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If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
71–80 of 86 posts
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#72Live in Eastern Europe, work for American or Western European customer.
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#73This is bad. If your metric for best city for software engineers excludes from its top 10 not only SFBA but Seattle, New York, Austin, and Atlanta, your whole piece better be a prolonged and detailed explanation of how you concluded that metric was valid. I love Chicago and think we benefit in a lot of ways from running a tech company (mostly) from here, but there is no way Chicago is a better place to be a software…
The image of Chicago has been tainted lately especially by the news of everyday shootings. How safe there is in comparison to let's say typical large city in Mexico?
Crime is very much concentrated; if you live in an area where a software engineer is likely to live, it is perfectly fine. IMO, much better quality of life than SFBA. If anything, you are not likely to step into human excrement...
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a really interesting point. I often fantasize about leaving "my" city of Frankfurt/Germany, but I always wonder if anywhere else is actually better for ME, wherever on the bell curve I might be. Before I was 30 I became CTO of a great company here, i really wonder if I had made such a career anywhere else if I'd moved to somewhere with a more vibrant tech-scene where my specific skill combination isn't as rela…
If you're happy, stop fantasizing about leaving :) You already have a family. For younger people without responsibilities, I do suggest they think about the Bay Area. If you have the right set of skills, you can skyrocket your career rapidly. If you don't like it, move back home and hopefully you gained some valuable life experience. I've seen staff engineers at age 25 at Facebook and Google... Very rare, but having…
Perhaps you can skyrocket your career rapidly, at least in terms of tax bracket, but is that what you want your life to be about?
My coworkers and I are doing all sorts of things that seem unlikely in the Bay Area. I have 11 kids. I once lived in San Jose, where that would not come cheap. The person in the office next to me has sheep on 11 acres, and he can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. He grew up in San Francisco, where that would be... difficult. Other people live in beach condos.
If you aren't careful, you can let the years pass by while hoping that just a bit more will get you financially secure enough to do something you really want to do in your life. One day you notice that the years are just gone.
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#75A lot of people would rather maximize their retained earnings rather than their income. No point in working like a dog so that your landlord can lie on the beach in Maui all year.
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#76Anyone with industry knowledge can look at those median salary numbers and instantly tell that the data set is faulty.
Do cost of living calculators take into account the more static pricing of non-necessities? For example, maybe an apartment in the Bay Area costs, say, 300% what it costs in a major mid-western city. Groceries are 150% more expensive and other necessities are equally as expensive. (All numbers made up for the sake of example) After you pay for the things you need though, you move on to things you want. Investments in…
They do account for that. Normally, they assume you are a person with average desires. The more complicated cost of living calculators will let you enter in your actual expenses to produce a personalized adjustment.
If you aren't weird, the cost of living calculators work fine.
I mentioned in another comment that I have a coworker who moved from San Francisco. He now has an 11-acre lot with sheep, goats, and chickens. He can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. OK, he's weird. Imagine the cost of living for him in San Francisco. Step 1 is to find 5 acres. Step 2 is to lobby the state legislature...? Even if we downgrade to a California-compliant gun, that 11 acres seems likely to cost roughly $366,666,666.
Wow. For him, it looks like San Francisco is nearly 1000 times more expensive. Thousands turn into millions.
He does commute a half hour. Perhaps there is a city a half hour away from San Francisco where he could get his kind of home for "only" a hundred million dollars.
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#77The link doesn't even try to answer what it claims it tries to answer. If you're trying to maximize your income as a software engineer, you move to SF. If you're trying to maximize your standard of living as a software engineer, you move to Seattle. Adjustments for "opportunity index" only obfuscates that.
To maximize income net of living expenses, you should live in your car under the Googleplex. (And work upstairs.)
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#78This is bad. If your metric for best city for software engineers excludes from its top 10 not only SFBA but Seattle, New York, Austin, and Atlanta, your whole piece better be a prolonged and detailed explanation of how you concluded that metric was valid. I love Chicago and think we benefit in a lot of ways from running a tech company (mostly) from here, but there is no way Chicago is a better place to be a software…
They're looking at "median". If you're a "median" engineer, I would not recommend SFBA.
Unless you assume just about every 'above median' tech person is in SFBA, there have to be plenty of perfectly content sub-median ones around as well.
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#79Anyone with industry knowledge can look at those median salary numbers and instantly tell that the data set is faulty.
They're cost of living adjusted, so 100k in SF is going to be 30k in other places
And they're still way off. The only reason Detroit's number is so high is because they're counting the $1k condemned houses for sale, all over the city, that nobody wants to move into.
Re: If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
#80The best to maximize income? One of those places in middle America or Alaska that pay people to live and work there. Work remotely on something boring so that you can spend the rest of your time investing your savings. Live in a small part of your house and rent the rest out to people if you can find tenants.
I mean, if we're JUST talking about maximizing income here and not anything else, this is the way to go.