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2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

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Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#171

Post by Epenthesis »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #69
kcorbitt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My commute is a 15-minute walk, or 5-minute bike ride. :) I chose the apartment based on proximity to work -- could have saved $100-200/mo with a longer commute, but the savings would have been more than eaten up by the gas/car maintenance costs and I hate commuting. I still own a car, but don't use it to get to work. We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). We'll have to upgra…

> We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. I'll never move to the SF Bay Area. I encourage others not to, either. Get the companies there to open up to remote employees instead.

I mean, this is the fundamental crux of these CoL discussions: How much does the quality of your residence matter to you?

People try and mechanically translate equivalent lifestyles from place to place, but that's probably not the best way of analyzing things. Yes, if you choose to have a midwestern lifestyle in SF, it will be ludicrously expensive. However, you don't have to. If instead, you're able to replace the utility you'd get for a nice place with the activities/amenities SF has and a small town doesn't, the cost differential is not nearly as stark.

Obviously, some people do value a nice home much more than anything they could get from living in SF, and that's fine. But that's not everyone, which is important to keep in mind when understanding why people move to the bay (or big cities in general).

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#172

Post by humanrebar »

the_gastropod wrote: post #83
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. I'll never move to the SF Bay Area. I encourage others not to, either. Get the companies there to open up to remote employees instead.

Yes. Urban areas are typically more expensive than rural areas. Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living, this price gap would shrink.

> Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living, this price gap would shrink.

Rural areas produce, raise, and educate workers that end up working in cities. So small towns (and small countries, for that matter) make big investments in their children and they just move away. Cities don't grow solely due to birth rates, so they are only "sustainable" from a limited perspective.

The rural/urban split is a give-and-take relationship at least as complex as figuring out what an "equivalent Bay-area" salary would be.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#173

Post by humanrebar »

the_gastropod wrote: post #150
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living What do you mean?

Many things necessary (or common) for living in suburban and rural places is subsidized through taxes, flat-rate costs of goods/services, and several other means. I'll give a few examples: * Internet, electricity, or cable costs significantly more to provide to people living in single family homes with distant neighbors than it does to provide to residents of a highrise apartment building. The consumers, however, pay…

It's worth pointing out that, in some of those points, even "urban" and "suburban" communities are net-negative in their infrastructure planning. Let's not lay into rural areas but not insolvent municipalities. More details about these issues at https://www.strongtowns.org/.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#174

Post by WhitneyLand »

drstewart wrote: post #125
WhitneyLand wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tough argument to make that SF beats SLC in net savings. You should try living with your family in a house with a backyard, it's quite enjoyable and could be pretty cheap over time if you see any appreciation. Secondly there are a lot more taxes on a lot more things in SF, are you factoring that in? Also I'd bet you are worth more than 105k in SLC if you looked around longer. I love SF and it's great to live…

>You should try living with your family in a house with a backyard, it's quite enjoyable and could be pretty cheap over time if you see any appreciation. You should try living in a cabin in the woods. Way cheaper plus you get fit from chopping up firewood for the winter. Obviously only a fool would live in a city in Utah when they could live in rural Alaska for cheaper!

Why are you acting like I said Utah was better? I said there are many reasons to live in SF.

The point is I don't agree with the conclusion a family can save more living in SF.

As great as SF is for some people with a young family not having a house with a backyard is a big deal.

Regarding your final incorrect assumption, yes I would love living in a cabin in the woods and chopping firewood.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#176

Post by muzfuz »

switch007 wrote: post #109
muzfuz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True - but then that's the general issue with London vs the rest of the country. Compared to other careers, dev salaries in London make the city pretty liveable. I'm certainly not struggling to service a mortgage in Zone 2, and many devs I know are similarly comfortable.

You, or you and a partner? Do you work in finance? I'm having trouble with my idea of average dev salaries and zone 2 prices equalling comfortable (i.e. nice amount of savings and disposable income after mortgage payment). If non-finance, I must be really out of touch with London salaries. I had an email today offering "up to £50k" for a devops position at a web agency...risible.

Myself and a partner, and no I'm not in finance, and don't plan to be any time soon. Also, it's the very edge of zone 2, so that helps.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#177

Post by Jach »

humanrebar wrote: post #53

The problem with straight-across cost-of-living adjustments is that they're only relevant when you're talking about a more-or-less zero savings rate. Assuming you can save 10% of your annual salary a year, you're better off living in higher cost-of-living areas, assuming all other things being equal. Then you are growing wealth (retirement funds, etc.) instead of just getting a more expensive lease for your car or ap…

The problem is that for the same city, same job, same gross income, people's savings rates can vary wildly. On one extreme you have the Google employee living out of his car in a parking lot. On the other extreme you have another Google employee who's living paycheck-to-paycheck because he spends just about all he makes. I don't know what the total distribution would look like for tech (or even tech in each city) so I'd be skeptical of any reports just using the mean or median. If it turns out it's all a nice bell curve (or some other nice distribution), then it could be helpful to see which cities have a tendency for saving and what you could expect your savings would be in total if you lived approximately like most others in the area. Otherwise you need to see the whole distribution for what's possible (I hear LA makes it hard to live out of your car), how it's done, and whether you think you could do it too.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#178

Post by xexers »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #141
xexers wrote: post #85

We're getting screwed here in Canada.

How are we getting screwed? (and I agree that the salaries are pretty low compared to the other cities). Also, the dollar being low doesn't help.

For the exact reason you said... our salaries are way lower. I should move to the states (although I wont because immigrants don't seem to be welcome there now).

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#179

Post by kcorbitt »

funkaster wrote: post #151
kcorbitt wrote: post #37

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…

50k a year for a family of three? Sure, maybe if you are really, really frugal and live far south or east. But living in the city, you could barely pay rent + groceries with 50k a year for a family of three. We live relatively frugal and got a good deal for rent, but I'm pretty sure we are over 50k a year, even more now that we are a family of three and need to consider the outrageous prices of daycare. That last poi…

I live in San Bruno, not SF. I agree that it would probably be very difficult to have a decent quality of life at our spending level living in SF proper. But we're just an 18-minute BART ride away from downtown when we want to go in.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#180

Post by akiselev »

DannyBee wrote: post #164
drstewart wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You should try living with your family in a house with a backyard, it's quite enjoyable and could be pretty cheap over time if you see any appreciation. You should try living in a cabin in the woods. Way cheaper plus you get fit from chopping up firewood for the winter. Obviously only a fool would live in a city in Utah when they could live in rural Alaska for cheaper!

"You should try living in a cabin in the woods." This isn't even close to a reasonable retort.

It is if you have a preference for urban environments and your choice is between SF/NYC/London/etc and Salt Lake City, where it feels like every other street is as wide as the average block in another city.

To each their own of course.

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