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> I make $130k right now. If you're in a reasonable COL area, you're probably closer to FAANG salaries than you think. I make about that in a relatively low C

> I make $130k right now. If you're in a reasonable COL area, you're probably closer to FAANG salaries than you think. I make about that in a relatively low COL city in the south. After receiving some recruitment emails, I thought about FAANGs but ran the numbers and decided against it. $400000 is not nearly as awesome as it sounds if you're living in the Bay area or similar tech mecca. Note: it's an immense salary, of course, but not so far from 130000 when you consider COL. Whether 100000 or 400000, we're all very fortunate. Finally, from what I've heard, it's far from guaranteed for a non FAANG senior engineer to get offered a senior engineer position coming in. More common is to start at engineer, which would be a straight up demotion in salary when you consider cost of living. FAANG engineers are welcome to correct me if this is not the case at their company. Edit: surprised this is getting heavily downvoted. I'm not claiming they're equivalent, only closer than you'd think. Also, I wonder if folks even look at COL comparisons, which don't even tell the whole story. For example: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=Raleigh%2C+NC&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... And I live in an even lower cost-of-living city than Raleigh. I also think this site gives an optimistic view of San Francisco COL, based on what I've heard from friends. Particularly if you want to buy a home. If you're just coming out of school, and can get a job at a FAANG, go for it. But for older devs with established families and spouses with careers, the salary isn't as overwhelmingly more as it appears at first glance. In the absence of arguments otherwise, I'll assume the truth hurts.

bovermyer 7y ago
Honestly I don't think I'd switch. My current job is comfortable and interesting, despite the "low" salary. It also allows me the freedom to explore my own ideas and projects while maintaining really nice work/life balance. Numbers on paper don't tell the whole story.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  if accredited investor status accounted for Cost of Living I would agree with you but the reality is that hard numbers, especially when they are 300% more, really do matter
  - bovermyer 7y ago
    Sure, but after a certain point, more money doesn't make much of a difference. I travel enough. I go to plenty of good restaurants with my wife and friends. I can buy some fun toys. My retirement fund is in progress. I have no debt. Would I turn down another hundred grand a year? No. Would I do much with it? No, it'd just go to investments, which I may or may not live long enough to use.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      nah, I want to be able to make the same amount annually from interest alone, I want to be able to afford appeals court for any civil or criminal issue, I want a total exemption from the socio-economic woes of the proletariat such as the privilege of switching fielty to nations when convenient or preferred, a total exemption from ever needing to split assets built in a marriage because they would have never been built in a marriage or at least no real impact to an actual nest egg since they existed beforehand
      - bovermyer 7y ago
        That's... oddly specific. You do you, though.
        rolltiide 7y ago
        Its the privilege that separates the classes. As you pointed out the consumptive aspects completely disappear, but its an incredibly limited view of money. I forgot to mention the tax and liability advantages of a fully funded trust and autonomous private foundation.
        bovermyer 7y ago
        I admit I never considered these aspects of financial gain. What books or other reading would you recommend on the subject?
qqwaabb 7y ago
The only thing that’s significantly more expensive in the Bay Area is housing. Even with the housing prices, you will still probably come out ahead. Remember that if you own, you are building up equity in a huge asset. CoL calculators online are not accurate at all. I personally work remotely for a FAANG from the upper Midwest, but if this arrangement ever runs out I’d move to California or Seattle before I took a 30% pay cut.
- senordevnyc 7y ago
  I agree with your overall point, but in addition to housing I'd also include childcare / private school tuition, and taxes.
- monoideism 7y ago
  > I personally work remotely for a FAANG from the upper Midwest Which FAANGs hire remotely, please? And why do you think online COL calculators are inaccurate? They're relatively close to government reimbursement tables, which are pretty well-researched. Edit: Also, once again, I'm not arguing that I wouldn't come out ahead, only that you have to consider COL. So many new grads I know have moved to CA for a junior position, elated at making the same salary I make here as a senior, only to realize that cost of living eats up a huge percentage of that salary. Granted, some of these people may not be the most financially frugal around... My main argument is that COL is an important component of salary.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Amazon at least for AWS consulting positions seem to hire from almost any major city as long as you are willing to travel and are near a major airport. I’m mostly a software engineer now but I’ll probably be looking to work for AWS directly or one of their consulting partners in two years when I am more willing to travel. I think the same applies to Microsoft (Azure) and Google (GCP)
  - esoterica 7y ago
    Cost of living calculators are calibrated for the median budget, which looks very different from the budget of someone who makes 400k/year. Poor people spend a large fraction of their money on housing, which is much more expensive in HCOL areas and skews the cost of living multiplier. If you were only paying 5% of your income on rent in a LCOL area and your rent quadruples after moving to SF, you only need a 15% pay increase to cover that, not a 300% increase. Also don’t forget that wealthy people can save most of their money, so an X% increase in overall expenses doesn’t need to translate to an X% increase in income.
_dark_matter_ 7y ago
I mean, by the numbers: 400k salary - 129k taxes - 72k housing (~1.2M dollar house) = ~200k left over Just off that alone, the 400k blows the $130k out of the water, no matter where in the country the $130k is living.
- overcast 7y ago
  https://smartasset.com/taxes/paycheck-calculator#ZI0BD3ambd https://smartasset.com/taxes/paycheck-calculator#ZI0BD3ambd Still more money, but your number are off by about 25%
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- alistairSH 7y ago
  Does $1.2M put you within walking distance of any of the FAANG headquarters? I'm looking at Mountain View, and it appears it's more like $3M to live close to Google. There isn't anything listed (Zillow) close to Infinite Loop, Cupertino. What is listed is $1.8M+. Just curious, as I currently walk to work and that's a massive QOL issue for me. Sitting in traffic even 60 minutes/day would be awful.
  - alexhutcheson 7y ago
    Almost nobody walks to work at the Silicon Valley tech company campuses - they are mostly suburban office parks surrounded by parking, so you'd have to walk pretty far. Lots of people bike though. There are plenty of people that walk to work in SF itself, and walking to work in San Jose will probably become more popular as the various new office buildings around Diridon start to open. If you highly value walking to work (and to other amenities) then NYC is a great option. $1.2M won't buy you a place, but you can certainly rent a great apartment within walking distance of the Google or Facebook NYC offices for significantly less than $72k/year.
    - alistairSH 7y ago
      I'm in Reston, VA (outside DC) currently. $500k for a decent townhouse and 1 mile to the town center. I can walk to Google's Reston office spaces, Walmart Labs is around the corner, and AWS (Herndon) is a short bike ride. Interestingly, the suburban office campuses in this area are beginning to go away. Companies are moving to locations that are at least Metro accessible (Google's new office), or into urban areas (Amazon HQ2). Local zoning has changed to make that more palatable - just interesting to see the change in preferences since I started work in 1999.
throwawaymath 7y ago
I don't think your analysis is correct. Or at least, it's really incomplete and thereby misleading. I'm going to use hard numbers as someone who lives in one of the highest COL areas, but I want to emphasize I'm doing that for illustrative purposes and not to be condescending. To begin with, the cost of basically anything you buy online from Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Best Buy, etc is the same no matter where you are in the country. Likewise for digital goods. That's a point in favor of the high COL areas. Of course it's not that simple. You're right that there are plenty of things which cost more money in higher cost of living areas; namely entertainment, cinema, service-oriented experiences like restaurants, bespoke labor, groceries and housing. In most of those cases the absolute cost raises significantly but the relative cost to your increased salary is still tiny; for example, I spend $6 - $8 for a half gallon of milk, but since I earn well over $300k/year that doesn't really matter. Similarly movie tickets are ~$18 but again, that doesn't scale enough to make much of a dent relative to a competitive engineering salary here. On the other hand, some cost increases are significant even relative to competitive salaries. This mostly and primarily applies to housing, but it does also apply to restaurants and entertainment somewhat. But despite the fact that I spend over $4000/month for a luxury condo and another ~$2500/month on fun "stuff", I'm also saving over $100k/year on top of maxing out my 401k. That simply blows out any combination of lifestyle and savings I could enjoy in a meaningfully cheaper area. Finally there is (unfortunately) an opportunity cost to working outside of high COL areas. The concentration of wealth and capital in high COL cities has a superlinear feedback effect on opportunity and lifestyle. There are numerous Michelin rated restaurants near me, a concierge and retinue of helpful staff in my building, world famous entertainment venues within a 20 minute train ride, numerous gyms, lots of childcare, excellent schools, etc. My commute to work is also only 20 minutes. But those things don't interest everyone. More practically, it is also easier to quickly change jobs here, either out of necessity or for a quick 20 - 50% increase in compensation. Not only is the higher COL a justification for higher salary, but the employee power that comes with a bidding war puts a positive pressure on external compensation packages. The last time I went looking, I received about 10 offers. I don't even currently work at one of the most competitive companies according to levels.fyi. I don't want to push this on other people because money isn't everything and it's perfectly valid to choose a lower COL area. But I do want to lay out the hard numbers from my experience so as to give a better picture for the situation.
subsubzero 7y ago
As a parent and engineer in the bay area COL is more extreme than other higher cost areas in the country, My company gives a 15% paycut from the sf bay area to say Colorado front range and these were a few things I noticed (having lived in both, colorado on left sfbay on right): - Housing, 3000 sqft house vs. 1500 sqft (sfbay house double the cost) - Taxes(state) - ~4.8% vs ~10% - Property taxes - $6k vs. $17k yearly - Gas ~$2.2 per gal vs. ~$3.40 a gal - Childcare, 12k vs 24k
dmode 7y ago
This is very bad advice. 130k in low COL is absolutely not equal to 400k in Bay. People generally cap their housing expense to 30% salary. So that may give you a mansion in low COL and a 3 bedroom townhome in bay, but the remaining 70% goes very very far. Remember vacations, Tesla, electronic goods, in n out, cost the same no matter where you live.
- monoideism 7y ago
  > 130k in low COL is absolutely not equal to 400k in Bay It's amazing to me how little people read comments. They latch onto one idea, and then respond to that. I mentioned - 3 times! - in my original comment that they were not equivalent, but only much closer than they appeared at first glance because of COL. In light of all the responses above, many of which were enlightening to me, I stand by that assertion.

bovermyer 7y ago

Honestly I don't think I'd switch. My current job is comfortable and interesting, despite the "low" salary. It also allows me the freedom to explore my own ideas and projects while maintaining really nice work/life balance. Numbers on paper don't tell the whole story.

rolltiide 7y ago
if accredited investor status accounted for Cost of Living I would agree with you but the reality is that hard numbers, especially when they are 300% more, really do matter
- bovermyer 7y ago
  Sure, but after a certain point, more money doesn't make much of a difference. I travel enough. I go to plenty of good restaurants with my wife and friends. I can buy some fun toys. My retirement fund is in progress. I have no debt. Would I turn down another hundred grand a year? No. Would I do much with it? No, it'd just go to investments, which I may or may not live long enough to use.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    nah, I want to be able to make the same amount annually from interest alone, I want to be able to afford appeals court for any civil or criminal issue, I want a total exemption from the socio-economic woes of the proletariat such as the privilege of switching fielty to nations when convenient or preferred, a total exemption from ever needing to split assets built in a marriage because they would have never been built in a marriage or at least no real impact to an actual nest egg since they existed beforehand
    - bovermyer 7y ago
      That's... oddly specific. You do you, though.
      - rolltiide 7y ago
        Its the privilege that separates the classes. As you pointed out the consumptive aspects completely disappear, but its an incredibly limited view of money. I forgot to mention the tax and liability advantages of a fully funded trust and autonomous private foundation.
        bovermyer 7y ago
        I admit I never considered these aspects of financial gain. What books or other reading would you recommend on the subject?

qqwaabb 7y ago

The only thing that’s significantly more expensive in the Bay Area is housing. Even with the housing prices, you will still probably come out ahead. Remember that if you own, you are building up equity in a huge asset. CoL calculators online are not accurate at all. I personally work remotely for a FAANG from the upper Midwest, but if this arrangement ever runs out I’d move to California or Seattle before I took a 30% pay cut.

senordevnyc 7y ago
I agree with your overall point, but in addition to housing I'd also include childcare / private school tuition, and taxes.
monoideism 7y ago
> I personally work remotely for a FAANG from the upper Midwest Which FAANGs hire remotely, please? And why do you think online COL calculators are inaccurate? They're relatively close to government reimbursement tables, which are pretty well-researched. Edit: Also, once again, I'm not arguing that I wouldn't come out ahead, only that you have to consider COL. So many new grads I know have moved to CA for a junior position, elated at making the same salary I make here as a senior, only to realize that cost of living eats up a huge percentage of that salary. Granted, some of these people may not be the most financially frugal around... My main argument is that COL is an important component of salary.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Amazon at least for AWS consulting positions seem to hire from almost any major city as long as you are willing to travel and are near a major airport. I’m mostly a software engineer now but I’ll probably be looking to work for AWS directly or one of their consulting partners in two years when I am more willing to travel. I think the same applies to Microsoft (Azure) and Google (GCP)
- esoterica 7y ago
  Cost of living calculators are calibrated for the median budget, which looks very different from the budget of someone who makes 400k/year. Poor people spend a large fraction of their money on housing, which is much more expensive in HCOL areas and skews the cost of living multiplier. If you were only paying 5% of your income on rent in a LCOL area and your rent quadruples after moving to SF, you only need a 15% pay increase to cover that, not a 300% increase. Also don’t forget that wealthy people can save most of their money, so an X% increase in overall expenses doesn’t need to translate to an X% increase in income.

_dark_matter_ 7y ago

I mean, by the numbers: 400k salary - 129k taxes - 72k housing (~1.2M dollar house) = ~200k left over Just off that alone, the 400k blows the $130k out of the water, no matter where in the country the $130k is living.

overcast 7y ago
https://smartasset.com/taxes/paycheck-calculator#ZI0BD3ambd https://smartasset.com/taxes/paycheck-calculator#ZI0BD3ambd Still more money, but your number are off by about 25%
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alistairSH 7y ago
Does $1.2M put you within walking distance of any of the FAANG headquarters? I'm looking at Mountain View, and it appears it's more like $3M to live close to Google. There isn't anything listed (Zillow) close to Infinite Loop, Cupertino. What is listed is $1.8M+. Just curious, as I currently walk to work and that's a massive QOL issue for me. Sitting in traffic even 60 minutes/day would be awful.
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  Almost nobody walks to work at the Silicon Valley tech company campuses - they are mostly suburban office parks surrounded by parking, so you'd have to walk pretty far. Lots of people bike though. There are plenty of people that walk to work in SF itself, and walking to work in San Jose will probably become more popular as the various new office buildings around Diridon start to open. If you highly value walking to work (and to other amenities) then NYC is a great option. $1.2M won't buy you a place, but you can certainly rent a great apartment within walking distance of the Google or Facebook NYC offices for significantly less than $72k/year.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    I'm in Reston, VA (outside DC) currently. $500k for a decent townhouse and 1 mile to the town center. I can walk to Google's Reston office spaces, Walmart Labs is around the corner, and AWS (Herndon) is a short bike ride. Interestingly, the suburban office campuses in this area are beginning to go away. Companies are moving to locations that are at least Metro accessible (Google's new office), or into urban areas (Amazon HQ2). Local zoning has changed to make that more palatable - just interesting to see the change in preferences since I started work in 1999.

throwawaymath 7y ago

I don't think your analysis is correct. Or at least, it's really incomplete and thereby misleading. I'm going to use hard numbers as someone who lives in one of the highest COL areas, but I want to emphasize I'm doing that for illustrative purposes and not to be condescending. To begin with, the cost of basically anything you buy online from Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Best Buy, etc is the same no matter where you are in the country. Likewise for digital goods. That's a point in favor of the high COL areas. Of course it's not that simple. You're right that there are plenty of things which cost more money in higher cost of living areas; namely entertainment, cinema, service-oriented experiences like restaurants, bespoke labor, groceries and housing. In most of those cases the absolute cost raises significantly but the relative cost to your increased salary is still tiny; for example, I spend $6 - $8 for a half gallon of milk, but since I earn well over $300k/year that doesn't really matter. Similarly movie tickets are ~$18 but again, that doesn't scale enough to make much of a dent relative to a competitive engineering salary here. On the other hand, some cost increases are significant even relative to competitive salaries. This mostly and primarily applies to housing, but it does also apply to restaurants and entertainment somewhat. But despite the fact that I spend over $4000/month for a luxury condo and another ~$2500/month on fun "stuff", I'm also saving over $100k/year on top of maxing out my 401k. That simply blows out any combination of lifestyle and savings I could enjoy in a meaningfully cheaper area. Finally there is (unfortunately) an opportunity cost to working outside of high COL areas. The concentration of wealth and capital in high COL cities has a superlinear feedback effect on opportunity and lifestyle. There are numerous Michelin rated restaurants near me, a concierge and retinue of helpful staff in my building, world famous entertainment venues within a 20 minute train ride, numerous gyms, lots of childcare, excellent schools, etc. My commute to work is also only 20 minutes. But those things don't interest everyone. More practically, it is also easier to quickly change jobs here, either out of necessity or for a quick 20 - 50% increase in compensation. Not only is the higher COL a justification for higher salary, but the employee power that comes with a bidding war puts a positive pressure on external compensation packages. The last time I went looking, I received about 10 offers. I don't even currently work at one of the most competitive companies according to levels.fyi. I don't want to push this on other people because money isn't everything and it's perfectly valid to choose a lower COL area. But I do want to lay out the hard numbers from my experience so as to give a better picture for the situation.

subsubzero 7y ago

As a parent and engineer in the bay area COL is more extreme than other higher cost areas in the country, My company gives a 15% paycut from the sf bay area to say Colorado front range and these were a few things I noticed (having lived in both, colorado on left sfbay on right): - Housing, 3000 sqft house vs. 1500 sqft (sfbay house double the cost) - Taxes(state) - ~4.8% vs ~10% - Property taxes - $6k vs. $17k yearly - Gas ~$2.2 per gal vs. ~$3.40 a gal - Childcare, 12k vs 24k

dmode 7y ago

This is very bad advice. 130k in low COL is absolutely not equal to 400k in Bay. People generally cap their housing expense to 30% salary. So that may give you a mansion in low COL and a 3 bedroom townhome in bay, but the remaining 70% goes very very far. Remember vacations, Tesla, electronic goods, in n out, cost the same no matter where you live.

monoideism 7y ago
> 130k in low COL is absolutely not equal to 400k in Bay It's amazing to me how little people read comments. They latch onto one idea, and then respond to that. I mentioned - 3 times! - in my original comment that they were not equivalent, but only much closer than they appeared at first glance because of COL. In light of all the responses above, many of which were enlightening to me, I stand by that assertion.