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Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers
- lexicalscope 12y agoI'm curious if the salaries include stocks and other compensation - my stocks are a large portion of my compensation package, and I work for a major company, not a startup. It makes me wonder if this might skew more in favor of west coast, where (I think?) those compensation schemes are more common - as where I'm at, those numbers all seem really low compared to what most people I know make.
- tgeo 12y agoBased on the sources I used, they would probably not includes those extras (unless they self-reported them at glassdoor.com I guess).
- sgk284 12y agoThere is a lot of selection bias in the type of people that post on those sites. The salaries are almost always deflated. Software engineers making $200k+ aren't posting on indeed.com.
- dbenhur 12y ago> The salaries are almost always deflated. Really? Last I looked self-reported numbers tend to be _inflated_ compared to govt collected figures (from tax returns and payroll reports). My intuitive understanding of this is that people being underpaid tend to not want to brag about it, even anonymously.
- nhstanley 12y agoI don't know what the truth is either, but sites like Glassdoor are specifically designed so you can find out if you're being underpaid, and let others know they're being underpaid. So intuitively it could go the opposite as well. People who think they're getting underpaid report, and people who are clearly not ($200k+ crowd) may not. It would be really interesting to know, though.
- johnward 12y agoI agree. The salaries seem inflated compared to talks with co-workers. If I look within my own company and even within my own company+city+job title Glassdoor is way to high. Honestly the most accurate numbers we get are probably from the H1B visas because they are required to be reported by the employer but I don't know how that correlates to pay of national citizens. I guess the best way to know if you are underpaid is applying for other positions and see what kind of offers you get.
- notahacker 12y agoThe salaries are probably pretty accurate for people that need to look at job boards to figure out whether they'd be best moving to a new company or city though. If you're in the relatively small subset of software engineers eligible for roles paying north of $200k, the opportunities to radically improve your disposable income and lifestyle are searching for you.
- pjc50 12y agoStocks are extremely hard to value until you IPO, though.
- bbody 12y agoVery in depth, nice work OP!
- tgeo 12y agoThanks, I hope it helped.
- baddox 12y agoIt is nice a cost of living discussion that looks at total discretionary earnings rather than useless metrics like percentage of income spent on rent+food.
- nhstanley 12y agoWhat would "Extra Discretionary" look like for SF?
- alandarev 12y agoYes, I missed the SF entry too.. Though, it will very likely be on par with NYC.
- s3nnyy 12y agoI think averaged adjustments for cost of living are senseless as this is quite individual. Let's take me as an example: I manage to live modestly but well on around 1000 CHF (1050 USD) in Zurich while making around 6400 CHF (6700 USD) in net-salary. I am a junior software engineer hacking on Python in a SMB. (Full disclosure: My company is hiring; feel free to reach out to me at iwang{at}fastmail.net. Also, my experiences working in Switzerland can be found here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" http://goo.gl/EIX4UX http://goo.gl/EIX4UX)
- tgeo 12y agoVery true. Different individuals have their own spending amount. I tried to use a reasonable average when adjusting the salaries but if you are far away from average, then your own calculations will be different.
- davidw 12y ago> I think averaged adjustments for cost of living are senseless as this is quite individual. Well it's a base to work from. If it costs, on average X for Y things, and you know you are happy with about half of Y, then it'll still be cheaper to live in Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma, than in central London.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoI remember saving lots of money in Switzerland because it was too expensive to actually buy anything. When that frappechino costs 8CHF, you think hard about getting it (now it's probably even worse!).
- zerr 12y agoLast time I was researching, good enough flat (with 2+ bedrooms) in Zurich costs 4K+ CHF per month.
- paddyzab 12y agoIn Zuerich maybe, I rented 3.5 room apartment in Adliswil for 1.970 CHF last week. Close to nature, and for me close to office since my company in in Binz. Moved away from crowded Berlin, no regrets.
- joshAg 12y agoIs that itemizing the CA taxes or just taking the standard deduction? The rule of thumb in CA is if you make more than $100,000, your state taxes are larger than the standard deduction.
- tgeo 12y agoOP here. Good point, it is definitely using standard deduction.
- joshAg 12y agowell, based on the ADP site, that's about a $3k difference in annual state tax vs. standard deduction for CA, so I don't think that changes things too much, but good to know for someone like me who's already here in san jose.
- tilly132 12y agoExcept cities aren't really fungible. If you like big cities, then NYC may be the best place to live regardless of salary. If you like the outdoors, then maybe another city. If you are raising a family, then maybe you want to be in a quieter area with good schools. If you want to be in a tech hub, then you should be in Silicon Valley. And if you have a spouse, that is all adjusted by their needs and the industry they work in. On a software developer's salary, you'll get by regardless of what city you live in, so you should be choosing the city which suits your personality and your stage of life.
- eitally 12y agoCities aren't fungible, but on the other hand, it can pay benefits to live in a city where there is a plethora of opportunities just in case you need to find a new job.
- timbuckley 12y agoWhich, in this line of work, happens to be just about everywhere.
- tsotha 12y agoOn a software developer's salary there are a whole lot of cities in which you'll have to live like a student if you have a family.
- kushti 12y agoNice! Would like to see similar rating for Europe. From my experience, Prague could be the leader.
- davidw 12y agoVery nice work! I'd love to see it expanded and "opened up" in the form of a Google Spreadsheet or something else where people can plug more cities into it.
- SwellJoe 12y agoI suspect the cost of living data for Austin trails reality by some significant margin. The sources don't indicate the age of the data, but even if it's only a couple of years old, it's going to be wrong by enough to be a factor. I have lived in Austin for a couple of years, and also lived here (and owned a house here) about 8 years ago. The cost of homes here has gone up tremendously since then. I was shopping for a house a few months ago, and was simply unable to buy one; those in my price range wouldn't accept my offer because it wasn't an all-cash offer (despite being $5000 or more over the asking price). Investors paying cash are buying aggressively here, driving up prices. Rental rates have risen at an even faster pace. Certainly, it's cheaper here than in Silicon Valley. Five years ago, I was paying $2145 a month in rent for a house a couple of blocks from downtown Mountain View. Today I'm paying $1690 a month for a house quite far outside of downtown Austin and on the east side; renting in downtown is not an option, even at $2000+ a month. Apartments are somewhat cheaper, and buying a house is still notably cheaper than Silicon Valley, but the gap has been closing rapidly. In short, Austin has grown incredibly fast in recent years, and the real estate market hasn't been able to absorb that growth in anything like a reasonable manner. So much so that I'd be shocked if the graphs in this article still reflect reality for Austin.
- nugget 12y agoTremendously is relative. Austin and SV real estate prices are not close at all. High property taxes keep home prices lower across almost all of Texas. Austin prices are limited in their 'irrational exuberance' upside since there's no way to finance a property tax bill and existing homeowners start to suffer. California is the opposite with low tax rates and proposition 13 covering existing homeowners - perfect conditions for price speculation.
- GnwbZHiU 12y agowhat's the difference between engineer & developer ?
- mathgeek 12y agoOne's called an engineer, and the other is called a developer. The difference is supposed to be that an engineer works more in the design of software than the developer, who works more on the implementation. In reality, the difference is rarely that concrete and generally the two are interchangeable for many people in the middle of the overall bell curve.
- collyw 12y agoHas anyone done something similar for Europe or other parts of the world?
- ldng 12y agoYeah, I'd love to see the said for London, Paris and say Brussels and Madrid. I'm pretty sure we'd have surprises (or maybe not ...)
- disputin 12y agoThis doesn't have developer salaries, but might be of interest. Edit: Forgot the link: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/ http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/
- ldng 12y agoBut precisely, that's the interesting part. For instance COL in Madrid and Barcelona are similar yet salaries in Barcelona are lower. It's kind of the point of the article, crossing COL data and salaries after taxes. COL alone in itself gives a hint but it's not enough.
- wallflower 12y agoI remember once meeting an old high school friend in NYC. He was hanging out at one of those non-descript but unfathomably loud bars. Some of his coworkers stopped by. The conversation switched to the car one of them had bought. A Lexus SC430 convertible. He was complaining about how he never got to get out of The City and drive it enough. They were all super-sharp CS graduates working for one of the most successful hedge funds in the world. My point with this story is that if you are making way above the median salary in NYC ($200k+ range at the time, this was 10 years ago) - the world is just different. You are making enough money to enjoy one of the top cities in the world. With the $125k-$140k salaries some software developers report making, they are barely getting to "enjoy" living in NYC. Finance has distorted the baseline of what it means to be successful in NYC. I mean, my school friends' coworkers were 2-3 yrs out of Harvard and talking about the travails of $80k car ownership like it was an Accord. Software salaries outside of Fintech and top-tier companies like Google and Facebook and a handful of others in globally attractive cities are the equivalent of middle class in the burbs. You're doing OK but you're not going to be relatively 'really doing well'. In a city like NYC, there are more than enough free events to overwhelm anyone. However, in San Jose, what do you do? Hang out on the Palo Alto main drag? Check out the size of the dogs being walked near Central Park. Where do these people live?!
- msutherl 12y agoMeanwhile, living in the 'burbs' is the cultural equivalent of living in Siberia as far as I'm concerned. I spent < $20k last year and had a great time in New York.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoSan Jose is not hurting for nearby recreation oppurtunities, though you often need a car to access them. On the other hand, try a city with hot/humid southern weather like Atlanta or even Dallas or Huston...there is a reason they have high obesity rates.
- wallflower 12y agoI wonder if Uber 2025 will ever be cheap enough to make not having a car in the burbs almost a mandatory requirement. Last time I was in the area my aunt took me to the Los Gatos creek trail. Like someone else commented, cities are not fungible. Maybe Richard Florida is right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Florida http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Florida
- CmonDev 12y agoSuggested title change: "American Cities with ...". Not everyone lives in Murica.
- crimsonalucard 12y agoMost of the cost is from rent or housing. If you lower that cost by living more minimally, San Jose may still be the best place overall in terms of discretionary spending.
- briandear 12y agoYou could say the same about Austin. If you lower you costs in housing, in Texas you'd pay less in property taxes, so you save twice (more discretionary plus a lower tax bill) In San Jose, it doesn't matter how cheaply you live, your income is still taxed at the same rate and things still cost the same. And the cheapest San Jose place would still be far more expensive than the cheapest Austin place.
- pavanred 12y agoOne thing I have noticed during a recent job search - I used the cost of living calculator from bankrate.com[1], relocation from city A to city B from wolframalpha [2] and the salary information available on websites like glassdoor, indeed and salary.com to get an estimate of a par salary at different locations for a particular position. In these websites, I noticed that indeed.com has extremely optimistic estimates of the salaries for most positions when compared to glassdoor or salary.com, so much so that I stopped using data from indeed.com e.g. here are the salaries for a software engineer in Chicago, IL - glassdoor.com ( avg $74,426 ) [3] - salary.com ( median $62,257 ) [4] - indeed.com ( avg $114,000 ) [5] Even when verified by converting the par salaries from 2 different locations using bankrate or wolframalpha the indeed estimates were quite high. Since, the author used data from glassdoor and indeed, I wonder how accurate the analysis is considering the underlying data from indeed isn't necessarily accurate. [1] http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-calculator.aspx http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-l... [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=relocating+from+seattle+to+miami+with+a+salary+of+$35000 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=relocating+from+seattle... [3] http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,7_IM167_KO8,25.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software-engineer-... [4] http://www1.salary.com/IL/Chicago/Software-Developer-I-salary.html http://www1.salary.com/IL/Chicago/Software-Developer-I-salar... [5] http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-Chicago,-IL.html http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-Chicago,-...
- bradfa 12y agoThere's probably a huge difference in salary ranges for someone with minimal experience and someone with lots of experience, and this isn't even counting if you're really good or just mediocre. Personally, with 10 years of experience, if I was to move to Chicago right now, I would expect to make more than $114k due to the highish cost of living. There's no way in hell I'd move anywhere to make $74k, let alone $62k per year.
- hackerboos 12y agoThings like schools, healthcare, crimerates and public transport should be added.
- briandear 12y agoThe original poster was addressing costs versus salary.
- archagon 12y agoFYI, something about this page is bringing my iPhone 5S to a crawl. Safari routinely stops responding for 10s at a time. Is it the graphs?
- sferik 12y agoI’m curious how Europe’s tech hubs (specifically London, Paris, and Berlin) compare to U.S. cities. I suspect Berlin would compare quite favorably, despite the relatively high German tax rate. I moved there 18 months ago and currently pay €500 ($565) for a one-bedroom apartment in a nice part of town (Prenzlauer Berg). In San Francisco, I paid 5X that for a studio apartment in Hayes Valley.
- kokey 12y agoI would say Berlin would look good, cost of living there is decent mainly due to the reasonable rental costs and good transport, and the demand and job mobility that has improved a lot there. Dublin also wouldn't rate too badly. London would probably look more like New York.
- ilghiro 12y agoI wouldn't be surprised if London came out bottom. Anecdotally, salaries are lower and rent higher as compared with both NY and San Francisco. Taxes are obviously higher as well.
- notahacker 12y agoGlassdoor suggests "software developers" or "software engineers" in London earn around $60k, which would put it far below the salaries listed here. In the absence of the COL index for the UK we can use the "London living wage" - supposedly a baseline for a minimum acceptable standard of living[1] which translates to £18k (a little under $30k). The tax paid on the amount earned in excess of this living wage is around £7k (<$11k) That would leave around $19k of savings or "discretionary spending", actually slightly better than NYC and Portland despite the low salary, but based on what is almost certainly a much less generous view of essential costs of living. [1]Since it assumes dependents it's quite a generous minimum standard; indeed excluding tax payments from the equation I've never spent more than it whilst living in London on substantially higher income. But it's also almost certainly less generous than the COL assumptions for the US cities.
- theRhino 12y agoan international version of this would be good
- omegaham 12y agoIs this for the city proper, or does it take an average of the suburbs, too? I live in a suburb of Portland, (Hillsboro) and I live a perfectly decent life making about $44,000 a year before taxes. I'm also young and don't have kids, but I would happily commute half an hour into Portland if I had a job in the city. It's not that bad of a drive as long as it isn't during rush hour.
- jkot 12y agoHow about Chiang Mai or other city with large digital nomad community?
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoYou won't be pulling in any local income in those cities (all work would be remote, you would be dodging thai taxes on income taxed in a western country), so it wouldn't be a very realistic comparison.
- jkot 12y agoNot really: http://www.rd.go.th/publish/6045.0.html http://www.rd.go.th/publish/6045.0.html Also there are many people who are permanent and pay Thai taxes.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoYes, but if your income is usa sourced but you are working in Chiangmai, both the thai and U.S. governments have first dibs on taxes, there is no tax treaty that can help you.
- jasonwocky 12y agoDecisions based on average (a/k/a "mean") salaries, however, are only relying on a small part of the picture. Personally I'd like to see standard deviations accounted for in here. I have the feeling that it is easier to make 1.5x to 2x these "averages" in some cities than in others, especially for people with experience.
- jessedhillon 12y agoAgreed. The other data I'd like to see is distribution of non-salaried incomes -- bonuses and equity. I have the feeling that SF and SV are the only places where you have a realistic shot of working for a company for 4-6 years and coming away a millionaire. In other places, it'd be base salary, maybe a bonus, and that's it. For life. And if you ever have ambitions to start your own startup, would you want to be in Atlanta?
- smrtinsert 12y agoThey should've added Washington DC and Boston to this list.
- iopq 12y agoLooking at SF would be very interesting since being in the bay area I have the choice of both SJ and SF
- Murkin 12y agoCan someone explain the numbers, I see averages of $100K/year for developers and then keep hearing of freelancers raking $150-$200/hour ($300K/year). How can this be ?
- xianshou 12y agoBoth of those rates are real (I have, in fact, had exactly that salary and charged exactly that rate at different points in my career), but freelancers don't make $300k per year in any but the rarest cases. Part of their pay derives from the volatility of their work. Freelancers don't work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week - they work on whatever schedule they can according to the volume of projects they pull in. Generally, the total number of hours adds up to much less than that for a salaried worker, so the overall pay would be comparable. Naturally, the range for freelancers varies much more widely, with the most active freelancers making serious money, and the least just scraping by.
- maaaats 12y agoIt's hard to make $200/hour for 8 hours a day. You will have overhead eating much of that away. Like time not spent working directly for a client, or lease for renting your office. So one can't compare those hourly prices to what an employee make per hour.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- johnward 12y agoCompanies pay benefits on top of salary. According to my company the cost for me is $208 per hour for "total compensation". I don't know how they come to that number but it seems unlikely. I generally bill out at about $100 more per hour. I make somewhere between 1/8 - 1/10 of that in actual hourly rate. The thing that really gets me is that I work salary but if I work over 40 hours in week they still considered that as a $208/hour loss even though they pay me nothing. Then I'm "over budget". Freelancers have to charge higher rates because of lack of benefits and because they can charge $200 per hour and still be cheaper than me. Freelancers have cost that aren't directly passed on in an employee relationship. You're also assuming all freelancers have 40 hours of work each week, which is probably unlikely. Now you have me dreaming of working 20 hours a week and making what I make now. Hell, I'd like to get to 6 figures in my 50+ hour per week corporate job.
- heydenberk 12y agoWould love to see Philadelphia included in such a calculation.
- geogra4 12y agoA shame Detroit was not included. Salaries are similar to Chicago and CoL is much lower, although probably not as low as Raleigh.
- coldcode 12y agoI would think people would pay to get out of Detroit.
- ctrager 12y agoI lived in Detroit until the mid 80's, now Chicago, but just went back for the first time with a touristic mindset. I met software developers from New York, Boston, and San Francisco who had moved TO Detroit and liked it. Detroit overall is as horrible as the media says, but the central core, which includes a big university, medical center, and downtown, is livable, bikable, and.... just cool.
- geogra4 12y ago..And we have fiber[0] 0:http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2015/02/22/dan-gilbert-rocket-fiber-internet/23838849/ http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2015/02/22/dan-gil...
- geogra4 12y agoWell, then you should come visit :)
- m0th87 12y agoI've lived in several of these cities briefly (Seattle, Austin), and a long-term (Raleigh, NYC). If you can put up with the car culture - which you have to if you want to live outside of NYC or Chicago - Raleigh is a great city. Very low cost of living, a burgeoning downtown night-life and cultural scene, and very warm, likable people. Austin has a much better downtown, but I'd be concerned about traffic moving there, which is not a problem (yet) for Raleigh.
- cjslep 12y agoRaleigh's location also opens up a lot of roadtrip options, too: It is just several hours from the nation's capital, the outer bank islands, the Appalachian Mountains, and "big city" events at Charlotte and/or Atlanta. When going to the mountains or beaches, there are the options of exploring something more commercialized (Boone, Wrightsville Beach) or more rural (Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Maggie Valley, etc).
- chucksmash 12y agoAtlanta is only 50 road miles closer to Raleigh than New York City.
- sb8244 12y agoMaybe it's just how I read this sentence, but I think "Raleigh is 50 road miles closer to Atlanta than it is to NYC" cleared things up for me. Regardless, that's a really interesting fun fact I learned today.
- eitally 12y agoThat doesn't mean 50 minutes closer, though. To get to NYC you have to drive up I95 through such fun spots as the whole DC metro.
- madcaptenor 12y agoI'm surprised to see this as well. Alternatively: by road, Raleigh is equidistant from Philadelphia and Atlanta.
- WhitneyLand 12y agoFor those that wish to own a home, make sure to consider property taxes. Texas has no income tax but very high property taxes at ~3% per year of home value. So a 350k house will add ~$900/month on top of a mortgage. SV has a much lower rate but you'll probably pay more than Texas in absolute terms because 350k houses do not exist there. Colorado is a nice balance. Home prices in between SV and Texas, but one of the lowest property tax rates in the country.
- tomkinstinch 12y agoHomeowner's insurance is also to be considered as a non-negligible fraction of the monthly cost of a house. When I bought a house in 2008 in upstate NY, I was moderately surprised to see that with taxes and insurance my monthly payment more than doubled from the amount I was to pay from mortgage alone (granted this was at a time with a historically low interest rate).
- steveax 12y agoHomeowner's insurance, or mortgage insurance? The former is cheap, the latter, not so much.
- johnward 12y agoHow accurate is glassdoor? If I look at my city, for my position, inside my own company it seems highly inaccurate. Either that or I'm paid half of what everyone else makes, which seems unlikely. According to this site indeed seems probably even more inflated. Then I can't figure out what the incentive to inflate your salary would be when reporting it to glassdoor unless companies are doing it themselves.
- justinsteele 12y agoIt's unlikely that it is inaccurate by that much. The company would not want to show higher salaries either (resentment). You are probably underpaid.
- s73v3r 12y agoIf your company doesn't have a lot of people in your position, or if you think you might be identified by your salary, then Glassdoor will fudge things a bit.
- imaginenore 12y agoTexas personal income tax is zero. That's a huge advantage. But then you have to live in Texas.
- tsotha 12y agoStates have to collect taxes somehow, and though Texas doesn't have a personal income tax, you pay through the nose in property taxes. And parts of Texas are very nice.
- jimktrains2 12y agoNo mention of Pittsburgh! We have a fairly low cost-of-living and decent salaries for tech.
- johnward 12y agoI was kind of looking for that too. Cost of living in this area is pretty low and the tech scene is growing. The only downside is you have to live in Pittsburgh and I actually like sunshine so I've been thinking of moving.
- jimktrains2 12y agoOur city isn't that bad! Though it does rain a good deal, and is cloudy a lot. That said there are a lot of amenities (museums, shows, groups, &c) and things-to-do, so we're not as isolated and dull as a lot of people I've met feel we are.
- johnward 12y agoI live in Ohio but work in Squirrel Hill. The city has transformed over the years and is a really nice place. The only downside is the weather. This time of year it's easier to complain about weather but we literally get some of the lowest amount of direct sunlight in the country. We basically have 2 seasons: 4 months of summer, 8 months of winter/grey. Other than that the area is ok. Where I live it's pretty depressing old industry towns with nothing left, but like I said I don't live in Pittsburgh.
- serve_yay 12y agoI'm from there originally, and I agree, but the weather really is a problem. It's terrible. I live in Portland now, an area renowned for its gray rainy days and lack of sunlight. And yet, it has been 50º-60º and sunny for nearly a month now. Whenever I check Pittsburgh it's hovering around 0º. It's really a shame because I love Pittsburgh.
- akgerber 12y ago
- xacaxulu 12y agoThis is something a lot of us have instinctively felt for a long time, hence all job action in places like Austin, Denver, Raleigh, etc. And I've worked in SF, Denver and Raleigh, NC enough to know the differences. If I can make 6 figures in both SF and Raleigh, the cost of living and quality of life are insanely better in Raleigh. I own a condo, a car and have tons of discretionary income. For the same type of work in the bay area, I'd have to contend with ridiculous rents, ridiculous taxes, longish commutes and increased expenses on food/misc items. These increases are not commensurate with the increase in salary that usually goes along with moving to the bay area. My actual income when adjusted for these factors is better than friends who make ~200k in SF.
- s73v3r 12y ago"If I can make 6 figures in both SF and Raleigh, the cost of living and quality of life are insanely better in Raleigh." The keyword is "if". Employers in places that say they're lower cost of living are more reluctant to pay the high developer salaries that one gets elsewhere.
- ild 12y agoRaleigh though is a still better deal (salary/COL) than say Portland or random place in Midwest.
- pXMzR2A 12y agoThis is happening more and more. WTF web devs? Me: Where are the charts themselves? Me: Oh, I'm using noscript. Me: Displaying PNGs now requires javascript.
- ph4 12y agoSorry, the trivial amount of people using noscript is simply unimportant to me.
- vinceguidry 12y agoThis attitude is, quite frankly, pathetic. People have no respect for their craft.
- gipp 12y agoAnd what about falling back to a verbal description of the chart for those of us on ELinks?
- vinceguidry 12y agoRespecting your craft means using the right tools and techniques for the job. Not caring about one group of users is no excuse for needing Javascript to display a chart. You don't use Javascript to display a chart because you don't need Javascript to display a chart. Render the chart server-side and use an image to display it. It's a static chart, it's not like the information is changing with every page load. To do otherwise is just lazy and disrespectful.
- camhenlin 12y agoI didn't actually look at the site that's being complained about but SVG charts are actually the way to go in terms of accessibility, and they can certainly be rendered client side (but maybe shouldn't be, as you say, if the data is static). Charts made this way definitely beat out an image with a description svg accessibility stuff (not my blog, just one I found after a quick search): http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2013/12/using-aria-enhance-svg-accessibility/ http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2013/12/using-aria-enhance...
- apaprocki 12y agoAnecdote: The "average" salary reported for New York is very close to the entry-level starting salary for college graduates at most large (names you've heard of) tech employers in NYC. Companies routinely check what each other are doing and adjust entry-level pay packages yearly to compensate for competition, inflation, demand, etc. which makes data from each successive previous year not as relevant for someone interested in making a decision now. I do not think it is hard to imagine that more senior employees that are currently not interested in another job do not have any incentive to report pay to these sites, particularly if their pay is higher than what the site is reporting. (i.e. selection bias) Related -- I believe the distinction between "engineer" vs "developer" being discussed here lately is less relevant than people think. Many people choose their own title when reporting information on sites used as sources in the article and companies may choose to post job listings using a completely different title. Even if the data could be traced back to an actual official title at each company, a large well-paying (or low-paying) company in a particular city could skew the entire number based upon whether they randomly refer to their employees as developers, programmers, or engineers internally. Similarly, a social trend to prefer "engineer" could skew all the anonymous reporting on these sites but actually had no bearing whatsoever in how salaries are determined. Given the noise in the data, I don't see how distinctions can be drawn from the outside.
- steve-howard 12y agoAgreed, the salaries on these sites are generally way lower than I expect. It makes me wonder if my current job is paying above market (and thus moving to another employer would be a significant pay cut) or if the data is really really wrong.
- k3oni 12y agoI am a bit surprised to see the salaries for Denver. For anyone leaving/working in Denver area is that on par with what you see? For some reason i was expecting Denver to be a bit higher on that list in terms of salaries.
- mattybrennan 12y agoWhen the final analysis results in 5-10k difference, I'm just going to live where I want
- totalrobe 12y agoWould be nice to see more SE cities in here like Atlanta, Miami/Ft Lauderdale, Tampa/Orlando, Jacksonville, Charlotte, NOLA, etc.. edit the software market is pretty hot up in DC/North Virginia too Salary/COL is typically high in the bigger SE metros from what I've observed growing up in the region.
- serve_yay 12y agoThat's true, however DC & Northern VA specifically are actually pretty expensive to live in. In fact, I would argue that they're not great places for a lot of devs, because the cost of living is high but you also don't get much in return for that COL - it's high because people in the region have basically guaranteed jobs between all the gov't and contracting jobs. Plus, all that gov't and contracting stuff is what the software jobs are. So sure, you can be gainfully employed writing AbstractFactoryFactories in some gigantic consulting firm. But overall, you're really paying for the job security of people in very different fields than you, and you will spend your off-hours surrounded by lawyers and gov't employees. I don't recommend it, but YMMV of course.
- totalrobe 12y agoAgreed on the COL in NOVA - I moved there recently from FL and regret it every time I pay rent, and can't even wrap my head around house prices. That's why I'm curious to see data from the Southeast and FL in particular. Also in NOVA you're paying for some of the best public middle/high schools in the country, which I don't care about yet but if I had kids would be something to factor.
- bglazer 12y agoMemphis here. The cost of living here is basically impossible to beat. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the city of Memphis, but I wouldn't dissuade anyone from living here either. The 'burbs here are indistinguishable from the 'burbs anywhere else. Within the city there are certain neighborhoods that are very bike/walker friendly. We have Shelby Farms, which is an urban park 5 times larger than Central Park. Memphis also has a lot of crime. In the poorest neighborhoods that manifests as gang-related violent crime. In the rest of the city we deal with a higher than average rate of property theft. Get a big dog (or a small dog with a big bark) and lock your doors and you'll be fine. Overall I love the city and I want to be here as it begins to recover from decades of mismanagement and overt racism.
- nilkn 12y agoIf more employers understood the value of distributed teams, this wouldn't even need to be an issue. You could live exactly where you wanted to live. Want a 700 sq ft studio in Manhattan for $3k/month? Great. Want a 2000 sq ft ranch home next to a river out in the country with your own garden? Done. Want to just save as much as you can, with a cheap apartment in a cheap town outside a cheap city? You got it. Maybe you even want that $600k suburban McMansion to raise your family in. That's not a problem either. Most readers are probably going to prefer urban environments, but that's because the demographic of software developers is somewhat self-selecting. When it's nearly impossible to get a job as a developer not in an urban environment, people who don't like urban cities are going to self-select out of the profession. The high achievers among them will instead choose to become doctors, dentists, lawyers, etc. -- careers that aren't so location restricted, despite ironically being far less amenable to remote work. I had some really smart and hard-working friends growing up, and all chose to go into careers of that nature simply because they didn't want to be forced to move to a big city.
- wahsd 12y agoVery good points. It has really been baffling me why, especially in an industry like tech, where products for distributed networking and communications are developed, companies are so hell-bent on co-location. I have my suspicions that it actually has to do with tax code and incentives to have corporate offices in expensive locations, but that's just an untested theory I have at the moment.
- slantedview 12y agoI can understand it to an extent - tech is a pretty creative field and creative stuff definitely benefits from co-location. But most of what the average tech worker does day to day is execution, and there's no reason one can't execute from a chair in Anywhereville just as good as a chair in Palo Alto. The irony about tech being so adverse to remote work is pretty thick, at least that's what my friends in other sectors who work remote with no problem tell me. Even companies who build tools to enable remote work often don't embrace it themselves.
- 12y ago
- thorntonbf 12y agoSelfishly, I'm glad to see that Nashville isn't on this list! Though I'd be interested to see how it compares. There seem to be a lot of cities that offer good talent with a great cost of living - sort of cities poised for a breakout. I wonder what kind of critical mass you have to have in other areas - i.e. concentration of tech talent, infrastructure, educational resources, etc... to really be a great tech community?
- atwebb 12y agoI was pretty surprised it wasn't there as well, though the COL has gone up significantly compared to what it was, it's still relatively cheap compared to some of the major hubs. Though judging by the plates around here, people have already figured out the cost difference.
- bengotow 12y agoHaha me too! I think that it's rapidly converging on Austin though. Getting more expensive every year, more condos going up, etc.
- tsotha 12y agoThere's definitely a network effect. And abundance of tech jobs draw in and abundance of tech workers, which draws in companies (jobs) looking for workers, which draws in workers looking for jobs... That's why you see municipalities failing at becoming "the next Silicon Valley" so often. It's not impossible for new tech hubs to form, but it's not as easy as you'd think by looking at CoL.
- michaelochurch 12y agoI would guess that New York is getting underrated, because in finance, once you get a serious, adult job, you're usually called something other than software engineer. "Vice President" is the typical title for someone of my age (31) even if you're a full-time programmer with no reports. Only at Managing Director (30-35 if you're lucky or good, 40-45 more typically) are you culturally expected to start having reports. I've heard of full-time engineers getting "Portfolio Manager", even if the job has little to do with managing a portfolio. So, I'd guess that there are a lot of high-paying full-time software jobs in New York (and Chicago) where the title is something like "Vice President, Technology" or "Quant Trader".
- coned88 12y agoNobody is getting VP titles and is still doing much programming. There would be maybe one VP per dept.
- Iftheshoefits 12y agoCost of Living is just one factor to consider, and everybody has different priorities. I discount the CoL "bonus" because of the generally poorer environment with respect to culture, public institutions like libraries and parks, and educational opportunities. I grew up and lived in the south for most of my life. With precious few exceptions I found it to be mainly a canvas upon which the bigoted (race, gender, sex orientation) and extreme anti-government types painted most of the landscape. You could give me 100% of my current salary/year tax-free in a high-yield/low-risk investment account and I wouldn't move back to one of those places. I may have considered it before I had kids, but not now.
- mkr-hn 12y agoMetro Atlanta might not be representative, but things aren't too bad for me here. I can get just about any book on the PINES system, and I find most books I want in the local branch's ebook loan program. There are several decent parks (Fort Yargo is the closest). Downtown Athens is a 30-40 minute drive if I need a higher dose of culture. Things used to be a lot worse, just ten years ago. Winder was a crumbling, traffic-choked hole. It's less crumbly now, and the traffic situation is improving. And the editor of the local paper didn't get run out of town when he endorsed marriage equality, so there's that.
- fndrplayer13 12y agoI still feel like Chicago developers miss out on being exposed to the culture of SV or Seattle. I've worked and lived in Chicago all of my professional career, and one of the intangible non-money aspects to this field to consider is how you grow as an engineer. If you love writing software, this isn't a very good place to work compared to SV/Seattle. There just isn't a very large or strong culture of software development here like there is in those cities. Also the tech scene here feels super small and tight knit. If you work for a startup here its hard to interview or talk to people outside your company without somebody knowing somebody from XYZ company who can get the inside digs on you. That's been fine for me in my career, because I think I'm a decent performer, but it makes things awkward when you want to move on.
- ild 12y agoAgree. Chicago is a great city experience for affordable price, but nothing compares to SV, even Seattle does not really match.
- forrestthewoods 12y agoNice. A slightly more useful analysis would be for a fixed, user defined, salary. Showing results for Glassdoor is pretty cool. But I don't care what other people make. I care about what I make and what I think I can make in particular cities. All the figures are pretty low for a senior engineer which limits it's use. Also, the chart that takes taxes into account is really cool. Super useful. People who move from Seattle to California know that cost of living is a big difference, but they don't properly account for state income tax! They often try to, but get the math wrong.
- s3r3nity 12y agoWould love to see Boston, Boulder, and Los Angeles added to the list for comparison
- encoderer 12y agoI look at these numbers as curve-fitting. If you want to rationalize why you stay in Austin or North Carolina or someplace, this is great data to do it with.
- eranation 12y agoWeirdly Atlanta is not on the list, but this is why I'm probably never moving to SF. Yes, all the cool jobs are there, but for what price? GA tech is releasing very high quality engineers and the startup scene here is great (Mailchimp and many others), and you live in a frikin mansion 10 minutes commute to work (if you live in Alpharetta). Tons of technical meetups and both thriving startup scene and established enterprise presence. West coast based companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon et al keep trying to offer me jobs in SF like it's obvious that this is where I would want to move, I really don't understand why they don't open offices in Alpharetta. Dead cheap office space, great talent pool, and if you ask me - awesome weather. and they will have to pay me 50% less than what they would in SF, and I won't have to switch my 3,500 square feet house (which is 10-20 minute drive to a myriad of tech companies) with a 2 bedroom and an hour commute to work
- madcaptenor 12y agoand you live in a frikin mansion 10 minutes commute to work (if you live in Alpharetta) Yeah, but then you have to live in Alpharetta. Would be nice to see more jobs ITP. I currently work for a large enterprise company, at an office in Roswell (our office was moved here from Alpharetta a few months before I started) and I see lots of people (including me) commuting up. I'm coming up 400 the whole way so it's not too horrible. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the people who have to use the east side of 285 (we have lots of people who live in or near Decatur) work from home a lot. Still, it beats living in San Francisco... I actually moved here from SF when my wife and I realized there was no way we could afford to settle down there.
- eranation 12y agoAlpharetta is great (if you are 35+ with kids) Not so great if you are a young couple before having kids and want to have some city action, I agree... I think that most ITP jobs are more tending toward younger startups, Rails, Python etc. Alpharetta is much more enterprise / Java / .NET, funny how your tech stack needs to change dramatically based on where you choose to live... I actually think the cooler jobs are midtown ;)
- 12y ago
- stevebot 12y agoIn Seattle, taking a 45 minute train ride can be the difference in 300K or more for buying a house. I wonder if other cities are similar?
- slantedview 12y agoIn the bay area you're pretty much screwed no matter how far out you go. But it's not just about cost of living, it's also about finding a place you can afford where you wouldn't mind sending your kids to school some day. That cuts the options down quite a bit.
- jdminhbg 12y agoSo... 1.5 hrs/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks/year * $80/hr = $30,000/year. Obviously those numbers are fudged in a bunch of places, but maybe it's not so crazy to spend $300k extra to avoid the commute?
- allochthon 12y agoThe distinction between "software developer" and "software engineer" seems like a spurious one. Almost invariably I've seen the two terms used as synonyms.
- _puk 12y agoThe whole piece feels like a reference to [0] Main comments on that one were the difference between software developer and engineer's salary, but also requests for the real cost of living. This addresses the latter. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9096002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9096002
- Navarr 12y agoI wish I could just plug cities into this thing and it spits out the same data. Would be an incredibly useful tool
- shanemhansen 12y agoSadly there's no data for Utah. Salt Lake City has an amazing ratio between software developer salaries and cost of living. 6 figure salaries are the norm for non-junior developers. According to trulia, housing is about half the price (450k vs 950k). It's hardly a technical wasteland either, historically or economically. Utah was the 3rd or 4th node on what became the internet. Alan Kay began research on what he would later call "object oriented programming" at the University of Utah. In the startup world Utah is number 7 when it comes to venture funding http://siliconslopes.com/blog/2015/01/19/utah-ranks-7th-nationally-in-vc-funding-for-2014/ http://siliconslopes.com/blog/2015/01/19/utah-ranks-7th-nati.... Personally, I've spent time working for a google venture funded Utah based startup. I've had multiple offers to relocate to areas like Sydney, Las Vegas, Seattle and they've never been able to beat Utah's salary to cost of living ratio. Also, having the world's best snowboarding and mountain biking is a perk for some of us. Of course the one thing that beats working for a Utah company and living in Utah is working remotely for Bay Area company and living in Utah. Win/Win.
- StudyAnimal 12y agoBe interesting to compare this to some Indian cities.