8 ms·

Treating the Bay Area as like working in the mines

90 points by imartin2k 8y ago

angarg12 8y ago
I'm looking to relocate to the Bay next year, and I'm exploring renting a one bedroom with my partner. Our plan is to rent as cheaply as we reasonable can, even if we can afford more (that is what we are doing right now). I think the analogy to the mines is spot on. At the same time it seems like the most rational approach for most tech workers. Even if I wanted to stay in California, as a foreigner in a L1 visa, my future will be too unpredictable to commit myself. Even after getting a green card, another recession would most likely force me to leave the area, if not the country altogether. Having worked through 2008 I know the current situation won't last forever. In the meanwhile, I rather work in the mines and extract as many resources as I can from the ground. Once the mine dries up and we are forced to move I'll have time to reevaluate my position in life and priorities.
- cylinder 8y ago
  Are you Indian born? What category would you be in for an employment based green card?
- megablast 8y ago
  > Our plan is to rent as cheaply as we reasonable can, even if we can afford more (that is what we are doing right now). Everybodies plan is to do that.
- pm90 8y ago
  Mine are similar and I just moved. Its as demanding as I was warned it would be but oddly I feel great. I've never had as much responsibility and yet have to work on tough engineering problems at the same time before. Maybe this is the best way to learn for me; I feel like I've learned a lot from being around very very effective and driven engineers. Its increased my confidence in my craft. And I think those intangibles are worth a lot more down the line. Of course, I'm able to work as hard because I kinda really like programming and learning about how Computers/Algorithms work. If I didn't have that inclination, then this would be hell.
nostrademons 8y ago
I'd say it's more like conventional factory towns from a couple centuries ago. I grew up in the Boston area, and on a recent trip back home, took my wife to see Lowell National Historic Park, birthplace of the industrial revolution in America. It struck me how similar the stories of the young women who went to work in the mills were to the young people who now flock to the Bay Area. Like today's workers, they were fleeing political instability & violence (for immigrants) or economic stagnation and lack of opportunity (for domestic migrants). Like in the Bay, they were thrust into a melting pot of cultures that sometimes stirred conflict but usually ended up broadening their horizons. Like in SF, they lived in small tenements or boardinghouses, often 2/room. Like at tech startups, they worked long hours in often alienating conditions to make capital owners rich. The interesting thing about it was that despite all the hardship, it was very often the right choice financially for them. Many of the women who worked in the mills would "retire" in their mid-late 20s or early 30s, having saved up the majority of their wages. They were then free to do things like become a pastor (the 1840s equivalent of living a life of spiritual enlightenment), or get an education (nearly unheard of for women in those days), or marry above their previous station and have a family, or return to their hometowns and buy up large swaths of farmland that would've been out of their reach had they stayed on the farm they grew up on. The people who really got screwed by the industrial revolution were those who didn't take the factory jobs in poor conditions - the small homesteading farmers, the artisans and craftspeople, the local merchants. They were largely wiped out as the new means of production spread throughout the world, bankrupt dinosaurs who eventually had to sell what was left of their homesteads when the dust bowl hit almost a century later. Most of them ended up catching the next wave, though, migrating to California or the Great Lakes and getting jobs in the new aerospace, defense, and automotive industries.
- vostok 8y ago
  > Many of the women who worked in the mills would "retire" in their mid-late 20s or early 30s, having saved up the majority of their wages. Thanks for sharing. I was under the impression that this was a relatively new phenomenon with the advent of sky high compensation in tech roles. Do you happen to know how common it was for them to be making, say, $300k in inflation adjusted terms by, say, age 26? I'd love to read more about this if you have any links. All the stuff I remember reading in school was about how horrible it was.
null0pointer 8y ago
At $5,500 per month is that to rent or buy? I currently spend about 25% of my after-tax salary on rent and I consider it too much for me. $66,000 => $264,000 after-tax. Californian marginal income tax bracket for $52k - $268k is 9.3% So $264,000 after-tax => $291,000 pre-tax (I know that's not how tax brackets work but I'm just estimating) And that must be base salary since you can't pay rent or buy food with stock options. On Glassdoor a SENIOR developer at Google in SF shows as only $170,000. So can someone either tell me where can I get a $300k job as a MID LEVEL developer or tell me how on earth the author considers $5,500 per month an affordable housing cost? Side note: My marginal income tax rate in Australia is 37%... I feel absolutely robbed looking at these California tax rates
- tehlike 8y ago
  Rsus do stack up with refreshers.
  - dgoldstein0 8y ago
    Yeah that 170k probably doesn't include stock based incentives. With those, >300k sounds plausible.
  - null0pointer 8y ago
    But you can't use your options until they vest right? Maybe I don't understand exactly what you mean
    - wffurr 8y ago
      So your first year is tight, but then your stock grants begin vesting and it's basically extra income at that point if you sell immediately.
      - ummonk 8y ago
        Large companies are starting to eliminate vesting cliffs, and moving to quarterly refreshers.
titzer 8y ago
After 5 years there, my conclusion was that the Bay Area runs on human souls. It might not be like the black lung, dirt-faced dangerous mines of old, but if you end up working 10 or 12 hours a day, are caged, distracted, annoyed (but fed!) at work, go home to a meager existence, have zero friends, zero romance, and your mind is hijacked to the point where you literally cannot think about anything else and relax, then your soul is being pretty much sucked dry. Get out if you can.
- EZ-E 8y ago
  > It might not be like the black lung, dirt-faced dangerous mines of old, but if you end up working 10 or 12 hours a day, are caged, distracted, annoyed (but fed!) at work, go home to a meager existence, have zero friends, zero romance, and your mind is hijacked to the point where you literally cannot think about anything else and relax, then your soul is being pretty much sucked dry. I would get my soul sucked dry for a few years for 100k$+ a year - for few years
  - carlmr 8y ago
    100k$ won't create much savings in the Bay Area. At least aim for 200k$ there if you want to sell your life for years.
    - madengr 8y ago
      So $200k is $20k for 10 years, which is well below the poverty line. If you sold your life for 4 years, that would only get you 40 years of poverty. Now if you can invest $180k/year, for a few years when young, you can retire early and rich. But it would take 20 years of growth.
    - nigifabio 8y ago
      100k in most of European big cities are not going to send you to pension at 40 either, 200k is the 6figures salary of the 90s
      - 8y ago
code4tee 8y ago
Its a harsh but fair analogy. The region has lost its soul. People moving there have little intention of setting down roots and staying long term. People who have lived there long term are just waiting to cash out on their house and move far away and just hoping the local tech ecosystem doesn’t implode first. Employees think they’re playing the companies by taking big pay then getting out and going elsewhere. Companies think they’re playing employees by having a seemingly never ending supply of “miners” looking to live and work under conditions most “normal” people would laugh at. Yes, it’s a mess.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  What’s wrong with planning to live somewhere until you retire, then moving to a lower col, lower taxes area? This is literally what most people do, at least in the US. I don’t know anyone who plans to live here long term. Why is that necessary for a region?
- ummonk 8y ago
  I grew up here, and have always wanted to stay, but the affordability bar for that has been constantly going up. I switched into software engineering in the hope that I could afford to keep up with rising housing prices. I'm just hoping all the people planning to get out do so soon in the next recession. Because god knows the NIMBYs aren't going to allow enough housing for everyone in the meantime.
claydavisss 8y ago
There's really no way to intellectualize it - people coming to the Bay Area in 2018 are suckers, plain and simple. You missed the boat - by years. Not only will you never afford a home here, you will piss away so much money on rent and other aspects of the absurdly inflated cost-of-living adjustment that you won't be able to leave and buy anywhere else either. If you're coming up on forty and still renting your primary residence, you are in real danger of financially screwing yourself for life. Traditional models of retirement have people paying off their homes in full by around fifty so they can start building their retirement funds. Forget about catching a break when the "bubble bursts"...the "bubble bursting" means most people reading Hacker News will be out of work or feeling very nervous about their jobs.
- megaman8 8y ago
  What the article is saying is, If you are young and have no family, you can rent a room really cheaply say 1400$ for a 1 bedroom, or bunk up with a mate for 700$ (2 people renting 1 room), and save most of your income for about 10 years - durring that time you can save about 500K. Then after that, get out and go anywhere but CA. In the rest of the US, you can buy a house for 300K and have a nice life. The trick is, to not settle down. Don't get a wife or girlfriend or friends. If you that, you'll be able to walk away from it all very easily.
  - pm90 8y ago
    > The trick is, to not settle down. Don't get a wife or girlfriend or friends. If you that, you'll be able to walk away from it all very easily. 10 years without friends and partners (to use a gender neutral term) would literally be hell. Its not that hard to find a healthy mix and not bust your bank in the process.
  - rfdave 8y ago
    I'm an experienced HW guy pondering this, My wife and I have kids out of college, so I'd be coming at this from the other end of the family pipeline.
jiveturkey 8y ago
what’s wrong with working in the mines? everyone is afraid of working hard? my parents spent every ounce of their being working hard so their children could have a better life. you think this is something difficult try on a true “work is life” existence like the people that made your phone and laptop. and, no one is being marched here. no one claims it is better than a slow and steady and more well rounded life. i mean besides the incessant drone of pop culture. just a couple of counterpoints to the developing arguments. i do like how the article itself isn’t judgemental about t. it’s a fair piece.
throwaway5250 8y ago
If you don't have kids, and don't plan to, the Bay Area could be a fun ride. And if it turns out not to be, well, you can just lick your wounds and leave. If you have kids, or think you might, you're doing them a grave disservice by moving to the Bay Area, given the alternatives currently available in America.
dnr 8y ago
The author seems pretty confused about the geography of the bay area, and comes to odd conclusions because of it. First of all: > Google programmers living two to three to a bedroom in Bernal Heights, not even that close to BART. Why would Google employees care about living close to BART? They take the Google shuttle to work, and Bernal has great highway access, making it a shorter commute than other parts of SF. Besides that, the people I know who have tons of roommates in SF do it because they want the experience of living in SF (culture, nightlife, food, socializing). If they just wanted to make money and save as much as possible, they'd live on the peninsula or in the east bay and have a more comfortable, and also cheaper, housing situation. Even for people working in SF (SOMA), commuting on BART from Oakland is often faster than many parts of SF, and almost certainly cheaper. If you choose to live in SF anyway, it's because you want to be there specifically.

90 points by imartin2k 8y ago

I'm looking to relocate to the Bay next year, and I'm exploring renting a one bedroom with my partner. Our plan is to rent as cheaply as we reasonable can, even if we can afford more (that is what we are doing right now). I think the analogy to the mines is spot on. At the same time it seems like the most rational approach for most tech workers. Even if I wanted to stay in California, as a foreigner in a L1 visa, my future will be too unpredictable to commit myself. Even after getting a green card, another recession would most likely force me to leave the area, if not the country altogether. Having worked through 2008 I know the current situation won't last forever. In the meanwhile, I rather work in the mines and extract as many resources as I can from the ground. Once the mine dries up and we are forced to move I'll have time to reevaluate my position in life and priorities.

cylinder 8y ago
Are you Indian born? What category would you be in for an employment based green card?
megablast 8y ago
> Our plan is to rent as cheaply as we reasonable can, even if we can afford more (that is what we are doing right now). Everybodies plan is to do that.
pm90 8y ago
Mine are similar and I just moved. Its as demanding as I was warned it would be but oddly I feel great. I've never had as much responsibility and yet have to work on tough engineering problems at the same time before. Maybe this is the best way to learn for me; I feel like I've learned a lot from being around very very effective and driven engineers. Its increased my confidence in my craft. And I think those intangibles are worth a lot more down the line. Of course, I'm able to work as hard because I kinda really like programming and learning about how Computers/Algorithms work. If I didn't have that inclination, then this would be hell.

nostrademons 8y ago

I'd say it's more like conventional factory towns from a couple centuries ago. I grew up in the Boston area, and on a recent trip back home, took my wife to see Lowell National Historic Park, birthplace of the industrial revolution in America. It struck me how similar the stories of the young women who went to work in the mills were to the young people who now flock to the Bay Area. Like today's workers, they were fleeing political instability & violence (for immigrants) or economic stagnation and lack of opportunity (for domestic migrants). Like in the Bay, they were thrust into a melting pot of cultures that sometimes stirred conflict but usually ended up broadening their horizons. Like in SF, they lived in small tenements or boardinghouses, often 2/room. Like at tech startups, they worked long hours in often alienating conditions to make capital owners rich. The interesting thing about it was that despite all the hardship, it was very often the right choice financially for them. Many of the women who worked in the mills would "retire" in their mid-late 20s or early 30s, having saved up the majority of their wages. They were then free to do things like become a pastor (the 1840s equivalent of living a life of spiritual enlightenment), or get an education (nearly unheard of for women in those days), or marry above their previous station and have a family, or return to their hometowns and buy up large swaths of farmland that would've been out of their reach had they stayed on the farm they grew up on. The people who really got screwed by the industrial revolution were those who didn't take the factory jobs in poor conditions - the small homesteading farmers, the artisans and craftspeople, the local merchants. They were largely wiped out as the new means of production spread throughout the world, bankrupt dinosaurs who eventually had to sell what was left of their homesteads when the dust bowl hit almost a century later. Most of them ended up catching the next wave, though, migrating to California or the Great Lakes and getting jobs in the new aerospace, defense, and automotive industries.

vostok 8y ago
> Many of the women who worked in the mills would "retire" in their mid-late 20s or early 30s, having saved up the majority of their wages. Thanks for sharing. I was under the impression that this was a relatively new phenomenon with the advent of sky high compensation in tech roles. Do you happen to know how common it was for them to be making, say, $300k in inflation adjusted terms by, say, age 26? I'd love to read more about this if you have any links. All the stuff I remember reading in school was about how horrible it was.

null0pointer 8y ago

At $5,500 per month is that to rent or buy? I currently spend about 25% of my after-tax salary on rent and I consider it too much for me. $66,000 => $264,000 after-tax. Californian marginal income tax bracket for $52k - $268k is 9.3% So $264,000 after-tax => $291,000 pre-tax (I know that's not how tax brackets work but I'm just estimating) And that must be base salary since you can't pay rent or buy food with stock options. On Glassdoor a SENIOR developer at Google in SF shows as only $170,000. So can someone either tell me where can I get a $300k job as a MID LEVEL developer or tell me how on earth the author considers $5,500 per month an affordable housing cost? Side note: My marginal income tax rate in Australia is 37%... I feel absolutely robbed looking at these California tax rates

tehlike 8y ago
Rsus do stack up with refreshers.
- dgoldstein0 8y ago
  Yeah that 170k probably doesn't include stock based incentives. With those, >300k sounds plausible.
- null0pointer 8y ago
  But you can't use your options until they vest right? Maybe I don't understand exactly what you mean
  - wffurr 8y ago
    So your first year is tight, but then your stock grants begin vesting and it's basically extra income at that point if you sell immediately.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      Large companies are starting to eliminate vesting cliffs, and moving to quarterly refreshers.

titzer 8y ago

After 5 years there, my conclusion was that the Bay Area runs on human souls. It might not be like the black lung, dirt-faced dangerous mines of old, but if you end up working 10 or 12 hours a day, are caged, distracted, annoyed (but fed!) at work, go home to a meager existence, have zero friends, zero romance, and your mind is hijacked to the point where you literally cannot think about anything else and relax, then your soul is being pretty much sucked dry. Get out if you can.

EZ-E 8y ago
> It might not be like the black lung, dirt-faced dangerous mines of old, but if you end up working 10 or 12 hours a day, are caged, distracted, annoyed (but fed!) at work, go home to a meager existence, have zero friends, zero romance, and your mind is hijacked to the point where you literally cannot think about anything else and relax, then your soul is being pretty much sucked dry. I would get my soul sucked dry for a few years for 100k$+ a year - for few years
- carlmr 8y ago
  100k$ won't create much savings in the Bay Area. At least aim for 200k$ there if you want to sell your life for years.
  - madengr 8y ago
    So $200k is $20k for 10 years, which is well below the poverty line. If you sold your life for 4 years, that would only get you 40 years of poverty. Now if you can invest $180k/year, for a few years when young, you can retire early and rich. But it would take 20 years of growth.
  - nigifabio 8y ago
    100k in most of European big cities are not going to send you to pension at 40 either, 200k is the 6figures salary of the 90s
    - 8y ago

code4tee 8y ago

Its a harsh but fair analogy. The region has lost its soul. People moving there have little intention of setting down roots and staying long term. People who have lived there long term are just waiting to cash out on their house and move far away and just hoping the local tech ecosystem doesn’t implode first. Employees think they’re playing the companies by taking big pay then getting out and going elsewhere. Companies think they’re playing employees by having a seemingly never ending supply of “miners” looking to live and work under conditions most “normal” people would laugh at. Yes, it’s a mess.

ryandrake 8y ago
What’s wrong with planning to live somewhere until you retire, then moving to a lower col, lower taxes area? This is literally what most people do, at least in the US. I don’t know anyone who plans to live here long term. Why is that necessary for a region?
ummonk 8y ago
I grew up here, and have always wanted to stay, but the affordability bar for that has been constantly going up. I switched into software engineering in the hope that I could afford to keep up with rising housing prices. I'm just hoping all the people planning to get out do so soon in the next recession. Because god knows the NIMBYs aren't going to allow enough housing for everyone in the meantime.

claydavisss 8y ago

There's really no way to intellectualize it - people coming to the Bay Area in 2018 are suckers, plain and simple. You missed the boat - by years. Not only will you never afford a home here, you will piss away so much money on rent and other aspects of the absurdly inflated cost-of-living adjustment that you won't be able to leave and buy anywhere else either. If you're coming up on forty and still renting your primary residence, you are in real danger of financially screwing yourself for life. Traditional models of retirement have people paying off their homes in full by around fifty so they can start building their retirement funds. Forget about catching a break when the "bubble bursts"...the "bubble bursting" means most people reading Hacker News will be out of work or feeling very nervous about their jobs.

megaman8 8y ago
What the article is saying is, If you are young and have no family, you can rent a room really cheaply say 1400$ for a 1 bedroom, or bunk up with a mate for 700$ (2 people renting 1 room), and save most of your income for about 10 years - durring that time you can save about 500K. Then after that, get out and go anywhere but CA. In the rest of the US, you can buy a house for 300K and have a nice life. The trick is, to not settle down. Don't get a wife or girlfriend or friends. If you that, you'll be able to walk away from it all very easily.
- pm90 8y ago
  > The trick is, to not settle down. Don't get a wife or girlfriend or friends. If you that, you'll be able to walk away from it all very easily. 10 years without friends and partners (to use a gender neutral term) would literally be hell. Its not that hard to find a healthy mix and not bust your bank in the process.
- rfdave 8y ago
  I'm an experienced HW guy pondering this, My wife and I have kids out of college, so I'd be coming at this from the other end of the family pipeline.

jiveturkey 8y ago

what’s wrong with working in the mines? everyone is afraid of working hard? my parents spent every ounce of their being working hard so their children could have a better life. you think this is something difficult try on a true “work is life” existence like the people that made your phone and laptop. and, no one is being marched here. no one claims it is better than a slow and steady and more well rounded life. i mean besides the incessant drone of pop culture. just a couple of counterpoints to the developing arguments. i do like how the article itself isn’t judgemental about t. it’s a fair piece.

throwaway5250 8y ago

If you don't have kids, and don't plan to, the Bay Area could be a fun ride. And if it turns out not to be, well, you can just lick your wounds and leave. If you have kids, or think you might, you're doing them a grave disservice by moving to the Bay Area, given the alternatives currently available in America.

dnr 8y ago

The author seems pretty confused about the geography of the bay area, and comes to odd conclusions because of it. First of all: > Google programmers living two to three to a bedroom in Bernal Heights, not even that close to BART. Why would Google employees care about living close to BART? They take the Google shuttle to work, and Bernal has great highway access, making it a shorter commute than other parts of SF. Besides that, the people I know who have tons of roommates in SF do it because they want the experience of living in SF (culture, nightlife, food, socializing). If they just wanted to make money and save as much as possible, they'd live on the peninsula or in the east bay and have a more comfortable, and also cheaper, housing situation. Even for people working in SF (SOMA), commuting on BART from Oakland is often faster than many parts of SF, and almost certainly cheaper. If you choose to live in SF anyway, it's because you want to be there specifically.