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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?

#341

Post by nostrademons »

linkregister wrote: post #329
nostrademons wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

It's over 2 years. $20K or so after tax per year. A bit over $30K pre-tax.

Not sure what typical bonuses are these days, but I don't think that's out of line for a big tech company. Certainly stock grants can be much more than that, but it usually takes more than 18 months for them to amount to anything.

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

#342

Post by seattlefreeze »

EdJiang wrote: post #283
jrm415 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you move to CA, you need to pay state tax on your entire earnings, not just your raise. 13.3% of 140k is more than 18k, which is certainly significant.

I believe you can deduct state from federal tax, which would save ~2.5% in marginal tax. In addition, social security phases out at ~120k so that's another 7.5% savings. So the difference is almost a wash if I understand correctly?

Don't forget about AMT. That usually throws a wrench in things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_minimum_tax

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

#343

Post by chrisper »

mwfunk wrote: post #291
chrisper wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is because I live in the South Bay. But here it seems that everyone is just going to work and back home.. and that's it. There is nothing else going on here, but work work work.

Whether or not that's true, your lifestyle isn't dictated by what "everyone" does, it's only dictated by what you do. I know lots of people who are workaholics or spend all of their non-work time with their families, and I know as many or more people with rich and varied lifestyles that go out and do stuff with friends all the time. It's what you make of it, like many things in life.

Sadly, what everyone does determines what is available to me. They are not going to create nightlife and other interesting stuff if there is no target demographic.

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

#344

Post by shawndumas »

linkregister wrote: post #329
nostrademons wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

not for the bay area; and really, that's the point...

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

#345

Post by saltyworker »

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…

I think to padobson's point, it's all about what you want to do.

There are certain restrictions that the Bay Area places on you, like how much money you need to earn, and a particular lifestyle you want to live, in a very specific industry. This is the same as someone going to Houston for Oil, NYC for Finance/Fashion, LA for entertainment, etc. People who live in those places have a particular set of goals - e.g. building big companies (vc or not), doing well on wall street, hitting it big in the movies, etc.

If you don't have those goals, then absolutely - stay where you want to stay. Work remotely. There is a ton of arbitrage in software dev right now, you can make a killing and live in really cheap places. You can literally live like a king. if that is what you want to do.

So it all comes down to your goals, and the Bay Area as a whole is self selecting in that way. If you want to do something more chill in software, that's great. We need more people making money writing code - it's great for the world economy. But you don't need to be in the Bay Area for this (unless you want to).

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

#347

Post by user5994461 »

nostrademons wrote: post #341
linkregister wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

It's over 2 years. $20K or so after tax per year. A bit over $30K pre-tax. Not sure what typical bonuses are these days, but I don't think that's out of line for a big tech company. Certainly stock grants can be much more than that, but it usually takes more than 18 months for them to amount to anything.

It's out of line for people who are not at big tech companies with publicly traded stock or bonus.

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

#348

Post by pedrosorio »

ryandrake wrote: post #287
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…

You would have to be extremely well paid and frugal to save $100K in two years. Sure, it's do-able, but wow. Of course, this is HN, so there's always someone who knows someone's brother's roommate who makes $150K/year at Google but that's a pretty high salary. And to be able to keep $50K of that given the cost of everything? I don't see how it's possible unless you are single, have no kids, no existing debt payments,…

"there's always someone who knows someone's brother's roommate who makes $150K/year at Google"

I don't know any software engineer at Google (in the Bay Area) with such a low annual compensation: https://www.paysa.com/salaries/google--software-engineer--mo...

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

#349

Post by jartelt »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #304
chrisper wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is because I live in the South Bay. But here it seems that everyone is just going to work and back home.. and that's it. There is nothing else going on here, but work work work.

I don't know what exactly you're looking at, because from my perspective "everyone" is an insane exaggeration on your part. I know countless people who run, cycle, ski, mountain bike, play soccer, go backpacking, play board games, travel, partake in live music, and so on and so forth. Sure there are disproportionately more workaholics in the area. There are also disproportionately fewer people who work 9-5 then go ho…

I totally agree. If people want to gripe about high rent/COL or lack of public transit that is fine and legitimate. But complaining about lack of things to do just doesn't add up. You can go hiking in Marin or in the open space preserves on the peninsula. You can drink great beer at several breweries or go to Napa/Sonoma to wine taste. You can go skiing in Tahoe. You can go to Yosemite or Sequoia. You can ride your bike in the mountains/hills on the peninsula. You can go to several different beaches. There is a good restaurant scene (albeit expensive). There are NBA, NFL, and NHL teams if you are into sports. As someone who moved here from Illinois, I think the variety of things to do in the Bay Area is huge.

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

#350

Post by basetensucks »

wlk wrote: post #28

I use this website to compare costs of living between countries and cities: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp Here's example for Seattle and SF: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... I'm wondering if anyone could comment if those numbers look accurate for those cities.

I paged through - the rent price estimates in Seattle strike me as low. Obviously I don't have strong statistics to back this up but when I looked for one bedroom apartments a year and a half ago everything was at least $1700 and many were not in the city center. Prices have increased considerably since then.
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