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I think for many people it comes down to go exactly where and do exactly what there. Once lived in Bay Area for while, you have certain expectations on compensa
by enra 8y ago
I think for many people it comes down to go exactly where and do exactly what there. Once lived in Bay Area for while, you have certain expectations on compensation, services, things to do, career growth etc.
If you are used to a city like SF and enjoy the level of things in there, in the world and US there only few cities similar. Like nyc, la, London, Tokyo etc. Portland, Seattle, Austin, Berlin are all good but not the same.
Most of these places are almost as expensive or in similar category as SF but all of them have lower tech salaries than SF, by little or by a lot.
In addition, if you live decently and your salary doesn’t only go to rent, then any decrease in rent is always less than decrease in your salary. Say your rent is $3000 in sf and you make $300k+ per year in total comp. Say moving to Austin your rent would be $1500 but your salary would be $200k. You are only saving $18k year in rent but your salary dropped $100k. Go to Berlin and you maybe pay $1000 for apartment but your salary is $60k.
Lastly, as messed up lot of startups and companies are in Bay Area, there is still a lot of experience and drive to build succesful companies. Go anywhere else in the world and you will encounter more clueless people with absolutely no networks, who have no ambition, and are just trying to do some local play of a global company. I know it sounds harsh but I think for many people thinking about moving to London and working in some consultancy or bank doesn’t sound very exciting or a growth opportunity.
So I think lot of people want to move, but cannot find good or exciting reasons to do that financially, growth or general job happiness. Quality of living and housing yes for sure.
I think options are:
1) start your company and build the culture and company you want whenever or in a distributed way
2) Decide to retire to the countryside and work on your own projects
3) Find a fulfilling, not exactly high tech job or position, but more like a foundation / helping governments with socially responsible software etc. Essentially financially retire, but work on meaningful things
I think Bay Area is still great for singles or couples without kids, that you can get dual high income and share housing costs. Also the career and company options in tech are unparaller.
Starting companies needing massive engineering force, less so.
- randomacct3847 8y agoIt’s not just cost of living but taxes. Living in a state with no income tax is an automatic 10-12% bump in take home pay. Agree though if you’re single your living situation is more flexible and you can find a place for less than market rate here pretty easily. It’s once you get married and want kids that SF makes no sense for most people. Someone making 200k in Austin has a much much better quality of life than someone making 300k in SF. No question.
- techslave 8y agotaxes don’t drive it. the 10% income tax savings is made up by prop tax and other costs. yes austin is cheaper but not because of taxes
- randomacct3847 8y agoWhat? Yes TX has higher property taxes as % property value than CA but, again, if you’re buying a 300k place in Austin your annual property taxes are going to be <<< than the CA property taxes you pay on a typical 1.5m place + income tax in CA. And because TX does not have income tax it also means for a 300k place your state and local taxes won’t hit the $10k limit for fed deductions which you will easily hit if you earn and have property in CA.
- techslave 8y agoa 300k place in austin is not comparable to a 1.5m place in sf bay. the 10k limit is irrelevant because most people will be in the 200k-500k AMT range where prop tax is not deductible anyway. please compare apples to apples. why picking on austin? it was just an example. wyoming has no income tax. you think living in jackson, WY is cheaper than cupertino? and that the reason is taxes???
- burlesona 8y agoAs someone from Austin living in SF I disagree. Austin has better housing affordability and less severe homelessness. To me, just about everything else is nicer in SF. But more to the point, everyone is different and you really can’t generalize about what place is better or worse, because people’s tastes, interests, and logistics vary so widely.
- randomacct3847 8y agoDefine nicer. To me housing affordability is a massive lever that drives quality of life. You can find a place for 300k in Austin (renovated) what would cost 1.5m in SF.
- sytelus 8y agoLet’s not discount weather. As pg had said, places with bad weather can cut opportunities in half (paraphrased). Think about all the time you didn’t go out because of bad weather. Those are the times you didn’t bump across some founder or partner or VC or new job. Also, there is huge cultural aspect that is much harder to articulate. If you are young, you can find lots of peers arriving in office on roller blades or playing video games on Friday or going for long drives in weekend. You might not find this in NYC or Seattle mature companies. People often change employers like cloths and that’s perhaps good for cultural because you continuesly encounter new ideas, opportunities and people. There is much less fear about not able to find job and that allows to take risk in working at startups at peanuts salaries. In most other places it would be hard to find folks who had more than 2-3 employers in 30 years and even more harder to find people taking pay cuts to get job at risky companies. Yet another aspect is that either people don’t have kids or married couples both work in tech. Because of tremendous numbers of tech companies it’s easy to find tech jobs for spouses. Once you have double income in tech, housing cost is not huge deal.
- temp1928384 8y agoWeather in NYC is pretty bad.
- baddox 8y agoBut then the meaning of “want to leave” seems unclear. Of course everyone by definition wants to leave if there is somewhere else to go that is strictly better according to their personal preferences.
- enra 8y agoI think it’s but like say people “want to be healthy” but don’t want take action or compromise. I think lot of people in sf feel the pressures of housing and homelessness, that potentially makes them want to leave, but they cannot find enough ways to justify why move to place x.