15 ms·

San Francisco

255 points by bencevans 13y ago

wallio 13y ago
It is very hard to not love this guy.
charliepark 13y ago
Is it a common experience that, as a single person in SF, you'd make $100K and end the year without any money saved? I'm not asking with any judgment or critique implied. I'm genuinely curious if that's normal in SF.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  You can certainly save money if you make that much living in sf. Your take home would be about 65k. A very nice apartment shared with one roommate should not cost more than 2k a month, leaving you with 40k for food, entertainment, and travel. If you can't save some of this that is a comment on your priorities, not the fundamental difficulty of living in sf.
  - aaronblohowiak 13y ago
    Is your estimate of 65 including state (10%) and city (1.5%) taxes?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      Yes. It might actually be a bit conservative, since the overall burden for a single person making $100k with 10% state taxes is around 20% for federal taxes. And the CA overall burden is going to be more like 8.9% (marginal is 9.3% below $1M). So, let's do the numbers to be sure. 100 000 - 7 009 (2013 CA on 100 000 -- not sure if std deduction should be factored in) - 17 820 (2012 Federal on 87 000 -- GI - state - std deduction) - 7 650 (Soc sec + Medicare) ======= 67 521
    - gkop 13y ago
      The city 1.5% tax is paid by employers and has no bearing on the $100K base salary or take home pay.
  - sbisker 13y ago
    That may have been true a year ago, but a 2br apartment for 1k a person would currently put you no closer to the city than the outer richmond.
    - nandemo 13y ago
      James is saying 2k per person (~24k per year, leaving you with ~40k).
  - nilkn 13y ago
    For comparison, my roommate and I in Houston pay $1950/month for our apartment (or $975/person). 1300 sq ft, brand new hardwood floor, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, huge windows, rain showers, full-sized washer/dryer in-unit, concierge service, etc. I also walk to work; it takes me about 5 minutes. So we're paying almost exactly half what the rent would be in SF, assuming the apartment you had in mind is of the same quality. We individually make a lot more than half the wage we'd get if we went to SF, though.
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      > We individually make a lot more than half the wage we'd get if we went to SF, though. But, you live in a place where it is unpleasant to be outside well more than half the year, and the typical dev in your area gets paid a lot less than the typical dev in SF (and, remember that ratios aren't really important when it comes to saving, only net [1]). Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Houston is a fine place for you, but it's important to be complete rather than just stating the pros. [1] I.e. you make twice what it costs to live in Houston, while I make only 25% more what it costs to live in SF. But if it cost $10000 to live in Houston and $100000 to live in SF, I'm still better off.
      - nilkn 13y ago
        Honestly, the weather here is great. I don't mind it at all. Your mileage may vary of course, but I find most people here do not find the weather to be a problem. > remember that ratios aren't really important when it comes to saving, only net Agreed, but the ratios have a big impact on what the net is. Right now, I wouldn't really be any better off going to SF in terms of saving potential. From talking with friends, the pay raise I'd get wouldn't be enough to justify it, from a purely financial viewpoint. If I stayed there for long enough, though, my salary would probably rise enough to put things in favor of SF in the end. But that's assuming I rent my whole life. At some point I'd like to buy a house. Now things are in favor of Houston--hugely so. The average home price in SF has went above $1M recently, but in Houston it's in the 100s. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/san-francisco-median-home-price_n_3356238.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/san-francisco-media... http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2013/05/median-home-price-hits-all-time-high/#12494-6 http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2013/05/median-home-pric... In Houston, a $1M house gets you one of two things, depending on where you buy: (1) if you buy in a suburb, you'll get a mansion; (2) if you buy in the city ("in the loop"), you'll get a very nice house in probably a place like River Oaks (unambiguously the best neighborhood of Houston and possibly Texas). IMHO, you need an income of well over $300k to afford a $1M house. How many developers in SF make that kind of money? Even in the HN demographic, it's got to be a very, very small number. Yet I could easily afford a median-priced Houston home on my starting salary out of college. I choose to rent just because I enjoy walking to work. Anyway, strictly speaking the best strategy might be to go to SF for some of your twenties, live a crappy life but save like crazy, and then come somewhere more cost effective and buy a house, maybe also using your higher SF income to negotiate a higher wage here as well.
- bherms 13y ago
  Yes. Taxes are pretty high, so making $100k w/ benefits, you take home roughly $63k/yr. Then factor in rent and utilities: 1br ($2500+/mo), 2br w/ roomie ($1800+/mo), 3br w/roomies ($1500/mo). So let's assume 2br. You walk away with around $40k/yr. Then take out transport, cell phone, random monthly bills like student loans, etc and you're down to $28k disposable. Take out food and random living expenses and you don't have much left.
  - jurassic 13y ago
    28k for food and random living expenses is a lot of money unless you are eating out for every meal; that's more that some people's entire paycheck (like grad students.) If you can't make room for savings in there, it definitely shows a lack of priorities.
    - shardling 13y ago
      It's twice the typical grad student pay check. (Ignoring the tuition/healthcare coverage you normally get, anyway.)
    - look_lookatme 13y ago
      Well some people's priorities might involve having an active social life, dressing well, paying for entertainment, etc... all of which will be expensive. It's not a "lack" of priorities, it's just a different set of them.
      - ShirtlessRod 13y ago
        The point being that not thinking about the future is in fact a lack of priorities. The party is not going to last forever and not planning for that in the slightest is very short-sighted. You can have an active social life without completely disregarding the future.
      - marcinw 13y ago
        And that's your problem. I was the same way, though I live in NYC. With every pay raise I upgraded my lifestyle. Whether I was making $50k/year or $100k/year, I wasn't saving anything more besides the shit I was contributing to my 401k. My savings actually grew smaller over the years, until I made a conscious effort to save money. An effort so simple, I kick myself for not realizing it sooner. Several simple ways I found to save money living in NYC (not SF, but close enough). Note these figures are on a per-year basis. - Scrap web hosting, move to AWS and S3 (~120 saved) - Get rid of cable, stick with cheap Internet (~1000 saved, Internet ~40/mo) - One night less at the bar each week (~2500 saved, that's just for a $40 tab) - Skip buying coffee every day (~500 saved) - Get a cheaper phone package (~120 saved) In the end, I think a good rule of thumb is to keep your daily expenses under $20. You want to dress well? Wait for Banana Republic to have a 40% off everything sale, and buy clothes then. Buy clothes you're actually going to wear more than once (this is easy for guys, women have it harder). I don't know your lifestyle or actually care what you spend money on, but complaining you can't save money is a bullshit excuse. I was bullshitting myself too, and I think everyone's got spending habits they can curb without impacting their lifestyle.
- bifrost 13y ago
  Yes, I've heard this from just about everyone. If you're making $50k in this city, you're basically working poor. With the average 2 bedroom condo renting for $2500+ and houses renting for more, you're dropping a ton of your income just on a place to live. Its not uncommon to see a single bedroom renting for $1600+ in the city.
  - bherms 13y ago
    Avg 1br prices are up to over $2500 now. Granted depending on area and quality, you can get down to $1600, but a majority are mid to high $2ks.
    - encoderer 13y ago
      Citation? We're in the SF rental market and I work for a real estate start-up. I see 1br's in desirable neighborhoods available for $1.5-2k all day long. A look through Craigslist gives you an idea: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/sfc?zoomToPosting=&query=&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms=1 http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/sfc?zoomToPosting=&qu... But note that there are many 2+ BR's in the search results so skim the list with some scrutiny. Also there's a lot of spam in the "$1200 4br" listing that appears a thousand times. Sort ascending by price to get an easier look.
      - ceph_ 13y ago
        According to this[1], as of February average rent for 1br in OUTER sunset is 1.9k. Another source[2] puts average 1br rent at $2547. [1]http://sfist.com/attachments/SFist_Brock/SF-Infographic.png http://sfist.com/attachments/SFist_Brock/SF-Infographic.png [2]http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends/ http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent...
      - bherms 13y ago
        See seph's comment. I took that from a heatmap I saw not too long ago on avg 1br prices in each neighborhood. I'll link if I locate it again.
- kingkilr 13y ago
  I don't know if it's common, but it is definitely possible to save money while making 100k in SF.
- jurassic 13y ago
  I think this is normal everywhere in the US. I expect this has little to do with SF and more to do with the fact that many people all over the country, regardless of income level, are living far beyond their means and lack the discipline to make saving a priority; the US average personal savings rate has fallen to 2.5%. But what percentage buys cable tv, smartphones with data plans, auto loans for more car than they needed, etc? http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt
  - lotharbot 13y ago
    People in the US don't do well at saving. But SF is still abnormal -- you need a considerably higher salary to have the same quality of living + savings in SF as compared to many other cities. For example: elsewhere in this thread it was stated that a one bedroom apartment runs $2500+ in SF. In my neighborhood, a decent one bedroom apartment might run $700. Sure, you might earn $90k instead of $100k, but you save twice the difference just in rent.
- neilk 13y ago
  It is very common. But it's also the lifestyle that forces this. I was continually perplexed at how all of my colleagues seemed to be able to afford to go to all these conferences (not always on company dime), buy the most expensive coffee, upgrade their bleeding-edge laptop the moment Apple puts out a new one, and so on. I figured out later that they just weren't saving or investing any money, and often were even accumulating debt despite their high salaries. The culture of always being at work (or at least seeming to be) is a factor too. More and more of your meals are eaten outside the home. A lot of people use cleaning services. Some people feel they need to do all this to keep up. I'm not sure they're wrong. When I pulled out a three-year-old iPhone, people gawped at it, like it was the Ark of the Covenant or something. I lived in a district which was not the Mission or SOMA and people acted like I lived off the edge of the world.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    You're forgetting how much money people outside of San Francisco spend on their car. That makes expensive coffee, eating out, and computer upgrades look like pocket change.
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      I dunno. In other places, Teslas are an unusual site. I can't commute three miles without seeing one or two each day. BMWs might be more ubiquitous than Toyotas here. To be fair, I'm not in the city, I'm on the peninsula.
- kelnos 13y ago
  I'm not sure if it's normal, but I can at least offer my own anecdotal experience: I'm a single guy who's been out of school for almost 10 years, living in SF for the past 3 years. I make a bit more than the $100k figure you're asking about, but if I were to adjust my income down, I'd still be saving ~35% of my take-home pay every month. And this is including eating out 8-10 times a week and going out to bars 3-4 times a week. I've since paid off my college loans, but while I was paying them I was tossing close to $1k at them per month while maintaining my savings rate. I'm not frugal, but neither am I a crazy spender either. At this point I've developed enough of a cushion that I could take 2-2.5 years off work if I wanted to. So it's definitely doable. I think as another poster commented, it's more about priorities than ability. There's certainly enough to do here and spend money on that you could spend all your money with nothing to save, but you'd have to work at it. Especially for someone working in tech and making 6 figures, living in SF and not saving is a choice, and by no means a necessity.
bherms 13y ago
Very happy he enjoyed the city! Next time he's in town, I'll be sure I'm following his twitter to remain informed. I'd love to buy him a drink. While there is a lot of crappiness in the city, it really is a melting pot (not as much as 10-20 years ago of course) of motivated, friendly people.
- michael_miller 13y ago
  What forces do you see bringing together SF as a melting pot? I've only spent a small amount of time there, and with a very small subset of people, but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry). I absolutely agree about the motivated, friendly people part. There's definitely a "pay it forward" culture in the tech community which you can feel in the atmosphere.
  - bherms 13y ago
    but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry) That's why I said "not so much as 10-20 years ago". It seems like our community is actually destroying what made SF so special in years past. That being said, while a majority of people coming in are fairly well-off 20-something tech industry kids, the fact that SF prides itself as being an "anything goes, something for everyone" kind of city helps to bring out the quirkiness and eccentricities of people who otherwise would've never found that side of themselves. In addition, if you look in the right places, you will find a ton of the goofy oddballs that made SF such a special place.
bifrost 13y ago
> The coffee is very different than the Italian one I've heard this many times :) His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the peninsula will get families and SF will get DINKs.
- MaxGabriel 13y ago
  "Dual Income, No Kids" (I had to look it up)
- spikels 13y ago
  Not a great place for raising a family: expensive, bad schools, disfunctional government, drugs on streets, and lots of crazies[1]. Pretty much everyone I have ever know who had kids in SF moved away within a few years. The demographics always reminded me of China where you did not see as many girls because of the one child policy. In SF children of both sexes (10% of population) are just missing: Persons under 18 (2010 Census) US 23.7% [2] SF 13.5% [3] [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pse50YZsyck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pse50YZsyck [NSFW: male nudity & mild violence] [2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html [3] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html
  - antirez 13y ago
    The census citation is pretty incredible indeed... About schools, that's something you could never tell just looking at the city that seems very civilized, and this usually correlates with quality of schools. I hope there will be efforts to fix that in the future.
    - bifrost 13y ago
      I hope they fix the school situation, but its unlikely. There's a reason why SF is listed as one of the least well run cities in the world.
austinz 13y ago
I was reading up on Catania (the city from which he hails) and it looks like a beautiful place - very different from SF, but still having a large number of tech companies.
- david927 13y ago
  The nearby town of Taormina is awesome.
  - weston 13y ago
    I can confirm both: Taormina and Catania are gorgeous, amazing cities. The whole island of Sicily is also a wonderful place to visit.... I highly recommend it!
jamesjguthrie 13y ago
I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck, there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really that high, it probably won't be a good idea.
- arkem 13y ago
  This is very specifically about the San Francisco city area. The peninsular and south bay are much more suburban and family friendly. Palo Alto isn't a lot cheaper that San Francisco it has a reputation as being much more family friendly and has some good schools. Also, Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunny Vale, Santa Clara are all more affordable and family friendly than San Francisco. Disclaimer: I'm a single guy with no kids, so what would I know?
- michael_miller 13y ago
  The schools in Palo Alto itself are very good. Palo Alto HS has an excellent reputation amongst people I know. It's a bit of a pressure cooker, as everyone in the school has parents in the tech industry who care about education, but the quality of teaching is great. The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will require some sacrifices.
  - ryandrake 13y ago
    Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income: $5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr salary I could see that for a very, very senior and specialized engineer working at one of a handful of companies, but that's probably double the norm in the 'Valley for your average 5-10 year experienced engineer. Not to mention having to have $200,000 in cash for a down payment sitting around. Even if you saved as much as $1,000 a month, it would take you over 16 years to build up such a down payment--for a STARTER home!
ladon86 13y ago
What a sweet and good-natured write-up. It's not cynical, and you can feel a positive outlook on life and people throughout. It's an outlook that's probably very helpful in being productive and happy generally.
stefantalpalaru 13y ago
Sounds like a guided tour with no real exploration of the city.
- antirez 13y ago
  Well it is, in the sense that, no exploration is really possible in three days full of meetings, but something can be captured walking on the street, talking with many people, most also not native of SF exchanging stories. I just tried to turn my feelings into a blog post without any special goal.
swang 13y ago
First I am glad this is not another post about how many homeless people he saw and how he cannot believe it and how people in SF should fix these problems. Thinking of the areas the author was around (Nob Hill, SOMA, FiDi) he is probably not going to see many families. You'll definitely see way more strollers and kids if you head south to Noe Valley or head north to Pac Heights.
jechen 13y ago
On one hand, you have people earning six figures fighting for the dwindling, ever inflated supply of conventional housing options, and on the other, you have people like Nadia Eghbal who display the utmost resourcefulness and manage to live in SF for $20k a year (http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-francisco-on http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-...). Really goes back to what pg says about being relentlessly resourceful. In the end, if you really want to get settled in SF, all it takes is some persistence and a healthy network. (I moved here when I knew next to no one and managed to find home at a coliving space called Startuphouse for most of last year; not only was my stay free but it gave me a fantastic network on which to jumpstart life here.)
- tommaxwell 13y ago
  Haha, I stayed at StartupHouse for awhile before they got shut down by city officials.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  Haha, yeah, I stayed at the StartupHouse a bit too. It was great being right in the middle of the city and being able to walk a block for groceries or tech meetups. Got a lot of coding done too! Too bad someone filed a complaint and got it shut down. I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling. The most I've ever paid for that is $2000/month in the center of SF. Dropped down to $1000/month in the southern hills, which was still an easy BART/bus ride into downtown. East Palo Alto was $600 a month, but you had to take a bus to the Caltrain to get anywhere. Currently staying in Walnut Creek on the BART for $1000/month. I only ever rent month to month, so could get way cheaper buying longer too.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling. That's fair enough, and describes me when I moved to SF straight out of college. It's probably also fine (even necessary) if you're a student or bootstrapping your own startup. But I've only been here two years, and it didn't take long for me to get sick of having a home situation that's in many ways worse than when I lived in my college's dormitory and significantly worse than my last two years of college living in a one bedroom apartment. With no lack of great and lucrative career opportunities in the area, I wish I didn't have to either live like a starving college kid in a house packed full of starving college kids or spend 20 hours a week searching for an affordable studio apartment in a tolerable location. Although I've actually been hearing good things about Oakland...
physcab 13y ago
San Francisco truly is a wonderful city, all things considered. I'm currently traveling throughout Europe and while I'm having a blast seeing how another portion of the world lives, I'm more thankful than ever I can call my home SF. It has temperate weather, is relatively clean, Napa, Stinson Beach, and Pt Reyes to the North, Pacifica, Santa Cruz, Monterey to the South. Tahoe for skiing and summer fun is 4 hours away. And if you are craving more warmth, just have to cross over a bridge or two. There are awesome dog parks complete with doggie ice cream. There are endless amazing restaurants. There are enough singles to keep your dating life occupied for months. And there are fun festivals nearly every weekend. Every neighborhood has something different and unique to offer if you keep an open mind. I've also found that people are incredibly family oriented, not because they have families of their own, but because their families live 20-30 minutes away. You also experience different cultures and homelessness -- something which many people go to great lengths to hide. But IMO it keeps the city grounded and humble. Yes, SF is expensive. It has cost overruns and mismanagement. But I have yet to meet people (in person) who seriously dislike where they live.
- agilebyte 13y ago
  When talking about singles you mean men right?
  - colmvp 13y ago
    Yeah seriously. The number of single women I meet in SF is for whatever reason vastly disproportionate to living in other cities in the United States, like New York or Los Angeles.
danmaz74 13y ago
"UK people are especially hard for me to understand, and I guess the opposite is also true. Fixing the language if you don't practice it is either impossible or requires a lot of time, probably I'll star to travel more." One very enjoyable way to improve at least understanding spoken English is to watch movies and (if you like that) tv shows. BTW, I agree that UK pronunciationS are much more difficult to understand (I wonder if that's only true for Italians, or for other foreigners too).
- keiferski 13y ago
  My guess is that foreigners are used to hearing American English from TV shows and movies, and thus find it easier to understand.
  - danmaz74 13y ago
    Until very recently, Italian people were only commonly exposed to spoken English through music - and there a lot of UK there. Almost everything on tv is dubbed here (and not long ago there was no almost :)
  - kroger 13y ago
    This is true. As someone who speaks English as a second language living in London, I can understand both "standard" American English and "BBC" British English very well. The problem is that in a London alone you are exposed to all kinds of accents, including Queen's English, Cockney, Scottish English, and Irish. This video is a good example of how a Cockney accents sounds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjGNJ5JL8w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjGNJ5JL8w
  - cmccabe 13y ago
    The UK was where English first evolved, and it seems like there is a lot more diversity in how it is spoken there. Fragments of older dialects that didn't win out still linger. The US was settled relatively quickly and there wasn't that much time for regional accents to evolve. There are a few recognizable ones, like the Southern US accent, but it's not as dramatic as something like a Cockney or a Scottish accent in the UK.
spitx 13y ago
kryten: Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children... Does your experience of life in London in recent years (since around late nineties) reflect that of this writer? I think this is one of the few writers (on the topic) I've found balanced and non-alarmist. That's the reason I've used her piece to moot a point that has been posited by many others in a more judgmental and accusative tone. So I ask, is this what London increasingly feels like for secular, middle-income families and individuals? "Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim, with the majority of them young families. That is not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they never look me in the face. I recently went to the plainly named “Curtain Shop” and asked if they would put some up for me. Inside were a lot of elderly Muslim men. I was told that they don’t do that kind of work, and was back on the pavement within a few moments. I felt sure I had suffered discrimination and was bewildered as I had been there previously when the Muslim owners had been very friendly. Things have changed. I am living in a place where I am a stranger. I was brought up in a village in Staffordshire, and although I have been in London for a quarter of a century I have kept the habit of chatting to shopkeepers and neighbours, despite it not being the done thing in metropolitan life. Nowadays, though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are serving. They have no interest in talking to me and rarely meet my gaze. I find this situation dismal. I miss banter, the hail fellow, well met chat about the weather, or what was on TV last night." "In the Nineties, when I arrived, this part of Acton was a traditional working-class area. Now there is no trace of any kind of community – that word so cherished by the Left. Instead it has been transformed into a giant transit camp and is home to no one. The scale of immigration over recent years has created communities throughout London that never need to – or want to – interact with outsiders. It wasn’t always the case: since the 1890s thousands of Jewish, Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Chinese workers, among others, have arrived in the capital, often displacing the indigenous population. Yes, there was hateful overt racism and discrimination, I’m not denying that. But, over time, I believe we settled down into a happy mix of incorporation and shared aspiration, with disparate peoples walking the same pavements but returning to very different homes – something the Americans call “sundown segregation”. But now, despite the wishful thinking of multiculturalists, wilful segregation by immigrants is increasingly echoed by the white population – the rate of white flight from our cities is soaring. According to the Office for National Statistics, 600,000 white Britons have left London in the past 10 years. The latest census data shows the breakdown in telling detail: some London boroughs have lost a quarter of their population of white, British people. The number in Redbridge, north London, for example, has fallen by 40,844 (to 96,253) in this period, while the total population has risen by more than 40,335 to 278,970. It isn’t only London boroughs. The market town of Wokingham in Berkshire has lost nearly 5 per cent of its white British population. I suspect that many white people in London and the Home Counties now move house on the basis of ethnicity, especially if they have children. Estate agents don’t advertise this self-segregation, of course. Instead there are polite codes for that kind of thing, such as the mention of “a good school”, which I believe is code for “mainly white English”. Not surprising when you learn that nearly one million pupils do not have English as a first language. I, too, have decided to leave my area, following in the footsteps of so many of my neighbours. I don’t really want to go. I worked long and hard to get to London, to find a good job and buy a home and I’d like to stay here. But I’m a stranger on these streets and all the “good” areas, with safe streets, nice housing and pleasant cafés, are beyond my reach. I see London turning into a place almost exclusively for poor immigrants and the very rich. It’s sad that I am moving not for a positive reason, but to escape something. I wonder whether I’ll tell the truth, if I’m asked. I can’t pretend that I’m worried about local schools, so perhaps I’ll say it’s for the chance of a conversation over the garden fence. But really I no longer need an excuse: mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all." Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I-feel-like-a-stranger-where-I-live.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I... Edit: Cleanup
Yhippa 13y ago
This story reminds me of my most "San Franciscan" experience. I was lucky enough to spend a weekend at Mark Hopkins InterContinental and pretty much the entire time there were protesters yelling things (peacefully of course). One of which was: "Mark Hopkins, you're no good; treat your workers like you should". I went down and talked to the guys and got to hear their side of the story (fighting for minimum wage concessions for the workers there). What a cool city to be a geek in. Where else can you see more billboards for web browsers and video games than you can for lawyers and liposuction?
codex_irl 13y ago
I love the bay area, nothing else to say.
ryanSrich 13y ago
Eh. They can keep it. • Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2] After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a year. For me it would never work having 2k per month in student loans. Also compare that to a place like D.C. • Average engineering salary in D.C. : 105k / year [3] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $1,392 / month [4] After taxes you'll have around 68k / year - 17k / year for rent That's 51,000 per year. About 11k more per year and a place that is significantly less expensive to live in. That can really make a difference and you may miss out on being in sf but you're in a large city with a healthy tech environment none the less. 1.) http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-Francisco,-CA.html http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-Franc... 2.)http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_fra.php http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_... 3.) http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washington+DC http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washing... 4.) http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa=8872 http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa...
- lobotryas 13y ago
  You are forgetting the weather. DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking. SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it. This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Personally, I'm unable to imagine myself going back to east coast weather ever again.
  - stplsd 13y ago
    "...every day, hot and sunny, today, hot and sunny, tomorrow, hot and, for the rest of the... hot and sunny, every single day, hot and sunny. And they love it. "Isn't great, every day, hot and sunny?" What are you, a fucking lizard? Only reptiles feel that way about this kind of weather. I'm a mammal, I can afford coats, scarves, cappuccino and rosy cheeked women" Bill Hicks
meerita 13y ago
I want a SF job but work remotely from Barcelona. I'm willing to travel 1 a month :). I know the pains of work and live there, it looks amazing but all my friends told me the same: it feels artificial. I like Europe, with their pro/cons.
pfarrell 13y ago
I moved to the Bay Area, with my family, 8 months ago. We tried to make SF work (and did live in temporary housing in SOMA for three months), but SF is not a place for young children (unless you are beyond financial constraints). I commute to SOMA every day from Rockridge. Rockridge is nice, except for Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force! All the tech things antirez outlined are true, but the reality is, it took some commitment and blind faith to move out with a family and no friends or contacts. Its like moving to another country :). There is more of everything in SF (bay area really), success and destitution, beauty and ugliness, brilliant people and charlatans, opportunity and desperation. I'm loving it, but it's a balancing act.
- Throwadev 13y ago
  Can you elaborate on lack of police? Have you been affected by the crime in Rockridge? I thought it was a pretty decent area the last time I visited.
  - dontAgree 13y ago
    No he's just being a typical transplant and talking out of his ass.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - dontAgree 13y ago
        No need to fear. The plebeians who worship HN will downvote me into oblivion to stick up for their fellow transient brother from flyover state Nowhere, USA.
    - pfarrell 13y ago
      Don't down vote the parents comment. He/she's right!
    - hyperbovine 13y ago
ef4 13y ago
Regarding the hotel gym: the most likely reason you couldn't find any free weights is America's penchant for lawsuits. The hotel's lawyers and/or insurance company probably insists on less "dangerous" fitness equipment.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Do you have some specific citation? I've seen plenty of hotel gyms with free weights. And any real gym has them, even though they face similar liability concerns. I can think of a number of other reasons that hotels would avoid free weights. Fitness machines need less tidying, are harder to steal, are more friendly to novices, and look fancier to people looking at the hotel brochure.
VeejayRampay 13y ago
British people are really hard to understand. The way they make whole syllables disappear is nothing short of black magic.
- threedaymonk 13y ago
  American people are really hard to understand. The way they pronounce "can" and "can't" the same, and the paucity of vowels in their phonemic inventory (cot/caught and Mary/merry/marry) is most perplexing. (Which is another way of saying: that to which one is unaccustomed is difficult. British people understand each other perfectly well, and some of us even find American English a bit difficult to understand out of familiar contexts.)
lelandbatey 13y ago
I quite like the writing style, and I'm thankful that the author took the time to write this all down! Hopefully this isn't taken as offensive, but I wanted to read this in a less plain-text way, so I've mirrored the article here with full attribution: http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68 http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68 It's just a bit easier on my eyes, I hope that's alright.
corresation 13y ago
Enjoyable read, however the notes about the hotel gym were a bit strange to me. I may have a insufficient sample set, however I've never seen free weights in a hotel gym, beyond a couple of low weight dumbbells. Certainly no one doing deadlifts, and I can't imagine a hotel dealing with that.
corford 13y ago
Just out of curiosity... I assume the waiters, waitresses, receptionists, taxi drivers etc. of San Francisco are not all on $70K+ salaries? And if the answer to that is yes, how do they manage to make it work? Either there's a lot of #firstworlproblem esque moaning going on in this thread or taxi drivers in SanFran are the best paid cabbies in the world.
bretpiatt 13y ago
Salvatore, the author, is the lead developer on redis, very interesting perspective on a visit to SF from Europe for a person that is globally connected. He met up with a good crowd one night: http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-Meetup/events/123141892/ http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-Meetup/events/1231...

255 points by bencevans 13y ago

It is very hard to not love this guy.

Is it a common experience that, as a single person in SF, you'd make $100K and end the year without any money saved? I'm not asking with any judgment or critique implied. I'm genuinely curious if that's normal in SF.

jamesaguilar 13y ago
You can certainly save money if you make that much living in sf. Your take home would be about 65k. A very nice apartment shared with one roommate should not cost more than 2k a month, leaving you with 40k for food, entertainment, and travel. If you can't save some of this that is a comment on your priorities, not the fundamental difficulty of living in sf.
- aaronblohowiak 13y ago
  Is your estimate of 65 including state (10%) and city (1.5%) taxes?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Yes. It might actually be a bit conservative, since the overall burden for a single person making $100k with 10% state taxes is around 20% for federal taxes. And the CA overall burden is going to be more like 8.9% (marginal is 9.3% below $1M). So, let's do the numbers to be sure. 100 000 - 7 009 (2013 CA on 100 000 -- not sure if std deduction should be factored in) - 17 820 (2012 Federal on 87 000 -- GI - state - std deduction) - 7 650 (Soc sec + Medicare) ======= 67 521
  - gkop 13y ago
    The city 1.5% tax is paid by employers and has no bearing on the $100K base salary or take home pay.
- sbisker 13y ago
  That may have been true a year ago, but a 2br apartment for 1k a person would currently put you no closer to the city than the outer richmond.
  - nandemo 13y ago
    James is saying 2k per person (~24k per year, leaving you with ~40k).
- nilkn 13y ago
  For comparison, my roommate and I in Houston pay $1950/month for our apartment (or $975/person). 1300 sq ft, brand new hardwood floor, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, huge windows, rain showers, full-sized washer/dryer in-unit, concierge service, etc. I also walk to work; it takes me about 5 minutes. So we're paying almost exactly half what the rent would be in SF, assuming the apartment you had in mind is of the same quality. We individually make a lot more than half the wage we'd get if we went to SF, though.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    > We individually make a lot more than half the wage we'd get if we went to SF, though. But, you live in a place where it is unpleasant to be outside well more than half the year, and the typical dev in your area gets paid a lot less than the typical dev in SF (and, remember that ratios aren't really important when it comes to saving, only net [1]). Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Houston is a fine place for you, but it's important to be complete rather than just stating the pros. [1] I.e. you make twice what it costs to live in Houston, while I make only 25% more what it costs to live in SF. But if it cost $10000 to live in Houston and $100000 to live in SF, I'm still better off.
    - nilkn 13y ago
      Honestly, the weather here is great. I don't mind it at all. Your mileage may vary of course, but I find most people here do not find the weather to be a problem. > remember that ratios aren't really important when it comes to saving, only net Agreed, but the ratios have a big impact on what the net is. Right now, I wouldn't really be any better off going to SF in terms of saving potential. From talking with friends, the pay raise I'd get wouldn't be enough to justify it, from a purely financial viewpoint. If I stayed there for long enough, though, my salary would probably rise enough to put things in favor of SF in the end. But that's assuming I rent my whole life. At some point I'd like to buy a house. Now things are in favor of Houston--hugely so. The average home price in SF has went above $1M recently, but in Houston it's in the 100s. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/san-francisco-median-home-price_n_3356238.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/san-francisco-media... http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2013/05/median-home-price-hits-all-time-high/#12494-6 http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2013/05/median-home-pric... In Houston, a $1M house gets you one of two things, depending on where you buy: (1) if you buy in a suburb, you'll get a mansion; (2) if you buy in the city ("in the loop"), you'll get a very nice house in probably a place like River Oaks (unambiguously the best neighborhood of Houston and possibly Texas). IMHO, you need an income of well over $300k to afford a $1M house. How many developers in SF make that kind of money? Even in the HN demographic, it's got to be a very, very small number. Yet I could easily afford a median-priced Houston home on my starting salary out of college. I choose to rent just because I enjoy walking to work. Anyway, strictly speaking the best strategy might be to go to SF for some of your twenties, live a crappy life but save like crazy, and then come somewhere more cost effective and buy a house, maybe also using your higher SF income to negotiate a higher wage here as well.
bherms 13y ago
Yes. Taxes are pretty high, so making $100k w/ benefits, you take home roughly $63k/yr. Then factor in rent and utilities: 1br ($2500+/mo), 2br w/ roomie ($1800+/mo), 3br w/roomies ($1500/mo). So let's assume 2br. You walk away with around $40k/yr. Then take out transport, cell phone, random monthly bills like student loans, etc and you're down to $28k disposable. Take out food and random living expenses and you don't have much left.
- jurassic 13y ago
  28k for food and random living expenses is a lot of money unless you are eating out for every meal; that's more that some people's entire paycheck (like grad students.) If you can't make room for savings in there, it definitely shows a lack of priorities.
  - shardling 13y ago
    It's twice the typical grad student pay check. (Ignoring the tuition/healthcare coverage you normally get, anyway.)
  - look_lookatme 13y ago
    Well some people's priorities might involve having an active social life, dressing well, paying for entertainment, etc... all of which will be expensive. It's not a "lack" of priorities, it's just a different set of them.
    - ShirtlessRod 13y ago
      The point being that not thinking about the future is in fact a lack of priorities. The party is not going to last forever and not planning for that in the slightest is very short-sighted. You can have an active social life without completely disregarding the future.
    - marcinw 13y ago
      And that's your problem. I was the same way, though I live in NYC. With every pay raise I upgraded my lifestyle. Whether I was making $50k/year or $100k/year, I wasn't saving anything more besides the shit I was contributing to my 401k. My savings actually grew smaller over the years, until I made a conscious effort to save money. An effort so simple, I kick myself for not realizing it sooner. Several simple ways I found to save money living in NYC (not SF, but close enough). Note these figures are on a per-year basis. - Scrap web hosting, move to AWS and S3 (~120 saved) - Get rid of cable, stick with cheap Internet (~1000 saved, Internet ~40/mo) - One night less at the bar each week (~2500 saved, that's just for a $40 tab) - Skip buying coffee every day (~500 saved) - Get a cheaper phone package (~120 saved) In the end, I think a good rule of thumb is to keep your daily expenses under $20. You want to dress well? Wait for Banana Republic to have a 40% off everything sale, and buy clothes then. Buy clothes you're actually going to wear more than once (this is easy for guys, women have it harder). I don't know your lifestyle or actually care what you spend money on, but complaining you can't save money is a bullshit excuse. I was bullshitting myself too, and I think everyone's got spending habits they can curb without impacting their lifestyle.
bifrost 13y ago
Yes, I've heard this from just about everyone. If you're making $50k in this city, you're basically working poor. With the average 2 bedroom condo renting for $2500+ and houses renting for more, you're dropping a ton of your income just on a place to live. Its not uncommon to see a single bedroom renting for $1600+ in the city.
- bherms 13y ago
  Avg 1br prices are up to over $2500 now. Granted depending on area and quality, you can get down to $1600, but a majority are mid to high $2ks.
  - encoderer 13y ago
    Citation? We're in the SF rental market and I work for a real estate start-up. I see 1br's in desirable neighborhoods available for $1.5-2k all day long. A look through Craigslist gives you an idea: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/sfc?zoomToPosting=&query=&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms=1 http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/sfc?zoomToPosting=&qu... But note that there are many 2+ BR's in the search results so skim the list with some scrutiny. Also there's a lot of spam in the "$1200 4br" listing that appears a thousand times. Sort ascending by price to get an easier look.
    - ceph_ 13y ago
      According to this[1], as of February average rent for 1br in OUTER sunset is 1.9k. Another source[2] puts average 1br rent at $2547. [1]http://sfist.com/attachments/SFist_Brock/SF-Infographic.png http://sfist.com/attachments/SFist_Brock/SF-Infographic.png [2]http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends/ http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent...
    - bherms 13y ago
      See seph's comment. I took that from a heatmap I saw not too long ago on avg 1br prices in each neighborhood. I'll link if I locate it again.
kingkilr 13y ago
I don't know if it's common, but it is definitely possible to save money while making 100k in SF.
jurassic 13y ago
I think this is normal everywhere in the US. I expect this has little to do with SF and more to do with the fact that many people all over the country, regardless of income level, are living far beyond their means and lack the discipline to make saving a priority; the US average personal savings rate has fallen to 2.5%. But what percentage buys cable tv, smartphones with data plans, auto loans for more car than they needed, etc? http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt
- lotharbot 13y ago
  People in the US don't do well at saving. But SF is still abnormal -- you need a considerably higher salary to have the same quality of living + savings in SF as compared to many other cities. For example: elsewhere in this thread it was stated that a one bedroom apartment runs $2500+ in SF. In my neighborhood, a decent one bedroom apartment might run $700. Sure, you might earn $90k instead of $100k, but you save twice the difference just in rent.
neilk 13y ago
It is very common. But it's also the lifestyle that forces this. I was continually perplexed at how all of my colleagues seemed to be able to afford to go to all these conferences (not always on company dime), buy the most expensive coffee, upgrade their bleeding-edge laptop the moment Apple puts out a new one, and so on. I figured out later that they just weren't saving or investing any money, and often were even accumulating debt despite their high salaries. The culture of always being at work (or at least seeming to be) is a factor too. More and more of your meals are eaten outside the home. A lot of people use cleaning services. Some people feel they need to do all this to keep up. I'm not sure they're wrong. When I pulled out a three-year-old iPhone, people gawped at it, like it was the Ark of the Covenant or something. I lived in a district which was not the Mission or SOMA and people acted like I lived off the edge of the world.
- jrockway 13y ago
  You're forgetting how much money people outside of San Francisco spend on their car. That makes expensive coffee, eating out, and computer upgrades look like pocket change.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    I dunno. In other places, Teslas are an unusual site. I can't commute three miles without seeing one or two each day. BMWs might be more ubiquitous than Toyotas here. To be fair, I'm not in the city, I'm on the peninsula.
kelnos 13y ago
I'm not sure if it's normal, but I can at least offer my own anecdotal experience: I'm a single guy who's been out of school for almost 10 years, living in SF for the past 3 years. I make a bit more than the $100k figure you're asking about, but if I were to adjust my income down, I'd still be saving ~35% of my take-home pay every month. And this is including eating out 8-10 times a week and going out to bars 3-4 times a week. I've since paid off my college loans, but while I was paying them I was tossing close to $1k at them per month while maintaining my savings rate. I'm not frugal, but neither am I a crazy spender either. At this point I've developed enough of a cushion that I could take 2-2.5 years off work if I wanted to. So it's definitely doable. I think as another poster commented, it's more about priorities than ability. There's certainly enough to do here and spend money on that you could spend all your money with nothing to save, but you'd have to work at it. Especially for someone working in tech and making 6 figures, living in SF and not saving is a choice, and by no means a necessity.

bherms 13y ago

Very happy he enjoyed the city! Next time he's in town, I'll be sure I'm following his twitter to remain informed. I'd love to buy him a drink. While there is a lot of crappiness in the city, it really is a melting pot (not as much as 10-20 years ago of course) of motivated, friendly people.

michael_miller 13y ago
What forces do you see bringing together SF as a melting pot? I've only spent a small amount of time there, and with a very small subset of people, but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry). I absolutely agree about the motivated, friendly people part. There's definitely a "pay it forward" culture in the tech community which you can feel in the atmosphere.
- bherms 13y ago
  but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry) That's why I said "not so much as 10-20 years ago". It seems like our community is actually destroying what made SF so special in years past. That being said, while a majority of people coming in are fairly well-off 20-something tech industry kids, the fact that SF prides itself as being an "anything goes, something for everyone" kind of city helps to bring out the quirkiness and eccentricities of people who otherwise would've never found that side of themselves. In addition, if you look in the right places, you will find a ton of the goofy oddballs that made SF such a special place.

bifrost 13y ago

> The coffee is very different than the Italian one I've heard this many times :) His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the peninsula will get families and SF will get DINKs.

MaxGabriel 13y ago
"Dual Income, No Kids" (I had to look it up)
spikels 13y ago
Not a great place for raising a family: expensive, bad schools, disfunctional government, drugs on streets, and lots of crazies[1]. Pretty much everyone I have ever know who had kids in SF moved away within a few years. The demographics always reminded me of China where you did not see as many girls because of the one child policy. In SF children of both sexes (10% of population) are just missing: Persons under 18 (2010 Census) US 23.7% [2] SF 13.5% [3] [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pse50YZsyck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pse50YZsyck [NSFW: male nudity & mild violence] [2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html [3] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html
- antirez 13y ago
  The census citation is pretty incredible indeed... About schools, that's something you could never tell just looking at the city that seems very civilized, and this usually correlates with quality of schools. I hope there will be efforts to fix that in the future.
  - bifrost 13y ago
    I hope they fix the school situation, but its unlikely. There's a reason why SF is listed as one of the least well run cities in the world.

austinz 13y ago

I was reading up on Catania (the city from which he hails) and it looks like a beautiful place - very different from SF, but still having a large number of tech companies.

david927 13y ago
The nearby town of Taormina is awesome.
- weston 13y ago
  I can confirm both: Taormina and Catania are gorgeous, amazing cities. The whole island of Sicily is also a wonderful place to visit.... I highly recommend it!

jamesjguthrie 13y ago

I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck, there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really that high, it probably won't be a good idea.

arkem 13y ago
This is very specifically about the San Francisco city area. The peninsular and south bay are much more suburban and family friendly. Palo Alto isn't a lot cheaper that San Francisco it has a reputation as being much more family friendly and has some good schools. Also, Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunny Vale, Santa Clara are all more affordable and family friendly than San Francisco. Disclaimer: I'm a single guy with no kids, so what would I know?
michael_miller 13y ago
The schools in Palo Alto itself are very good. Palo Alto HS has an excellent reputation amongst people I know. It's a bit of a pressure cooker, as everyone in the school has parents in the tech industry who care about education, but the quality of teaching is great. The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will require some sacrifices.
- ryandrake 13y ago
  Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income: $5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr salary I could see that for a very, very senior and specialized engineer working at one of a handful of companies, but that's probably double the norm in the 'Valley for your average 5-10 year experienced engineer. Not to mention having to have $200,000 in cash for a down payment sitting around. Even if you saved as much as $1,000 a month, it would take you over 16 years to build up such a down payment--for a STARTER home!

ladon86 13y ago

What a sweet and good-natured write-up. It's not cynical, and you can feel a positive outlook on life and people throughout. It's an outlook that's probably very helpful in being productive and happy generally.

stefantalpalaru 13y ago

Sounds like a guided tour with no real exploration of the city.

antirez 13y ago
Well it is, in the sense that, no exploration is really possible in three days full of meetings, but something can be captured walking on the street, talking with many people, most also not native of SF exchanging stories. I just tried to turn my feelings into a blog post without any special goal.

swang 13y ago

First I am glad this is not another post about how many homeless people he saw and how he cannot believe it and how people in SF should fix these problems. Thinking of the areas the author was around (Nob Hill, SOMA, FiDi) he is probably not going to see many families. You'll definitely see way more strollers and kids if you head south to Noe Valley or head north to Pac Heights.

jechen 13y ago

On one hand, you have people earning six figures fighting for the dwindling, ever inflated supply of conventional housing options, and on the other, you have people like Nadia Eghbal who display the utmost resourcefulness and manage to live in SF for $20k a year (http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-francisco-on http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-...). Really goes back to what pg says about being relentlessly resourceful. In the end, if you really want to get settled in SF, all it takes is some persistence and a healthy network. (I moved here when I knew next to no one and managed to find home at a coliving space called Startuphouse for most of last year; not only was my stay free but it gave me a fantastic network on which to jumpstart life here.)

tommaxwell 13y ago
Haha, I stayed at StartupHouse for awhile before they got shut down by city officials.
lnanek2 13y ago
Haha, yeah, I stayed at the StartupHouse a bit too. It was great being right in the middle of the city and being able to walk a block for groceries or tech meetups. Got a lot of coding done too! Too bad someone filed a complaint and got it shut down. I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling. The most I've ever paid for that is $2000/month in the center of SF. Dropped down to $1000/month in the southern hills, which was still an easy BART/bus ride into downtown. East Palo Alto was $600 a month, but you had to take a bus to the Caltrain to get anywhere. Currently staying in Walnut Creek on the BART for $1000/month. I only ever rent month to month, so could get way cheaper buying longer too.
- baddox 13y ago
  > I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling. That's fair enough, and describes me when I moved to SF straight out of college. It's probably also fine (even necessary) if you're a student or bootstrapping your own startup. But I've only been here two years, and it didn't take long for me to get sick of having a home situation that's in many ways worse than when I lived in my college's dormitory and significantly worse than my last two years of college living in a one bedroom apartment. With no lack of great and lucrative career opportunities in the area, I wish I didn't have to either live like a starving college kid in a house packed full of starving college kids or spend 20 hours a week searching for an affordable studio apartment in a tolerable location. Although I've actually been hearing good things about Oakland...

physcab 13y ago

San Francisco truly is a wonderful city, all things considered. I'm currently traveling throughout Europe and while I'm having a blast seeing how another portion of the world lives, I'm more thankful than ever I can call my home SF. It has temperate weather, is relatively clean, Napa, Stinson Beach, and Pt Reyes to the North, Pacifica, Santa Cruz, Monterey to the South. Tahoe for skiing and summer fun is 4 hours away. And if you are craving more warmth, just have to cross over a bridge or two. There are awesome dog parks complete with doggie ice cream. There are endless amazing restaurants. There are enough singles to keep your dating life occupied for months. And there are fun festivals nearly every weekend. Every neighborhood has something different and unique to offer if you keep an open mind. I've also found that people are incredibly family oriented, not because they have families of their own, but because their families live 20-30 minutes away. You also experience different cultures and homelessness -- something which many people go to great lengths to hide. But IMO it keeps the city grounded and humble. Yes, SF is expensive. It has cost overruns and mismanagement. But I have yet to meet people (in person) who seriously dislike where they live.

agilebyte 13y ago
When talking about singles you mean men right?
- colmvp 13y ago
  Yeah seriously. The number of single women I meet in SF is for whatever reason vastly disproportionate to living in other cities in the United States, like New York or Los Angeles.

danmaz74 13y ago

"UK people are especially hard for me to understand, and I guess the opposite is also true. Fixing the language if you don't practice it is either impossible or requires a lot of time, probably I'll star to travel more." One very enjoyable way to improve at least understanding spoken English is to watch movies and (if you like that) tv shows. BTW, I agree that UK pronunciationS are much more difficult to understand (I wonder if that's only true for Italians, or for other foreigners too).

keiferski 13y ago
My guess is that foreigners are used to hearing American English from TV shows and movies, and thus find it easier to understand.
- danmaz74 13y ago
  Until very recently, Italian people were only commonly exposed to spoken English through music - and there a lot of UK there. Almost everything on tv is dubbed here (and not long ago there was no almost :)
- kroger 13y ago
  This is true. As someone who speaks English as a second language living in London, I can understand both "standard" American English and "BBC" British English very well. The problem is that in a London alone you are exposed to all kinds of accents, including Queen's English, Cockney, Scottish English, and Irish. This video is a good example of how a Cockney accents sounds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjGNJ5JL8w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjGNJ5JL8w
- cmccabe 13y ago
  The UK was where English first evolved, and it seems like there is a lot more diversity in how it is spoken there. Fragments of older dialects that didn't win out still linger. The US was settled relatively quickly and there wasn't that much time for regional accents to evolve. There are a few recognizable ones, like the Southern US accent, but it's not as dramatic as something like a Cockney or a Scottish accent in the UK.

spitx 13y ago

kryten: Sounds like London, UK where I currently reside with three children... Does your experience of life in London in recent years (since around late nineties) reflect that of this writer? I think this is one of the few writers (on the topic) I've found balanced and non-alarmist. That's the reason I've used her piece to moot a point that has been posited by many others in a more judgmental and accusative tone. So I ask, is this what London increasingly feels like for secular, middle-income families and individuals? "Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim, with the majority of them young families. That is not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they never look me in the face. I recently went to the plainly named “Curtain Shop” and asked if they would put some up for me. Inside were a lot of elderly Muslim men. I was told that they don’t do that kind of work, and was back on the pavement within a few moments. I felt sure I had suffered discrimination and was bewildered as I had been there previously when the Muslim owners had been very friendly. Things have changed. I am living in a place where I am a stranger. I was brought up in a village in Staffordshire, and although I have been in London for a quarter of a century I have kept the habit of chatting to shopkeepers and neighbours, despite it not being the done thing in metropolitan life. Nowadays, though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are serving. They have no interest in talking to me and rarely meet my gaze. I find this situation dismal. I miss banter, the hail fellow, well met chat about the weather, or what was on TV last night." "In the Nineties, when I arrived, this part of Acton was a traditional working-class area. Now there is no trace of any kind of community – that word so cherished by the Left. Instead it has been transformed into a giant transit camp and is home to no one. The scale of immigration over recent years has created communities throughout London that never need to – or want to – interact with outsiders. It wasn’t always the case: since the 1890s thousands of Jewish, Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Chinese workers, among others, have arrived in the capital, often displacing the indigenous population. Yes, there was hateful overt racism and discrimination, I’m not denying that. But, over time, I believe we settled down into a happy mix of incorporation and shared aspiration, with disparate peoples walking the same pavements but returning to very different homes – something the Americans call “sundown segregation”. But now, despite the wishful thinking of multiculturalists, wilful segregation by immigrants is increasingly echoed by the white population – the rate of white flight from our cities is soaring. According to the Office for National Statistics, 600,000 white Britons have left London in the past 10 years. The latest census data shows the breakdown in telling detail: some London boroughs have lost a quarter of their population of white, British people. The number in Redbridge, north London, for example, has fallen by 40,844 (to 96,253) in this period, while the total population has risen by more than 40,335 to 278,970. It isn’t only London boroughs. The market town of Wokingham in Berkshire has lost nearly 5 per cent of its white British population. I suspect that many white people in London and the Home Counties now move house on the basis of ethnicity, especially if they have children. Estate agents don’t advertise this self-segregation, of course. Instead there are polite codes for that kind of thing, such as the mention of “a good school”, which I believe is code for “mainly white English”. Not surprising when you learn that nearly one million pupils do not have English as a first language. I, too, have decided to leave my area, following in the footsteps of so many of my neighbours. I don’t really want to go. I worked long and hard to get to London, to find a good job and buy a home and I’d like to stay here. But I’m a stranger on these streets and all the “good” areas, with safe streets, nice housing and pleasant cafés, are beyond my reach. I see London turning into a place almost exclusively for poor immigrants and the very rich. It’s sad that I am moving not for a positive reason, but to escape something. I wonder whether I’ll tell the truth, if I’m asked. I can’t pretend that I’m worried about local schools, so perhaps I’ll say it’s for the chance of a conversation over the garden fence. But really I no longer need an excuse: mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all." Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I-feel-like-a-stranger-where-I-live.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I... Edit: Cleanup

Yhippa 13y ago

This story reminds me of my most "San Franciscan" experience. I was lucky enough to spend a weekend at Mark Hopkins InterContinental and pretty much the entire time there were protesters yelling things (peacefully of course). One of which was: "Mark Hopkins, you're no good; treat your workers like you should". I went down and talked to the guys and got to hear their side of the story (fighting for minimum wage concessions for the workers there). What a cool city to be a geek in. Where else can you see more billboards for web browsers and video games than you can for lawyers and liposuction?

codex_irl 13y ago

I love the bay area, nothing else to say.

ryanSrich 13y ago

Eh. They can keep it. • Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2] After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a year. For me it would never work having 2k per month in student loans. Also compare that to a place like D.C. • Average engineering salary in D.C. : 105k / year [3] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $1,392 / month [4] After taxes you'll have around 68k / year - 17k / year for rent That's 51,000 per year. About 11k more per year and a place that is significantly less expensive to live in. That can really make a difference and you may miss out on being in sf but you're in a large city with a healthy tech environment none the less. 1.) http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-Francisco,-CA.html http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-Franc... 2.)http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_fra.php http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_... 3.) http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washington+DC http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washing... 4.) http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa=8872 http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa...

lobotryas 13y ago
You are forgetting the weather. DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking. SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it. This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Personally, I'm unable to imagine myself going back to east coast weather ever again.
- stplsd 13y ago
  "...every day, hot and sunny, today, hot and sunny, tomorrow, hot and, for the rest of the... hot and sunny, every single day, hot and sunny. And they love it. "Isn't great, every day, hot and sunny?" What are you, a fucking lizard? Only reptiles feel that way about this kind of weather. I'm a mammal, I can afford coats, scarves, cappuccino and rosy cheeked women" Bill Hicks

meerita 13y ago

I want a SF job but work remotely from Barcelona. I'm willing to travel 1 a month :). I know the pains of work and live there, it looks amazing but all my friends told me the same: it feels artificial. I like Europe, with their pro/cons.

pfarrell 13y ago

I moved to the Bay Area, with my family, 8 months ago. We tried to make SF work (and did live in temporary housing in SOMA for three months), but SF is not a place for young children (unless you are beyond financial constraints). I commute to SOMA every day from Rockridge. Rockridge is nice, except for Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force! All the tech things antirez outlined are true, but the reality is, it took some commitment and blind faith to move out with a family and no friends or contacts. Its like moving to another country :). There is more of everything in SF (bay area really), success and destitution, beauty and ugliness, brilliant people and charlatans, opportunity and desperation. I'm loving it, but it's a balancing act.

Throwadev 13y ago
Can you elaborate on lack of police? Have you been affected by the crime in Rockridge? I thought it was a pretty decent area the last time I visited.
- dontAgree 13y ago
  No he's just being a typical transplant and talking out of his ass.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - dontAgree 13y ago
      No need to fear. The plebeians who worship HN will downvote me into oblivion to stick up for their fellow transient brother from flyover state Nowhere, USA.
  - pfarrell 13y ago
    Don't down vote the parents comment. He/she's right!
  - hyperbovine 13y ago

ef4 13y ago

Regarding the hotel gym: the most likely reason you couldn't find any free weights is America's penchant for lawsuits. The hotel's lawyers and/or insurance company probably insists on less "dangerous" fitness equipment.

wpietri 13y ago
Do you have some specific citation? I've seen plenty of hotel gyms with free weights. And any real gym has them, even though they face similar liability concerns. I can think of a number of other reasons that hotels would avoid free weights. Fitness machines need less tidying, are harder to steal, are more friendly to novices, and look fancier to people looking at the hotel brochure.

VeejayRampay 13y ago

British people are really hard to understand. The way they make whole syllables disappear is nothing short of black magic.

threedaymonk 13y ago
American people are really hard to understand. The way they pronounce "can" and "can't" the same, and the paucity of vowels in their phonemic inventory (cot/caught and Mary/merry/marry) is most perplexing. (Which is another way of saying: that to which one is unaccustomed is difficult. British people understand each other perfectly well, and some of us even find American English a bit difficult to understand out of familiar contexts.)

lelandbatey 13y ago

I quite like the writing style, and I'm thankful that the author took the time to write this all down! Hopefully this isn't taken as offensive, but I wanted to read this in a less plain-text way, so I've mirrored the article here with full attribution: http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68 http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68 It's just a bit easier on my eyes, I hope that's alright.

corresation 13y ago

Enjoyable read, however the notes about the hotel gym were a bit strange to me. I may have a insufficient sample set, however I've never seen free weights in a hotel gym, beyond a couple of low weight dumbbells. Certainly no one doing deadlifts, and I can't imagine a hotel dealing with that.

corford 13y ago

Just out of curiosity... I assume the waiters, waitresses, receptionists, taxi drivers etc. of San Francisco are not all on $70K+ salaries? And if the answer to that is yes, how do they manage to make it work? Either there's a lot of #firstworlproblem esque moaning going on in this thread or taxi drivers in SanFran are the best paid cabbies in the world.

bretpiatt 13y ago

Salvatore, the author, is the lead developer on redis, very interesting perspective on a visit to SF from Europe for a person that is globally connected. He met up with a good crowd one night: http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-Meetup/events/123141892/ http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-Meetup/events/1231...