121–130 of 302 posts
Amateurs. People in New York have been commuting two or more hours each way since at least the 70's. Some people who work in the city live in Pennsylvania.
That isn't really saying much. Easton, PA is almost exactly 90 min from NYC (though it has tolls).
I recently had an opportunity to move out to the Bay Area with my current job (I am currently at a satellite office). The commute time combined with CoL and a few other factors made the decision easy to not go. I currently have a 3 minute commute and I would honestly lose my mind if I had to commute 90 mins one way. I have also been seeing a general rise of articles mentioning how many people are leaving, how insane…
>. I have also been seeing a general rise of articles mentioning how many people are leaving, how insane the commutes are becoming, and general unpleasantness of living there if you aren't in the top 10%. But if you are in the top 10%, life is amazing here. It's an absolute paradise. Every single time I'm sitting in traffic hating my life, I try to do a pro/con on getting the hell out of here. Every single time I jus…
So while many are leaving it's not like they aren't being replaced!
The sad fact is that long as people are willing to put up with this nothing is going to change. The crazy rents and terrible commutes sound insane to anyone living elsewhere but people are continuously more than happy to continue doing them to work at companies that haven't been priced out yet either. It's not an issue of social mobility either, since people living in the bay area are some of the most socially mobile…
Very few places on the planet are as temperate and offer so many options to escape into nature as the Bay Area. I agree that something has to change, but trying to convince people that the only answer is to move away is a non-starter for the majority of the population, especially those who want to live here.
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I grew up in the Bay Area. Spent several years at a FAANG company. About 2/3 of the time, I lived with my parents. The remainder was with housemates. In my early 30s, I decided that I couldn't continue living with parents, while there wasn't any place in the BA that I cared to pay money to live in. Now I live in NYC, same salary, but finally have my own place that's not shared with others. I live in a 30th floor stud…
Average rent in NYC - $3,375 Average rent in SF - $3,558 I don't know your situation but NYC is basically in the same boat (just with a better rail system).
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the ridiculous salary and equity while I'm here would be foolish to pass up So - how much of the "ridiculous" salary is left after subtracting living costs and taxes, actually?
Average FANG salary is $200k with roughly another $200k in equity each year spread out over 4 years. So that's roughly $400k per year in total comp. Conservatively 40% of that is going to taxes, so take home is closer to $240,000. While $240,000 is a nice salary it's not even close to what you'd need to afford a house in SV. And that's just housing. All in all it feels like a bad deal.
This cannot be correct. If you are taking home $20,000 a month and cannot have a house in SV the problem is not affordability but availability. Or what kind of house are you talking about.
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>Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office. Remote work hasn't taken off on a large scale because massively successful multi-billion dollar companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/SpaceX were not built with remote workers . You get (relatively) minor companies touting it such as Automattic and Basecamp. Those smaller businesses haven't ach…
It's a double standard though. I was at one of the big companies mentioned. I was the only one on my team in my office. Everyone else was remote in a time zone. My manager wasn't on site. But I couldn't work from home, and my desk space was reduced several times during my time there.
Oh, tech companies. If only there were a way to have conversations about, create, and transmit computer programs using some kind of long-distance network. Maybe we could break the data up into "packets". Just thinking out loud here. Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office. We can dream.
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Much more than other places in the US. I keep seeing this type of comment, do the math, 2-3X salary increase, rent 2X increase, but rent is only ~25% of your salary, cost of things around ~25% higher. You are much better of in Silicon Valley as a techy in general.
Besides rent, are other things really 25% higher in the Bay Area? Taxes are a bit higher, but cars, computers are about the same, groceries can even be cheaper. A plane ticket to Tokyo is probably even cheaper than most places.
Amateurs. People in New York have been commuting two or more hours each way since at least the 70's. Some people who work in the city live in Pennsylvania.
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Sure, but how would they get to work if there were no buses? A fraction of them would drive, no? Buses are a net positive.
Maybe they would live in Mountain View and walk, so not creating any new traffic at all? Or live somewhere on the train line and take a train? If none of those people would drive instead, or even if only a couple of them would, then the massive bus is a negative.
And even if all of these people lived in walking distance of where they worked, the places they've now vacated would be occupied with people who may drive, and so forth.
The imaginary world you're supposing does not exist, hence the article we're discussing to begin with.