Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area? • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by morgante » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 4:35 AM UTC

mrkurt wrote: post #409

morgante wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In my case, I was renting in Manhattan. When I've considered moving to SF I found plenty of comparable apartments for around $2.5k/m.

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

#412

Post by Rapzid » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 4:59 AM UTC

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.

And closing/financing fees! If you end up taking a job out of area and decide to sell(understandable as now isn't the right time to be purchasing a rental) you're out the fees.

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

#413

Post by stbtrax » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:05 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #393

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 love Portland. I might make more in SF, but I'm already making more than the median SF salary while living in Portland, and my house only cost me $350K or so. The cost of living is starkly lower here, and the city itself is much, much smaller and less hectic -- while still being big enough to have all the things you want and plenty of people if you want to be social. I can't see moving to SF unless I could earn $30…

I really want to like Portland because it is so cheap and seems to have good access to outdoor activities. Unfortunately I can't get past the weather, and the stark lack of diversity.

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

#414

Post by valleyer » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:11 AM UTC

seattlefreeze wrote: post #342

EdJiang wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Correct. Specifically, it disallows deduction of state/local taxes from your federal taxable income.

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

#415

Post by thedufer » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:14 AM UTC

_xhok wrote: post #127

dustinmoris wrote: post #100

So a recruiting agency who makes money from placing applicants in the Bay area, a place with a shortage of developers, writes an article to convince more developers to move to the Bay area ? Yeah, totally trust their data and the data they selected for this article!

So, do you actually see something wrong with/missing from their data?

I didn't get very far, but their first section has a huge disconnect between data and the text. Text:

> So assuming you’re looking throughout the Bay Area for a good deal and you’re comfortable renting rather than buying a home, as most of us are during the early stages of our careers, higher Bay Area salaries at least cover the costs of higher rents.

Data:

> engineers at top tech companies in the Bay Area stand to make between $15,000 and $33,000 more per year than engineers at top tech companies in Seattle.

and

> median rent is about $1400-$1500 a month (or roughly $17,000-$18,000 a year) higher in the Bay Area than in the Seattle metro area

Somehow $15k-$33k marginal income "at least cover" $17k-$18k. That's just outrageously untrue, even if you ignore the fact that it fails to cover any of the numerous other ways that SF is more expensive (food? local services? CA income tax?) or the fact that you have to pay taxes on the extra money (which brings $15k-$33k down to $10k-$22k, assuming a conservative marginal tax rate estimate of 35%).

Even assuming they aren't missing anything, cherrypicking data, etc., their data doesn't come close to supporting the claims they're making. Claiming bias seems like a pretty generous interpretation here.

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

#416

Post by base698 » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

_skel wrote: post #52

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, if you're fiscally prudent. I'm not sure what you think an average salary is. If you think an average engineer can save $50k cash per year out of his/her net income, you're way above the average I had in mind. Let's assume an average salary of $120k per year gross. That's about $6k per month net for a single person who takes the standa…

After maxing out 401k you get about $10k net a month @ $200k. Not including bonus and stock. $10k a month is a lot anywhere unless you have kids.

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

#417

Post by kosei » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:24 AM UTC

This article focuses entirely on cost of living through home pricing, however there are many additional areas impacted. First, perhaps most importantly, Washington does not have state income tax. Additionally, there are differences in price of groceries, restaurants, etc that are not considered here.

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

#418

Post by automatwon » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #369

automatwon wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might as well live in Washington at that point. No state income tax, while there is Oregon state income tax. Then again, Washington has sales tax, whereas Oregon does not. I used to live in Portland, and some peopled lived / worked in Vancouver, Washington, and drove to Portland to do all their shopping, groceries included.

Seattle would also get hit hard in the same big earthquake. See the same article above.

Funny thing. I remember reading about this a while back. There were particular regions in Seattle that would be unaffected. I'm not sure how accurately the predicted boundaries were, but I remember my apartment being 10 feet away from the boundary, in the unaffected area. My company, though, was on the other side. In essence, I was exempt from danger for half of the day during weekdays, and a full day during weekends.

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

#419

Post by linkregister » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

shawndumas wrote: post #344

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'…

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

I will unequivocally state that a total comp of $150k+ for a new grad is at the very least, the top 5% of software development salaries for that level of experience.

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

#420

Post by pdimitar » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 5:29 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #339

pdimitar wrote: post #244

> It’s easy to hear data and stories like these and conclude that programmers moving to the Bay Area are suckers. After all, salaries have not risen by 70% in the past four years. But what this analysis misses is the extent to which this place and time is exceptional. The author lost me right there, even though I did make an honest effort to read the article to the end. (1) There are plenty of "brain centers" in the…

I wonder if you have ever been to the Bay Area. It sounds like your entire conception of it is from HBO's Silicon Valley. Most developers in the Bay Area are working 9-10 hours per day, not 16. > Most of us Europeans strongly dislike touting. This is a Scandinavian trait, not universally European. It's not even universally Scandinavian. You're mad about something, but I can't figure it out. What is it?

Me being mad -- that's partially true. Mostly I am just sick and tired of the fake positive SF press coverage. It's so forced you can just smell the dollars spent to write the article. Or the lack of any personal life of those who praise their employer and job.

Apologies for the mistake -- I mean "Most of us Eastern Europeans strongly dislike touting", by the way.

It's a fact that I have never been to the Sillicon Valley. And after all the forced press coverage I don't want to either. I realize this is a bias, but hey, if the Bay Area residents don't like it, you should do some policing of the press hype.

About the statistic -- it's very likely we're both wrong. Let's not go there, none of us has solid data to support their claims. I am sharing intuitive impressions and I am not claiming them to be hard facts.