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

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

#321

Post by josh_carterPDX »

pmoriarty wrote: post #272
josh_carterPDX wrote: post #143

As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, but moved to Portland about three years ago, I can tell you there is a stark difference in ecosystems. However, if you are a young up-and-coming programmer coming out of school, it makes complete sense to move to the Bay Area. If you're an Actor you move to L.A. to get your big break. If you're a programmer, you go to the Bay Area to work for a big firm that will help build you…

I considered moving to Portland, until I read about how a big earthquake would pretty much completely wipe it out: http://www.oregonlive.com/earthquakes/index.ssf/2015/07/the_...

Meh. I was in the Bay Area during the 89' quake. I'm not terribly worried about what would happen here. I remember hearing "the big one" was coming for the past 30 years.

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

#322

Post by imesh »

Mz wrote: post #312
yarou wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it comes down to culture. The culture of the South Bay is relatively non-existent outside of small pockets like Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Mountain view, and maybe Santana Row. It's geared toward raising kids and family life in general.

I am having enormous difficulty parsing that comment. I have tried to just let it go, but I am failing at that, and I am seriously struggling to reply in a way that does not sound like snark. Could you clarify what you mean? Because it sounds like either you are saying "Culture only exists in tiny parts of certain places, no place else in the South Bay even has a culture" (which is utterly nonsensical) or maybe you a…

A culture of people with no kids doesn't sound like a real culture to me.

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

#323

Post by wyclif »

madengr wrote: post #302
eganist wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DC I'm assuming you've never paid us a visit :( DC literally has the second largest mass transit system in the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_tr...

Assuming they can keep it from catching on fire or de-railing. I'm happy to be out of NOVA/MD/DC.

I lived in Vienna, VA for a while, so I'm pretty familiar with all the failings of WMATA. And there are many. But...and it's a big "but", if you've lived in any major non-coastal city in the US you might think that DC's Metrorail is at least a public rail system, which is better than many cities have.

It's sad that in the US, you have to take what you can get, and the reasons why the US doesn't have good public transportation have been discussed here ad nauseum, so I won't even flog that dead horse again.

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

#324

Post by linkregister »

bcheung wrote: post #132
ammon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT I incorrectly multiplied the tax rate to the salary difference, and said that this was a 5$ difference. This is totally wrong (as multiple people point out below). I'll leave my original embarrassing comment as a cation to not write stupid things :) == I just added in a mention of the tax difference. But the numbers are 13.3% in CA vs 0% in WA. That's significant, for sure. But 13% tax on $33k is about $5k. I do…

Where are you getting 13.3%? Most likely a software developer is going to be in the 9.3% bracket. And it is also a graduated bracket system so you are only paying that 9.3% on income over $51K. See https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator On a $150K income you are going to be paying an effective rate for CA around 7%.

You're omitting MediCal. It ends up being about 13% (marginal) after it is added.

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

#325

Post by komali2 »

sporkenfang wrote: post #314
padobson wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on what you want to do. If programming is programming and programming is just a job, then you can do that anywhere there are programming jobs, and with so many companies offering remote work, that could be anywhere. But if programming is what you intend to bring as a founder - if it's simply a means to get the burning ideas out of your head and into a product, then there's a much smaller number of p…

What if I'm working on a side project, don't want VC funding (or any sort of loans), and just want to build organically? I can find people who can program and can program well in almost any place on the planet. There are a shitload of Russians and Chinese cleaning up at things in the software engineering domain. There are a shitload of people writing all kinds of good and bad code everywhere. Even if I wanted to foun…

If you can afford to pay a couple Chinese programmers this isn't a bad idea. You run the risk of your code just vanishing and a eerily similar Chinese product appearing a few months later, but depending on your financial situation you can be a sole funder in that case.

Not that I have anything against using out of country programmers, but it's a fact that China does not strongly enforce copyright and does not go out of its way to protect foreign businesses. I don't know about Russia, India, South America, etc, I'd be curious about anybody that's done this sort of thing before. Tim Ferris always talks about it for things like running his support and returns and whatnot.

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

#326

Post by Spooky23 »

josh_carterPDX wrote: post #143

As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, but moved to Portland about three years ago, I can tell you there is a stark difference in ecosystems. However, if you are a young up-and-coming programmer coming out of school, it makes complete sense to move to the Bay Area. If you're an Actor you move to L.A. to get your big break. If you're a programmer, you go to the Bay Area to work for a big firm that will help build you…

It's always expensive to chase the hot thing. If you're an average joe, SFO is that thing that is best avoided.

I'm living in a median cost market in an expensive state and live like a king in comparison to someone in my job (senior tech role) in SFO, although my salary is 50% less. I won't be working for Google anytime soon, but I don't need $500k to live in the lifestyle that I want for my family.

If you want the northern CA lifestyle, wait for the real estate cycle to bust and save some money in a normal place.

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

#327

Post by smsm42 »

Rapzid wrote: post #211
caseysoftware wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your premise but I suspect your numbers are a bit off. Regardless, whether it's 2 years or 3 years, to do the lifestyle you're suggesting takes and incredible amount of willpower to be willing to sacrifice and prioritize. It's passing up that cell phone upgrade. It's cutting discretionary spending to zero. It's passing on happy hour and bringing lunch every day. While feasible, it's hard.. but suffering…

It's worth pointing out that is just for the down payment. If you want to get ahead in life you need to be "saving" that much and more every year. And oops, your expenses just shot up dramatically because now you're a home owner.

BTW everybody knows about mortgage payments/rent but many forget about property taxes you have to pay as a homeowner. That's about 1.5% of your house purchase cost every year. Of course, there are tax deductions for that but even after them it's still non-negligible chunk of cash on homes approaching $1M.

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

#328

Post by pedrosorio »

mr_pink wrote: post #195
nostrademons wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes about 2 years to save up $100K on a typical Bay Area engineer's salary, if you're fiscally prudent. Figure that $150K/year after taxes is about $110K/year, and live on $60K/year. That's eminently doable even in the Bay Area. The problem is that $100K is a very low estimate for a down payment in the Bay Area these days. Most people I know are getting parental help to put down $500K down, because with housing…

> It takes about 2 years to save up $100K on a typical Bay Area engineer's salary Have you actually done this? Know anyone who has? This seems completely implausible, outside of some extreme frugal lifestyle cases (I'm talking "eating garbage dumped by grocery stores" level frugal)...

Single person $150k gross pay (salary, stock, bonus). $94k net pay according to this: http://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/salary

Not being very frugal:

  - rents $2000K/mo 1BR apartment (single but wants some comfort in the Peninsula, no hellish commutes from East Bay)
  - transportation $200/mo
  - free lunch (and possibly dinner) at the company - eating out and groceries $300/mo
  - entertainment $200/mo
That's $2700/mo. Let's round it up to $3000/mo because you're a well paid software engineer and can spend $300/mo on top of what I listed whenever you feel like it.

So far, $36k expenses + $50k savings and you still have $8k left to go on ski trips to Tahoe, Outside Lands and other non-frugal lifestyle expenses.

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

#329

Post by linkregister »

nostrademons wrote: post #258
mr_pink wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paycheck calculator shows me that $120K [1] in CA leaves you with $6,220 after-tax monthly income. If you really made about as much, and managed to save ~$5.5K a month, then you spent only ~$660 a month, which is just impossible, sorry. Even if you're sharing a 1BR with several roommates, which, by the way, is not really an option for many. [1] Googling "average software engineer salary california" shows figures rang…

It was 2009-2010, so rents were lower, but my paycheck was lower as well (I started at only $100K/year base, compared to the ... well, much higher amount a few years later). After taxes and 401k, I netted $5400/month. 18 months encompassed 2 bonus cycles, so about $40K of that was bonuses, after tax. My rent was $900/month with roommates, and then $1400/month in the 1BR, and total monthly expenditures were about $2K.…

Thanks for sharing your numbers.

You must admit that $40k bonus after tax is a huge, atypical amount of money. It makes your effective yearly income to be about $156k.

It reminds me of the mrmoneymustache.com guy, saying "anyone can retire early! Just look at me, all I had to do was get $1M in stock from Cisco!"

No disrespect intended for you; I'm sure compared to some of your friends you lived frugally. The point I'm making is that to duplicate your living standard today, very few comparable developers would be able approach your level of savings.

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

#330

Post by rconti »

stephencanon wrote: post #242
rconti wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, when I saw "nicer", I sure as hell didn't expect it to be followed by "New England". Fortunately, there's a region for everyone, but man, as someone who moved out of Seattle for better weather, New England would be a huuuge downgrade.

New England weather is way better. No moody fog and light drizzle bullshit. Glorious sunny days, brutal winter storms, etc. To each their own =)

Don't forget the humidity :)

But, I left Seattle because of the dreary weather I suffered from my whole life, so I understand.

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