6 ms·

Wait, this dumbass page just divides the salary by the cost of living ratio? This is idiotic. It would only make sense if you spent all you salary on "livings",

• ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Also, I don't know how many times I've heard potential employers who are very interested in me, tell me "well the cost of living is so much less out here, we don't want to pay you jack $h!t!". As if I don't understand how compounding my raise percentage works over the course of my career, or they think my rent is going be drastically different... It's disturbing to think they can get away with it.
  • thesis 14y ago
    Low balling potential hires due to cost of living isn't right and won't win you any hires... but.. It's disturbing to think that you'd pay the same, or close to the same for rent wherever you live.
    • bmelton 14y ago
      In my experience, that's not the case at all. It might be true for large populaces, or big city areas, but the difference between say, Memphis, TN and Annapolis, MD is huge. I got a 200% pay increase when I moved, only to find that the majority of it is consumed by the housing difference.
      • dennisgorelik 14y ago
        3x in pay just by moving from Memphis to Annapolis? That means you were grossly underpaid and could likely get 2x increase just by changing employer and staying in Memphis.
        • bmelton 14y ago
          It's not at all improbable that I was underpaid, though I highly doubt that I could have gotten 2x. It's also worth noting that I switched career paths at the same time and moved from a strictly engineering role to an enterprise architecture role.
          • dennisgorelik 14y ago
            2x is still 33% less than 3x (in Annapolis). Was it hard to find enterprise architecture position in Memphis?
            • bmelton 14y ago
              For a bit of backstory, I had already decided to leave Memphis for reasons that had nothing to do with job or pay, and was literally in the market to go anywhere. Shortly after casting my resume to far broader nets than I ever had (I had interest from companies in London, Australia, Boulder, CO, Bay Area, etc.) we took a vacation to visit some friends in the Annapolis area and I fell in love with the place. With that, I decided to refocus my job search and someone I'd known years prior hired me on for a security-clearance required position in the federal government at a job I'd never done (but which he thought I was qualified for). Because of the customer, my contacts, and the cost of livings increases, I was paid a salary well above the "2012 average base salary" for a Google engineer per the linked article. Before that, I had made something like $60k. Except for some very specialized positions (SAP, EMC, etc.) in Memphis, I don't know of any engineers making much above $100,000 (though indeed $100,000 in Memphis is a very respectable salary.) Since leaving, I've had a number of Memphis-based employers trying to buy me back into the area, but the discussion generally dies when we get into money as, at least from my anecdotal experience, wages just aren't that high around there, and the only large paying employers are those who have successfully commoditized the market (FedEx, International Paper, etc.) and aren't hiring 'rockstars'. In summation, while I'm sure there are people making what I make or above in my field in Memphis, it is by no means as common as a six figure salary in the valley, or bay area, or in places where there are large IT-based firms that are competing for talent. Even if there were, I wouldn't really have been qualified at the time - at least mentally, having taken a job I didn't feel qualified for and making absolutely damn certain I performed well at it made for interesting times, but ultimately boosted my overall confidence a million-fold. Edit: I would also be remiss to add that at least amongst my peers, colleagues and family, I was doing fairly well. A lot of that had to do with the TN cost of living.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  • fusiongyro 14y ago
    The mortgage on my 1600 sq. ft. house is about $800/month. Do you know anybody paying $800/month or less in rent in the Bay?
    • ImprovedSilence 14y ago
      Yeah, but that will only save you a set dollar value, for a limited time. lets keep it simple. say you start out at $70k/yr, and assume $800/month rent (9600/yr). And your friend Joe takes $100k/yr, with $1400/month rent (16.8k/yr). Assuming 5% raises/year (conservative, assume no big promotions) for the both of you, and both taxed a flat 28% (for simplicity). At the end of year 1, Joe has 55.2l, you have 40.8 left over. In 5 years from now, your buddy Joe is making ~127.6k, you are making ~89.3k. Joe has gained 8.3k more than you GAINED, (which is greater than the difference you pay in rent) So now Joe clears ~75k/year (after tax and rent), and you are clearing ~54.7k. The gap is only going to get bigger from there as time goes on, that's only after 5 years. You've GOT to think of money in terms of percentages, not just hard dollar values, or it's going to bite you.
      • encoderer 14y ago
        Bay Area rents are ~$1900, 2000 for a 1br in the best case.
        • krakensden 14y ago
          SF maybe. Berkeley no. Oakland hell no. Fremont, Hayward, Union City... There's life outside of Palo Alto and SoMa.
          • dennisgorelik 14y ago
            Say I want to work for Google, want no more than 15 minutes commute, and want to live in a house of ~2400 sq.f (which I live in right now). How much would it cost me per month (both net and gross, considering that I have to pay taxes prior to paying my rent)?
  • randomdata 14y ago
    > As if I don't understand how compounding my raise percentage works over the course of my career That only helps if your raise percentage exceeds inflation. Otherwise, you could actually find yourself worse off. e.g: $100K earnings + 2% $50K living + 3% -------------------- $59,756K after living expenses after 30 years. $70K earnings + 2% $20K living + 3% -------------------- $77,177 after living expenses after 30 years.
    • ImprovedSilence 14y ago
      That's true, and you make good points. I guess another factor is raise percentage, in this industry, I've never heard of a 2% raise unless they're thinking of letting you go... (or you've got 15 yrs under you belt, by which point lets hope you're making enough already) But I bet that's different the farther out you go from cities.... I wonder if there is a correlation with getting crummier raises in the lower cost of living areas as well?
      • randomdata 14y ago
        The 2% was made up for demonstration purposes, I'm not really sure how it plays out in the real world. It is a good question. Though consider this: $70K + 5% [1] $50K living + 3% ----------- $2.5M saved after 30 years [2] $70K for life $20K living + 3% ----------- $2.7M saved after 30 years Even a decent rate may not be all it is cracked up to be. [1] For the first 15 years, whereafter you suggest it could plateau (at around $140K, in this case, which doesn't seem unreasonable given the current market and historic income increases) [2] Assumes all non-living expense allocated income is invested at 5%.
      • vonmoltke 14y ago
        > * I guess another factor is raise percentage, in this industry, I've never heard of a 2% raise unless they're thinking of letting you go...* Sounds like you have never worked for a large defense contractor. The "standard" raise given to ~70% of the engineers last year (my last review cycle working for that company) was 2.1%.
• joezydeco 14y ago
  CNN has a cost of living calculator that seems to take grocery , housing, utility, transportation, and healthcare factors into account. http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm... 107,798 in SF would be 73,278 in Minneapolis
  • alaithea 14y ago
    Just an FYI for those in DC: on that calculator, Washington is listed under the state of Virginia. Geographic boundaries are tricky business, but c'mon, CNN. You could at least pretend District of Columbia is a state.
    • bmelton 14y ago
      But it's not a state, it's a district. I'll grant you that it's obviously a place where people live and work; but a state it is not.
      • alaithea 14y ago
        I did say "pretend." I'm not interested in debating DC statehood, rather I am interested in a good user experience. In my case, I actually live in Maryland, yet I had to pull up Virginia to find my metro area.
  • Evbn 14y ago
    Still missing the point. Consider the common case of earning and saving in NY and retiring to FL. One has to distinguish cost of living for a non-saver from cost-of-living for a saver.
    • rada 14y ago
      On the other hand, consider the more realistic scenario of renting in NY vs. building house equity elsewhere. Given that house equity is the prevalent savings scenario in the US, the average New Yorker has a higher cost of living and a lower savings rate.
• _delirium 14y ago
  In particular, you shouldn't adjust for CoL any parts of your salary that will be spent on (nonlocal) trips/vacations, or on nationally priced consumer goods. The cost of big-screen televisions or Xbox games doesn't get any cheaper when you move from San Francisco to Fresno, for example, and neither does the cost of taking a trip to Paris. The CoL calculators, as they're usually implemented, make the most sense for people with no real disposable income beyond living expenses, but they don't make a lot of sense for Google-level salaries.
  • praptak 14y ago
    > they don't make a lot of sense for Google-level salaries. Yes. This was my point. > you shouldn't adjust for CoL any parts of your salary that will be spent on trips/vacations, or on nationally priced consumer goods. Indeed, the real comparison of salaries should take into account what you plan to do with the income above the CoL. To the above I would also add that the interest on the rest of your cash stash (you don't plan to spend all of it on LCDs and trips?) is pretty much independent of where you live.
  • joezydeco 14y ago
    Are you counting sales taxes? How about income taxes? Both affect your ability to buy even national goods, especially now that states are starting to enforce sales taxes on out-of-state items. Anyone from CA want to chime on what state income and sales taxes are compared to the rest of the country?
    • rada 14y ago
      I can't speak for California but for New York vs. Minnesota, the taxes breakdown is roughly: 50% in NYC vs. 35% in Minnie. When you look at mortgage deductions - a far more common scenario in the "rest of the country" - the difference is even greater.
      • _delirium 14y ago
        I'm getting much lower rates when I plug them into tax calculators. For example, if you make $100k, are single, and take the standard deduction, you pay an overall $18k in federal income tax (18%) and just under $7k in MN income tax (7%), for 25% total. YMMV if you have a spouse, kids, or a mortgage, of course.
• hnriot 14y ago
  Your paragraph makes no logical sense, a 20k raise is not the same wherever you live, taxes and the things you'll ultimately buy with it vary in cost so it's incomparable. Notice how the salary adjustment jives with the CNN calculator too, this is because the cola takes into account the things that people need to spend their salary on, if you buy a vw microbus and sleep in the office parking lot every night and have minimal dining needs then you will notice an absolute difference between regions, otherwise you won't, the salary variance is eaten by the cost of all he usual things people do.