4 ms·

It's really complicated. Living in SF, with a family, what I would observe is that people mostly just live in housing units / arrangements that their peers in

It's really complicated. Living in SF, with a family, what I would observe is that people mostly just live in housing units / arrangements that their peers in other cities would find "unacceptable," for the "percentage of budget" reason mentioned in a sibling comment. I know some married couples that still have "roommates" to cut costs. I know a lot of families with one or more kids in apartments < 1000sqft. The majority of single folks I know have 4-5 roommates in small apartments, some sharing bedrooms. None of that is, in and of itself, that unusual or problematic. What's unusual is that the people who do this often earn somewhere from $200-$500k/yr. It's pretty difficult to explain to people who live elsewhere why you'd be willing to live in a small apartment and pay $4k/mo... unless you're willing to break out your budget spreadsheet and show them that by putting up with the housing, you get to have a very interesting job and that you are putting six figures a year into savings. When you know that you only have to put up with it for 5-10 years to be able to semi "retire" to anywhere else in the country, it's much easier to put up with. See also places like the North Slope in Alaska, where living conditions are rather harsh but people take the work because of the extraordinary pay.

root_axis 7y ago
> $200-$500k Anything over 250k is not a typical salary though, even in SV land. It is definitely attainable, but most engineers will never see that type of salary.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  The difference tends to come from RSUs or ISOs, not salary.
- burlesona 7y ago
  Not salary, but total compensation. At public companies, total comp is a mix of Salary, Bonus, and RSU. In most cases I've heard it's something like 50%, 15%, 35% of your total compensation.
ghaff 7y ago
>See also places like the North Slope in Alaska, where living conditions are rather harsh but people take the work because of the extraordinary pay. There certainly are jobs that some mostly younger people take with the expectation that they come with sort of a lousy lifestyle but they'll put away lots of money and they'll do them for a fairly limited length of time. (A lot of these jobs are in the oil business but it arguably also applies to things like investment banking and Big Law where you pay your dues for a few years and either make partner or get out.) I'm not sure how many people working for big tech companies in the Bay Area have that sort of mindset though. [And, as root_axis notes, I'm not sure the numbers work for most developers starting out. One difference with the North Slope, etc. example is that you don't have a lot of expenses with those kinds of jobs.]
- burlesona 7y ago
  Totally anecdota, but working at <bigcorp> I would say it's close to 100% of new grad hires here, and probably 60-70% of older (35+) engineers? Many people come here even at age 32-35 because they realized working in <midwestern city> that they were never going to get the big break that even 5 years in the Bay Area would give them. So they arrive with a 5-year plan to shovel away savings, then return to <midwestern city> where they'll be able to pay cash for a really nice house and return to their old life but with a much nicer lifestyle and economic base to live on from there on out.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Interesting. It's not an attitude I've ever seen in the Boston area but salaries aren't generally at Bay Area levels either. (And although metro Boston/Cambridge housing has gone up quite a bit, the area as a whole is quite a bit more affordable than the Bay Area.)
    - akhilcacharya 7y ago
      What? I'm in Cambridge, TC is identical at the Big4 here. (Of course, I pay more in rent than my SF and Seattle friends..)
api 7y ago
Sounds about right. For years I've called Silicon Valley the "world's only six figure slum." It wouldn't be this way if we figured out how to use this Internet thing for communication.
rb808 7y ago
> I know a lot of families with one or more kids in apartments < 1000sqft. This is pretty common in most of the world. Only in America is 1000sqft "small".
- api 7y ago
  That's a good thing? Excessively cramped living spaces create anxiety and reduce ability to concentrate among other things. BTW I think the real problem is the hyper-concentration of all opportunity in only a few cities. The US is enormous. There is no housing shortage unless we decide that we must cram all economic activity into five cities.
scarejunba 7y ago
Loads of people I know live frugally but it's absolutely just great financial management. They're aiming for long-term wealth. No one pays more than $2.5k in rent (I'm the extreme near the end because I moved out to a different apartment). We're talking people being millionaires in their twenties and tons of earning potential for the future carrying a three year old smartphone. I think it's because tech folk are good at min-maxing and at focusing on specific goals. It's nothing at all like the nonsense you see on /r/personalfinance. It's all ruthless optimization.

root_axis 7y ago

> $200-$500k Anything over 250k is not a typical salary though, even in SV land. It is definitely attainable, but most engineers will never see that type of salary.

lawnchair_larry 7y ago
The difference tends to come from RSUs or ISOs, not salary.
burlesona 7y ago
Not salary, but total compensation. At public companies, total comp is a mix of Salary, Bonus, and RSU. In most cases I've heard it's something like 50%, 15%, 35% of your total compensation.

ghaff 7y ago

>See also places like the North Slope in Alaska, where living conditions are rather harsh but people take the work because of the extraordinary pay. There certainly are jobs that some mostly younger people take with the expectation that they come with sort of a lousy lifestyle but they'll put away lots of money and they'll do them for a fairly limited length of time. (A lot of these jobs are in the oil business but it arguably also applies to things like investment banking and Big Law where you pay your dues for a few years and either make partner or get out.) I'm not sure how many people working for big tech companies in the Bay Area have that sort of mindset though. [And, as root_axis notes, I'm not sure the numbers work for most developers starting out. One difference with the North Slope, etc. example is that you don't have a lot of expenses with those kinds of jobs.]

burlesona 7y ago
Totally anecdota, but working at <bigcorp> I would say it's close to 100% of new grad hires here, and probably 60-70% of older (35+) engineers? Many people come here even at age 32-35 because they realized working in <midwestern city> that they were never going to get the big break that even 5 years in the Bay Area would give them. So they arrive with a 5-year plan to shovel away savings, then return to <midwestern city> where they'll be able to pay cash for a really nice house and return to their old life but with a much nicer lifestyle and economic base to live on from there on out.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Interesting. It's not an attitude I've ever seen in the Boston area but salaries aren't generally at Bay Area levels either. (And although metro Boston/Cambridge housing has gone up quite a bit, the area as a whole is quite a bit more affordable than the Bay Area.)
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    What? I'm in Cambridge, TC is identical at the Big4 here. (Of course, I pay more in rent than my SF and Seattle friends..)

api 7y ago

Sounds about right. For years I've called Silicon Valley the "world's only six figure slum." It wouldn't be this way if we figured out how to use this Internet thing for communication.

rb808 7y ago

> I know a lot of families with one or more kids in apartments < 1000sqft. This is pretty common in most of the world. Only in America is 1000sqft "small".

api 7y ago
That's a good thing? Excessively cramped living spaces create anxiety and reduce ability to concentrate among other things. BTW I think the real problem is the hyper-concentration of all opportunity in only a few cities. The US is enormous. There is no housing shortage unless we decide that we must cram all economic activity into five cities.

scarejunba 7y ago

Loads of people I know live frugally but it's absolutely just great financial management. They're aiming for long-term wealth. No one pays more than $2.5k in rent (I'm the extreme near the end because I moved out to a different apartment). We're talking people being millionaires in their twenties and tons of earning potential for the future carrying a three year old smartphone. I think it's because tech folk are good at min-maxing and at focusing on specific goals. It's nothing at all like the nonsense you see on /r/personalfinance. It's all ruthless optimization.