, for me at least, is just having the confidence to ask for more.
• automatwon 10y ago
  I wonder how much weather affects success, both for companies and individuals. I worked as a Data Science engineer in Seattle (startup), and just moved to San Francisco this year (Google). I know this sounds trivial, but I think the more pleasant weather in the Bay Area is beneficial to my career. The lifestyle aspect is just icing on the cake. I can't get up in the morning when it's rainy and cold. Of course, I do show up to work, just a little bit later in the day than if the weather was pleasant. I'm less refreshed. I think less clearly. I work less efficiently. I make more mistakes. I feel less healthy, because grogginess and caffeine consumption is positively correlated. That's the effect weather has day-to-day. Week-to-week, month-to-month, I can't help but avoid having S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in Seattle. Occasionally, I'd have an Existential Crisis, to use the term lightly, questioning whether my work is meaningful, whether I've sold out on my passion for programming. It helps that I work at a Google, but San Francisco weather definitely makes me feel more excited for work. Maybe things will change when I want to own a house. Until then, even if my take home pay minus cost of living in the Bay Area is lower than Seattle, the Bay Area is still a better payoff, both in finances and purposefulness.
  • kbart 10y ago
    "I wonder how much weather affects success, both for companies and individuals." Weather has a very big influence on how one feels, but every person has different preference. I, for example, can't stand heat and sun (I get headaches, sleep problems, find it harder to focus etc). I love colder climates and it would be be very hard to convince me to move to CA, while I'd happily move to Norway or other northern country anytime.
  • findjashua 10y ago
    Stole the words right out of my mouth! Did a summer internship in Redmond, and realized how much the weather affects my happiness and psychological well-being. While SFBA weather is way better than Seattle, I still find it a bit cold/dreary for my liking. I really wish the tech hub was in San Diego instead, I'd move there in a heartbeat.
    • automatwon 10y ago
• automatwon 10y ago
  This growth creates opportunity. Startup jobs, big company jobs, drone programming in Clojure
• disposablezero 10y ago
  If one plans to take full advantage of brain, entrepreneur, capital and customer concentrations then yes. Otherwise, scarcity elsewhere make for increased career leverage (at varying income / cost of living ratios) elsewhere. Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13178495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13178495
• alasdair_ 10y ago
  A major selling point for Seattle over SF is the complete lack of state income tax. Losing an extra 10% of your money before you receive it is pretty painful, and it's especially painful if you get stock options and cash them out while an SF resident.
• dorianm 10y ago
  Yes :)
• kosei 10y ago
  This article focuses entirely on cost of living through home pricing, however there are many additional areas impacted. First, perhaps most importantly, Washington does not have state income tax. Additionally, there are differences in price of groceries, restaurants, etc that are not considered here.
  • sytelus 10y ago
    Even for home pricing comparison is not apple-to-apples. In Seattle, you can still buy descent house in 10-rated school area for $500k. In Bay area you can probably buy house with 30% more money but it would be no where close to what you can in Seattle area.
• sytelus 10y ago
  The comments are full of opinions. It would be interesting to know experience of anyone who has moved to Bay area, have family and does not have double income :).
• hacknat 10y ago
  I just left Seattle a year ago, be careful about confusing Seattle Metro with Seattle. Seattle is surrounded by water and its mass transit system is nascent, so it's pretty hard to live too far outside the city to take advantage of the cheaper real estate. Seattle city proper prices are getting ridiculous and I suspect they will catch up with the Bay Area quite quickly and maybe even surpass it. Seattle doesn't come close to the level of tech/economic output that the Bay does, but the output is more geographically dense. Amazon is, effectively in downtown Seattle. The most far flung tech outlier is Microsoft a mere 20 miles away. Expedia moved all of its staff from Bellevue to downtown. I would venture to put median home prices closer to 600k than the 450k reportedly here.
• Heraclite 10y ago
  After having spent some time in SF in the whole "startup ecosysem", my dream is now to run a 100% boostrapped business, totally location-independant.
• baccheion 10y ago
  Divide yearly salary (before taxes) by median rent (40 = bare minimum to rent an apartment, 60 = comfortable, and 100 = luxurious living). Once you're making enough, it's about realizing the chances you'll be able to buy a house or find a compatible (and attractive) romantic partner are low. Before the rent situation got completely out of control, it was easy to recommend at least living in the Bay Area for a while (just to see if you like it or not, and to have experienced it), especially if just out of school, but now things are unclear. Many (of the better) tech companies have their headquarters in the Bay Area, and it's been commonly said that working out of any other office is a poor experience.
• stakhanov 10y ago
  wow, this article, and the discussion in this forum is doing a great job at substantiating an idea that's been swirling around my head for a long time now. i personally have made a lifestyle choice not to work for any company that won't allow me to work largely remotely. i often apply to great companies who do interesting stuff and pay well, and then i hear "sorry, we don't do remote". that can be very frustrating. i'm losing a contract right now with a company that decided they were going to switch to a non-remote policy. that too was very frustrating. but the kind of data that's pointed to here really shows that the joke is on them. think about the cost base of a completely centralized non-remote company: a large share of their employees' salaries goes into their landlords' rather than their own bank accounts. a large share of their time goes to crazy commuting routines rather than actual work. tell your employees "okay, you make $140000 dollars now, but $30000 goes to your landlord for the privilege of being in the BA. work remotely, move to wherever you want, and we'll pay you $125000". both the company and the employee have $15000 to gain. that's 12%! tell your employees: "okay, you do 8 hours of work now, and you do 2 hours of commuting each day. why don't you work from home for 9 hours instead." both sides win. the company gains an hour of work, and the employee gains an hour of time to themselves. if we subtract holidays, sick days etc. so that we assume that a year normally has 220 working days, that's 220 hours over a year. cumulatively that adds up as follows: $140000 over a year for 220 x 8 hours equals an hourly rate of $80. $125000 over a year for 220 x 9 hours equals an hourly rate of $63. That's a 21% cost advantage for the company, and more money left over and a better life for the employee. Over a base of $125000 that 21% advantage is $26250 a year per employee. i find it really funny how the word "coffee" keeps being brought up by people who deny that there's an economic opportunity here. when i lost my current remote contract, the argument was something like "sorry, our culture is such that so much information exchange is taking place over a coffee, and so many decisions are being taken over a coffee that we can't have you working for us if you can't be a part of that". someone in this discussion thread suggested that it's important to be able to "have coffee" with investors and co-founders. i get the point that we're all meant to be social creatures, and it's nice to be able to have coffee with people. but i'd seriously question the business acumen of people willing to value it to the tune of $26250 per employee per year. the other thing i find interesting about this article and the discussion thread is that it's another example showing how markets always find a way to get into an equilibrium that rules out the possibility of any such thing as a "free lunch". the article mentions the idea of "building equity." my own first job was in a high-paying finance role, working with lots of other young people who come in with extremely naive ideas around the notion of building equity. "i'll work like crazy for top dollar until i'm 35. if at that point i want to deleverage my lifestyle, i'll always have that option. i'll be able to move to a trailer park and never have to work again in my whole life if it turns out at that point that that's what i want to do. by building equity i'm just expanding my options, never reducing them". the point i'd like to make is: earning more is easy. building equity at a higher rate is hard! the point of departure for your thinking might be "move to the BA because of the higher salaries". but then you start to think things through: "higher rents, higher costs of living, higher taxes, higher risk when you should find yourself out of work for a month, bad situation if you're foreigner, build a life there, then lose your job", and you inevitably conclude. "well there's no such thing as a free lunch in the BA either."
• hellofunk 10y ago
  I think it makes sense for programmers or anyone else in this universe to do what they love to do and want to do. If moving to SF is the best way for you to do that, then sure, move there. But I don't think it is. A place with much lower cost of living might give you much greater freedom to explore your interests and hone your skills, develop your talents, let you wander through your own ideas, implement your own projects, grow as a developer in a way that working for a company would not. I'm a believer that more interesting things get done when talented people are left on their own to explore. Maybe down the line you get a job in SF after all that exploration is over. But I'm not sure that exploration ever really ends.
• baccheion 10y ago
  Median rent (1 bedroom) in San Francisco, CA: $3,336 Median rent (1 bedroom) in Seattle, WA: $1,924 Senior Software Engineers (total compensation from https://www.paysa.com/salaries https://www.paysa.com/salaries )-- Facebook Seattle: $340,750 (340750 / 1924 = 177.10x rent) Facebook Bay Area: $291,750 (87.46x) Microsoft Seattle: $327,250 (170.10x) Microsoft Bay Area: $288,250 (86.41x) Google Seattle: $307,250 (159.69x) Google Bay Area: $260,250 (78.01x) Amazon Seattle: $271,500 (141.11x) Amazon Bay Area: $234,250 (70.22x) Given the significant differences in salary, variations in taxes are essentially irrelevant and can be ignored.
• rurban 10y ago
  There are already a bunch of valid arguments made here. Double salary, double career opportunities vs 2-4x expenses for rent and food, opportunism all over. But the biggest contra argument I had was the Diablo nuclear power station directly at the coast (protected by 6m walls) and directly near the a huge fault which will hit soon. The other 3 corners of the Pacific ring of fire already hit their 9.x in the last decade, San Fran not yet. And this will be in the country, not 50 miles outside. If so you get the Diablo meltdown by tsunami, if not something much worse. And then the career in this company will only be short term. So not.
  • alexhutcheson 10y ago
    The Diablo plant is more than 180 miles down the coast from San Jose. What specifically are you worried about?
• s3nnyy 10y ago
  There is no doubt that the big four (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook) and hot tech startups like Airbnb pay really well. However, I think that "normal" companies in the Bay Area pay normal salaries. If you are a normal software engineer, who wants to have a family, you are better off in Zurich. Here you can make similar money and have lower living expenses. Disclaimer: I run coderfit.com, a platform which should become hired.com / triplebyte of Europe and I live in Zurich. Read my story about Zurich that I wrote two years ago: "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" - https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90 https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
• geggam 10y ago
  Yes, If you have never been around Silicon Valley culture do experience it. The culture and knowledge sharing is invaluable. If you have a family do not go to Silicon Valley. Loved living in the Bay Area. Hated the commute. Hated the prices of everything. Loved the culture. Loved the crazy you can only find in SF ( altho much of that is moving to places like that warehouse which burned in Oakland ) Loved the beautiful ocean beaches. Rent prices... well... you will lose money moving to the bay unless you get a ludicrous salary. Single.. I wouldnt hesitate. Married with kids. Stay away from The Bay.
• samuraig 10y ago
  I haven't seen anyone else make this point, but the other vicious cycle to consider is the 7-10 year downtown cycle that the Bay Area goes through (1991, 2000, 2008, 201?). When this happens, the tech companies gleefully (privately) and sadly (publicly) lay off all their middle-aged employees (many now with families), and many smaller companies just fold or get bought. Those people have to hunker down or sell their assets and get out (this was me, 1998-2013 worked/lived in BA). Then 2 years later, it's all back to hiring and partying, but for recent college grads and twenty-somethings who are suckered into the cycle and are unaware of the history. But I'm sure 2017 will be different...
• amyjess 10y ago
  I will never, ever move to NorCal. I find the Silicon Valley tech industry degenerate, and I honestly have no desire to be part of it. I'd rather work a corporate job at a traditional company than have anything to do with SV. I'm not fond of the general non-tech atmosphere in NorCal either... the lack of quality Mexican food puts me off in a big way. On top of that, NorCal is the most expensive part of the US. Even SoCal is considerably cheaper (and I'm honestly considering moving to SoCal when I have to flee Texas next year).