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I feel like this list is skewed by cost of living. The top four cities are also very expensive cities to live in and around. 200k in the bay area is scraping by

I feel like this list is skewed by cost of living. The top four cities are also very expensive cities to live in and around. 200k in the bay area is scraping by whereas 100k in the Austin area gets you a house in a reasonable amount of time. Are there any plans to provide adjustments like that?

Zaheer 7y ago
Yes! We're working on Cost-of-living (CoL) comparisons and adjustments. We've just finished extensively normalizing our data (which we used for this report). The next steps are better analysis over it including things like CoL.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
>200k in the bay area is scraping by What a gross exaggeration. Had you said 90k and for a family, then sure, but unless you consider "not having a new Tesla" as scraping by, this is disingenuous. Source: Lived in Bay Area all my life with under $200k salary, not homeless, not scraping by, saving (a little bit) of money, able to go out with friends and my hair isn't falling out from being unable to pay bills. Maybe some of the big earners out there would consider my lifestyle "scraping by" but I like to think I know the difference between "scraping by" and "living within your means".
- esotericn 7y ago
  Probably just talking about owning a home. To a lot of people it doesn't matter how many fancy toys they have, they want stability.
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    That makes it even more to the point; there are probably a dozen cities in the Bay Area where one could afford a house on a 200k household income without "scraping by". San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Martinez, Antioch, Pittsburg, Hayward, Union City, Livermore, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Richmond are all places you can get a house with a 200k salary in the Bay Area. There's probably a lot more, too. It's an indefensible statement.
    - txcwpalpha 7y ago
      I notice a pervasive attitude amongst tech companies where people think that "affording a home" means "being able to purchase a home without having to spend any time saving for it and be able to entirely pay off the home within a few years". Most people in SV seem oblivious to the fact that saving for many years for a down payment on a 30+ year mortgage is the norm everywhere, whether it be NYC, suburban Atlanta, or middle-of-nowhere Montana.
- SaltyBackendGuy 7y ago
  > Lived in Bay Area all my life I have as well until recently. Living in SF that's probably a close to accurate statement. If you live in Concord or Martinez (which is still technically the Bay Area), you can do quite nicely. Although, you'll trade ~2 hours of your life in commuting on Bart. Not to mention the overall discomfort of the Bart commute itself (better than the drive however).
- dlhavema 7y ago
  > living within your means This cannot be understated.
throwawaymath 7y ago
Can we please stop with the hyperbole? $200k in the bay area is emphatically not scraping by. You can live on your own, without roommates, save money and have a social life if you have a $200k income in SFBA. What people (especially on HN) think "scraping by" looks like is getting a little nuts. Just because you can't have an opulent lifestyle and a cheap five bedroom house doesn't mean you're struggling. $200k in SFBA is well beyond the point where all your basic needs are met.
- pascalxus 7y ago
  it all depends on your situation. Sure, as a single person 200K is doing well. But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on the penninsula or SF. The only way that's not scraping by is if you bought your house over 20 years ago (or during 2010-2012 housing slump) OR you got yourself a Rent controlled apartment. Other than that, You ARE scraping by. In SF, day care is almost 3K per month per child! On the penninsula/SF, if you rent a 3 bedroom apartment, it'll cost 4k-6K or so per month or more, that's 60K of your 130K take home pay.
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    >But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on the penninsula or SF. Lol. No, it isn't. It is absolutely mind blowing what the general tech industry thinks "scraping by" means. The median household income in SF is less than 100k. At 200k, you make more than twice that. If you're just "scraping by" with 200k, then I can't even imagine what people making less than the median are doing.
    - geebee 7y ago
      Child care in San Francisco, the kind that goes from 8am to 6pm, runs over $2500 a month. That's not ultraluxe, that's pretty standard fare, and my estimate is probably on the low side. A 3br house in an unfashionable but largely safe part of town is probably well over $4000 in rent. Again, that's not a high estimate. If you have 2 kids in daycare and are paying a mortgage or even just renting, you're looking at $9,000 a month in these expenses alone. Wealth in San Francisco is more measured by when you got into the housing market than what you make, salary-wise, unless you're quite a ways up. Now, a two income family with tech jobs is likely going to have at least 300k in family income (though even with the expensive 8am to 6pm day care, expect lots of phone calls coordinating who will scramble over to day care before 6). These families are not "scraping by", and I agree we need to be careful with hyperbole. But the median household income may not reflect the cost structure for new arrivals to the housing market who lack the family structure that would cushion the blow of daycare costs.
adventured 7y ago
> 200k in the bay area is scraping by People say these things, it's not very accurate even though the bay area is obviously very expensive. You've got roughly $130,000 in take-home pay at $200k in the bay area. Your employer is paying for your health insurance. Even if you're paying $5,000 per month in rent for an apartment, you're still not scraping by. You've got $60k to $70k (depending) to distribute to everything else (food, utilities, lifestyle, etc), with housing and health covered. You can trivially buy a year old Mercedes or BMW sedan every year if you feel like it, like all those other people barely getting by. You can spend $2,000 per month eating out, instead of $400 cooking for yourself, if you feel like it, as with all those other people choosing between their vast food options while living on food stamps.
pascalxus 7y ago
I've adjusted avg salaries based on cost of living here: 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-... But, note, the above is for average software engineering salaries, not for the sky high FANGS.
whalesalad 7y ago
> I feel like this list is skewed by cost of living. The top four cities are also very expensive cities to live in and around. This... is how the world works.
- rcpt 7y ago
  Is it? Shouldn't salaries be higher in Vancouver or Hong Kong?
username90 7y ago
Pittsburgh is not that expensive, you can get two bedroom apartment in the middle of the city for $1k a month and they still pay huge salaries there. So the CoL adjustment is not that big, you get a little less in low CoL than in high CoL, the main driver of these large salaries is the company and not the location.

Zaheer 7y ago

Yes! We're working on Cost-of-living (CoL) comparisons and adjustments. We've just finished extensively normalizing our data (which we used for this report). The next steps are better analysis over it including things like CoL.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

>200k in the bay area is scraping by What a gross exaggeration. Had you said 90k and for a family, then sure, but unless you consider "not having a new Tesla" as scraping by, this is disingenuous. Source: Lived in Bay Area all my life with under $200k salary, not homeless, not scraping by, saving (a little bit) of money, able to go out with friends and my hair isn't falling out from being unable to pay bills. Maybe some of the big earners out there would consider my lifestyle "scraping by" but I like to think I know the difference between "scraping by" and "living within your means".

esotericn 7y ago
Probably just talking about owning a home. To a lot of people it doesn't matter how many fancy toys they have, they want stability.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  That makes it even more to the point; there are probably a dozen cities in the Bay Area where one could afford a house on a 200k household income without "scraping by". San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Martinez, Antioch, Pittsburg, Hayward, Union City, Livermore, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Richmond are all places you can get a house with a 200k salary in the Bay Area. There's probably a lot more, too. It's an indefensible statement.
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    I notice a pervasive attitude amongst tech companies where people think that "affording a home" means "being able to purchase a home without having to spend any time saving for it and be able to entirely pay off the home within a few years". Most people in SV seem oblivious to the fact that saving for many years for a down payment on a 30+ year mortgage is the norm everywhere, whether it be NYC, suburban Atlanta, or middle-of-nowhere Montana.
SaltyBackendGuy 7y ago
> Lived in Bay Area all my life I have as well until recently. Living in SF that's probably a close to accurate statement. If you live in Concord or Martinez (which is still technically the Bay Area), you can do quite nicely. Although, you'll trade ~2 hours of your life in commuting on Bart. Not to mention the overall discomfort of the Bart commute itself (better than the drive however).
dlhavema 7y ago
> living within your means This cannot be understated.

throwawaymath 7y ago

Can we please stop with the hyperbole? $200k in the bay area is emphatically not scraping by. You can live on your own, without roommates, save money and have a social life if you have a $200k income in SFBA. What people (especially on HN) think "scraping by" looks like is getting a little nuts. Just because you can't have an opulent lifestyle and a cheap five bedroom house doesn't mean you're struggling. $200k in SFBA is well beyond the point where all your basic needs are met.

pascalxus 7y ago
it all depends on your situation. Sure, as a single person 200K is doing well. But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on the penninsula or SF. The only way that's not scraping by is if you bought your house over 20 years ago (or during 2010-2012 housing slump) OR you got yourself a Rent controlled apartment. Other than that, You ARE scraping by. In SF, day care is almost 3K per month per child! On the penninsula/SF, if you rent a 3 bedroom apartment, it'll cost 4k-6K or so per month or more, that's 60K of your 130K take home pay.
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  >But, 200K with a family of 4 (2 kids and a wife) is definately scraping by on the penninsula or SF. Lol. No, it isn't. It is absolutely mind blowing what the general tech industry thinks "scraping by" means. The median household income in SF is less than 100k. At 200k, you make more than twice that. If you're just "scraping by" with 200k, then I can't even imagine what people making less than the median are doing.
  - geebee 7y ago
    Child care in San Francisco, the kind that goes from 8am to 6pm, runs over $2500 a month. That's not ultraluxe, that's pretty standard fare, and my estimate is probably on the low side. A 3br house in an unfashionable but largely safe part of town is probably well over $4000 in rent. Again, that's not a high estimate. If you have 2 kids in daycare and are paying a mortgage or even just renting, you're looking at $9,000 a month in these expenses alone. Wealth in San Francisco is more measured by when you got into the housing market than what you make, salary-wise, unless you're quite a ways up. Now, a two income family with tech jobs is likely going to have at least 300k in family income (though even with the expensive 8am to 6pm day care, expect lots of phone calls coordinating who will scramble over to day care before 6). These families are not "scraping by", and I agree we need to be careful with hyperbole. But the median household income may not reflect the cost structure for new arrivals to the housing market who lack the family structure that would cushion the blow of daycare costs.

adventured 7y ago

> 200k in the bay area is scraping by People say these things, it's not very accurate even though the bay area is obviously very expensive. You've got roughly $130,000 in take-home pay at $200k in the bay area. Your employer is paying for your health insurance. Even if you're paying $5,000 per month in rent for an apartment, you're still not scraping by. You've got $60k to $70k (depending) to distribute to everything else (food, utilities, lifestyle, etc), with housing and health covered. You can trivially buy a year old Mercedes or BMW sedan every year if you feel like it, like all those other people barely getting by. You can spend $2,000 per month eating out, instead of $400 cooking for yourself, if you feel like it, as with all those other people choosing between their vast food options while living on food stamps.

pascalxus 7y ago

I've adjusted avg salaries based on cost of living here: 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-... But, note, the above is for average software engineering salaries, not for the sky high FANGS.

whalesalad 7y ago

> I feel like this list is skewed by cost of living. The top four cities are also very expensive cities to live in and around. This... is how the world works.

rcpt 7y ago
Is it? Shouldn't salaries be higher in Vancouver or Hong Kong?

username90 7y ago

Pittsburgh is not that expensive, you can get two bedroom apartment in the middle of the city for $1k a month and they still pay huge salaries there. So the CoL adjustment is not that big, you get a little less in low CoL than in high CoL, the main driver of these large salaries is the company and not the location.