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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?

#401

Post by ryandrake »

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.

Thanks for sharing numbers. Wow, that's an amazing bonus, and you should feel fortunate! This is coming from someone who does work for a big tech company. I've never seen anything remotely close to that.

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

#402

Post by vonmoltke »

shostack wrote: post #379
smsm42 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't forget about home repairs and renovations, HOA, and services like gardening, etc. depending on what you buy. It is easy to end up spending double rent on a comparable place. The difference is for now at least the home you buy can grow nicely so you need to do the math on rate of return for that vs other uses of that cash.

Those are all expenses your landlord has to pay if you are renting. If those costs plus mortgage is double rent than either landlords are hemmoraging money or something is seriously fucked up with the housing market.

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

#403

Post by automatwon »

findjashua wrote: post #377
automatwon wrote: post #366

I wonder how much weather affects success, both for companies and individuals. I worked as a Data Science engineer in Seattle (startup), and just moved to San Francisco this year (Google). I know this sounds trivial, but I think the more pleasant weather in the Bay Area is beneficial to my career. The lifestyle aspect is just icing on the cake. I can't get up in the morning when it's rainy and cold. Of course, I do s…

Stole the words right out of my mouth! Did a summer internship in Redmond, and realized how much the weather affects my happiness and psychological well-being. While SFBA weather is way better than Seattle, I still find it a bit cold/dreary for my liking. I really wish the tech hub was in San Diego instead, I'd move there in a heartbeat.

If I ever create a startup, I would definitely move to SoCal. It's cheaper. There's more diversity. The restaurant scene, in my opinion, is better, too.

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

#404

Post by ryandrake »

morgante wrote: post #400
ryandrake wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to PayScale[1] and Glassdoor[2], average/median salary for software engineer in the Bay Area is around $110K, so it's tough to believe $100K is "the bare minimum". 1: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa... 2: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en...

That's salary alone, not total comp.

Your post only mentioned salary.

EDIT: And to add more to the conversation than that curt response:

When I compare take-home pay among various jobs I tend to ignore bonuses (because they're subject to your employer's whim--you don't necessarily get them) and I tend to ignore equity (because it's typically temporary--once you vest it no longer adds to your yearly take-home). To compare apples with apples you can only really compare base salary.

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

#405

Post by nkassis »

dingdongding wrote: post #207
nkassis wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there has also been an incredible growth in amazon stock value during that time. This isn't going to be typical of someone starting to work for Amazon today (or another tech company) as your stock grant was most likely calculated at a much lower stock price then it is now while theirs would be calculated on today prices and we don't know how the future will go. Experience definitively varies.

You're underestimating Amazon. I still think it can achieve same returns if not more in next 4 years like last 4 years

Not underestimating, worked there and believe in the company. But speaking from experience, the stock can take dives from time to time based on market whims as it happened when I left and t my RSU vested below their estimated price. Which sucked as I needed cash at the time to move. The thing is you can be lucky or unlucky with RSUs during short or long term periods.

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

#407

Post by morgante »

ryandrake wrote: post #404
morgante wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's salary alone, not total comp.

Your post only mentioned salary. EDIT: And to add more to the conversation than that curt response: When I compare take-home pay among various jobs I tend to ignore bonuses (because they're subject to your employer's whim--you don't necessarily get them) and I tend to ignore equity (because it's typically temporary--once you vest it no longer adds to your yearly take-home). To compare apples with apples you can only…

I think it makes sense to discount those factors, but ignoring them entirely is disingenuous.

A company offering $100k in salary + $20k in bonuses and $80k in RSUs is paying significantly more than one offering $120k in salary with no bonus or RSUs.

Also, Glassdoor tends to skew low. Here's a more reasonable database of new grad offers which average $109k base for public tech companies. [0]

[0] http://newgradsalaries.com/

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

#408

Post by vonmoltke »

bandrami wrote: post #122

DC/NoVa is hurting for programmers. Particularly if you can get a clearance, there's no shortage of work out here, at a (somewhat) cheaper cost of living.

My direct experience is that the companies that cover cleared engineers pay slightly below average salaries and jack shit for variable compensation (bonuses, stock, and such). Plus, you can't talk about all the best work you did when you interview elsewhere, so you sound like a faker to interviewers. I'm glad to be free of the shackle of my clearance.

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

#409

Post by mrkurt »

morgante wrote: post #382
mrkurt wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NYC is much more reasonable than the SF Bay. Manhatten itself is incredibly expensive, but it's fairly easy to live frugally in the NYC area. There's basically nowhere to go "in the bay area" to save much money.

You're not wrong about NYC, but the bay area is really broken.

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

#410

Post by iamcasen »

kLeeIsDead wrote: post #201
chrisper wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, same. I live in San Jose and feel 100% like you. I haven't even worked yet and only went to school here and I am already exhausted. This is why I chose not to live here after graduation.

The crazy part about it is it's just going to get worse and worse. I was born and raised in SJ... since the 80s this tech stuff has been slowly building on top of itself like some sort of tumor, and the city does absolutely nothing to stop the gentrification and overall shittyness of the money-money-money mindset from taking over. I'm 23 now, most of my friends and 100% of my parents friends (lived there since the 60…

I felt the same way after living in SF for 6 years. I moved up to Portland, though they probably find me to be an annoying migrant too :/
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