Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

Never thought of it that way. Percentage of income consumed by state and local taxes, housing, etc compared and average gross income would show the whole picture.

The article is poorly argued.

Paragraph 2 -- if you pick a winning startup (uber, etc) then the bay area is great! Well, yes. The problem is picking that winning startup, and really, if you're good at that, stop wasting your life as an engineer and go invest money for a living. We shouldn't expect eng to be able to pick better than vcs, and their hit rate isn't great.

It also uses pre-tax salaries, not after tax salaries, where Seattle has a large advantage; even at $120k, you get $5k more in cash in Washington state. Which may not sound like much, but you should view it not as 5/120 but as 5/80 (roughly your take-home pay).

The discussion of housing (where exactly is that sub $800k housing in sfbay) ignores commute times and costs. Sure, if you want to live in outer sunset or east bay and deal with horrid commutes, there's cheap housing. If you want to live within 30 minutes of work, housing will likely be much more expensive.

The author also pays no attention to the effects of having to reset your social network / family to exploit moving to sfbay, banking the higher salary, then moving away. That's a large price to pay if your plan is to get to your mid 30s then move elsewhere. And hard to achieve buy-in from significant others who may similarly not be stoked about losing all his/her friends.

And finally, it finishes with a discussion of the two most generous employers, google and fb. Who, yes, are generous but also not representative.

    > username: rememberlenny

What about Lenny? You aren't referring to "Lennie" from Of Mice and Men, are you?

Investors diversify their portfolios by investing in a number of startups and also in more reliable investments like well-established companies. You can't treat a job that way - there's no way to diversify the hours of day into several different companies with different risk levels. What the author describes is gambling. You bet all your resources (time, in this case) on one horse and hope it pays off big. That's not a good strategy. If you want to "invest in startups", then do that. Use Republic or start a VC. Don't gamble on a single startup and lie to yourself that it's an investment - treat it as a gamble, and only bet as much as you can afford.

It all depends on your own situation.

I, myself, moved from the Midwest to a very high COL East Coast city 7 or 8 years ago. My salary has pretty much doubled, though I imagine at this point it is about $40K more than I could get back home.

But I live very frugally, and I have saved a lot of money. The plan is to soon get out of here and buy a nice place somewhere cheaper (South or Midwest) with cash and not worry about making the same salary.

OTOH, I think many people end up losing out financially in places like NYC and SF. If your salary is only $40K more than it would be in Omaha, after taxes, you're probably looking at only $30K. If you rent a typical corporate apartment, you're probably now underwater.

I think we're going to start seeing more and more people refusing to move to SF, NYC, and DC if salaries don't allow similar lifestyles as $20K less in middle America.