6 ms·

By my estimation, even factoring in the cost of living, medical insurance, tax differences etc, people working in the Bay area are taking home twice what an equ

by nly 5y ago

By my estimation, even factoring in the cost of living, medical insurance, tax differences etc, people working in the Bay area are taking home twice what an equally qualified dev would take home in say, London. If anything the contrast is even more stark across the EU

GekkePrutser 5y ago
They also seem to work very long hours with long commutes and get few vacations. When I see that the average cost of a house in Cupertino is 2.5 million dollars for example, I would imagine most of those Apple engineers live far away.
- mrguyorama 5y ago
  Never forget that "Free Dinner" is a big "perk" of work in FAANG land. I can't comprehend the messed up work life balance that makes that make sense
  - jmgao 5y ago
    Why not? The vast majority of people who ate dinner at Google immediately went home afterwards. My daily routine was to show up at 11, check email, eat lunch, work until 6:30ish, eat dinner, and then go home.
- dboreham 5y ago
  It has been a few years since I lived in the South Bay, but generally Apple engineers would live somewhere reasonably local. A few would choose to commute from Gillroy or Santa Cruz for sure, but it's not like there are only zillionaires living in Cupertino and Santa Clara. Those are pretty mid-range places to live.
oceanplexian 5y ago
I think the "equally qualified" point you're making is highly disingenuous. Qualified doesn't mean you can churn out so many lines of code or have X years of experience at a company or whatever, it means you have right kind of experience. To a big company like Facebook or Google, someone from SV who has a few years in the local industry has more relevant "experience" to the position than someone in London with 10 years at a financial firm.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nly 5y ago
  In my experience 90%+ of folks at FANGS are doing "nothing special". These companies just need a lot of bodies
rsj_hn 5y ago
Companies pay the prevailing wage in whatever labor market they participate in. The prevailing wage in the UK is lower than in Silicon Valley, but higher than in, say, Oklahoma City. Not sure why people are still confused about this. But it seems many still don't understand it. The funniest thing is when people try to concoct some sort of fairness argument to explain this, or equally hilarious is when they try to come up with a fairness argument to condemn it. Different markets have different prices due to differences in supply and demand in those markets. Want developer salaries to be much higher in the UK? Create an environment where a bunch of big tech companies all want to massively increase hiring there. Salaries will go up. Want developer salaries to be lower in Silicon Valley? Get most of the tech companies to leave. Salaries will go down. One can say that ultimately the reason why Silicon Valley wages are so high is because there is a productive ecosystem that was so beneficial to the creation of tech companies that there was an explosion in demand for local tech labor. That ecosystem consists of easy access to credit and VC funding, existing networks of suppliers and vendors, existing mentorship networks for engineers and entrepreneurs, stable regulations and enforcement of contracts/property rights, together with sufficient local talent to pull off the difficult job of company creation. London didn't have that to the same degree, and so has a lower demand for tech labor with correspondingly lower wages.
- satyrnein 5y ago
  Companies pay the prevailing wage in whatever labor market they participate in. Well, yes, but the topic under discussion is whether the market is "developers that can commute to the local office" or "developers they can work on that timezone" or "developers anywhere," which all have different implications for the market clearing rate.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  > The prevailing wage in the UK is lower than in Silicon Valley, but higher than in, say, Oklahoma City. This probably isn't true. A quick googling indicates the average software engineer salary for Oklahoma City as being in the 70-80k USD range, while a similar googling says the number for the UK is around 50k GBP, which is...68k USD. The median software engineer salary for the US as a whole is 110k USD according to the BLS, so even cheaper areas like Oklahoma City won't be super low.

by nly 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

They also seem to work very long hours with long commutes and get few vacations. When I see that the average cost of a house in Cupertino is 2.5 million dollars for example, I would imagine most of those Apple engineers live far away.

mrguyorama 5y ago
Never forget that "Free Dinner" is a big "perk" of work in FAANG land. I can't comprehend the messed up work life balance that makes that make sense
- jmgao 5y ago
  Why not? The vast majority of people who ate dinner at Google immediately went home afterwards. My daily routine was to show up at 11, check email, eat lunch, work until 6:30ish, eat dinner, and then go home.
dboreham 5y ago
It has been a few years since I lived in the South Bay, but generally Apple engineers would live somewhere reasonably local. A few would choose to commute from Gillroy or Santa Cruz for sure, but it's not like there are only zillionaires living in Cupertino and Santa Clara. Those are pretty mid-range places to live.

oceanplexian 5y ago

I think the "equally qualified" point you're making is highly disingenuous. Qualified doesn't mean you can churn out so many lines of code or have X years of experience at a company or whatever, it means you have right kind of experience. To a big company like Facebook or Google, someone from SV who has a few years in the local industry has more relevant "experience" to the position than someone in London with 10 years at a financial firm.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nly 5y ago
In my experience 90%+ of folks at FANGS are doing "nothing special". These companies just need a lot of bodies

rsj_hn 5y ago

Companies pay the prevailing wage in whatever labor market they participate in. The prevailing wage in the UK is lower than in Silicon Valley, but higher than in, say, Oklahoma City. Not sure why people are still confused about this. But it seems many still don't understand it. The funniest thing is when people try to concoct some sort of fairness argument to explain this, or equally hilarious is when they try to come up with a fairness argument to condemn it. Different markets have different prices due to differences in supply and demand in those markets. Want developer salaries to be much higher in the UK? Create an environment where a bunch of big tech companies all want to massively increase hiring there. Salaries will go up. Want developer salaries to be lower in Silicon Valley? Get most of the tech companies to leave. Salaries will go down. One can say that ultimately the reason why Silicon Valley wages are so high is because there is a productive ecosystem that was so beneficial to the creation of tech companies that there was an explosion in demand for local tech labor. That ecosystem consists of easy access to credit and VC funding, existing networks of suppliers and vendors, existing mentorship networks for engineers and entrepreneurs, stable regulations and enforcement of contracts/property rights, together with sufficient local talent to pull off the difficult job of company creation. London didn't have that to the same degree, and so has a lower demand for tech labor with correspondingly lower wages.

satyrnein 5y ago
Companies pay the prevailing wage in whatever labor market they participate in. Well, yes, but the topic under discussion is whether the market is "developers that can commute to the local office" or "developers they can work on that timezone" or "developers anywhere," which all have different implications for the market clearing rate.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
> The prevailing wage in the UK is lower than in Silicon Valley, but higher than in, say, Oklahoma City. This probably isn't true. A quick googling indicates the average software engineer salary for Oklahoma City as being in the 70-80k USD range, while a similar googling says the number for the UK is around 50k GBP, which is...68k USD. The median software engineer salary for the US as a whole is 110k USD according to the BLS, so even cheaper areas like Oklahoma City won't be super low.