8 ms·
There's very few places where there is an overlap of "jobs that pay $100k" and "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary".
by Tehchops 7y ago
There's very few places where there is an overlap of "jobs that pay $100k" and "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary".
- aidenn0 7y ago"Household income" so a couple with incomes of say $75k and $25k would put you in the "low six figures."
- dragontamer 7y agoSmall town America will have $500 / month for a 2-bedroom apartment, while paying medical-doctors $200k+ / year. But you may be the only doctor around for 10s of miles. Which is why you'd be so valuable. I'm sure there are other $100k to $200k jobs that small towns need. No, you won't get high-tech or programming in small-town America. But there's more to life than just the tech-field. Its easy to forget because we're mostly programmers in this website.
- notfromhere 7y agothe sweet spot in terms of arbitrage right now is: find full time employment at a high earning job in a major metro area, move far enough from that metro area to work remote while being able to come into the office a handful of times per month. A three hour commute is easier when you only do it twice a week, or a few times a month.
- taurath 7y agoA 3 hour commute each way is not easy even when you do it only twice a week
- notfromhere 7y agoRound-trip
- NotSammyHagar 7y agoBut my weekly commuting is less than 5 hours total. And I live in the Seattle area. I will add before I switched jobs to one on the same side of the lakes as I live on, it was 10 hours / week ;-)
- imtringued 7y agoWhy isn't a 1 hour commute enough to find cheap land/housing?
- notfromhere 7y agoAt least where I'm at, those areas have already been built out at least twenty years ago. So unless you want to buy a McMansion, housing isn't cheap.
- journalctl 7y agoIf you want to be mind-numbingly bored, sure. Despite the cost of living in a city, I (and others who enjoy city life) would much rather pay to enjoy amenities like public transit and being able to walk to a bar.
- kevstev 7y agoI don't think its fair to say that living outside a city has to be boring. Many value and enjoy being among nature. My ex-coworkers who live in rural areas seem to have a good time on their quads, tending their gardens that sometimes approach small farms, hiking/biking, boating on the lake in summer, ice fishing in winter, hunting, camping, etc. Your Friday night at a bar is their Friday night around a fire with their hounds.
- avgDev 7y agoI dislike bars, clubs, people in general. I like outdoors, silence, beach. I feel miserable around all the other "robots" in the city. I feel decent enough in the suburbs with less people and more space.
- magduf 7y ago>Many value and enjoy being among nature. My ex-coworkers who live in rural areas seem to have a good time on their quads, Listening to an extremely noisy engine for hours on end is not my idea of "enjoying nature". I've lived in rural areas. They generally suck, even for nature. In America, all the wooded land is "POSTED" (no trespassing), so you can't go there, and will probably be shot if you do; you have to find a park instead. If your rural house is located near a park, great, but otherwise you're out of luck.
- taborj 7y agoI actually am thankful for folks who think living outside a major metro area is "mind-numbingly" boring. That means you'll stay in the city with all the other crazy people. See, these low-effort insults work both ways!
- 7y ago
- TylerE 7y agoEven in small towns $500 won’t get you much. A small, old, place in a marginal part of town.
- dragontamer 7y agoIt was walking distance from the local university + local hospital. My sister at the time was studying to be a medical doctor, so she needed to be close to those two spots. There wasn't much else going on in the town aside from the university + hospital.
- bradlys 7y agoWhat kind of "small town" are we talking about? Most "small town"s I think of don't have universities. Maybe a community college for the whole county.
- dragontamer 7y agoWell, its all relative ain't it. Lets just say... Buies Creek, North Carolina. I've been to smaller towns, but I'd say population of 2,942 is small for most people. EDIT: Seems like prices may have gone up in recent years: I'm seeing $800 to $1000 on Rent.com, but there's still a listing or two for $600/month. Or maybe "word of mouth" is still king there. Buies Creek is still reasonably close to the Raleigh metropolitan area. So this is still "somewhat suburban". I've visited my cousins in Coulee City, WA (Population 562), so I know what "actually rural" looks like too.
- bumby 7y agoIf you consider automation to be sufficiently tech-y, there's still plenty of jobs like those around, particularly in the rust belt. The people I knew in this area lived in small towns and got paid well enough to live in neighborhoods surrounded by medical doctors. Part of the problem is these jobs don't have the sex appeal of SV tech so they aren't on people's radar or just not considered desirable because of the nature of manufacturing work.
- throwaway981211 7y agoIn the grand scheme of things, even $200K is not a lot of money. I made record this year (~$320K), but I end up saving it all. Can I afford to buy a home? Absolutely. Will I buy a home? Absolutely not. Let’s say I purchase an $650K home outside Seattle and commute to work. I still have a huge mortgage weighing on my shoulders and I could get wiped out if my employer let me go. Just not worth the risk.
- ed312 7y agoIf you find one, please share :) Less sarcastically: is there an index for this kind of thing? E.g. cost of living for an equivalent neighborhood plotted against median salaries for tech jobs?
- czbond 7y agoDallas, TX is one - but as resident, I up and moved to Denver because .... ugh.
- opencl 7y agoA large chunk of the midwest is like that. Housing is very cheap in the small-medium cities (and the big cities are still a lot cheaper than the coasts) and you'll usually find a few local software companies + satellite offices of bigger ones that pay in that range.
- sudosteph 7y agoThere are a few different rankings that sort of assess this. There's a CompTIA "Tech Towns" report[1] from last year that does a good breakdown of salary + job opportunities vs CoL by city. Anecdotally, I think it was right to rank Charlotte NC at the top. It's easy to find 100k+ salary jobs there if you have experience (avg is a bit lower though) - and median housing prices are like 230k. But the big downside is that you pretty much have to be cool with working for a bank. [1] https://www.aitp.org/blog/aitp-blog/2018/10/23/tech-town-usa-20-cities-it-pros-will-want-to-call-home/ https://www.aitp.org/blog/aitp-blog/2018/10/23/tech-town-usa...
- taborj 7y agoThere are numerous cost of living calculators[0] online, but they basically just tell you how much more or less you need to earn to maintain your standards if you move to another city (not neighborhood level). Still, they're interesting. [0] Here's one: https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator
- sjdb77 7y agoRemote work is becoming more "real" by the day, so it's certainly possible in the age of the internet to work remotely in a low cost location while making a salary competitive with a higher cost of living city like SF/NY/LA.
- swlkr 7y agoI do this and I want other people to know it's possible too. I'm putting together a list of the best places to live for remote workers with families, hoping to turn it into a little website that you can filter by schools, available internet speeds, median house price, that sort of thing. Hopefully it will help someone out there when there's more data. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X2JihFpA97EEAMz8kD-jwETnR09oEaGux7v2TynY8qI/edit https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X2JihFpA97EEAMz8kD-j...
- mikebonnell 7y agoHow would one contribute to this?
- taborj 7y agoAgreed, I want to contribute. So I can direct people away from where I live, so the prices don't skyrocket.
- swlkr 7y agoHaha, for now it's just the spreadsheet like I mentioned in parent comment.
- freehunter 7y agoWhere I live, there is a concerted effort to do the same thing. For a long time people in the area have been trying to convince the world that our region is the best. Best beaches, best food, best beer, best outdoor activities, best mix of weather, best music, best quality of life. And then we all saw what happened to Portland, Seattle, and Austin once the word got out and everyone knew about these "secret" cool cities. So now we keep our mouths shut and enjoy our beer and beaches without all the tourists and transplants.
- asdfman123 7y ago1) Take this list of metropolitan areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic... 2) Remove most of the coastal cities (SF, NYC, Boston, Seattle, Portland, etc. etc.) 3) End up with a list of metros with decent paying jobs and not exorbitantly expensive housing
- zajd 7y agoCounterexample: Denver
- tjr225 7y ago> "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary" There are many places throughout the south, midwest and northeast with decent job markets and dirt cheap housing. The mortgage on my 1800 sq foot house is nearly a third of the cost of my tiny one bedroom back in Seattle. The cost of the entire house is a tenth of a house in the Bay Area. I am fortunate to work remotely but when deciding where to live I wanted to be able to afford to keep this roof over my families' head even if I didn't have a Bay Area/Seattle gig. I think the biggest obstacle may be coming up with enough cash to secure the financing in the first place, and for that I am grateful to have lived and worked in a tech hub.
- throwaway981211 7y agoHow does your total comp fare relative to Seattle? I’m living in downtown Seattle now working for Amazon. I’ve been here almost 8 years. My TC is north of $300K, but the mental strain this fucking company has had on me has me constantly on the edge. I’m thinking about leaving to join another FANG company or drop out of big tech all together.
- jhall1468 7y agoNot who you asked, but it's almost guaranteed to be lower. It's extremely rare to be both remote and get paid at the prevailing salary of the company. That only works for companies that generally don't allow remote, as they don't have COL-adjusted salaries to worry about. As an Amazonian that works remote, I have the same payscale as everyone else in Seattle.
- beefalo 7y agoPeople I know who work remotely from the midwest for Bay Area/Seattle companies are ~200 TC when they would probably get ~400 if they moved.
- tjr225 7y agoMy TC is significantly lower(half) but we aren't public and not a FAANG so. Living in Seattle on two high incomes(maybe not relative to you, but still) and having no kids was amazing. Paid off about 80k of student loans in a short amount of time. However, the prospect of having a massive 500k-1m mortgage in a boom or bust town was just too much for me. Here, If the housing market flipped upside down and my house magically worth 0$ id still come out alright! It's that, plus I can afford my housing while working at Starbucks(exaggeration) that gives me peace of mind. I will say though, if Seattle's housing market crashes I'd be back in a heartbeat. I miss the water and the mountains! Also FWIW my company is remote first, and I get paid the same in Seattle as I do here.
- MrMember 7y agoLook for places that other people don't want to live. There are plenty of midwestern cities with senior developer jobs paying $100k+ and a low cost of living. My two bedroom condo 20 minutes from the downtown of a major metro area was $80k.
- PenguinCoder 7y agoDo tell; which midwestern cities?
- bart_spoon 7y agoCan’t speak for others, but Indianapolis is one
- lukevp 7y agoHousing in Texas is still very cheap comparatively. And salaries are $100k+ in tech. You can get a house in round Rock ( for example 1309 green terrace Dr is on the market for under $240k and it's a 2300 sqft house with a 2 car garage ) and it's an 18 minute drive from Apple and Facebook.
- RhysU 7y agoAnd no state income tax, though property taxes will take your breath away.
- KoftaBob 7y agoAustin and Chicago definitely fit in that overlap. On top of that, when you compare SF to say, Cleveland, sure the median salary in SF could be 2x as high, but the median home price is close to 10x as high. NIMBYism is going to absolutely choke the bay area over time, and newer generations of startups, VCs, and accelerators will wise up and broaden their horizons. The frequently parroted argument of "SF has the best pool of engineering talent" only goes so far. Especially when quality engineers can move wherever they want, and Stanford and UC Berkeley aren't pumping out nearly enough CS grads to justify the absurd cost of operating for startups to stay there.
- efa 7y agoOr San Antonio. A few less jobs and a little lower pay than Austin but housing is way cheaper.
- autotune 7y agoMid 20s guy here; I lived in San Antonio a few years back for a year and spent every other night driving up to Austin, because there is basically nothing to do in downtown SA unless your only interests are drinking and food trucks.
- throwing838383 7y agoIf you're looking for the best ROI where there are the highest SE salaries per living cost, check out: https://skilldime.com/blog/see-which-cities-pay-the-highest-software-engineering-salaries-adjusted-for-col/ https://skilldime.com/blog/see-which-cities-pay-the-highest-... There's many places that have great ROIs but Palo Alto isn't one of them: they're dead last.