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Frankly I would be ok with that. The situation in the valley developed in the 90s and 00s, so that companies could be located close to their investors. That wa

Frankly I would be ok with that. The situation in the valley developed in the 90s and 00s, so that companies could be located close to their investors. That was a time when remote work tools sucked and work practices forced people to be in the same office as the founders, so it made lots of sense that the proximity to capital spiked rents and comp to match. But now, post-pandemic, remote work is the norm. The founders can relocate to the valley because investment finance is largely a relationship game and those are still way better done in person, but there’s no longer any reason the technical team needs to be located near the founders or even each other. There is huge disparity in engineering salaries — if you work for a smallish company in a rural area you’re probably making $80k/yr for doing the same job someone in the bay gets $175+ for. Ideally it will work the other way around though — the folks making $80k are much more likely to jump ship for a remote job that pays $125k than the folks making $175k are to jump to the same job. Of course, if organize via collective bargaining we can likely push that even higher, so listen to your union organizers.

bennysonething 6y ago
I always assumed that it the high paid jobs in SF were proper software engineering positions as opposed to line of business apps that lower paid jobs else where often are?
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  What is "proper software engineering"?
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    Calling it "proper software engineering" is little pretentious at best, but there is some distinction to be made between software engineering in the bay area and most software engineering elsewhere. When we think of SF software, we think of software created by a company whose core product is the software itself, especially when the end-users are individuals or other software companies. This is quite a bit different than most software developed outside of the bay area. Most of it is either in-house stuff or industry-specific B2B stuff. In these situations, the software doesn't have to be pretty, it doesn't have to use cutting-edge tech to woo investors, resource utilization is much less important, and hell - it usually doesn't even have to scale. It just has to work. It just has to make someone's job incrementally better, and it'll be a success. This software can be tremendously valuable, and creating it has its own unique challenges, but the job is indeed a bit different than software engineering in the bay, and the compensation is different as well.
- chris11 6y ago
  There's a wide range of salaries. The highest paying companies will pay $175+ to a new grad. A of jobs pay $200k+ with equity for senior engineers.
  - sgtnoodle 6y ago
    175K seems kinda crazy unless that's total yearly compensation including equity. These days even interns are making 80K+ though. The crazy SV money is in getting early equity in a company with enough secret sauce to make it long term, though, and those opportunities don't usually come with big salaries right away. It's also a very high risk way to be compensated. If you are in the position to do so, I suggest focusing on finding a job that's a good fit for your skills, work style and risk tolerance. Let the compensation details fall into place from there. Assuming you've joined a good group of people working on a real project, things will probably work out. (You of course need to be responsible for yourself and understand your financial situation. It's too easy to miss a deadline and lose equity options, for example.)
    - chris11 6y ago
      Yeah, I'm including equity. Equity at a public company like Google is liquid and easier to value. But usually new grad offers don't include a lot of equity. I'd say that pre-ipo unicorns can also be a great option if it's available to you. Base salaries are usually high, and equity can end up being really valuable. Recent IPOs have made a lot of millionaires. But I do agree with you, it's high risk and there's a lot of luck involved. And it's much more important to find a job that's a good fit for you.
walshemj 6y ago
But collocated teams are still more efficient - there's plenty of studies that prove that. And my current job quite often has multiple teams from multiple employers/agencies from multiple time zones - even being able to have key meetings with all hand present would massively speed up - we could have avoided so many problems and delivered things months quicker.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  In my experience, the efficiency benefits aren’t as clear-cut as you think. I have a client who is a big Fortune 10 company, with most of their engineering teams located in the same high-rise office building for this collocation efficiency benefit. They’ve actually seen a huge increase in productivity by moving to a virtual model during the pandemic — exactly because nobody is wasting 2 hours of their day waiting on elevators or waiting for meetings to start. People have more autonomy to block off their day and there aren’t the distractions present in a normal open office. If I were to informally poll all of the product development organizations I work with, I would expect to see at least 90% of folks want to maintain the remote workplace going forward. They’ll still probably go back to some level of in-person work later this year, but the difference is that remote will still probably be the default for most folks. I don’t think we’ll ever get back to a model that assumes all or even most of the team is located in the same room — it’s just too much better to do things this way.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    Well I normally work with a well known brand and we often have main client 2 -3 locations two or three agencies agencies plus our dev/project teams a Liviv . Trying to get things done properly is very hard if we could have even kickoff meetings with every one in the room and have printed designs stuck to the wall
    - wayoutthere 6y ago
      Yeah, that’s why I think long-term it’s going to be coming into the office a few days a month for meetings, and WFH the rest of the time. Productivity is up and people are generally ok with the remote work situation — it’s the fact that they have to babysit their kids and can’t go anywhere for a change of scenery that’s causing the stress. And frankly most of the dev projects I work on are globally distributed anyway, so you’re never getting everyone in the same room to begin with.

bennysonething 6y ago

I always assumed that it the high paid jobs in SF were proper software engineering positions as opposed to line of business apps that lower paid jobs else where often are?

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
What is "proper software engineering"?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  Calling it "proper software engineering" is little pretentious at best, but there is some distinction to be made between software engineering in the bay area and most software engineering elsewhere. When we think of SF software, we think of software created by a company whose core product is the software itself, especially when the end-users are individuals or other software companies. This is quite a bit different than most software developed outside of the bay area. Most of it is either in-house stuff or industry-specific B2B stuff. In these situations, the software doesn't have to be pretty, it doesn't have to use cutting-edge tech to woo investors, resource utilization is much less important, and hell - it usually doesn't even have to scale. It just has to work. It just has to make someone's job incrementally better, and it'll be a success. This software can be tremendously valuable, and creating it has its own unique challenges, but the job is indeed a bit different than software engineering in the bay, and the compensation is different as well.
chris11 6y ago
There's a wide range of salaries. The highest paying companies will pay $175+ to a new grad. A of jobs pay $200k+ with equity for senior engineers.
- sgtnoodle 6y ago
  175K seems kinda crazy unless that's total yearly compensation including equity. These days even interns are making 80K+ though. The crazy SV money is in getting early equity in a company with enough secret sauce to make it long term, though, and those opportunities don't usually come with big salaries right away. It's also a very high risk way to be compensated. If you are in the position to do so, I suggest focusing on finding a job that's a good fit for your skills, work style and risk tolerance. Let the compensation details fall into place from there. Assuming you've joined a good group of people working on a real project, things will probably work out. (You of course need to be responsible for yourself and understand your financial situation. It's too easy to miss a deadline and lose equity options, for example.)
  - chris11 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm including equity. Equity at a public company like Google is liquid and easier to value. But usually new grad offers don't include a lot of equity. I'd say that pre-ipo unicorns can also be a great option if it's available to you. Base salaries are usually high, and equity can end up being really valuable. Recent IPOs have made a lot of millionaires. But I do agree with you, it's high risk and there's a lot of luck involved. And it's much more important to find a job that's a good fit for you.

walshemj 6y ago

But collocated teams are still more efficient - there's plenty of studies that prove that. And my current job quite often has multiple teams from multiple employers/agencies from multiple time zones - even being able to have key meetings with all hand present would massively speed up - we could have avoided so many problems and delivered things months quicker.

wayoutthere 6y ago
In my experience, the efficiency benefits aren’t as clear-cut as you think. I have a client who is a big Fortune 10 company, with most of their engineering teams located in the same high-rise office building for this collocation efficiency benefit. They’ve actually seen a huge increase in productivity by moving to a virtual model during the pandemic — exactly because nobody is wasting 2 hours of their day waiting on elevators or waiting for meetings to start. People have more autonomy to block off their day and there aren’t the distractions present in a normal open office. If I were to informally poll all of the product development organizations I work with, I would expect to see at least 90% of folks want to maintain the remote workplace going forward. They’ll still probably go back to some level of in-person work later this year, but the difference is that remote will still probably be the default for most folks. I don’t think we’ll ever get back to a model that assumes all or even most of the team is located in the same room — it’s just too much better to do things this way.
- walshemj 6y ago
  Well I normally work with a well known brand and we often have main client 2 -3 locations two or three agencies agencies plus our dev/project teams a Liviv . Trying to get things done properly is very hard if we could have even kickoff meetings with every one in the room and have printed designs stuck to the wall
  - wayoutthere 6y ago
    Yeah, that’s why I think long-term it’s going to be coming into the office a few days a month for meetings, and WFH the rest of the time. Productivity is up and people are generally ok with the remote work situation — it’s the fact that they have to babysit their kids and can’t go anywhere for a change of scenery that’s causing the stress. And frankly most of the dev projects I work on are globally distributed anyway, so you’re never getting everyone in the same room to begin with.