3 ms·

I think the granularity of this map is far too coarse grained. Forks, WA and Seattle are in the same bucket. Same with San Jose, sharing the same bucket as Ukia

I think the granularity of this map is far too coarse grained. Forks, WA and Seattle are in the same bucket. Same with San Jose, sharing the same bucket as Ukiah. The "Greater Portland Area" stretches all the way to the southern border of Oregon. That said, there's still some surprising results. I would have expected NYC to be on par with Western Washington and the Bay Area, but it's significantly less, ~190K vs ~260K.

teasp2 2y ago
Agreed, the "Greater Boston Area" doesn't really reflect the reality, you are mixing Boston Metro (HCOL) with many others in Mass, Vermont, and New Hampshire that can't be compared.
jdminhbg 2y ago
> The "Greater Portland Area" stretches all the way to the southern border of Oregon. There may be an off-the-grid remote developer in Steens Mountain somewhere, but there aren't any employers there.
- cvwright 2y ago
  Lots of techies out in Bend though
  - davidw 2y ago
    This is accurate, as a techie in Bend. But the map hives off Deschutes county all by itself, and at the same time lumps in Baker City with the "Greater Portland Area". That needs some work.
  - 0xB31B1B 2y ago
    Not nearly as many as there are in portland by a factor of about 25
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
Given how many areas are marked as not having enough data, I'm going to guess that the dataset is pretty small, which is why some of the areas had to cover large spaces.
ryandrake 2y ago
Including Pike County, PA as part of the New York City area is kind of wild, too, from someone who grew up there. If you're making $190K and living in Pike County, you're living like a Sultan of a country with a palace made entirely of gold.
- wbl 2y ago
  Not all goods are nontradeable. Flights and lodging at a destination cost the same to everyone as do iPhones etc.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    As an immigrant from the 3rd world -> Canada, I found a surprising number of things fit this bill. Some things have a global market and everyone is paying ~ the same price everywhere. - Meat, to an extent - Any oil-derived product - Electronics - Software - IP - Cars - Clothes Of course there are always local taxes, regulations, and logistical considerations that skew the price this way or that way by 10-30%, but these markets can be pretty efficient.
    - jacurtis 2y ago
      While I do agree with you, that doesn't really impact salary all too much. Allow me to explain. Taxes, Housing, Transportation, and Insurance is what eats up most of your expenses anyway. Housing varies wildly across the world. Many parts of the US now cost > $3,000 /mo to rent a median home. Most of those homes are probably selling for ~$500k putting your mortgage at current interest rates in the same ballpark of $3k /mo. For somoene making $120k that is 1/3 of their income. For someone making the national average (around $70k) that is 1/2 their total income. Just to mention, those areas (Seattle, San Fran, NYC) where you see $250k-300k salaries, those people are paying much higher than these figures. Probably $5-6k in rent or buying modest homes that just happen to cost $1.25M-1.5M In the US you also can pay $1,000 (or more) /mo for health insurance. Most other parts of the world don't have this expense. As of 2024, the average price of a new car is now $47,000 in the USA. Now not everyone is buying a new car but the used car market swells based on this figure. Then you pay 15-30% in taxes on average for most people here. So You add all that up and probably 2/3-3/4 of your money is gone. I agree with you that things like clothing, consumer goods, software, meat, and oil are largely comparable globally now, but these goods only account for probably 10-20% of a person's monthly expenses. Not to mention retirement. Because all these costs are so high, it means I need to put a larger percent of my paycheck to retirement so I can survive a few years of not working before I die. When basics like healthcare and housing are as high as I outlined, it means more money needs to go to retirement, which is money that can't be spent on these basic goods that you mention. So yes, these goods you call out are in fact comparable around the world. But they only account for a relatively small portion of someone's expenses. The outstanding expenses are the most variable (housing, transportation, insurance, taxes).
zuhayeer 2y ago
This is a great point, and something we plan to address. We currently use Nielsen's DMA (Designated Market Area) mappings within the US to separate out regional areas which was used for TV / media market surveys. We happen to use DMA categories for our regional pages on Levels.fyi which is why it was easiest to start with since we already had this data captured. The features can sometimes be a bit off and seem like they're grouped very far and wide (you'll notice there's a bit of Denver within Nevada and its just a vestige of how it used to be categorized), but it still provides a bit of a broader level grouping than something like zip code. We've also been considering using Combined Statistical Areas using population instead, but the benefit with DMAs is that it offers full coverage of the entire US whereas some major tech hubs are still missing from CSAs if relying solely on population. We're planning to create some of our own regional definitions and borders using our own submissions and that should offer some more tighter bounds. This was just a v1, and I think its already resonating with folks. GeoJSON data for the map borders: https://github.com/PublicaMundi/MappingAPI/blob/master/data/geojson/us-states.json https://github.com/PublicaMundi/MappingAPI/blob/master/data/... Nielsen DMA regions: https://blocks.roadtolarissa.com/simzou/6459889 https://blocks.roadtolarissa.com/simzou/6459889
- tangjurine 2y ago
  Is this also using the levels.fyi salary data? If that data is submitted by individuals to a particular company, is it possible to see a lot more detailed heatmap, perhaps down to each address of each company?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago
  > We've also been considering using Combined Statistical Areas using population instead, but the benefit with DMAs is that it offers full coverage of the entire US whereas some major tech hubs are still missing from CSAs if relying solely on population. I think just using the 387 MSAs [1] instead of the 181 CSAs would get you far enough to cover all the major tech hubs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area
sn9 2y ago
You think that's shocking? This is just pre-tax TC. When you take into account taxes and cost of living, comparing NYC to a place like Austin makes NYC TCs look positively stingy.

teasp2 2y ago

Agreed, the "Greater Boston Area" doesn't really reflect the reality, you are mixing Boston Metro (HCOL) with many others in Mass, Vermont, and New Hampshire that can't be compared.

jdminhbg 2y ago

> The "Greater Portland Area" stretches all the way to the southern border of Oregon. There may be an off-the-grid remote developer in Steens Mountain somewhere, but there aren't any employers there.

cvwright 2y ago
Lots of techies out in Bend though
- davidw 2y ago
  This is accurate, as a techie in Bend. But the map hives off Deschutes county all by itself, and at the same time lumps in Baker City with the "Greater Portland Area". That needs some work.
- 0xB31B1B 2y ago
  Not nearly as many as there are in portland by a factor of about 25

Mountain_Skies 2y ago

Given how many areas are marked as not having enough data, I'm going to guess that the dataset is pretty small, which is why some of the areas had to cover large spaces.

ryandrake 2y ago

Including Pike County, PA as part of the New York City area is kind of wild, too, from someone who grew up there. If you're making $190K and living in Pike County, you're living like a Sultan of a country with a palace made entirely of gold.

wbl 2y ago
Not all goods are nontradeable. Flights and lodging at a destination cost the same to everyone as do iPhones etc.
- FredPret 2y ago
  As an immigrant from the 3rd world -> Canada, I found a surprising number of things fit this bill. Some things have a global market and everyone is paying ~ the same price everywhere. - Meat, to an extent - Any oil-derived product - Electronics - Software - IP - Cars - Clothes Of course there are always local taxes, regulations, and logistical considerations that skew the price this way or that way by 10-30%, but these markets can be pretty efficient.
  - jacurtis 2y ago
    While I do agree with you, that doesn't really impact salary all too much. Allow me to explain. Taxes, Housing, Transportation, and Insurance is what eats up most of your expenses anyway. Housing varies wildly across the world. Many parts of the US now cost > $3,000 /mo to rent a median home. Most of those homes are probably selling for ~$500k putting your mortgage at current interest rates in the same ballpark of $3k /mo. For somoene making $120k that is 1/3 of their income. For someone making the national average (around $70k) that is 1/2 their total income. Just to mention, those areas (Seattle, San Fran, NYC) where you see $250k-300k salaries, those people are paying much higher than these figures. Probably $5-6k in rent or buying modest homes that just happen to cost $1.25M-1.5M In the US you also can pay $1,000 (or more) /mo for health insurance. Most other parts of the world don't have this expense. As of 2024, the average price of a new car is now $47,000 in the USA. Now not everyone is buying a new car but the used car market swells based on this figure. Then you pay 15-30% in taxes on average for most people here. So You add all that up and probably 2/3-3/4 of your money is gone. I agree with you that things like clothing, consumer goods, software, meat, and oil are largely comparable globally now, but these goods only account for probably 10-20% of a person's monthly expenses. Not to mention retirement. Because all these costs are so high, it means I need to put a larger percent of my paycheck to retirement so I can survive a few years of not working before I die. When basics like healthcare and housing are as high as I outlined, it means more money needs to go to retirement, which is money that can't be spent on these basic goods that you mention. So yes, these goods you call out are in fact comparable around the world. But they only account for a relatively small portion of someone's expenses. The outstanding expenses are the most variable (housing, transportation, insurance, taxes).

zuhayeer 2y ago

This is a great point, and something we plan to address. We currently use Nielsen's DMA (Designated Market Area) mappings within the US to separate out regional areas which was used for TV / media market surveys. We happen to use DMA categories for our regional pages on Levels.fyi which is why it was easiest to start with since we already had this data captured. The features can sometimes be a bit off and seem like they're grouped very far and wide (you'll notice there's a bit of Denver within Nevada and its just a vestige of how it used to be categorized), but it still provides a bit of a broader level grouping than something like zip code. We've also been considering using Combined Statistical Areas using population instead, but the benefit with DMAs is that it offers full coverage of the entire US whereas some major tech hubs are still missing from CSAs if relying solely on population. We're planning to create some of our own regional definitions and borders using our own submissions and that should offer some more tighter bounds. This was just a v1, and I think its already resonating with folks. GeoJSON data for the map borders: https://github.com/PublicaMundi/MappingAPI/blob/master/data/geojson/us-states.json https://github.com/PublicaMundi/MappingAPI/blob/master/data/... Nielsen DMA regions: https://blocks.roadtolarissa.com/simzou/6459889 https://blocks.roadtolarissa.com/simzou/6459889

tangjurine 2y ago
Is this also using the levels.fyi salary data? If that data is submitted by individuals to a particular company, is it possible to see a lot more detailed heatmap, perhaps down to each address of each company?
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago
> We've also been considering using Combined Statistical Areas using population instead, but the benefit with DMAs is that it offers full coverage of the entire US whereas some major tech hubs are still missing from CSAs if relying solely on population. I think just using the 387 MSAs [1] instead of the 181 CSAs would get you far enough to cover all the major tech hubs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

sn9 2y ago

You think that's shocking? This is just pre-tax TC. When you take into account taxes and cost of living, comparing NYC to a place like Austin makes NYC TCs look positively stingy.