10 ms·

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 a

• 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
    • mattdeboard 13y ago
      That's the thing though, on the peninsula it's NOT always hot and sunny. Sometimes it is, but mostly it's close to perfect weather. 70s, 80s. Sun. That said though real estate there has gone absolutely berserk, not worth the weather.
    • philsnow 13y ago
      Did Bill Hicks say this of SF ? LA ? California in general ? Starting around San Mateo and going north from there through the city all the way to Sausalito (and probably beyond), there are numerous microclimates. It's not at all like the LA that I know.
      • serf 13y ago
        he was saying it about Los Angeles, when making fun of LA types. He was performing (as he did nearly half his career) for a British audience.
  • philsnow 13y ago
    in SF, summer is often colder than winter. I've never lived in DC, but - presence of good chinese food - weather (even though I love winter weather, DC summers would not be worth it) - jobs (which companies have large presences in SF vs DC-area) all conspire to make me completely incurious as to whether DC is "$11k/year" nicer than SF.
    • rosser 13y ago
      Exactly. SF is expensive, but it's going to take a hell of a lot more than ~$1k/month disposable income for me to give up what that amount buys me in quality of life — for, admittedly, my definitions of "quality of life"; YM, as always, MV.
    • gyc 13y ago
      DC, especially in the suburbs, also has very good Chinese food.
      • seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Ya, I think parent hasn't been to DC before.
      • ahoyhere 13y ago
        And, as much as I hate DC, all kinds of other foods, including really great Ethiopian and Moroccan. But not good sushi (back when I lived there 7 years ago).
    • baddox 13y ago
      > in SF, summer is often colder than winter. A common misconception, even among residents, easily debunked by paying attention or doing a quick Google search: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate http://weatherspark.com/#!dashboard;q=san%20francisco http://weatherspark.com/#!dashboard;q=san%20francisco
      • philsnow 13y ago
        SF itself has even more fine-grained microclimates than the peninsula (which only has a few). I didn't (immediately) find out how the wikipedia climate numbers were assembled nor what weather station(s) weatherspark gets data from, but if it's a single weather station, the data gathered is nigh-useless. weatherspark looks very nice btw, I'm going to go look if they have an android app.... seems there isn't one. oh well.
  • skwirl 13y ago
    I suppose this outlook is related to where you grew up. To someone from the north, referring to DC as cold and snowy is preposterous. They had one bad year with snowfall a few years ago, but other than that winter they rarely even crack 10" in recent years, and even that usually comes over only a couple of days during infrequent storms. Their mean temperature is above freezing every month of the year.
    • paul9290 13y ago
      On average in and around DC we see a blizzard every six years. The last awesome snow filled winter we had was the 2009 to 2010 season. We accumulated up to 80 inches of snow; fun stuff! San Fran weather is awesome, the amount of homelessness makes me sad though!
      • Dewie 13y ago
        > San Fran weather is awesome, the amount of homelessness makes me sad though! It bums you out?
      • paul9290 13y ago
        Ive lived in Baltimore, Philly, NYC and Nashville and never encounter the culture of homelessness that one experiences in San Francisco. I know part of why it's like that is because of the weather. Besides being bummed out by being surrounded by destitution the smell of destitution is just as bad.
  • ryanSrich 13y ago
    I grew up in Syracuse NY. The snowiest city in the U.S. I don't consider D.C. to "have" winters. They have a mild falls until spring.
    • dripton 13y ago
      I've lived in Syracuse. DC gets what Syracuse would consider a real snowfall about once every five years. But when it happens, everything shuts down. Not enough plows. And terrifyingly bad snow drivers.
  • eli 13y ago
    The DC winter is pretty mild. There is perhaps one snowstorm a year. Yes, sometimes there's ice on your car, but if you live and work in the city there's a good chance you don't drive to work or necessarily own a car. If you want to complain about DC weather, I would direct you to the heat + humidity level in the summer. SF and DC are very different cities, but based solely on weather I would absolutely take DC + $11,000/year. No question. It's really not that bad and some people even enjoy having discrete seasons.
  • justanother 13y ago
    To add something to this discussion: On my South Florida tropical island, rent is 1500-1900 per month, depending on whether you live on a canal, or waterfront (nevermind living on dry land, which is much, much more reasonable). For most of a decade, I've telecommuted and received, well, let's round it down to the San Francisco 119K per year, and yes that's W2, and paid 22.8K/year a month for rent. Snow? Ice? haven't seen them in years. Jackets? Surely you jest, I shiver at 73 degrees. My point isn't that San Francisco is worse than this or that, but that every day I read that it is the center of the universe, and recruiters used to tell me "but you _have_ to be here, this is the place to _be_" which is terribly unconvincing for persons of my particular persuasion, nevermind that I don't care for wading through bums and traffic. TL;DR it's a huge universe, and you don't have to put up with California to develop software in it.
    • tsotha 13y ago
      You read San Francisco is the center of the universe because there really is a network effect for software development. Companies looking for a bigger pool of talent to draw from relocate to the area, post jobs, and bring in yet more developers. On your South Florida island can you find someone with ten years of Cobol or five years programming 12F675s? If I started a company there, how many people could I hire that have solid experience in Scala? Not "I played around with it after work" experience, but real experience?
  • Dewie 13y ago
    Having more money is pretty much objectively better, while more distinct seasons is personal preference, to a degree.
  • jusben1369 13y ago
    SF people have to stop quoting the weather. The summer's are miserable with fog. It's as annoying as snow or sleet.
    • rdouble 13y ago
      It's never very foggy east of Fillmore street, even in the summer. YMMV but SF weather is only miserable to people from LA.
      • jusben1369 13y ago
        SMH. You know you're drinking the Kool Aid when you try and go neighborhood by neighborhood. SF is terrible, Oakland/Berkeley better but not much (Berkeley gets nailed by the finger coming straight in from the GG Bridge) If you grew up somewhere else where summer meant putting your coat away for 3 months then "Two blocks over here the wind is still biting but the sun is out" isn't much of a consolation. Now, if you hate heat, as some do, then it's wonderful. I just think SF has a fantastic climate April/May and Sept/Nov. Folks need to realize though that there are big trade offs living there. No beach and always needing to have warm clothes if you leave your house for more than a few hours in case the fog comes in.
        • rdouble 13y ago
          I don't know what you mean. The microclimates there are just a fact of life. The sunset is going to be cooler and foggier than the Mission simply because of the topography. Berkeley and Oakland are actually 10 degrees warmer with only occasional fog all year round. The whole area gets like 300 days of sun per year. I just wonder where people are from when they say that the bay areas weather is "terrible." It seems highly relative. For reference, I've lived in Minneapolis, Tokyo, Tucson, Atlanta, Boston and NYC and thought SF's weather was better than all of those places. They all had at least one season where it was miserable to be outside.
          • jusben1369 13y ago
            Given we're talking about the weather some of this is in jest. And you've somewhat turned this around as "what do you mean the weather is terrible". I was objecting to the "the weather in SF is fantastic!" crowd who blow by Mark Twain's keen observation. Places I have lived for more than a year include the Bay Area, Boston, Melbourne Australia, Istanbul, Chapel Hill, London. I found the fog to be very annoying as I had to manage to the weather constantly there.
  • tlrobinson 13y ago
    The weather is one of the worst things (that and high cost of living) about San Francisco (the city itself, not suburbs). There are maybe 3 weeks a year of actual warm, sunny weather. But you don't get the cold/snowy or hot/humid weather either. Now, if you live 30+ minutes outside of San Francisco, you can have great weather and slightly lower cost of living.
  • hoov 13y ago
    Some people find seasons preferable. I plan on moving back to Boston for that reason alone. The lack of seasons in SF makes me feel like it's Groundhog Day. I'd gladly take some snow in exchange for the other seasons. For me, summer feels much better after a long winter.
  • baddox 13y ago
    I grew up in the Midwest, where we had all the seasons and often fairly bad summers (old people die if their air conditioners fail) and winters (can't leave the driveway without 4WD). Still, in San Francisco, I am personally uncomfortable due to weather far more often than I ever was in the Midwest. This is due primarily to the lack of air conditioning in housing (I have bay windows constantly open and a fan directly on my desk and bed, and am still almost always hot, often to the point of having difficulty sleeping for long stretches in the late summer), the lack of air conditioning in my office (an older building in the financial district), and being improperly dressed outside due to the lack of predictability in the weather. I really dislike San Francisco's weather, not because it looks bad on paper (it obviously looks great), but because it causes me discomfort much more frequently than I was used to in the Midwest.
    • acchow 13y ago
      It sounds like you could significantly improve your standard of living by buying an air conditioner...
      • baddox 13y ago
        Most apartments and shared houses I've seen and both the ones I've lived in had no easy way to install an air conditioner.
• jcdavis 13y ago
  The rent comparison isn't exactly fair - you are looking at the rent in the city of SF vs the entire Greater Washington area. There are certainly cheaper places than SF to live in the Bay Area. Also, almost all apartments in SF proper have rent control meaning that rent pretty much never goes up.
  • GeneralMayhem 13y ago
    You can find apartments for that much in DC proper. Maybe not the average, but certainly present. And it gets better even staying on the Metro lines out into NOVA and (more so) MD.
  • eli 13y ago
    $1,400 isn't going to get you your dream apartment, but it's a reasonable budget for a one bedroom apartment that's in DC and not in a bad neighborhood. It's also pretty common to live outside the city and commute in on Metro (DC's Metro is built more like a commuter rail than a urban subway system).
    • upquark 13y ago
      I wouldn't say 1.4k is a reasonable rent in DC, not in my experience at least. Not even if you move out to the nearby suburbs.
      • eli 13y ago
        I agree that it's below average for a one bedroom in DC, but apartments do exist at that price. I've lived in DC for 9 years and I've never paid more than that. (Granted, my wife is a wizard-level Craigslist user.) I think the tricky part is that there really aren't many apartment buildings in DC to begin with, aside from the recently built and very overpriced luxury condo conversions, so the supply of one bedroom apartments is low. If you can stand to have roommates, you're much better off with a 2 bedroom English basement or a 3-4 bedroom little rowhouse.
        • 13y ago
• wpietri 13y ago
  As somebody who has lived here for 13 years, let me strongly agree. This is a terrible place and nobody should ever move here. Also, if you have friends living here, ask them to come home. (Let's see if that helps with the average rents.)
• usaphp 13y ago
  Are you sure that the average rent for 1 bedroom is $2,700? I lived on Market street in a studio apartment with a pool and a gym in our building and I paid only $1500, that was couple years ago tho, but I dont think that the average rent is $2,700...sorry
  • veemjeem 13y ago
    I think you need to look around again. Prices have increased dramatically over the last two years. I have friends who landed a cheap place in SOMA for $3600. They were the ones who used the word "cheap". If you glance at craigslist, the majority of the listings are above $3k. All the cheap apartments are outside of SF-proper.
  • ryanSrich 13y ago
    From the company who did the estimates: > "is based on averaging all of the data points from each neighborhood, not the average prices of the neighborhoods." Here's the application they're using --> https://www.zumper.com/sf https://www.zumper.com/sf 1.) 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_...
  • liveinoakland 13y ago
    key phrase: "couple years ago" welcome to rent increase 30% in last two years... SF is a disaster and incomes aren't rising to keep up with this. these "high" tech worker salaries assume an outdated rental market.
  • baddox 13y ago
    People would kill to pay $1500 a month in the tiniest studio apartment possible anywhere in the city.
• kumarm 13y ago
  You can rent single bedroom for $1000 around multiple Bart stations and save 2000 more/month with 30 minutes commute by public transport in SF.
• potatolicious 13y ago
  Your math is reasonably fair, IMO. That being said, the type of work being done in DC and SF is vastly different. I attended an iOS conference in DC a few months ago (I'm based out of NYC) and was shocked at how few "tech company" people were present. Nearly everyone was working for a government agency, a government contractor, or freelancing with a primarily government client-base. Personally I don't think I can do it. Nearly everyone I talked to came from gigantic, monstrous organizations (either private or public) with huge, massive layers of management. I might just die in that environment. At the end of the day, the spiraling cost of living in SF is a serious problem, and one that threatens the well-being of our industry if we can't curb it. Unfortunately, in the city being pro-development is almost as bad as pushing your grandma down the stairs.
  • ryanSrich 13y ago
    This is really the only reasonable dig I've heard against D.C. I guess I was lucky enough to land a public sector job at a software shop that runs much like the hip ones out west. They are here, just not well represented.
    • acchow 13y ago
      Have you worked in the bay area?
      • ryanSrich 13y ago
        Physically no. I've telecommuted for a few contracts and the structure of those companies appear to be similar to what I've been exposed to here on the east coast. I would imagine both have their fair share of differences and being there physically is, I'm sure, much different. However I find it hard to believe that the difference is so significant that it warrants surrendering financial gain.
  • hack_edu 13y ago
    Whoa-whoa-whoa hold up. The spiraling cost of rent 'threatens the well-being of our industry?' I say this as an engineer who's worked in the local industry during both booms and as a native-born "local." Sure, perhaps but only just like it does for every other industry besides fancy restaurants and cafes. Rent is too damn high and no one wants to pay it, and we seem to be the only ones who can. But lets get some perspective here. I'm willing to posit that the relative high rent prices has give our industry to greatest boost of all in town [quick edit: for clarification if everyone is pushed out and only tech workers can move in, does that not just create room for more founders? Not at all arguing that wasted money is good]. This city is still the Gold Rush, always has been. People move here with the dream to make a ton of money and have a good time, most likely moving away after <10 years when they get serious about family. This city is fueled by alcohol and general hedonism, which is fun! San Francisco is an awesome place to live, and people want to live in it. Tech workers move in to town and push everyone out, blah, blah, blah -- but its true, for better or for worse. Top talent not only wants to work in the Bay Area, but are also so often willing to throw away everything to live in San Francisco. The Valley down south has been there for half a century, attracting the best and brightest in the world. Its only now, with this Second Boom's influx of new businesses into the City Proper and the realization company-provided motorcoaches to bust the commute, that the tech workers are really pouring into SF. We're the only ones who can afford to live, so we stay here, working more and founding more businesses. If the price continues to go up (mark my words, no more than 30% above now), rather than be threatened, the industry will slowly spread out to the periphery. What is startup-rich Soma was urban blight during the 90's, the periphery. I'd be the first to argue that urban development is good, especially when done effectively (not the conversion of existing rental space into high-HOA condos), and quickly (unlike commercial real estate development in Soma and South Beach). Just realize that we are the kings of this age of this city, and we are the last ones who would be at threat, especially when you can just move East or South and ride the comfy bus in to work. tl;dr Nothing threatens tech but the drying up of capital to be invested in new business. Rent and/or supply is far, far down on the list of even those potential threats to the SF tech industry.
• hnriot 13y ago
  Hogwash. You don't need to spend that on an apartment.
• Spooky23 13y ago
  I live in a smaller place that isn't very exciting, but I make a SF style salary and pay $1,300/mo for a 4 bedroom house in a residential neighborhood. My office isn't a table with 4 rock stars and a dog, but the company will be there in 10 years too. A good friend moved out to SF and loves it. He's mid twenties with no family, and living in sublets for 3 months at a time is fun for him. I probably would have dug that 20 years ago, but doing that now, with the prospect of moving to some lame suburb and commuting 2 hours when I start a family isn't so appealing to me. In other words, most people do what works for them, today.
• deleted 13y ago
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• trapped 13y ago
  Why do you have to live in SF? You can live in SJ/MV and save more than half on rent. You can use BART/Caltrain for commuting. Life is great in Bay Area doesn't matter if you are staying in SF or in other cities in the Bay. I seriously don't the understand whats so special in living in SF. I do commute to SF on weekends whenever I want and on weekdays for work.
• dcgwu 13y ago
  Dc is primarily made up of takers, Sf is filled with doers. Don't mistake the fed govt parasite contractors for true hackers, it just ain't so.
• thufry 13y ago
  I'd gladly give up that $11K three times over to live in San Francisco instead of DC. And, looks like other people would too, hence the ridiculous rents here.