221–230 of 267 posts
In Seattle, taking a 45 minute train ride can be the difference in 300K or more for buying a house. I wonder if other cities are similar?
1.5 hrs/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks/year * $80/hr = $30,000/year. Obviously those numbers are fudged in a bunch of places, but maybe it's not so crazy to spend $300k extra to avoid the commute?
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. If something like this seems obvious to you, and obviously a lot of smart people are acting in the opposite way, maybe you should re-consider your assumptions. In reality, online communication tools currently are a poor proxy for in-person communication in many situations. Online tools do not pick up the array of no…
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. If something like this seems obvious to you, and obviously a lot of smart people are acting in the opposite way, maybe you should re-consider your assumptions. In reality, online communication tools currently are a poor proxy for in-person communication in many situations. Online tools do not pick up the array of no…
I'd prefer private offices to remote distributed work. But I find it's actually easier to find remote jobs than software companies that make an effort to provide private offices.
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…
> You could live exactly where you wanted to live. Until that awesome employer has layoffs and your options get really limited out in Nowhere, UT.
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 th…
Also in NOVA you're paying for some of the best public middle/high schools in the country, which I don't care about yet but if I had kids would be something to factor.
Weirdly Atlanta is not on the list, but this is why I'm probably never moving to SF. Yes, all the cool jobs are there, but for what price? GA tech is releasing very high quality engineers and the startup scene here is great (Mailchimp and many others), and you live in a frikin mansion 10 minutes commute to work (if you live in Alpharetta). Tons of technical meetups and both thriving startup scene and established ente…
I love GA too... but Texas has zero income tax (it's in the state Constitution).
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I love GA too... but Texas has zero income tax (it's in the state Constitution).
Yes because of insane property tax
Taxes are generally from 2% to 3% of property tax appraisal (which is usually lower than the real, "market" value; when I bought my house, it was appraised for 40% less than what I paid for it). For a $500k house (large home, probably 4,000 to 5,000 sq ft, pool), maybe $1k/mo. For a $200k home (which could still be 3k sq ft), maybe $500/mo.
Any way you cut it, even $12k/year in property tax is certainly less to possibly a LOT less than 13% income tax in CA, and you can buy smaller or larger, buy elsewhere or relocate, or negotiate it away by protesting with comps data. Also, it's a tax only when you spend the money, not when you make it (encouraging investment).
Rentals have no direct property tax, of course. Compare the actual prices. Before you say "oh, that's where it is!" compare the rental prices for a home in San Jose (or SF) to the same home in an Austin suburb.
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This is true if you're speaking of downtown Austin. Most tech companies are in north Austin, which is decidedly less cool and more strip mall-ish. You can still get a huge house for $200k if you look in Round Rock or Cedar Park -- both of which are within a 15-20 minute commute of the Braker/Metric area where most of the low-cost office space that attracts startups is. It's not super sexy, but cheap housing still exi…
Which is becoming a much bigger problem because of the crushing traffic and limited public transportation.
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Three hours, seriously? That is no longer within the metro area of NY, not even close. If you're talking about suburban commuting, houses upstate in Westchester are still $1 million with a fat 3% property tax bill. The trains suck and have a history of safety issues and you have to spend 2 hours a day on one. No thanks. Don't try to settle in the NY metro w/ a family unless you are in finance, your quality of life wi…
I live and work in Albany. I drive 5 minutes to work. My family gets to hop on the Amtrak and enjoy the cultural advantages of NYC about once a month. We drive to places like the Bronx Zoo and Boston for various things. When I was a kid in Queens, getting to Manhattan via transit easily took 2 hours. My son gets all of the benefits of not living in NYC, and many of the advantages.
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The life hack to actually come out ahead is to avoid these places and find a good opportunity in a cheaper place. I don't know a lot about Austin, but I'm familiar with NYC, and I think that example works too. If you define the "cool" part of NYC as being in Manhattan, once you have a family it's irrelevant, because you can't live there... like 98% of everyone else, you end up in Jersey, the boroughs, or Long Island.…
Three hours, seriously? That is no longer within the metro area of NY, not even close. If you're talking about suburban commuting, houses upstate in Westchester are still $1 million with a fat 3% property tax bill. The trains suck and have a history of safety issues and you have to spend 2 hours a day on one. No thanks. Don't try to settle in the NY metro w/ a family unless you are in finance, your quality of life wi…
Not everyone's choice of lifestyle, but it's certainly a nice one.