What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#21

Post by gfaremil » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 6:24 PM UTC

I have been living in Bay Area for 11 years and here is my take:

- as an engineer, you will never be able to buy a house in Bay Area (at least not so you can live conformable). you will struggle all your life. And don't dream: None of your stock options will be worth shit.

- the schools are horrendous, so expect extra costs for after-school programs or private school

- Bay Area is the best place in the world to be entrepreneur

- Bay Area has the best weather in the world

In short, if you have entrepreneurship aspirations and/or weather is important for you then Bay Area is the place. Otherwise, go somewhere else.

All the big corporations have development centers in other parts of the country. For example, Oracle has a big development center in Nashua, etc.

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#22

Post by radarsat1 » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 7:25 PM UTC

4 of the top 5 of the "upper crust" are web companies. What's a non-web guy to do? Any jobs in other fields around there? (e.g., robotics, embedded, audio..)

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#23

Post by bignoggins » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 7:50 PM UTC

Weird coincidence. The valley average salary was my exact salary to the dollar before I quit.

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#24

Post by simonsarris » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 8:24 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #22

4 of the top 5 of the "upper crust" are web companies. What's a non-web guy to do? Any jobs in other fields around there? (e.g., robotics, embedded, audio..)

http://www.willowgarage.com/

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#25

Post by hugh3 » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 8:27 PM UTC

jamesteow wrote: post #6

Jd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC to most people includes all the bureaus and sometimes even Jersey City, etc. There are lots of more affordable options (e.g. Astoria) than downtown Manhattan, whereas such options do not exist in Silicon Valley.

Yep, I'd say most creatives live in Brooklyn due to affordability. Over here, would an equivalent be Oakland?

Meh, in San Francisco the starving creative types just live in squalor in the scummier parts of San Francisco.

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#26

Post by rdouble » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 8:34 PM UTC

jamesteow wrote: post #6

Jd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC to most people includes all the bureaus and sometimes even Jersey City, etc. There are lots of more affordable options (e.g. Astoria) than downtown Manhattan, whereas such options do not exist in Silicon Valley.

Yep, I'd say most creatives live in Brooklyn due to affordability. Over here, would an equivalent be Oakland?

It depends on what you mean by "creatives." There's a difference between web designers, sculptors and painters. By and large, artists working with physical media have been moving to LA in droves for the past decade. Large studio spaces simply don't exist in the Bay Area at any price - suitable buildings are turned into condos or office space. The situation is similar for NYC artists. Even Jeff Dietch moved to LA, sort of a bellwether for art trends in the country.

For the creatives who stay in SF, the other comment by hugh3 is correct. Most live where you'd expect: the mission, the tenderloin, 6th and Market, etc. Oakland is also popular but not as much as the people who choose to live there make it seem. Artists in SF aren't necessarily living in squalor (or at least any worse squalor than hipster web programmers). My neighbor made a good living painting cartoon robot monsters.

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#27

Post by brianmwang » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 9:22 PM UTC

Jd wrote: post #11

_delirium wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're willing to include the kind of 60-minute commutes that New Yorkers living in outlying areas have, you can live in all sorts of cheap satellites of SV too, depending on where in the valley your job is. For example, if you work in Cupertino, you can live in Gilroy; for other parts of the valley, you can live in Livermore. There are also cheap parts of the southern East Bay that are pretty nearby. Even the cen…

Sure, but that's a 60 minute driving commute vs. a 60-minute public transit commute, which makes a big difference to a lot of people (e.g. I can read a book on public transit). A lot of the statistics are questionable, most certainly including the average apartment cost.

And that's not even factoring in the cost of car ownership, which is at least 4-5x what you pay for a monthly subway pass.

Re: What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

#28

Post by jamesteow » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 9:52 PM UTC

rdouble wrote: post #26

jamesteow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I'd say most creatives live in Brooklyn due to affordability. Over here, would an equivalent be Oakland?

It depends on what you mean by "creatives." There's a difference between web designers, sculptors and painters. By and large, artists working with physical media have been moving to LA in droves for the past decade. Large studio spaces simply don't exist in the Bay Area at any price - suitable buildings are turned into condos or office space. The situation is similar for NYC artists. Even Jeff Dietch moved to LA, sor…

Creatives also include illustrators, typographers, motionographers, musicians... they are mostly in Brooklyn. Physical media artists are still around, just further pushed to east in Bushwick and East Williamsburg, though I think quite a number have moved to Philly, Seattle, or as you mentioned, LA.