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Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

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Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#151

Post by maratd »

yourapostasy wrote: post #148
slm_HN wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was shopping for a house a few months ago, and was simply unable to buy one; those in my price range wouldn't accept my offer because it wasn't an all-cash offer I don't understand this. If you're pre-qualified for a $500,000 dollar loan how is your offer worse than someone willing to pay $495,000 cash?

Deal velocity. An "all cash" offer at 1% less than asking is more attractive to the seller's agent (not necessarily the seller) than a loan-process-backed offer, because the agent wants to close quickly and move onto the next deal. The loan process adds days and weeks to the deal, while the "cash" offer can literally close tomorrow. I'm scare quoting "cash" because what is really happening most of the time is the cas…

> not necessarily the seller

Usually the seller too.

A quick tip for those in the market. If you're trying to beat out cash offers, there's a sweet spot in every market where after a certain price point, the cash buyers drop off.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#152

Post by philwelch »

johnward wrote: post #96
tootie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how "put up with car culture" is a thing for our generation. Previous generation it would be "put up with not being able to drive". I'm fighting a losing battle against life in the suburbs but my one hope is that by the time I give in, I can commute in a self-driving car.

That's only a thing for people who live in NYC, Chicago, and maybe the Bay. The rest of us still need cars. I live pretty far away but my commute to Pittsburgh is ~2 hours each way.

I'm semi-carfree in Seattle. Most actual cities can support a carfree lifestyle, but I guess that's a bit of a tautology.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#153

Post by jessedhillon »

jasonwocky wrote: post #47

Decisions based on average (a/k/a "mean") salaries, however, are only relying on a small part of the picture. Personally I'd like to see standard deviations accounted for in here. I have the feeling that it is easier to make 1.5x to 2x these "averages" in some cities than in others, especially for people with experience.

Agreed.

The other data I'd like to see is distribution of non-salaried incomes -- bonuses and equity. I have the feeling that SF and SV are the only places where you have a realistic shot of working for a company for 4-6 years and coming away a millionaire.

In other places, it'd be base salary, maybe a bonus, and that's it. For life. And if you ever have ambitions to start your own startup, would you want to be in Atlanta?

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#154

Post by slantedview »

a2kadet wrote: post #144
nilkn wrote: post #120

If more employers understood the value of distributed teams, this wouldn't even need to be an issue. You could live exactly where you wanted to live. Want a 700 sq ft studio in Manhattan for $3k/month? Great. Want a 2000 sq ft ranch home next to a river out in the country with your own garden? Done. Want to just save as much as you can, with a cheap apartment in a cheap town outside a cheap city? You got it. Maybe yo…

>If more employers understood the value of distributed teams, this wouldn't even need to be an issue. I would say I'm pretty against distributed teams at the moment. Would you mind elaborating on the value of them?

Assuming this is a serious question, you can hire whoever you want without worrying about their location. The world is your talent pool.

Or to put it another way, almost every recruiter e-mail I respond to states that I am not interested in relocating (usually to the bay area). Requiring all of your employees to sit in the same building is not just old fashioned, it misses out on talent that chooses to live elsewhere.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#155

Post by yourapostasy »

tootie wrote: post #91
chiph wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem in Austin. Prices are going up faster than I can save, even accounting for the downpayment leverage. There's no way that I can compete with the all-cash offers that are $10k and $20k above asking price that are being made by investors and people from California and overseas. Knowing that it's a bubble, I think I'm going to have to wait until it pops, and just keep renting until then. Because c…

Oh Austin is so cute. I've lost apartments in Brooklyn getting outbid by $300K.

Austin's metro economy is currently insufficiently developed (that is, it hasn't found a way yet to geographically lock in any desirable, large-scale economic network effects) to support the kind of globally-unique signature metro economy associated with the metro areas like NYC, London, Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, etc. Those signature economies can support the kinds of incomes it takes to regularly yield six-figure bidding gaps.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#156

Post by nilkn »

slantedview wrote: post #154
a2kadet wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If more employers understood the value of distributed teams, this wouldn't even need to be an issue. I would say I'm pretty against distributed teams at the moment. Would you mind elaborating on the value of them?

Assuming this is a serious question, you can hire whoever you want without worrying about their location. The world is your talent pool. Or to put it another way, almost every recruiter e-mail I respond to states that I am not interested in relocating (usually to the bay area). Requiring all of your employees to sit in the same building is not just old fashioned, it misses out on talent that chooses to live elsewhere…

The other big one is that the company can save a lot of money on office space. If necessary, a small HQ can still be located in San Francisco or Silicon Valley for physical proximity to investors, but you don't need to worry about getting a big, fancy and expensive space to house all your workers. For a funded startup, this means the burn rate is a lot lower. For a bootstrapped company, it just means the company has a lot more money to spend elsewhere or save; they could even roll the savings into higher salaries to attract better talent (which fits with your point as well).

You're never going to have to worry about whether you need an open floorplan or not, because by default everybody gets a custom-designed private office.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#157

Post by forrestthewoods »

Nice. A slightly more useful analysis would be for a fixed, user defined, salary. Showing results for Glassdoor is pretty cool. But I don't care what other people make. I care about what I make and what I think I can make in particular cities. All the figures are pretty low for a senior engineer which limits it's use.

Also, the chart that takes taxes into account is really cool. Super useful. People who move from Seattle to California know that cost of living is a big difference, but they don't properly account for state income tax! They often try to, but get the math wrong.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#158

Post by ilghiro »

V-2 wrote: post #107
kokey wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£18k/year in London, I suppose you didn't live alone, that's the only way to make ends meet on that budget.

I did live in London on my own, on a budget tighter than that. Admittedly, a few years ago

Rental prices have skyrocketed in the past few years:

https://s2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/626WvTKmFK2FRBFpBg9rNg--/...

This is for buyers but the rental market price rates have gone up in pretty much the same way.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#159

Post by serve_yay »

totalrobe wrote: post #117

Would be nice to see more SE cities in here like Atlanta, Miami/Ft Lauderdale, Tampa/Orlando, Jacksonville, Charlotte, NOLA, etc.. edit the software market is pretty hot up in DC/North Virginia too Salary/COL is typically high in the bigger SE metros from what I've observed growing up in the region.

That's true, however DC & Northern VA specifically are actually pretty expensive to live in. In fact, I would argue that they're not great places for a lot of devs, because the cost of living is high but you also don't get much in return for that COL - it's high because people in the region have basically guaranteed jobs between all the gov't and contracting jobs. Plus, all that gov't and contracting stuff is what the software jobs are. So sure, you can be gainfully employed writing AbstractFactoryFactories in some gigantic consulting firm.

But overall, you're really paying for the job security of people in very different fields than you, and you will spend your off-hours surrounded by lawyers and gov't employees. I don't recommend it, but YMMV of course.

Re: Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers

#160

Post by wcummings »

jghn wrote: post #106
m0th87 wrote: post #63

I've lived in several of these cities briefly (Seattle, Austin), and a long-term (Raleigh, NYC). If you can put up with the car culture - which you have to if you want to live outside of NYC or Chicago - Raleigh is a great city. Very low cost of living, a burgeoning downtown night-life and cultural scene, and very warm, likable people. Austin has a much better downtown, but I'd be concerned about traffic moving there…

"outside of NYC or Chicago" I've been carless in Boston (technically cambridge and somerville) for 15 years now and it's not at all been an issue. I'm not some wackadoo outlier either, I know tons of people like myself.

I live in Somerville and work in Cambridge, no car, commute on the bus and otherwise get around exclusively w/ public transit. Parent is not alone.

Having to own a car is a deal-breaker.

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