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That’s a misrepresentation and basically using the Bay Area as a reference point. I’m in Chicago. Starting sw engineer salaries is probably around $90k-$100k. T

That’s a misrepresentation and basically using the Bay Area as a reference point. I’m in Chicago. Starting sw engineer salaries is probably around $90k-$100k. The housing nightmare exists but not as bad - depends on your school district. A good 3000 sq ft house in a suburb palatine/Arlington heights or Buffalo grove is around the $600k-$800k mark. You could obviously go smaller for a lower price.

__xor_eax_eax 3y ago
So a house is 6x a yearly tech salary - that's pretty bad.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  Starting salary, also if you want one that big. My first house cost me just $230k, which I sold for about $240k. That was about 1800 sq ft.
bmitc 3y ago
Misrepresentation, how exactly? Also, I'm not using the Bay Area as a reference point and have never even been there.
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  So there is privatized cost for universities. That's actually a major chunk of privatized cost a family with kids will bear. In Illinois, U of I has a total cost of $40k/year (may vary by major) for undergraduate education. The rest of it varies. Health care costs are mostly high deductible plans but a lot of companies proactively add money to your plan to soften that. In general, for a family you're looking at around $7k out of pocket per year. As long as all is good its fine. When there is the unfortunate situation of family members needing medical care you are saddled with the worry of maintaining your job. This is the spot that sucks the most in my opinion. K-12 schools are government funded but you pay property taxes. Here again, depending on where you live you can get excellent schools or not so great ones. But I think that's the situation in most places. The Bay Area maximizes these problems because cost of living is so high there. My point on the misrepresentation was that a lot of places in the US do not have Bay Area cost of living, especially with the real estate. So you can actually have a pretty good quality of life.

__xor_eax_eax 3y ago

So a house is 6x a yearly tech salary - that's pretty bad.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
orochimaaru 3y ago
Starting salary, also if you want one that big. My first house cost me just $230k, which I sold for about $240k. That was about 1800 sq ft.

bmitc 3y ago

Misrepresentation, how exactly? Also, I'm not using the Bay Area as a reference point and have never even been there.

orochimaaru 3y ago
So there is privatized cost for universities. That's actually a major chunk of privatized cost a family with kids will bear. In Illinois, U of I has a total cost of $40k/year (may vary by major) for undergraduate education. The rest of it varies. Health care costs are mostly high deductible plans but a lot of companies proactively add money to your plan to soften that. In general, for a family you're looking at around $7k out of pocket per year. As long as all is good its fine. When there is the unfortunate situation of family members needing medical care you are saddled with the worry of maintaining your job. This is the spot that sucks the most in my opinion. K-12 schools are government funded but you pay property taxes. Here again, depending on where you live you can get excellent schools or not so great ones. But I think that's the situation in most places. The Bay Area maximizes these problems because cost of living is so high there. My point on the misrepresentation was that a lot of places in the US do not have Bay Area cost of living, especially with the real estate. So you can actually have a pretty good quality of life.