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The COL is bull if you're making a huge salary, sure. Then it doesn't matter where you live. But if you made $50k/year and got an offer to work somewhere for $7
by Glyptodon 13y ago
The COL is bull if you're making a huge salary, sure. Then it doesn't matter where you live. But if you made $50k/year and got an offer to work somewhere for $75k/year but the cost of living was $20k more, it wouldn't make sense.
I know some of the best developers in my college class have ended up getting paid 45k to 65k a year in places like Phoenix because that's what was available job wise.
- potatolicious 13y agoRight, and that's my point. Moving from my baseline of Seattle to NYC is virtually guaranteed to raise your salary by far more than the $20K extra. I've done the same math from almost everywhere I've ever lived, and both SF and NYC still come out on top. The market salaries in those cities do make up for the cost of living, and then some. The whole "SF and NYC are bullshit because you end up losing money after cost of living adjustment" argument is bull, specifically because the market salaries between it and other cities in the US doesn't bear this out. > "I know some of the best developers in my college class have ended up getting paid 45k to 65k a year in places like Phoenix because that's what was available job wise." Sadly, the availability of jobs is not very highly correlated with programming ability. And I say this in a non-snarky way. The top end of the software industry is very much an exercise in pedigreed degrees, networking acumen, and fake-it-till-you-make-it. We're really not that much better than the business majors we like to make fun of.