4 ms·

Outside of the obvious bias of a site with SF in it bashing Austin. I'm going to tell the tale of two people. One is a product manager for apple in Cupertino a

Outside of the obvious bias of a site with SF in it bashing Austin. I'm going to tell the tale of two people. One is a product manager for apple in Cupertino and the other is a product manager for some random non FAANG tech company in Austin. Both of these guys make $200k which is a healthy salary. The one guy at Apple, who clearly has a job that has a lot of glory, lives in a 1k sq ft 2 bedroom apartment that cost him $500k. His wife and kid live in Cleveland (to be close to family). He spends 5 days a week in San Francisco and flies back to Cleveland on the weekends to see his wife and kids. His commute is 5 minutes to Apple but he flies out of SFO Friday night (gets into Cleveland around 11pm) and then flies on Sunday after noon and gets back to San Francisco around 8pm. They also did this because his kids would have gone to abysmal Cupertino schools since he could afford a better place zoned for better schools. The other PM lives in a 3k square foot 5 bedroom house in Austin where he gets to see his kids and wife every day. His daily commute is 20 minutes. In case you didn't pick up on it, I'm the PM that lives in Austin and my friend is the Apple PM. I have him over right now for the holiday weekend and i've never seen him more miserable. He told when he sees his kids they change so much each and every week. He admitted that even with his salary, the travel, and paying 2 mortgages (one for San Francisco and one for Cleveland) him and his wife have nothing at the end of each month (thanks to CA taxes). He looks like he aged several years from this lifestyle. He won't be able to take a real vacation back to his home in the UK to visit family because he can't afford it. My friend is trying to get Apple to let him work out of the campus here in Austin. Look, I love San Francisco but it has long ceased to be a place where you can raise a family. If you're young (or old and don't care about having a family) and don't mind the rat race, then treat it like you would any over priced metro area. Make your money and GTFO. In the meantime, I absolutely love Austin. I'm loving the heat, my commute, my house (owning a house in either LA or SF, haha funny), and more importantly spending time with my family in my backyard with the sprinkler. There's more to life than this rat race and the chill atmosphere of this town is a dream. I wish I never moved to California after my stint abroad.

threatofrain 3y ago
Abysmal Cupertino schools are among the best public schools. Half the math faculty in the local high school are Calculus teachers, because half of the student body is on the fastest math track. A good number of students continue their high school math education at the local community college. Of course you can always get better like Proof School, where your kids take Linear Algebra without having to walk to a local community college. Also, is $200k actually right for a PM's base salary? My friend who comes from a non-traditional background recently broke into the tech industry by joining Amazon for $180k as a junior. My other friends at similar big companies have similar offers.
apsurd 3y ago
you're justifying your life choices, which is fine, but it makes it too hard to get any perspective from it. $200k is not a high salary for SV tech, which i know sounds crazy, but a large part of this thread is about ambition and making it in the big city. Your data point isn't an earnest example of that trade off. i like that you like Austin and seeing your family. I don't like that you have to paint that picture against some kind of shit terrible black hole that is California. It's just not true. You wish you never moved to California!? I'm a california native, and perhaps that hurt me more than it should haha. Everyone loves California. How and wheher it's sustainable is its own question.
- plasticsoprano 3y ago
  As an Austin native I wish I could GTFO but family commitments preclude it. CA would be my preferred state but I can't afford to live there even though I make more than the parent commenter here. Maybe that's because I'm past my hustle stage and want a WLB that is more weighed toward life than work. I agree that CA isn't some terrible black hole. My Austin native brother moved to SF a couple of years ago and while the magic of SF has worn off he would still never pick Austin over it. Regardless, I can't trust someone that says they love the heat. 30+ years of it and every time I step foot in the Bay Area or PNW I wonder WTF I'm doing in Austin.
  - freitzkriesler2 3y ago
    I grew up in the snow belt where 2-3 ft of snow and -10F for several months were the norm for the first 23 years of my life. Trust me, 110F texan heat is a dream compared to being stuck inside for 6 months of the year and watching everything slowly fet destroyed by road salt. Though i will say, I do love Seattle, another city that is also nearly as expensive as
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  Don't take it personally. California was great and I vividly remember how great it used to be. Unfortunately it isn't anymore and it's so obvious after having seen it's decline from 2011 to post pandemic. I can only imagine how great it used to be in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, California has a landed gentry problem who have a desire to not see things change. The end of that property tax prop would fix a lot of issues both nimby and otherwise. As for making it, I mean yeah I made it and certainly got mine from living on that rat race but think critically for a moment. No one is going to remember us once the living memory of us passes. Children are really the only legacy we can build. Family and time are far more important than anything elusive career wins you're going to get. I'm getting too old anyway.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
So your friend made some poor life choices, what's your point? I've lived in Austin a long time, I've liked it a lot, though have seen the negatives grow more than the positives in the past 5 years, but I don't know what anyone would take from your comparison. Your friend deliberately chose a shitty lifestyle. I have really little compassion for that because I'm always dumbfounded how little people value the time with their loved ones. His choice to fly back and forth from SV to Cleveland every week is certainly not that common, and definitely has nothing to do with the specifics of living in SV.
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  He's a nice guy but yeah I agree. He screwed up big time. His wife is an illustrator (books). If she expanded into something they could probably get their total income above 300k. Regardless, I wouldn't live in SV unless both myself and my wife were making $300k for a $600k combined.
bradknowles 3y ago
I worked a six month contract for Apple Retail Software Engineering in Cupertino. I was staying in a 1BR apartment on the edge of Cupertino and San Jose, and my rent for that apartment was $2k/month. That was 2014. During that gig, my wife stayed here in Austin, and we were paying considerably less than $2k for our 4BR house we have in one of the nicer neighborhoods. I saw shacks (not fit for human habitation) on postage stamp size lots in Cupertino where the property was for sale, the land had a value of $700k, but the property overall had a value of $600k. The house literally had a value of negative 100k, because that's what it would take to knock it down and rip everything out and start building fresh. Meanwhile, the median home cost in the Austin area was like $200k. I totally get how house prices are much cheaper here in Austin. But the housing prices have rapidly gone up -- like 3-4x in just a few years. And our property taxes are going up as fast as the law will allow. What house you could have bought for $300k just a few years ago will now cost you over $1m. It's going to take a long time for the property taxes to catch up to the home values, unless that law gets changed. I hope my wife and I can continue to afford to live here long enough to retire, and then sell our house for ridiculous amounts of money so that we can afford to buy another place somewhere else where the weather is more moderate and the prices aren't so totally out of whack. We will just have to see what happens. EDIT: I will add that I calculated how much I was making as a contractor for Apple, and I realized that they'd have to pay me over $250k to have the same amount of take home pay, were they to make me an offer to become a permanent employee. At that time, only VPs were making that kind of money, so I was very relieved when I was told that my work was done and my contract was ending, and that my early Christmas present that year was that I would be able to move back home to Austin.

threatofrain 3y ago

Abysmal Cupertino schools are among the best public schools. Half the math faculty in the local high school are Calculus teachers, because half of the student body is on the fastest math track. A good number of students continue their high school math education at the local community college. Of course you can always get better like Proof School, where your kids take Linear Algebra without having to walk to a local community college. Also, is $200k actually right for a PM's base salary? My friend who comes from a non-traditional background recently broke into the tech industry by joining Amazon for $180k as a junior. My other friends at similar big companies have similar offers.

apsurd 3y ago

you're justifying your life choices, which is fine, but it makes it too hard to get any perspective from it. $200k is not a high salary for SV tech, which i know sounds crazy, but a large part of this thread is about ambition and making it in the big city. Your data point isn't an earnest example of that trade off. i like that you like Austin and seeing your family. I don't like that you have to paint that picture against some kind of shit terrible black hole that is California. It's just not true. You wish you never moved to California!? I'm a california native, and perhaps that hurt me more than it should haha. Everyone loves California. How and wheher it's sustainable is its own question.

plasticsoprano 3y ago
As an Austin native I wish I could GTFO but family commitments preclude it. CA would be my preferred state but I can't afford to live there even though I make more than the parent commenter here. Maybe that's because I'm past my hustle stage and want a WLB that is more weighed toward life than work. I agree that CA isn't some terrible black hole. My Austin native brother moved to SF a couple of years ago and while the magic of SF has worn off he would still never pick Austin over it. Regardless, I can't trust someone that says they love the heat. 30+ years of it and every time I step foot in the Bay Area or PNW I wonder WTF I'm doing in Austin.
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  I grew up in the snow belt where 2-3 ft of snow and -10F for several months were the norm for the first 23 years of my life. Trust me, 110F texan heat is a dream compared to being stuck inside for 6 months of the year and watching everything slowly fet destroyed by road salt. Though i will say, I do love Seattle, another city that is also nearly as expensive as
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
Don't take it personally. California was great and I vividly remember how great it used to be. Unfortunately it isn't anymore and it's so obvious after having seen it's decline from 2011 to post pandemic. I can only imagine how great it used to be in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, California has a landed gentry problem who have a desire to not see things change. The end of that property tax prop would fix a lot of issues both nimby and otherwise. As for making it, I mean yeah I made it and certainly got mine from living on that rat race but think critically for a moment. No one is going to remember us once the living memory of us passes. Children are really the only legacy we can build. Family and time are far more important than anything elusive career wins you're going to get. I'm getting too old anyway.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

So your friend made some poor life choices, what's your point? I've lived in Austin a long time, I've liked it a lot, though have seen the negatives grow more than the positives in the past 5 years, but I don't know what anyone would take from your comparison. Your friend deliberately chose a shitty lifestyle. I have really little compassion for that because I'm always dumbfounded how little people value the time with their loved ones. His choice to fly back and forth from SV to Cleveland every week is certainly not that common, and definitely has nothing to do with the specifics of living in SV.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago
He's a nice guy but yeah I agree. He screwed up big time. His wife is an illustrator (books). If she expanded into something they could probably get their total income above 300k. Regardless, I wouldn't live in SV unless both myself and my wife were making $300k for a $600k combined.

bradknowles 3y ago

I worked a six month contract for Apple Retail Software Engineering in Cupertino. I was staying in a 1BR apartment on the edge of Cupertino and San Jose, and my rent for that apartment was $2k/month. That was 2014. During that gig, my wife stayed here in Austin, and we were paying considerably less than $2k for our 4BR house we have in one of the nicer neighborhoods. I saw shacks (not fit for human habitation) on postage stamp size lots in Cupertino where the property was for sale, the land had a value of $700k, but the property overall had a value of $600k. The house literally had a value of negative 100k, because that's what it would take to knock it down and rip everything out and start building fresh. Meanwhile, the median home cost in the Austin area was like $200k. I totally get how house prices are much cheaper here in Austin. But the housing prices have rapidly gone up -- like 3-4x in just a few years. And our property taxes are going up as fast as the law will allow. What house you could have bought for $300k just a few years ago will now cost you over $1m. It's going to take a long time for the property taxes to catch up to the home values, unless that law gets changed. I hope my wife and I can continue to afford to live here long enough to retire, and then sell our house for ridiculous amounts of money so that we can afford to buy another place somewhere else where the weather is more moderate and the prices aren't so totally out of whack. We will just have to see what happens. EDIT: I will add that I calculated how much I was making as a contractor for Apple, and I realized that they'd have to pay me over $250k to have the same amount of take home pay, were they to make me an offer to become a permanent employee. At that time, only VPs were making that kind of money, so I was very relieved when I was told that my work was done and my contract was ending, and that my early Christmas present that year was that I would be able to move back home to Austin.