6 ms·

When headhunters contact me about SF (or even Bay Area) jobs, I just scoff and shut them down. If you're fresh out of school, no family, and willing to live in

When headhunters contact me about SF (or even Bay Area) jobs, I just scoff and shut them down. If you're fresh out of school, no family, and willing to live in a hovel for some interesting life experience, sure. But if you're an adult, it's no way to live. And putting kids through it is frankly unethical.

stale2002 8y ago
Well it depends. I'll agree with you that if you work at a rando tech startup, the costs of living are going to be quite high, and make it probably not worth it. But, the whole equation changes if you are working for a big 5 tech company, or hot unicorn company. These companies will pay you double what the rando startups pay. Who really cares if you are paying 40k a year on rent, if your total compensation breaks 250K. And getting 250k+ as an engineer, with a couple years experience, is only really possible in the Bay area.
- moftz 8y ago
  But the cost of living is so high there that the inflated salaries are pretty much required to bring anyone out there. A company wants to have competitive hiring so they offer a little bit more than competition so what was a $200k job is now $220k. Prices increase to what these inflated salaried workers can afford and the cycle continues. It will be incredible to watch when SF finally starts to allow for more high density housing. Housing prices will fall and the salary bubble will pop. A lot of companies will start cutting back on starting salaries and as a result, experienced workers will start either taking paycuts to switch jobs or be first in line for layoffs because they cost the company too much.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    This gets causality backwards. Employers don't give a shit about whether employees can afford housing - if they did, we wouldn't have such a big homelessness problem, and our teachers/firefighters/policemen wouldn't live over the mountains in Pleasanton. Employers pay enough to prevent employees from going to a competitor. The reason FANG salaries now hit $300-400K is because Facebook refused to play ball with the wage-fixing cartel that Schmidt/Jobs/et al had worked out, then the DoJ cracked down, and so now that's what you need to pay to keep your software engineers from working for someone else. Then you have a lot of tech workers with extremely fat salaries and not enough housing for everyone who wants to live here, so they bid up rents & housing prices until they're unaffordable for all the middle-income folks who used to live here. If more high-density housing was built, then rents would fall, middle-income people could live here again, and tech workers could pocket their fat salaries as savings (or live extremely lavish lifestyles). They would still be paid a lot, because there'd always be another tech company around the corner willing to bid up wages to their current level. For the salary "bubble" to pop, a lot of these companies would have to go out of business at once. This was exactly what happened in 2001 and 2009, and it had the predicted results: unemployment spiked, wages fell, rents fell, and people moved out of the Bay Area back to wherever they came from.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - ascar 8y ago
      If that would actually be the case you would have these salaries all around the world, but you don't. Because it's mainly a few big highly profitable companies (FAANG) that can afford these salaries and a big VC and stock market funded bubble around them. And even FAANG pays much lower salaries in cheaper regions, because hightech employers have to give a shit about housing. You can't compare it to teachers. I think it's a dangerous attitude to think the salaries in CA are the actual worth of a software developer's work. It's just what FAANG can afford to pay. For many companies devs at that price point are not economically sustainable.
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        It absolutely is what FAANG (and newer companies like AirBnB/Uber/Lyft/Stripe/DropBox etc) can afford to pay. And what FAANG can afford to pay is not going to change if more housing gets built in the Bay Area. And yes, for many companies devs at that price point are not economically sustainable, but that's why FAANG are sucking all the oxygen out of the startup developers market and maintaining their oligopsony. (Also, while there's some variance for cost-of-living in FAANG salaries in different regions, it's not that much. Google developers make less in Beijing than they do in Mountain View, but their salary still looks much more like a Google salary than a Beijing salary.)
- mrep 8y ago
  > And getting 250k+ as an engineer, with a couple years experience, is only really possible in the Bay area. Seattle and NYC can also easily reach that. Source: I'm in Seattle making 210k 3 years out of college.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
modwilliam 8y ago
Why "just scoff"? There's a salary that would allow you to live comfortably and get more net income in the Bay Area - you'd want to see if the jobs can pay that salary
- Cyclone_ 8y ago
  Looking at salary data from several places, even a $200k base seems pretty rare, most developers are not making that much in the bay area. People in the bay area are going to have less purchasing power than developers in most other places around the country.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    $3690/month * 12 months = $44280. If you're making ($44280 - current rent in your city) more for a SF job, you net out ahead, even without considering stock options. (It's also significantly more reasonable in the South Bay - my family pays about $2650/month for a 2BR, and most of the fat Facebook/Apple/Netflix/Google salaries are in Silicon Valley proper.)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - ericd 8y ago
      I'd definitely keep in mind that those are after-tax figures, though. At the higher income levels, CA+Federal taxes hover around 50%. So, roughly double that rent difference to get the salary offset needed.
      - wankerrific 8y ago
        Really? At what income level in California are you paying half your income in taxes?
        jjjensen90 8y ago

stale2002 8y ago

Well it depends. I'll agree with you that if you work at a rando tech startup, the costs of living are going to be quite high, and make it probably not worth it. But, the whole equation changes if you are working for a big 5 tech company, or hot unicorn company. These companies will pay you double what the rando startups pay. Who really cares if you are paying 40k a year on rent, if your total compensation breaks 250K. And getting 250k+ as an engineer, with a couple years experience, is only really possible in the Bay area.

moftz 8y ago
But the cost of living is so high there that the inflated salaries are pretty much required to bring anyone out there. A company wants to have competitive hiring so they offer a little bit more than competition so what was a $200k job is now $220k. Prices increase to what these inflated salaried workers can afford and the cycle continues. It will be incredible to watch when SF finally starts to allow for more high density housing. Housing prices will fall and the salary bubble will pop. A lot of companies will start cutting back on starting salaries and as a result, experienced workers will start either taking paycuts to switch jobs or be first in line for layoffs because they cost the company too much.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  This gets causality backwards. Employers don't give a shit about whether employees can afford housing - if they did, we wouldn't have such a big homelessness problem, and our teachers/firefighters/policemen wouldn't live over the mountains in Pleasanton. Employers pay enough to prevent employees from going to a competitor. The reason FANG salaries now hit $300-400K is because Facebook refused to play ball with the wage-fixing cartel that Schmidt/Jobs/et al had worked out, then the DoJ cracked down, and so now that's what you need to pay to keep your software engineers from working for someone else. Then you have a lot of tech workers with extremely fat salaries and not enough housing for everyone who wants to live here, so they bid up rents & housing prices until they're unaffordable for all the middle-income folks who used to live here. If more high-density housing was built, then rents would fall, middle-income people could live here again, and tech workers could pocket their fat salaries as savings (or live extremely lavish lifestyles). They would still be paid a lot, because there'd always be another tech company around the corner willing to bid up wages to their current level. For the salary "bubble" to pop, a lot of these companies would have to go out of business at once. This was exactly what happened in 2001 and 2009, and it had the predicted results: unemployment spiked, wages fell, rents fell, and people moved out of the Bay Area back to wherever they came from.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ascar 8y ago
    If that would actually be the case you would have these salaries all around the world, but you don't. Because it's mainly a few big highly profitable companies (FAANG) that can afford these salaries and a big VC and stock market funded bubble around them. And even FAANG pays much lower salaries in cheaper regions, because hightech employers have to give a shit about housing. You can't compare it to teachers. I think it's a dangerous attitude to think the salaries in CA are the actual worth of a software developer's work. It's just what FAANG can afford to pay. For many companies devs at that price point are not economically sustainable.
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      It absolutely is what FAANG (and newer companies like AirBnB/Uber/Lyft/Stripe/DropBox etc) can afford to pay. And what FAANG can afford to pay is not going to change if more housing gets built in the Bay Area. And yes, for many companies devs at that price point are not economically sustainable, but that's why FAANG are sucking all the oxygen out of the startup developers market and maintaining their oligopsony. (Also, while there's some variance for cost-of-living in FAANG salaries in different regions, it's not that much. Google developers make less in Beijing than they do in Mountain View, but their salary still looks much more like a Google salary than a Beijing salary.)
mrep 8y ago
> And getting 250k+ as an engineer, with a couple years experience, is only really possible in the Bay area. Seattle and NYC can also easily reach that. Source: I'm in Seattle making 210k 3 years out of college.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

modwilliam 8y ago

Why "just scoff"? There's a salary that would allow you to live comfortably and get more net income in the Bay Area - you'd want to see if the jobs can pay that salary

Cyclone_ 8y ago
Looking at salary data from several places, even a $200k base seems pretty rare, most developers are not making that much in the bay area. People in the bay area are going to have less purchasing power than developers in most other places around the country.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  $3690/month * 12 months = $44280. If you're making ($44280 - current rent in your city) more for a SF job, you net out ahead, even without considering stock options. (It's also significantly more reasonable in the South Bay - my family pays about $2650/month for a 2BR, and most of the fat Facebook/Apple/Netflix/Google salaries are in Silicon Valley proper.)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ericd 8y ago
    I'd definitely keep in mind that those are after-tax figures, though. At the higher income levels, CA+Federal taxes hover around 50%. So, roughly double that rent difference to get the salary offset needed.
    - wankerrific 8y ago
      Really? At what income level in California are you paying half your income in taxes?
      - jjjensen90 8y ago