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Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

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Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#151

Post by ksenzee »

retbull wrote: post #139
vertis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visited Seattle for the first time yesterday (from Australia). I have to say that unless you start paying me off I'm going to start promoting it. The people were super friendly. The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). The food was great. Even the roads were easy to deal with I do take bitcoin.

NOOOOOOO. Don't tell anyone. It is terrible here and there is lots of sadness from all the rain. I hate Seattle. Seriously though F * 405 traffic. The new "Toll route" is a nightmare and now everyone is using side roads making my drive to work from a quick 10 min jaunt into a 25-30 min parking lot.

My 167+405 commute is ~75 minutes. I have to admit I'm glad the toll route doesn't extend down my way or I'd be tempted to use it.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#152

Post by gricardo99 »

I recently turned-down a great job offer for a Bay area tech company. Their office was just too far outside my commute range. I even offered to remote-work part-time and be in the office some days a week (I had already been a 100% remote worker for 3+ years, so I had a proven track record as a remote worker). But the founder insisted everyone be on-site, daily, even though many aspects of the company were quite comfortable and capable with remote-work (they had a remote team in Europe).

This "must be colocated" mind-set is lose-lose no matter which way you cut it. I turned down a compelling/interesting job, the company lost a great-fit. If I had taken the job, burdened with an absurdly long daily commute, we both would have lost time/productivity to commuting (not to mention the broader societal costs).

Maybe it's going to take a billion-dollar startup to scale-up with a remote/distributed approach to really shift things.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#153

Post by nvader »

dragonwriter wrote: post #121
jusben1369 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is running with your Seattle humor but your comment on IPO'ing is worth discussing. 1) The reason a startup is appealing is because you're supposed to make a great low 6 or even 7 figure sum once your company goes public. 2) To achieve success you're supposed to work intensely hard and smart (@pmarca) for a short period of time (3 - 7 years) and then if you've picked successfully you'll create a really nice…

> One would hope your stock is appreciating in value at an equivalent or greater pace than your income. OTOH, hope is not the same thing as reality. Some startups will exit successfully and yield really big payouts. Some startups will have modest exists, and equity will have some additional value, but nothing to write home about. And some startups will fail. If you are a capital investor in lots of startups, the smal…

I love the mental image evoked by a startup piñata because it is so deep with symbolism: blindly swinging away at a brightly-painted papier mâché dream, hoping for the outpouring of sweets by sheer random luck.

Hopefully people are putting a little more thought into their career choices than that, but piñatas are definitely fun, and you're surrounded by your friends shouting encouragement and direction at you all the while. So while I'm positive that life isn't as bleak as this image conveys, I'm still going to borrow it to use in the future!

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#154

Post by mooreds »

jkestner wrote: post #56
WalterSear wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those things that is a great idea until it isn't. When your employer goes belly up, in SF, you have to fight off job offers. That's not going to be the case elsewhere. It's also much harder on the employers: if you think finding one good job is hard, try hiring an entire team of decent employees at once. Ultimately, it's worth the extra cost of staying where the tech is, prefixing your city name ala 'S…

It's not like those other cities are tech wastelands. You'll be able to find a good job. Maybe it won't pay as much as a city where you're being fought over, but then, it doesn't need to.

I had multiple clients (I'm a developer and a contractor) who had job reqs open for months at a good pay scale and had a heck of a time finding people in the Boulder Denver area.

I think that the tech frenzy is great enough that people are fighting over tech folks in other areas--maybe not as violently as in SF, but still fighting.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#155

Post by mikestew »

aianus wrote: post #127
vertis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visited Seattle for the first time yesterday (from Australia). I have to say that unless you start paying me off I'm going to start promoting it. The people were super friendly. The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). The food was great. Even the roads were easy to deal with I do take bitcoin.

> The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). Seattle from October through January is nothing like this. I literally didn't see the sun for over 20 days straight at one point (it's foggy and rainy non-stop during the winter).

20 days, huh? Must have been a mild winter.

Smart-assery aside, yeah, Seattle has awesome summers, albeit mighty short some years. November comes, you better head down to the NorthFace outlet and get a GoreTex jacket or two.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#156

Post by saryant »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #147
saryant wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegas, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta...

I'll give you Denver, definitely high quality of life in Colorado. Not Vegas, most definitely not Texas (save for Austin), not Phoenix, and Atlanta is nowhere near friendly unless you work from home and never need to get into a car. Chattanooga is good, Nashville is good (but getting pricey), lots of space and smart people in North Carolina (Asheville or Raleigh Durham Research Triangle Park). I've heard good things…

I lived in Houston and San Antonio for several years. I grew up in the Bay Area and I now live in Boulder. I've also lived in Wyoming and France.

Having sampled a fair number of places, I can safely say quality of life in Houston and San Antonio is far better than people on HN believe.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#157

Post by rconti »

azakai wrote: post #136

The reasoning here seems wrong. Yes, > "the rule of thumb is that you shouldn't spend more than 30% of your monthly take home on rent", as they say, but that's just a rule of thumb. What actually matters is how much money you end up with. For example, assuming taxes remove 30% of income (probably close enough; would need to look up federal and state tax codes to be precise), 1. A Zynga employee makes 147,000, loses 3…

Indeed. The cost of living is a powerful multiplier as long as you don't overspend. The same car is that much cheaper in a high COL area, you can contribute more to your retirement, and so on. The problem with living in a low-COL area is, even if you save a very high % of your income, you're "stuck" and unable to move somewhere cheaper. There's a reason New Yorkers retire to Florida. You have options.

That doesn't mean it works for everyone, but do your own numbers and make your own decisions.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#158

Post by autobahn »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #38

I love these high salaries. My thought is to find a job in SF, live there temporarily for 3-6 months, then become remote and move back to my real home on the east coast. Is that feasible? Aren't these kinds of companies pretty comfortable these days with video conferencing, IM, screen sharing etc.?

no. Telecommuting was a pipe dream of the 90s.

Some people do it, but at most companies the "butt in the chair employee is best employee" thing still sticks.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#159

Post by meatysnapper »

aianus wrote: post #127
vertis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visited Seattle for the first time yesterday (from Australia). I have to say that unless you start paying me off I'm going to start promoting it. The people were super friendly. The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). The food was great. Even the roads were easy to deal with I do take bitcoin.

> The weather was great (two days of sunny blue skies). Seattle from October through January is nothing like this. I literally didn't see the sun for over 20 days straight at one point (it's foggy and rainy non-stop during the winter).

That's nothing. In 1998 (I'm pretty sure) Seattle had 96 days of light drizzle with nary a ray of sunshine. The suicide rate went up massively, and I decided to move to CA as soon as I had the means.

Re: Employees at Airbnb, Square and Stripe Are Spending 50%+ of Income on SF Rent

#160

Post by balls187 »

roymurdock wrote: post #61

I always see articles like this and I wonder...who is winning here? I'm waiting for an article to break out the stats on who owns which property in these types of areas. What % of housing is owned by the government, foreign investors, domestic investors, institutional investors, real-estate holding companies, and the actual inhabitants of the property? For all we know, the whole story could just be that tech companie…

Commercial realestate owners, and the companies that serve them.
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