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2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

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Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#191

Post by ghaff »

Amezarak wrote: post #181
the_gastropod wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> * Gas. The Federal government subsidizes gasoline. Suburban/Rural residents drive more and consume more gas than urban residents who are more likely to use public transit. There is in fact a federal fuel tax , in addition to state fuel taxes. There is no direct gasoline subsidy. Some people argue that the tax deductions and structures used by drilling companies are a kind of subsidy, but that's debatable and most o…

>The larger argument that infrastructure is cheaper when population density is higher is, of course, trivially true.

I'm not sure even that is trivially true. Infrastructure projects in dense cities (which is what most people are talking about here when they say "cities") can be extremely expensive. See Boston Big Dig, Manhattan Second Avenue Subway, etc. Yes, they serve a lot of people. Cheap they ain't.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#192

Post by bradjohnson »

brilliantcode wrote: post #63

...and Vancouver, BC doesn't even show up on the radar because our average is roughly $53,000 USD / year. Might wanna consider outsourcing here. Same time zone as SV, similar culture, speaks English, tight job market means loyal workers. source: https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/vancouver-software-develop... USD/CAD as of today: 1.31

As a Vancouver-based software engineer that graduated about a year ago, I really wish I hadn't looked at this post...

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#193

Post by bluGill »

Retric wrote: post #116
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is huge cash flow to rural areas. The problem is the same infrastructure is cheaper when shared among large groups. You need more road per person when people have 80 acres vs 0.5 acres. Further, things like farm subsides, rural health care, and even poverty programs are just huge money sinks. IMO, it's important to separate things that must be in rural areas vs. things that are more expensive because they are i…

It is easy to pick on rural subsidies when you have enough food to eat. It is to everyone's advantage to ensure that there is more than enough food so that in the worst case years nobody starves to death.

How best to ensure that is debatable. However don't knock the rural subsidies unless you have a better plan to ensure that even in drought years there is enough to eat.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#194

Post by WildUtah »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #70
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…

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…

It's rare to be worth a lot more than $105k in SLC; wages are pretty low and deep specific expertise isn't often bought so much as grown in house. Especially with a startup.

If you're looking at $105k in SLC, you should be asking for $225k+ in SF by my experience.

--

We did the calculation between $125k in SF and $45k in SLC a decade ago and SLC came out well ahead for a family of four.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#195

Post by logfromblammo »

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.

And here I am, like a schmuck, paying almost 11.5% of my gross income in rent, on a 3 bedr/2.5 bath freestanding house. I think I'd have to earn more than $360k to get even close to that in SF/SV.

About the only places a median-priced house is more affordable than where I am now, relative to median income, are Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, and selected places in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York.

And at the bottom of that home affordability list? San Jose. Anaheim, SF, LA, and SD round out the California contingent of places where the median income-earner does not make enough to afford to buy a median-priced home. The only other places in the US that can claim that are Naples, White Plains, and Honolulu.

Don't move more employees to California, people. Move more satellite offices to the Rust Belt. Before all those factories closed, the workers educated their kids for better jobs, but now there's f'kall for them to do. There's a broad talent pool there, not even close to depletion, just waiting for someone to rescue them from their restaurant websites, online insurance forms, and line-of-business CRUD apps. I would move back there in a second if there were more decent employers around.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#196

Post by literallycancer »

_m8fo wrote: post #129
dukeluke wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is keeping women and minorities out of tech, they're just choosing different careers.

I'd love to see your evidence for this. Namely, you'd need to prove that for a given educational level, geographical location and familial history, they're more likely to choose something other than tech than white males.

Look at college freshmen, see what portion of women/minorities are studying something tech related? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#197

Post by akiselev »

humanrebar wrote: post #172
the_gastropod wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not so sure that's true. A not insignificant portion of those people move back out to rural (not suburban) areas to raise families, escape urban burnout, or because of evolving personal tastes. When they do, they often bring significantly more wealth back than they "cost" growing up because of the opportunities they had in the city. It seems that the life and death of a small town depends far more on economic factors like competition from globalization, or environmental fluctuations (droughts, hurricanes, etc). In the US many, if not most, big cities would easily grow from immigration alone.

Obviously cities depend on rural areas since it's far more economical to grow food on cheap plots of land than in steel hydroponic skyscrapers and few cities are built on top of vast fresh water reserves. However, not all rural areas are alike and the majority of the land in the US isnt fertile enough to sustain a competitive agricultural industry like in California, which produces far more of the nation's food and other natural resources than it's share of the population.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#198

Post by WildUtah »

akiselev wrote: post #180
DannyBee wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Outside SF proper, the SV urban design is as bad as in Utah.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#199

Post by dasil003 »

akiselev wrote: post #180
DannyBee wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> 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.

Funny you mention that because I make the same comparison with London vis-a-vis SF.

Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries

#200

Post by sheepmullet »

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…

> I don't plan on living in the Bay Area long-term

And that is the key. If you were looking at living in the Bay Area long term it would be a different story.

In SLC as a software engineer if you live reasonably frugally you can own a decent family home outright in under 7 years.

For me that opens up a whole new level of freedom.

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