Out of curiosity, where does biotech, or specifically bioinformatics fall on a scale like this?
2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
231–240 of 284 posts
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually, I don't feel a pressing need for that lifestyle at the moment. I am factoring in taxes and cost of living. The difference doesn't make up for the $55k wage gap. It's possible that I could have done better than $105k if I had looked harder, but based on how much my friends in that area make I doubt it. My salary in the Bay Area also has a lot more headroom…
> While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually How, might I ask? Assuming $1.5M for a townhouse or a house in the Bay Area, Google's mortgage calculator says ~7k monthly in payments. At $160k and 25% tax, you're left w/ 10k/mo; you'd be spending 70% of your income on housing, not counting maintenance. You'd need to make a significant downpayment (which even then, IDK if it helps, since I've seen hous…
> I don't plan on living in the Bay Area long-term
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#233Earlier 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…
Same with Seattle. Houses going for 300-500k, Salaries 110k+, minimum. I really don't think it's true either for my region. If you love the startup world, hard to beat SF.
Not much left in Seattle under 500k. The market is pushing the prices even higher.
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#234Seattle average is 180k and Austin is 198k. That's insane. What companies are offering this crazy salaries?
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#235Every article on salaries seems to really screw up two things. One is, salary is only a portion of total compensation. Which do they mean here? If you don't look at equity packages, my intuition is you're going to think SF sucks, since I think more companies there use stock incentives. I'm not sure anybody has good data on equity packages/total comp, and at the very least, it's not trivial even if you have that data,…
This is especially true for new grads who are willing to share an apartment. Student loan also doesn't scale with COL. For frugal engineers without family, SF Bay Area or Seattle can make a lot of sense.
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Appropriate username :) I spent most of my time in Eden and Ogden so I don't know anything about SLC's urban design beyond my impression of the sprawl from brief visits. Personally, I think terrible urban design is the norm in the US (in no small part to suburban sprawl) and SF/Bay Area are easily some of the worst offenders in my limited experience. I can't really think of any well designed cities in California beca…
Yes, terrible urban design and bad infrastructure and bad policy is pervasive in the USA. You can just look at neighboring Mexico with 1/6th the per capita income and correspondingly lower public budgets where transportation, urban maintenance, and quality of city life are routinely better. And not just relatively better: Mexican cities (outside the shady border region) are nicer than American cities to live in. If y…
I went to Mexico city with my family about 10 years ago and it didn't seem as you describe. I remember looking out our car window and seeing huge expanses of what seemed like shacks. Many of the road were wide with seemingly no lane markings, and people making their own lanes. We were at one such intersection, and got pulled over by a corrupt cop who was on foot. Supposedly we came too close to one the of people who constantly surround our car whever we stop, trying to sell us stuff. The cop took my dad's driver's license and demanded 1000 pesos to give it back. My dad negotiated it down to 200 pesos. We went to a hotel specifically chosen because it looked modern and had wifi. The pool was normal sized, but only had 1 foot of water, and it was green.
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually, I don't feel a pressing need for that lifestyle at the moment. I am factoring in taxes and cost of living. The difference doesn't make up for the $55k wage gap. It's possible that I could have done better than $105k if I had looked harder, but based on how much my friends in that area make I doubt it. My salary in the Bay Area also has a lot more headroom…
> While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually How, might I ask? Assuming $1.5M for a townhouse or a house in the Bay Area, Google's mortgage calculator says ~7k monthly in payments. At $160k and 25% tax, you're left w/ 10k/mo; you'd be spending 70% of your income on housing, not counting maintenance. You'd need to make a significant downpayment (which even then, IDK if it helps, since I've seen hous…
You can live in a similar house with great schools in the east bay for 800k so that's about $4000 payment, very doable to live comfortably and even save up a bit making $160k/year.
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#238Earlier 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…
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.
I think SLC salaries vary a lot by technology too. There's a lot of developers I know in that range here that would be around 135 in SF. Completely agreed on how much better of a value it is here though.
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with Seattle. Houses going for 300-500k, Salaries 110k+, minimum. I really don't think it's true either for my region. If you love the startup world, hard to beat SF.
Not much left in Seattle under 500k. The market is pushing the prices even higher.
South Seattle, West Seattle and some parts of North Seattle are still fairly affordable, for an engineer at least.
Re: 2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
#240I'm wondering why the entire southeast of the US was left out of the analysis? I'd have imagined ATL or Miami would have enough data to add to the report and cost of living is fairly low even in comparison to many of these other cities.
I went through a round with hired.com and I'm based in Atlanta. While you can specify that you're not willing to relocate the selection of potential employers looking for someone here was seemingly low. It wouldn't surprise me if there was very little to no matches for whatever reason. I feel like Atlanta is a tech hub but some days it doesn't want to act like it. I would think Miami is somewhat similar with Nashvill…
Anecdotally, Atlanta has a great tech scene. I'm earning SF salary and comp, and my cost of living is extremely cheap. The culture here feels much more heterogenous, too.
Atlanta has a lot of fintech and medical tech companies, and it sports a cottage startup scene at Georgia Tech and the ATDC. We've seen a number of local startups do really well: Airwatch, MailChimp, etc.