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> But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for

> But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors). Yes, it's quite simple: there are many more men in the Bay than women, so women have their pick, and they can afford to raise the bar far higher than $120k. Also, $120k can be a nice annual salary in much of the US, but doesn't go far in the Bay where median house price is over $1m. Consider just FAANGs in the Bay. There's probably not enough available single women just for every straight FAANG male employee (who would be making more than $120k/yr). Anecdotally, I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them. Fair or not, your "male SWE making $120K+ a year" has become the "common guy" of the Bay. The number of women is small enough that most of them can aim higher.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
whack 7y ago
I've been away from the bay for a while, but it's amazing how bad the dating scene is, for exactly the reasons you described. I'm currently engaged to an amazing woman who has only ever lived in working-class suburbs and smaller cities. Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. She keeps telling me how amazing I am as a partner, even though in my mind, I'm just being a decent human being. Engineers in places like SFBA severely underestimate how attractive they would be anywhere else in the country/world.
- NeverFade 7y ago
  > Engineers in places like SFBA severely underestimate how attractive they would be anywhere else in the country/world. I agree completely. > Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. Here's what happened: Guys who are intellectual, attended college, have good discipline, and stayed away from substance abuse and similar problems - they moved to the Bay to get that "six figure job". The Bay has thus become chock-full of these men. The few women who moved to the Bay can have their pick. What would be a rare find elsewhere, is commonplace and boring in the Bay. One of many anecdotes I could cite: A friend of mine is a 25yo female working in recruiting in the Bay. If you pitched a date as an "intellectual, college-educated man with a good life and a six-figure job" she'd literally laugh in your face. She had 2 different guys courting her at the time, a startup CEO and a VC. She once showed me her Tinder account. Just by swiping 30-40 times, she'd find at least one guy who is an exec or VC making 7 figures per year, and it would usually be a match. "120k/year"? You'd make her laugh.
  - TwoBit 7y ago
    Most startup CEOs don't make much. Are there really very many VCs out there?
    - NeverFade 7y ago
      > Most startup CEOs don't make much. Depends on the startup and what stage it is. If it's a successful startup, then the CEO is sitting on a pile of stock that will likely be worth millions. If it's also a later stage startup, then likely he is making at least as much as his senior developers on top of that. Either way, he's a much better bet if you want to be a millionaire's wife some day. Also, executives typically have expense accounts that afford them a very nice lifestyle _right now_, even if their salary isn't that high. You can be making a modest salary, but leading a jetset life on business expenses. > Are there really very many VCs out there? Yes there are. Here's just one random list of them: http://www.calstartuplawfirm.com/venture-groups.html http://www.calstartuplawfirm.com/venture-groups.html
      - Zenbit_UX 7y ago
        Of all the women I know, not one of them aspires to be "a millionaire's wife".
        barry-cotter 7y ago
        "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"
        NeverFade 7y ago
        Funny coincidence, I never met such a woman either! I did meet plenty who just happened to only date men who make high six to seven figures. It was a serial coincidence!
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Sounds like a self-selection situation
tomxor 7y ago
> I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them. That sounds more like bullets dodged than a loss (for the engineers that is).
- NeverFade 7y ago
  Sure. If that appeals to you, you're welcome to move to the Bay. You'll dodge so many bullets, that you'll forget what a date with a woman is ;-) More seriously, while we'd love to impose moral views on reality, the simple fact is that when people can afford to be picky, they will be. I don't know what you value in a romantic partner, but for simplicity, let's assume it's looks. If you arrived at some magical island where it was just you and hundreds of women, and 50% of those were supermodels, would you ever date an average girl?
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Maybe. If they were better at fishing than anyone else.
    - NeverFade 7y ago
      If hundreds of supermodels are competing for your attention, I'm sure many of them would become amazing at fishing, modern dancing, pottery-making, or whatever other random skill you find attractive.
      - chrisco255 7y ago
        Obviously the point is that you still gotta survive on this island, and the reason why we have diversity in personality, physicality and intelligence is because different combinations of those things matter for survival. And it's unlikely that you would "date" at all in an island with such ratios.
  - tomxor 7y ago
    I have no idea what your point is... i'm talking about avoiding women who are only interested in money or power, i.e gold diggers - that's not a healthy relationship for anyone.
cosmodisk 7y ago
>Anecdotally, I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them. No matter ones income, it's better not to go anywhere with that kind of women. Also life tends to adjust this pretty quickly: they can be that picky until their early 30's, maybe even late 20's. After that available options narrow down substantially.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> it's quite simple: there are many more men in the Bay than women I’m in Manhattan. The single sex ratio is reversed. (More single women than men.) Male FAANG employee rants about how they should be magnets for women, but can’t find a date because something is wrong with all women, are equally prevalent here. They’re all (a) the same rant and (b) as boring as the last one. There’s a selection effect among well-paid software engineers at large tech companies that explains more of this than local statistics. That or these jobs turn interesting people into those who believe they should be magnets for the opposite sex, which tends to be a turn-off for most people.
- xapata 7y ago
  It's interesting how co-occurrent some genetic/behavioral traits are. I read an article about a study of domesticating foxes. After many generations selecting for propensity to come forward when a human puts out food, the semi-domesticated offspring showed a wide array of physical traits associated with dogs in addition to the behavior that was selected for. Yet... as computing becomes more popular, I expect this stereotype to become obsolete. It roughly applies to myself and many of my friends. My wife calls me a robot. But hey, somehow most of us managed to find a spouse.
- nixarian 7y ago
  It's not like that. I understand your instinct is to be condescending towards men, which is sad - and to be honest, I agree, the rant is missing the point. Chances are those women are all having casual sex with a smaller number of attractive/high status males. Those lonely men typically want to "date", while the women - if the man isn't high status, wealthy, AND displaying the mental fitness which is counter-indicated by these 'rants' - would much rather sleep around with men who are far more attractive than them (or, younger!) but never have a real relationship.
- wmil 7y ago
  > That or these jobs turn interesting people into those who believe they should be magnets for the opposite sex, which tends to be a turn-off for most people. Tech selects for people who are object focussed as opposed to people focussed. Most women prefer to date men who are good at wooing and entertaining them. Which means more people focussed than object focussed. The tech men are frustrated because they are basically their best selves -- financially and professionally successful, able and willing to support a family. Traditionally that would be enough to make them a catch. But dating women with careers limits the value of their financial support. And they don't have the skills to wow the women socially. Realistically they can't develop those skills easily. This is probably going to sound incredibly cynical, but the best advice I've heard for NYC techies is to try to date ballerinas. They're beautiful and disciplined. But they retire before 30 and have to decide to either start a family or open a studio to start teaching. At that point most of the men they know are married or gay. So likely to be more willing to overlook the social weaknesses of tech men.
segfault42 7y ago
Galaxy brain: maybe the same qualities that make a guy more valuable in the professional marketplace and qualify them to be VCs and CEOs instead of entry level SWEs (interpersonal skills, superior judgement, long-range vision, managerial skills, identifying win-win solutions and building consensus for them, etc) also make them better romantic partners. So the salary is a correlation with an underlying shared root cause, not a direct causation.
- zelly 7y ago
  Not that I disagree (what you said is almost certainly true) but it's funny how both sides can unite on this Randian take. Horseshoe theory.
zelly 7y ago
Idk, $120k is still a lot. You are still begging the question that money even matters. There's an elephant in the room: Basically men have vastly overestimated the importance of wealth. A chart of the importance of wealth would drop off a cliff as you go from third-world conditions to a non-starvation civilization. Then it approaches zero as you get to NYC/SF where literally everyone is rich or else they wouldn't be living there. Guys who get mail order brides are basically arbitraging this (probably temporary) geographical difference in the importance of wealth.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  >> Guys who get mail order brides Are not usually exactly the winners in life.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

whack 7y ago

I've been away from the bay for a while, but it's amazing how bad the dating scene is, for exactly the reasons you described. I'm currently engaged to an amazing woman who has only ever lived in working-class suburbs and smaller cities. Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. She keeps telling me how amazing I am as a partner, even though in my mind, I'm just being a decent human being. Engineers in places like SFBA severely underestimate how attractive they would be anywhere else in the country/world.

NeverFade 7y ago
> Engineers in places like SFBA severely underestimate how attractive they would be anywhere else in the country/world. I agree completely. > Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. Here's what happened: Guys who are intellectual, attended college, have good discipline, and stayed away from substance abuse and similar problems - they moved to the Bay to get that "six figure job". The Bay has thus become chock-full of these men. The few women who moved to the Bay can have their pick. What would be a rare find elsewhere, is commonplace and boring in the Bay. One of many anecdotes I could cite: A friend of mine is a 25yo female working in recruiting in the Bay. If you pitched a date as an "intellectual, college-educated man with a good life and a six-figure job" she'd literally laugh in your face. She had 2 different guys courting her at the time, a startup CEO and a VC. She once showed me her Tinder account. Just by swiping 30-40 times, she'd find at least one guy who is an exec or VC making 7 figures per year, and it would usually be a match. "120k/year"? You'd make her laugh.
- TwoBit 7y ago
  Most startup CEOs don't make much. Are there really very many VCs out there?
  - NeverFade 7y ago
    > Most startup CEOs don't make much. Depends on the startup and what stage it is. If it's a successful startup, then the CEO is sitting on a pile of stock that will likely be worth millions. If it's also a later stage startup, then likely he is making at least as much as his senior developers on top of that. Either way, he's a much better bet if you want to be a millionaire's wife some day. Also, executives typically have expense accounts that afford them a very nice lifestyle _right now_, even if their salary isn't that high. You can be making a modest salary, but leading a jetset life on business expenses. > Are there really very many VCs out there? Yes there are. Here's just one random list of them: http://www.calstartuplawfirm.com/venture-groups.html http://www.calstartuplawfirm.com/venture-groups.html
    - Zenbit_UX 7y ago
      Of all the women I know, not one of them aspires to be "a millionaire's wife".
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"
      - NeverFade 7y ago
        Funny coincidence, I never met such a woman either! I did meet plenty who just happened to only date men who make high six to seven figures. It was a serial coincidence!
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Sounds like a self-selection situation

tomxor 7y ago

> I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them. That sounds more like bullets dodged than a loss (for the engineers that is).

NeverFade 7y ago
Sure. If that appeals to you, you're welcome to move to the Bay. You'll dodge so many bullets, that you'll forget what a date with a woman is ;-) More seriously, while we'd love to impose moral views on reality, the simple fact is that when people can afford to be picky, they will be. I don't know what you value in a romantic partner, but for simplicity, let's assume it's looks. If you arrived at some magical island where it was just you and hundreds of women, and 50% of those were supermodels, would you ever date an average girl?
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Maybe. If they were better at fishing than anyone else.
  - NeverFade 7y ago
    If hundreds of supermodels are competing for your attention, I'm sure many of them would become amazing at fishing, modern dancing, pottery-making, or whatever other random skill you find attractive.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      Obviously the point is that you still gotta survive on this island, and the reason why we have diversity in personality, physicality and intelligence is because different combinations of those things matter for survival. And it's unlikely that you would "date" at all in an island with such ratios.
- tomxor 7y ago
  I have no idea what your point is... i'm talking about avoiding women who are only interested in money or power, i.e gold diggers - that's not a healthy relationship for anyone.

cosmodisk 7y ago

>Anecdotally, I know some women in the Bay, working in areas like recruiting and marketing, who are dating VCs and CEOs exclusively and consider dating "plain engineers" to be beneath them. No matter ones income, it's better not to go anywhere with that kind of women. Also life tends to adjust this pretty quickly: they can be that picky until their early 30's, maybe even late 20's. After that available options narrow down substantially.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> it's quite simple: there are many more men in the Bay than women I’m in Manhattan. The single sex ratio is reversed. (More single women than men.) Male FAANG employee rants about how they should be magnets for women, but can’t find a date because something is wrong with all women, are equally prevalent here. They’re all (a) the same rant and (b) as boring as the last one. There’s a selection effect among well-paid software engineers at large tech companies that explains more of this than local statistics. That or these jobs turn interesting people into those who believe they should be magnets for the opposite sex, which tends to be a turn-off for most people.

xapata 7y ago
It's interesting how co-occurrent some genetic/behavioral traits are. I read an article about a study of domesticating foxes. After many generations selecting for propensity to come forward when a human puts out food, the semi-domesticated offspring showed a wide array of physical traits associated with dogs in addition to the behavior that was selected for. Yet... as computing becomes more popular, I expect this stereotype to become obsolete. It roughly applies to myself and many of my friends. My wife calls me a robot. But hey, somehow most of us managed to find a spouse.
nixarian 7y ago
It's not like that. I understand your instinct is to be condescending towards men, which is sad - and to be honest, I agree, the rant is missing the point. Chances are those women are all having casual sex with a smaller number of attractive/high status males. Those lonely men typically want to "date", while the women - if the man isn't high status, wealthy, AND displaying the mental fitness which is counter-indicated by these 'rants' - would much rather sleep around with men who are far more attractive than them (or, younger!) but never have a real relationship.
wmil 7y ago
> That or these jobs turn interesting people into those who believe they should be magnets for the opposite sex, which tends to be a turn-off for most people. Tech selects for people who are object focussed as opposed to people focussed. Most women prefer to date men who are good at wooing and entertaining them. Which means more people focussed than object focussed. The tech men are frustrated because they are basically their best selves -- financially and professionally successful, able and willing to support a family. Traditionally that would be enough to make them a catch. But dating women with careers limits the value of their financial support. And they don't have the skills to wow the women socially. Realistically they can't develop those skills easily. This is probably going to sound incredibly cynical, but the best advice I've heard for NYC techies is to try to date ballerinas. They're beautiful and disciplined. But they retire before 30 and have to decide to either start a family or open a studio to start teaching. At that point most of the men they know are married or gay. So likely to be more willing to overlook the social weaknesses of tech men.

segfault42 7y ago

Galaxy brain: maybe the same qualities that make a guy more valuable in the professional marketplace and qualify them to be VCs and CEOs instead of entry level SWEs (interpersonal skills, superior judgement, long-range vision, managerial skills, identifying win-win solutions and building consensus for them, etc) also make them better romantic partners. So the salary is a correlation with an underlying shared root cause, not a direct causation.

zelly 7y ago
Not that I disagree (what you said is almost certainly true) but it's funny how both sides can unite on this Randian take. Horseshoe theory.

zelly 7y ago

Idk, $120k is still a lot. You are still begging the question that money even matters. There's an elephant in the room: Basically men have vastly overestimated the importance of wealth. A chart of the importance of wealth would drop off a cliff as you go from third-world conditions to a non-starvation civilization. Then it approaches zero as you get to NYC/SF where literally everyone is rich or else they wouldn't be living there. Guys who get mail order brides are basically arbitraging this (probably temporary) geographical difference in the importance of wealth.

heavenlyblue 7y ago
>> Guys who get mail order brides Are not usually exactly the winners in life.