41–50 of 284 posts
A lot of the cost of living calculations are wrong. I had moved from LA paying 1400$ a month rent to Austin and paid nearly the same rent in Austin for a one bedroom. The plus is no income tax in Washington and Texas but food costs are more and property taxes are double in Texas when compared to California.
This analysis may be reasonable as far as it goes, but it can still make financial sense for someone to live and work in the Bay Area. I recently took a new job near San Francisco paying ~$160k. Living cheaply, our actual consumption for my family of 3 is about ~50k a year. (Yes, this is possible -- and life can still be enjoyable if you like spending time in nature/other inexpensive activities.) After taxes, that le…
The article is misleading. The average software engineer salary in Toronto is not $197k CAD. It is closer to $80k, according to online sources like https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-reasonable-salary-for-a-softwa... .
The adjustment for Cost of Living in SF is discussed in this thread, it might not be accurate.
This analysis may be reasonable as far as it goes, but it can still make financial sense for someone to live and work in the Bay Area. I recently took a new job near San Francisco paying ~$160k. Living cheaply, our actual consumption for my family of 3 is about ~50k a year. (Yes, this is possible -- and life can still be enjoyable if you like spending time in nature/other inexpensive activities.) After taxes, that le…
And here I am making $72,000 in New Hampshire...45 minutes from Boston. I have a B.S. in computer engineering and now have 4-5 years of professional experience in software (specializing in DevOps). Am I severely underpaid?
IMO if you're happy where you are, and the cost of living is really low (e.g. you can buy a decent house pretty easily for under 200k), no need to be worried. Otherwise I'd probably leave and work in a big but not overly expensive city. I've seen plenty of job listings in Chicago looking for people with like 2-4 years experience paying 100k+, and the good parts of Chicago are pretty damn nice plus it's a cheap city to live in for its size (e.g. Toronto is always compared to Chicago, but rent is much more affordable in Chicago and you get paid more)
EDIT: Just realized the 74k on Toronto is USD - these numbers seem pretty weird. I know plenty of people making starting salaries in the ballpark of $134k in SF, but you'd be hard pressed (maybe even impossible) to find somebody in Toronto who'd pay you 97k for you first job out of school. I don't know how SF salaries work though - maybe they start out higher, but they still have the same glass ceiling where very, very few people are making >200k as a developer?
I have a much different cost of living equation supporting my decision to live in the bay. The big expense is obviously rent, which I'm sure they have represented... The average 1 bedroom in Austin around $1,000 and in SF let's say $3,300. Difference of $2,300 * 12 = $27,600. After that, that other $40,000 cost of living difference seems a bit of a stretch. In SF, my company buys breakfast, lunch, dinner and my trans…
But all things are rarely equal.
When I moved from a low-COL city to a high-COL city, I chose to live in a much smaller and crappier apartment. Other people might choose to live with roommates. I never had any intention of looking for accommodations equivalent to what's normal in my hometown.
Housing costs are the easiest thing to compare. It's everything else that's less clear.
And here I am making $72,000 in New Hampshire...45 minutes from Boston. I have a B.S. in computer engineering and now have 4-5 years of professional experience in software (specializing in DevOps). Am I severely underpaid?
Second is, you can't just scale up salaries by the COL adjustment when the comp is this high. If you do that, you'll think the following are equally good:
- monthly income 10k, 3k on rent, 2k other expenses
- monthly income 5k, 1.5k on rent, 1k on other
London. The city with the highest cost of living in Europe [citation needed]. Look anywhere else in the UK and it's more like £25000-£35000.