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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?

#381

Post by findjashua »

twblalock wrote: post #14
ammon wrote: post #2

When people compare salaries / the cost of living in different cities, they often fail to account for the fact that many people don't spend their entire salary in the local economy. If you are trying to save money (or pay for college, donate to a cause, or buy a Ferrari) this costs the same no matter where you live. You should only apply the cost of living adjustment to housing (and maybe food). When you do this, liv…

Yes, this is absolutely true. Your car, clothing, computers and gadgets, and most of your groceries will be a lower percentage of your discretionary income in the Bay Area than in most other places. Your housing and gasoline will cost more, and maybe your car insurance. However, the caveat is that housing is so expensive here that it's difficult to save up for a down payment on any kind of housing on a single enginee…

If you're a HENRY (High Earner, Not Rich Yet), and have a good credit score (>740), you might qualify for a mortgage with 10% down payment without PMI/second mortgage.

With a frugal lifestyle, 10% should be doable in a couple years, especially if you're okay with living in the East Bay (so the house price is somewhat reasonable).

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

#382

Post by morgante »

mrkurt wrote: post #146
nostrademons wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a stage-of-life effect. Bay Area is great for young people, where cost of living is a much lower proportion of income. All the excess goes straight into savings or discretionary consumer goods, where a Bay Area dollar is worth just as much as a Rust Belt dollar. It's much less great for a family, where you have additional food, housing, childcare, and health costs that rise along with cost of living.

I don't think that's entirely true. Housing and food are still the highest spending categories. Most of the excess goes to taxes, I think. Families just make it more obvious that's happening.

> Housing and food are still the highest spending categories.

They can be your highest spending categories and still leave plenty of room left over to save.

As a young person living in NYC (high taxes, high housing, high food costs) I can still save a huge percentage of my income due to the high salaries.

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

#383

Post by morgante »

twblalock wrote: post #14
ammon wrote: post #2

When people compare salaries / the cost of living in different cities, they often fail to account for the fact that many people don't spend their entire salary in the local economy. If you are trying to save money (or pay for college, donate to a cause, or buy a Ferrari) this costs the same no matter where you live. You should only apply the cost of living adjustment to housing (and maybe food). When you do this, liv…

Yes, this is absolutely true. Your car, clothing, computers and gadgets, and most of your groceries will be a lower percentage of your discretionary income in the Bay Area than in most other places. Your housing and gasoline will cost more, and maybe your car insurance. However, the caveat is that housing is so expensive here that it's difficult to save up for a down payment on any kind of housing on a single enginee…

Or you just save up to buy a home elsewhere.

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

#384

Post by flukus »

morgante wrote: post #383
twblalock wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is absolutely true. Your car, clothing, computers and gadgets, and most of your groceries will be a lower percentage of your discretionary income in the Bay Area than in most other places. Your housing and gasoline will cost more, and maybe your car insurance. However, the caveat is that housing is so expensive here that it's difficult to save up for a down payment on any kind of housing on a single enginee…

Or you just save up to buy a home elsewhere.

Isn't the rent just as high?

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

#385

Post by chaoticgeek »

mooreds wrote: post #250
eganist wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding one: if you're doing anything security related, DC's your friend.

Good point! And if you are into oil/gas, Houston. Marijuana, Colorado or Washington. Cars, Detroit (maybe?). Commodities, Chicago. Ag, Kansas City (maybe?). Outdoor experiences, SLC. Building something for Latin America, Miami. Ets, etc. I imagine there are many other cities that dominate in niches that I'm missing.

I live in the Detroit suburbs. Can confirm many programmers working for auto companies around here and friends with a few.

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

#386

Post by disposablezero »

If one plans to take full advantage of brain, entrepreneur, capital and customer concentrations then yes. Otherwise, scarcity elsewhere make for increased career leverage (at varying income / cost of living ratios) elsewhere.

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13178495

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

#387

Post by emodendroket »

evanpw wrote: post #123
harterrt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could also be an artifact of the metric. I call this the "Geico" fallacy. Geico advertises that "People who switch to Geico save 15% or more". Notice that people who would lose money by switching to Geico should rarely switch. Accordingly, this metric will usually be positive. Consider that people moving to a new city for a job may need more incentive to move.

I've always found those advertisements weird. If consumers are rational and have good information, then the average savings from switching is the same as "how much do you have to pay someone to switch to Geico?". The higher it is, the worse you should expect service to be!

In practice it's quite difficult to compare insurers in this way since it's not that often you need to make a claim and online reviews are overwhelmingly biased toward negative reviews so they're all like one-star. As far as I can tell the correlation between price and service is not that strong.

For what it's worth, when I had to make claims with Geico it was fine. But I was clearly not at fault in either case so it was not a difficult process.

I also think part of their ability to offer lower premiums is generally having lower human involvement -- no independent agents, claims routed through Web site or call centers, claims adjuster on site in body shop instead of visiting you, etc.

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

#388

Post by morgante »

bradlys wrote: post #119
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…

Sorry, I live here. I have an average salary for my experience. I can barely save $20k/yr. My rent+util is about $2000/month. I live in a very /cheap/ 1-bedroom with creaky carpet floors, no insulation, and near train tracks that's far outside SF. (Belmont) Altogether I spend close to $4000/month if I don't do anything special. /Everything/ is more expensive in this region. Food is expensive for no apparent reason ot…

You don't have an average salary for your experience.

$4,000 * 12 is $48,000. Plus your $20k in purported savings is only $68k.

That's only $100k in gross pay, which is the bare minimum for a developer in SV. Most new grads make more than that.

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

#389

Post by morgante »

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)...

I went from a net worth of $150k at 22, while never being particularly frugal at all. Heck, I didn't even have roommates. My monthly spending averaged $4k/m.

NYC, not SF, but the difference isn't huge.

Most people are atrocious with their money by either overspending or under-optimizing.

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

#390

Post by emodendroket »

kirubakaran wrote: post #133
evanpw wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found those advertisements weird. If consumers are rational and have good information, then the average savings from switching is the same as "how much do you have to pay someone to switch to Geico?". The higher it is, the worse you should expect service to be!

Exactly! "Customers pay us more than our competition. They clearly love us and we're doing something right" is a nuanced point hard to make in an ad, but it needs to be made somehow. That's probably why Statefarm et al focus on their customer service in their ads, but those ads don't sound so catchy.

According to Consumer Reports the last I checked, State Farm is near the bottom of the pack in customer satisfaction among claimants.
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