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21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco

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Re: 21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco

#5
As someone who hasn’t even worked in the US, let alone SF, is this a typical wage for that area?

I live in a small European city, earning around half this, but my outgoings are a lot less (under €1k/mo) than what I would be paying in SF, so I’m probably saving more at the end of the day. I’d argue my lifestyle is a lot better too.

Re: 21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco

#6
post #4

I can tell you it is the same for a software engineer in Copenhagen. Salaries peeked in 2000 and have yet to catch up in real terms.

Certainly it isn't the same in absolute terms? You can get a two-bedroom apartment in Copenhagen for $300,000 or so. I haven't heard of any place in Europe where you can expect to make anything close to this for any normal software engineering role.

(I earn around, maybe less than half the average in this graph, in Norway).

Re: 21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco

#7
post #5

As someone who hasn’t even worked in the US, let alone SF, is this a typical wage for that area? I live in a small European city, earning around half this, but my outgoings are a lot less (under €1k/mo) than what I would be paying in SF, so I’m probably saving more at the end of the day. I’d argue my lifestyle is a lot better too.

>I’d argue my lifestyle is a lot better too.

Looks like the majority of the European "better lifestyle" involves convincing people on the internet that making a fraction of a Bay Area salary is somehow a good thing.

Re: 21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco

#8
Meanwhile, Vancouver BC boasted about the famously low salaries of its software engineers and people with similar skill sets, in a failed bid to attract Amazon HQ2:

https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+amazon+hq+bid+sala...

In my opinion a pretty stupid thing to do, considering the low probability of Amazon choosing either Portland or Vancouver as second headquarters. Too close to Seattle and still within the same regional talent pool, and regional market demand.

Re: 21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco

#9
post #8

Meanwhile, Vancouver BC boasted about the famously low salaries of its software engineers and people with similar skill sets, in a failed bid to attract Amazon HQ2: https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+amazon+hq+bid+sala... In my opinion a pretty stupid thing to do, considering the low probability of Amazon choosing either Portland or Vancouver as second headquarters. Too close to Seattle and still within the sa…

...and also perhaps not the best way to attract talented staff.

Re: 21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco

#10
post #9
post #8

Meanwhile, Vancouver BC boasted about the famously low salaries of its software engineers and people with similar skill sets, in a failed bid to attract Amazon HQ2: https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+amazon+hq+bid+sala... In my opinion a pretty stupid thing to do, considering the low probability of Amazon choosing either Portland or Vancouver as second headquarters. Too close to Seattle and still within the sa…

...and also perhaps not the best way to attract talented staff.

sadly, the people who either can't or won't leave vancouver don't have a lot to choose from. I'm from there and it's really hilarious when people say something like Hootsuite is a "world class" place to work in some IT-related field.

Meanwhile Seattle has things like SpaceX in Redmond developing satellites, Boeing jobs, Blue Origin, a number of tech companies that are not amazon, XKL (run by one of the founders of Cisco, over in the east side making cutting edge networking hardware), significant datacenter and telecom infrastructure that doesn't exist in BC, etc.

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