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This has zero mention of the quality of work. If you don't want to work for MS or Amazon Seattle probably doesn't look as good. Hardly scientific but I tend t

This has zero mention of the quality of work. If you don't want to work for MS or Amazon Seattle probably doesn't look as good. Hardly scientific but I tend to think each city seems to have attracted different kinds of companies, and not all of us are as interested in working for some types of companies as others. Personally I'd rather avoid anything to do with social media, advertising, online shopping, etc.. Health insurance SWE jobs would also not be at the top of my list. I do wonder if this matters less if you're a PM, as the author is, and whether the fact he's a PM changes his calculation as much. I think if I was a PM company culture and how demanding customers were might be a big factor. PMs seem to be in short supply even compared to engineers and the pay figures he's citing might reflect that. A lot of places I've worked PM has seemed to be enough of a disaster people don't want to do it. And that's even with it seemingly being easier to move from engineer -> PM than the other way around.

gsaines 3y ago
Super valid criticism, but how to incorporate it in a quantitative way? I happen to agree with you about the quality of jobs and the ecosystem as a whole being far superior in the Bay. I had expected CA to soundly defeat all other cities by a wide margin, but either due to remote work or some other weirdness in the data collection, that didn't turn out to be the case. Maybe glass door reviews? Another commenter suggested # of Unicorns?
- ben7799 3y ago
  I have this weird view/feeling that the Bay area opportunities have steadily shifted towards all the negative stuff over the past 20 years. It's obviously not the whole picture but it tarnishes the reputation. It's like everything "bad" about tech has seemed to grow out of SV, as if it's become the place for grifty companies to find tech workers who don't care about what they're working on as long as it makes money. You maybe could have quantified things like how far away workers typically have to live from the office, how bad traffic is in these cities, etc.. Traffic figures are often available in terms of "hours wasted annually". It seems most of these cities are "horrible" on things like traffic though.

gsaines 3y ago

Super valid criticism, but how to incorporate it in a quantitative way? I happen to agree with you about the quality of jobs and the ecosystem as a whole being far superior in the Bay. I had expected CA to soundly defeat all other cities by a wide margin, but either due to remote work or some other weirdness in the data collection, that didn't turn out to be the case. Maybe glass door reviews? Another commenter suggested # of Unicorns?

ben7799 3y ago
I have this weird view/feeling that the Bay area opportunities have steadily shifted towards all the negative stuff over the past 20 years. It's obviously not the whole picture but it tarnishes the reputation. It's like everything "bad" about tech has seemed to grow out of SV, as if it's become the place for grifty companies to find tech workers who don't care about what they're working on as long as it makes money. You maybe could have quantified things like how far away workers typically have to live from the office, how bad traffic is in these cities, etc.. Traffic figures are often available in terms of "hours wasted annually". It seems most of these cities are "horrible" on things like traffic though.