Which Occupations Are Priced Out of Homeownership? | Hacker News Reader

Which Occupations Are Priced Out of Homeownership?

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146 pointsscottporad193 comments

In SF/London/etc?

All of them. 'Occupations' don't get you a middle class lifestyle any more. You fundamentally have to play the capitalist game and maximise your income, you can't just 'do a good job' any more.

Look at London. A family home in zone 6? ~400K. 20% deposit, that's 320K -> ~90K annual income required to buy it.

Ninety thousand pounds. I don't think people really 'get' how much this is. It's 7x minimum wage.

It's not a wage that you work hard and get, it's limited to an exclusive elite. You might be able to manage that, I might be able to manage that, but the city as a whole is knackered.

I don't think people understand what it means that massive swathes of the population can never own a home, or can never save after paying for their rent.

You're saying that teachers, bus drivers, shopkeepers, don't deserve anything other than to go to work over and over again.

It's a total bloody disaster. I hear people moaning that tube drivers earn 50K. 50K! These guys run the god damn city, without them you couldn't get to work, and you want to pay them so little that they're unable to ever buy a studio flat.

What's the solution? I will work hard and earn lots. Everyone who can't do that is knackered. That sounds like a reasonable way to run a society - winner takes all, everyone else gets shafted.

Why don't people move? Haven't they learned to vote with their money?

> These guys run the god damn city, without them you couldn't get to work

I don't know, there are cities where there aren't even drivers in the metro.

People want to live there because high paying jobs are there, but then housing knocks the wind of them.

As a single person in London you can have a very comfortable lifestyle on 50K - I'm speaking from personal experience. Two years ago I paid 175K for a modern flat in good condition in Zone 3 - very close to a major bus depot actually, if it's the bus drivers you're worried about. I could buy what I wanted, go out more than I cared to, and was still saving money.

Fundamentally there are only so many houses and a lot of people want to live in London. Maybe the young people will push the families out, and then migrate out in turn when they themselves grow up and want a big house to raise a family in. If so then that's no bad thing in my book (and I don't think it's anything new). The young people are probably getting a lot more value out of living in London, since they're the ones going to the restaurants, theatres, gigs, clubs etc. - let them.

You need to check current property prices: "Last year most property sales in London involved flats which sold for on average £466,589." http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/London.html

Yes, you can certainly find cheaper flats, but these days they're in zone 6 and far from "good condition".

An average will be very skewed by the high end, and there's a lot of variation between expensive and cheap areas even quite close to the centre. I don't believe prices have changed that much in two years.

Probably about 25%, the question is, how many people's salaries have gone up 25% in that space of time?

Actually if you are a firefighter in San Francisco, you can qualify for a special downpayment assistance loan of up to $200,000 that requires no payments for 30 years

http://sfmohcd.org/first-responders-down-payment-assistance-...

Also starting salary for SFFD is from $72,670.00 - 112,190.00/year which doesn't include overtime.

https://www.jobaps.com/SF/sup/bulpreview.asp?R1=CCT&R2=H002&...

Firefighters are actually some of the highest paid city workers. In 2013, 31 of the top 50 earners were from the SFFD.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Fire-Dept-dominate...

Good for them. Emergency workers should be paid a living wage, and for SF $72k-$112k seems completely reasonable.

> Firefighters are actually some of the highest paid city workers. In 2013, 31 of the top 50 earners were from the SFFD.

as the article you linked to mentions, this is largely due to one time payments due to people cashing out unused vacation and sick days when they retire.

Whoever does emergency work for only a "living wage" is more of a saint than Mother Theresa. They deserve at least mid-range for their locale.

I was surprised to see that as well. Forget about highest-paid -- just the stability of a government job allows one to afford homes. I might make more as a developer, but i have no idea when i'll be laid-off and how long i might be out of work. That forces me to stretch far less than a firefighter or teacher.

Finance. Or rather working at a large bank, also comes with great job stability. If you are a developer on one of the core systems you are basically set for life.

You need to take into account that firefighters sometimes get injured and even die doing their jobs. Getting laid off isn't the only way to lose their job.

Very true. Here is a long treatise on the subject with some sources. http://www.iaff1775.org/the-truth-about-firefighter-retireme...

Clearly it is not a balanced article (since it comes from a FireFighters Union) but it definitely made some good points.

Don't they get compensation for that, which should still enable them to keep up with mortage payments?

Insurance?

Strong unions negotiate good wages. Good for them.

Why is he being downvoted? I don't get this site sometimes. San Francisco is a union town--get used to it. (It might be the last union town.)

Yes--firefigheters, electricians, plumbers, cops, etc. make a very livable wage.

I've been in a San Francisco union, and never felt so--what's the word--protected.

No--I didn't like the fact that everyone was paid the same, but in retrospect I was wrong. There will be a day where you are not the best in the room. You won't be the Rock Star. You will thank the socialists for that union.

To be honest, I think certain sectors of tech would benefit from a union. So many of you go to that fun place. You get free food. You get free sodas. You get the fun office hootenannies. And a salary that's barely livable.

We're still in a bull market in tech. All the Ayn Rand/Rebublican mantra will get very old when it gamblers decide to pull that money back in.

Sorry, I'm a fan of unions. Worked too many non-union jobs; jobs that were worse than not working. For some reason, owners only like to pay just what they get away with.

I have mixed feelings towards unions. I grew up just outside of Flint, MI, so the UAW was a big part of my life (though my parents were not GM workers, so it was not as big a part of my life as it was for my friends). I am in favor of unions in theory, as I tend to think that businesses will take advantage of their workers as much as they think they can, and a union is a great way for workers to protect themselves. But, eventually GM moved all of their factory jobs overseas and the whole Greater Flint area has suffered because of it. Now, I'm not going to lay the blame for this solely at the feet of the UAW, GM is ultimately responsible, but I'm sure the outlandish wages that the UAW had secured for their (unskilled) labor didn't help any. Demanding a living wage is vital, but when you have an unskilled workforce that is comprised entirely of high school graduates (or even dropouts in some cases) that are all making enough money to afford 2 homes, a boat, and enough cars to litter their front yard with them, I can see why a business would start looking at moving those jobs elsewhere.

So, I guess I would say that I am a fan of unions, but I believe that, while a unions primary goal should be protecting their workers, they should also be cognizant of the needs of the business(es) to which their workers sell their labor.

If a company is not going to pay you a living wage either way, the union did not mean anything. I often decry compromise because it means settling for worse - in the case of Michigan, while it is awful how rampant poverty and unemployment are there now that the union jobs dried up, the alternative was the slow gradual death of reasonable wages like is happening everywhere else. The union bought their workers as much time as they could but nobody will stop the trends of globalization and automation, and as a society we need to do a lot more to handle rampant unemployability than we are now.

Unions can only protect the living wage employable in the long term.

It seems the union did not buy as much time as they could. By ratcheting up wages so fast, they hastened the day that automation was cheaper than labor. Cheaper to go overseas anyway. By overreaching, the situation was made worse, in the sense of "the party's over" happening a decade earlier than it might have.

Because public sector unions are not bargaining on the same footing or with similar power that private unions do. They have an undue influence over local elections and in effect can hold local politicians hostage by it. There have been many documented cases where said unions used intimidation to include billboards and the like against any politician trying to reign in retirement and similar benefits back to reasonable levels.

Corporations do the same shit from an opposite angle. You need opposing groups to form a balance; unfortunately in our society, things are heavily weighted towards corporate power.

How do public unions get more influence?

> How do public unions get more influence?

Public sector unions operate in a way analogous to private-sector unions where the union members are mostly also shareholders of the corporation for which they are employed, and work together to lobby other shareholders for action as well as engaging in the usual collective bargaining approaches. This is rare (though not impossible) in the private sector, though there is a private-sector business model (the union co-op model) in which the union more power than in any public union situation, because the union workers are the entirety of the ownership group, not just an important and active subset of the constituency [0].

[0] http://www.geo.coop/story/unions-and-worker-co-ops-working-t...

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> Like all laws, laws which give unions monopoly protections are enforced by threats of violence

To the extent that's true, its less true (or entirely, flatly untrue, depending on the relation of the government issuing the rule to the one employing the workers) in the case of laws giving them such monopolies in public employment, which in fact withdraw the capacity of the government employer to apply violence or its threat in certain ways, like all laws restraining government.

It's because y combinator is an incubator for startup companies. Anyone who owns a startup doesn't want a union in their own company.

Good for them. Bad for the taxpayer.

The taxpayer ought to be ashamed of short changing people.

They also ought to have the common sense that it's better to pay a living wage, than pick up the bill in welfare.

This. I've never understood the convoluted logical gyrations required to get through "unions are bad" -> "free market should be allowed to set wages (without workers having freedom to collectively bargain)" -> "non-livable wages spread for workers without capital" -> "griping about welfare and lazy people who should just work more".

Yes, unions can metastasize and block their own effectiveness. But a properly bounded union isn't a terrible thing.

There's a major difference between a public employee union and a private sector union. In the private sector, a union organizes to put leverage on management, who represents ownership (i.e. the stockholders, the partners, etc). Ownership made a choice to invest in the company, and was able to weigh factors like labor rates and work environment before they invested.

But in a public employee union, labor is organizing for leverage against ownership, which in a democracy is everyone under the government's jurisdiction. In this case, ownership is investing in the union without the same choice.

If we live under a government that is of, by, and for the people, collective bargaining via unions is oppressive. Labor negotiations should take place at the ballot box, and public employees should live with what's decided there.

We live under a government where oppressive discrimination by the majority is also illegal.

You're expecting a majority to care about a livable wage for their fellow man or woman more than an extra dollar in their pocket saved from taxes. That's not a very realistic expectation and taken to conclusion, damaging for the country and the services provided by those employees (no expecting Ritz treatment at Walmart salaries).

I included a caveat about how unions need to be bounded, and there are additional needs in the public sector, but the same tensions that drive their necessity exists for public employees as well. Just because you choose a government job shouldn't mean you sign your rights away.

Wait but why?

We vote for representatives to negotiate with their labor force and contractors.

Thank you. It is astonishing how few people understand the distinction (public/private).

Can you explain the relevance of the distinction?

Christ. Just look at all of western europe to see unions working well for the most part.

Yes, and also the economy is in big trouble when people with full time gainful employment (yes even with the government, which is a major employer) have no money to buy things.

There is a big difference between paying a "living wage" to government workers, and paying them far above the market salary for people with similar credentials.

Who are these people you speak of that have similar credentials to a fire fighter?

Loggers and fisherman?

Interesting. I was wondering how accurate this was, and in terms of the risk of the job, it more than checks out according to my first result. http://www.cultureofsafety.com/2013/01/your-odds-of-dying-at... Of course that doesn't cover medical risk like cancer.

Skill-wise, I would expect they are comparable in skill level if not skill set.

Fire service could be privatized and government provided welfare does not have to exist to begin with.

Result, slums, city destroying fires, people dying in the street. You do realize also, that chronically sick malnourished sweatshop serfs do awful work?

It's a dystopian hell only a libertarian could love.

It's not a libertarian ideal. It's more of an Anarcho-syndicalist ideal.

I'm always shocked when such terrible ideas are put forth for consideration in a public forum.

Privatize essential life safety services? Because that has worked oh so well for healthcare.

healthcare is the state it is in because of government interference in the insurance markets at Federal and State levels. When you cannot cross state lines to offer competing insurance how can anyone expect a good system. Before anyone points to government run healthcare in the US being good please explain away the VA

The standard line always is, "we will do it better than X" - well fix current government run healthcare first

Arguably, U.S. government interference in healthcare markets has been heavily influenced by insurance lobbyists for the purpose of increasing insurance profits. Although there is often a trade-off between availability and quality, other countries have managed to provide decent healthcare without exorbitant cost.

If you don't just to want beat up a strawman, the US interference in health care is not a good argument against government interference in health care in general.

The NHS in the UK has its problems, but they are not nearly as bad.

(I don't know which country's system is the best to look at as a good example of private health care. Perhaps the best parts of India? (India ostensibly has government healthcare, but it's so bad that everyone who can afford it gets private health care. I don't know how bad the interference is.)))

You realize that firefighting is a job that requires a great deal of training and education, and it's a job that's very easy to do badly?

Not only that, but fires spread, they need to be caught early, and they're preventable. It's not just a matter of performing a service for one home at a time if they catch on fire, it's a matter of performing a public service to reduce the risk of fire, enforce building codes, minimize damage caused by fires, and save lives. This is something that requires a community effort, and needs to cover the entire community uniformly.

Most jobs provide some important service. The person that bags groceries at the supermarket is part of the system that feeds all of us. Firefighting is a job; one that is widely respected. However, the workers on farms and ranches and fishing boats work under riskier conditions and are paid less. Firefighting isn't a particularly dangerous job (although several times riskier than programming). With respect to training, I'm not a firefighter and I'm sure it varies by department, but I believe firefighting requires a highschool degree, EMS training and a few weeks of training on firefighting methods.

Before being concerned about firefighters, it seems to me that we should be more concerned with improving the conditions for loggers and garbage collectors which have much greater work related risks.

I wasn't expressing concern about the position, I was explaining why it would be a bad decision to privatize it. None of the things I listed mention anything about it being "dangerous" or "risky" One of the biggest arguments against privatization, I think, is that they're responsible for enforcing building fire codes, and that's a very non-dangerous task. I have no idea what your response is supposed to mean.

Strong unions are symptoms, not causes. Blaming unions because rich/powerful people have a tendency to fuck over the powerless is exactly what the rich/powerful want you to do. The rich and powerful benefit far more from low taxes than the stereotypical "tax payer".

Addendum: for God's sake, your precious karma score is a number on a website. If it matters to you so much that you create new accounts to say something people might not like, you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Reply to addendum: Pseudonymity is not anonymity - a lot of people post here under a handle known to friends and/or coworkers (or generally prefer to post without hiding their identities.) They may be posting under throwaways in order not to be judged for their opinions IRL (or fired for them.)

So it's not all magic internet points.

Always remember that public employees are taxpayers, too.

Would really like to see some methodology here. I find it extremely hard to believe that programmers can only afford 4% of SF's housing stock, but doctors can do 41%.

Sure doctors might make an average of $175k while programmers pull $100k, but by the time the doctor exits residency, the programmer will have earned about $400k+ post-tax while the doctor is $200k in debt. It'll take quite some time (12+ years) for a post-tax salary difference of $36k to make up that imbalance.

First, how many programmers, even in the Bay Area, have base salaries of $175k and higher? I'd wager not very many at all. You'll frequently see total compensation packages quoted in that range and higher, but those include various forms of deferred payment that are not guaranteed (like unvested stock options, whose value is often measured in a fairly unreliable way).

Second, one's cash salary is the primary determining factor in how much house one can "afford" (and I use quotes because I think there's a vast gap between what a bank tells you you can afford and what you actually can afford, but that's a different discussion).

If you just use the 3x rule of thumb, the $100k programmer can only afford a $300k house and the $175k doctor can afford a $525k house. But of course in SF people more often use the 5x rule of thumb, so the programmer could "afford" a $500k house and the doctor an $875k house.

Don't forget also that there are many doctors who make vastly more than $175k in salary. $300k+ salaries are not all that uncommon among specialists. Indeed, $284k is the average for specialists: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2015...

$175k is actually becoming fairly common for Senior Engineers at funded startups (post Series B usually). $160k is already pretty normal.

I tell people that a Senior Engineer should expect $225k in total comp. That's a reasonable base line at any of the big companies (Google/Facebook/Netflix/etc). You can take less than that, but you should be able to roughly itemize the reasons for discount. ("Startup stock options have an expected value of $X per year.", "Leadership opportunities are worth $Y per year.", " Being able to use a certain technology is worth $Z per year.", etc.)

Mortgage lenders tend not to count equity/bonuses as income for loans, even if they are pretty safe like BigCo RSUs

2 years of tax returns is often sufficient, just the same as being self employed.

I take it you're not from the Bay Area. Base salaries over 175k are common for senior engineers (10+ years). I would say that's a common base salary for the bigger companies like Google, etc. Netflix pays $400k cash for senior engineers.

Also the median house price in SF is over 1M.

I didn't say there aren't programmers making $400k or any particular figure. I said it's not common. And I don't think you've written anything here that would convince me that it is common. Could you link to some statistics that show $400k base salaries are common among programmers in the Bay Area in any reasonable sense? If so, then I will completely re-evaluate my stance.

My guess is that $400k is about as high as it gets (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong -- with a reliable source, mind you). If we're going to do a fair comparison to doctors, then we need to compare it to a top income for a doctor as well, which is easily in excess of $1M/year.

>programmers pull $100k

My understanding is $110k is an unsurprising entry-level salary; people who are mid-career would be making quite a bit more.

A bit off topic, but I just cannot grasp those US salaries for programmers. Even for UK, that would be insanely high, with the exception of maybe london, but if you work anywhere else the number is 1/3 of this. Average junior programmer salaries in the North East of England are around ~$35k/year, and I know seniors with 15-20 years of experience and they make 60k pounds/year(so ~85k USD/year). I have friends working as C++ programmers in Krakow, Poland, and they make ~$20k/year(bear in mind that it's extremely good salary there, as houses rarely cost more than $100k, in fact you could buy land and build a house for less). I just cannot grasp how an entry level position would pay $100k/year.

It is hard to compare European salaries to their US counterpart. You have to take account they have much less holidays on average, you have also some sort of "free healthcare" that is not tied to your job, a state pension plan, access to some cheap higher level education for your children.

In my country, between what is paid by the employer and what I actually get there is a factor of 2 to pay for all the "free" service aforementioned.

I would be careful with that comparison. Many higher-wage US jobs get much more vacation than the minimum 2 weeks, health insurance is paid for by the company (employee only pay ~10% of premium), you get a pension (Social Security) and you're kids can go to a state school with subsidized tuition (albetit, nowhere near as cheap as Europe).

That is why I mentioned "not tied to your job" which seems, from my very European viewpoint, a bit saner. I heard at least one horror story of an expat who went to work in the US, got a cancer, lost its job, and then had to come back because he was totally uncovered. I don't know the system well enough to determine if it was a total lack of precaution (and luck) on his side, or that was how the system was supposed to work.

> Many higher-wage US jobs get much more vacation than the minimum 2 weeks

[citation needed]. Most high-level American techies I've met get two weeks and take less.

Just as anecdotal as yours, but around here, the standard for new hires seems to be 14 days of PTO per year, which gets increased by about a week after a few years of service and again a few years after that. That's with the contractor companies working with the FAA outside Atlantic City, NJ. So, having and using 3-4 weeks isn't too uncommon. Don't know how that compares to elsewhere, but my last non-contractor job closer to Philly had a similar breakdown.

Edit: Oh, and it's probably worth noting that starting salary is wayyyy lower than SF, or even other major metro areas. Ballpark $50k. Balanced by the stability, benefits, lower cost of living, and lack of traffic/commute.

...> 2 weeks [after a few years of service at the one job].

Most tech people, especially younger people, have to switch jobs every one or two years, roughly, in order to get a proper compensation boost and career growth, so they never accumulate the years at one company that lead to the 4-5 weeks that some people get.

Like at my current job, there's several people here who have been here for 5 years and have 4-5 weeks of PTO accumulated. I've been here for less than a year, so I have 2 weeks, even though I have more career experience than quite a few of the people here.

Also, due to some recent changes that screwed with benefits quite a bit, I'm not sure I see myself staying here for much longer than maybe two years max (we'll see, there's a pretty good team, nice boss, and perfect commute, so I'm in no hurry), so I'm probably not going to see any extra PTO out of that either.

Interesting. I have heard of that being a problem here as well, with each contract change/new company resetting seniority (even to do the same exact job) and keeping your annual PTO allotment. However, I don't know if my current situation is special, but I'm in the process of negotiating a move to a new company and was able to get them to agree to honor my service with my current company toward PTO seniority. So, it may just be something you need to fight for, that most people don't think to fight for?

There are a lot of things that I cannot grasp, that are still true.

I know of one Big Five tech company where the lowest pay bracket for permanent-position software engineers is $110k USD base salary, plus substantial annual bonus and liquid stock (roughly $150k total comp, plus perks). Interns get less base and no bonus/stock, I think.

If we assume that all of the Big Five are within 20% of that, and if we also assume that every startup wants to hire "only the best" (or, more realistically, every startup wants to credibly lie to themselves that they do so), what do you figure they need to pay to get anybody taking their jobs seriously?

Market forces, friend.

Note that these are not salaries that apply to any ol' schlob who can sling a little HTML and got Apache running that one time, this isn't 1998.

Those aren't "US salaries". They're Bay Area salaries. Most American programmers don't live in the Bay Area, don't make Bay Area salaries, and would be rejected as Not a Rock Star by Bay Area companies.

You're on HN, everyone is talking about a small distinct sector of the country where all of this is insane. I've been in the conversation on here before. Leave the west coast of America and the salaries normalize quite a bit. There is literally a 'gold rush' right now of people moving west to work in tech with no thought to the cost of living.

The US national average is around $90k/year (£65k, €82k).

If you're in a place like Indianapolis, Indiana, which is basically as vanilla as a middle America gets, median salary drops to something like $70k/year (£50k, €65k). But there are basically no entry-level jobs there, and you either have to go to Chicago or a military base to find work nearby as a new graduate. That means the 12 experienced software pros that still work as employees in the city earn waaay below average. But the housing costs there are very low, such that it's much easier to buy a home in Indianapolis on $70k/year than in San Francisco with $105k/year (£75k, €95k).

There is the additional disadvantage that none of your employers will be even remotely sexy, there will be a pathetically low number to choose from, the public transit is terrible, and if you are at all worried about public schools, you would need to live in Carmel, Fishers, or Washington township, all quite a lengthy and congested commute from downtown.

Two hours away, in Chicago, median salary is $75k/year (£55k, €68k), with a greater variety of potential employers. Housing still affordable. Public transit is very usable. But the city is more corrupt than Dis, and nearly bankrupt.

The competition for housing around SF-Oakland-SJ is certainly driving up software industry salaries in that area. Companies hiring on-site employees in the metro area can't get anyone who can't afford to live within commuting distance, and can't keep in the long-term anyone who can't eventually secure family-appropriate lodgings within the same radius. And the intense competition for competent employees means that companies have to constantly outbid each other.

It really is insane out there. I have utterly no clue on how they can sustain such a high salary differential with the entire rest of the world without collapsing the market.

UK has rather low salaries for engineers. Even Singapore, Hong Kong or Australia are higher than UK.

If you don't mind paying for a FIFA cable package, you can move to the US and get that kind of salary perk quite easily. The downside is that the word "marmite" will raise eyebrows and you'll constantly be having to tell yourself to say "soccer" instead of "football."

Nah, professing your love of `football' works very well in casual conversation in America. (Just make sure you never mention any details, so they don't pick up that you are talking about the other football.)

Some of these entry level "compensation" figures include illiquid stock. Ask HR what the outstanding number of shares are and you get a blank face. Other stock classes? Silence. Liquidity preferences? Secret. The real worth is zero, yet they get treated like $30k on top of salary.

I am specifically talking about base cash salary here, but point taken.

According to Glassdoor[1] and Payscale[2] the average salary across all (not just entry-level) software engineers in San Francisco is $103K. So I doubt $110k is even close to a normal entry-level salary.

1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en...

2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...

That ignores substantial publicly-traded equity and cash bonuses

There is something really off about these numbers. unless i'm totally off about how many entry level employees are in the area vs mid/senior level employees. Since this data is collected by people reporting their salaries, I think that people that are more junior are more likely using and submitting their salary info to the site. This will skew salary data toward entry level employees.

I also see Glassdoor is accounting for stocks now, though that's not factored into avg salary, but total comp. Looking at some companies this raise compensation by ~$50k.

I would say that counts, provided it's actual stock and not options. If it's actual stock, it's liquid, which makes it almost as good as cash for most purposes.

RSUs and other post ipo options should definitely count cause you can sell it right after they vest, basically treating it like cash.

What I'm saying is that Glassdoor does not count it towards their avg salary number. If you click a salary for a role at a certain company it'll give you a different breakdown showing Avg Salary, and one showing Total Comp that includes salary + bonus + stock

RSUs will typically all vest after a certain period of time, depending on the company (4-5 years?). But your mortgage is for 30 years. I wouldn't count that stock towards your "yearly income".

they vest over a period of time, not usually all at once. my company does it evenly over 4 years with a 1 year cliff. other companies can have it skewed towards the latter 4 years. employees do get refreshers as well. so if it vests equally over a certain amount of years, totally should count that portion towards yearly income. In your analogy, it's like counting how much you owe in mortgage payments every year towards yearly expenses.

RSUs refresh, or employees go to another employer for new RSUs.

We're just talking about entry-level salary, right? I've heard really high numbers for first year total compensation.

Hi usaar333,

We got the median software engineer salary off of Glassdoor for San Francisco. It's possible that this skews lower than the actual median salary in the area, based on the type of people who report their salaries on Glassdoor, but that's probably the case for all the salary information we got. We were plainly looking at software engineers, not senior ones or any unique specialities. From there, we used a typical formula for mortgage affordability to figure out how much they could spend on a home. We compared that with recent sales over the last 6 months to determine what % of those homes they could have purchased.

Hope that helps! Kelly from Estately

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for the follow-up. I understand you are pulling the data from Glassdoor, but what I wanted to further understand is:

a) Are we talking about the city limits or metropolitan area or something else?

b) What is the formula used for mortgage affordability? Are we assuming dependents? Debt? Age?

c) How is housing cost determined? The doc implies home sales, but is this reweighed? If a new condo opens up with 400 units, that can significantly distort the "home sales distribution", but insignificantly affects value of housing across the market.

My high-level thought is that is that intuitively the data feels off. i'm not sure if two of the largest issues:

A. Considering sales of larger homes (3 beds+) that would almost always be purchased by dual-income individuals

B. Using salary means to claim occupation X can afford Y% of homes.

"Average salary for occupation X can afford Y%" of homes is different than stating "The average worker in occupation X can buy Y% of homes". (Example: 4 eng make $100k; 1 makes $200k. 1 home in the market costs $400k. Say you use 3x income for affordability standard. Average income is $120k = no one can afford the home (0%). But actually 1/5 engineers can afford the home, meaning that the average worker can buy 20% of all homes)

completely explain the discrepancy from my own world-view (almost every programmer I know could in fact purchase a 1 bedroom condo).

The problem is that they use the national average revenue, but revenue varies greatly by city.

$92k seems pretty low for a San Francisco computer engineer. Actually I think even restaurant servers make more in SF than the rest of US.

The article claims that they localised the revenue:

> "After finding the average annual salary for each profession in each city"

Whether the numbers are reasonably accurate is another question though.

Actually, their stated methodology is a bit rubbish, in that they just take the mean salary and compare it to the housing distribution when they've actually got the salary data and so could create a weighted average, which would be more accurate. (Plus everything you just said.)

> After finding the average annual salary for each profession in each city from Glassdoor...

Yeah, they don't take into account critical factors such as estimated student loans or time invested.

Here is some context that all of these discussions about life as a software developer in San Francisco need.

There are about 243k software developers/programmers in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA area: ~12% of the workforce.

There are about 46k software developers/programmers that make over ~$145,000 in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA area: ~2% of the workforce.

These numbers seem crazy. Are developers/programmers really 12% of the workforce in the SF area?

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics as of May 2014:

  Computer Programmers
  San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
  Total employment: 48,040

  10%ile: $48,040	
  25%ile: $71,460	
  50%ile: $97,050	
  75&ile: $124,020	
  90%ile: $147,970
  
  Software Developers, Applications
  San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
  Total employment: 70,110

  10%ile: $70,110	
  25%ile: $87,440	
  50%ile: $114,700	
  75&ile: $144,320	
  90%ile: $173,130
  
  Software Developers, Systems Software
  San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
  Total employment: 80,480

  10%ile: $80,480	
  25%ile: $94,320	
  50%ile: $118,720	
  75&ile: $146,620	
  90%ile: $171,140
  
  Web Developers
  San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
  Total employment: 45,320

  10%ile: $45,320	
  25%ile: $64,460	
  50%ile: $87,540	
  75&ile: $119,780	
  90%ile: $145,130

Thanks for posting BLS numbers. For all of the comments mentioning aspirational high salaries, the BLS numbers give a much more accurate view, albeit with a minor time delay.

Let's compare median national wages to local home prices. Look at the story we can tell!

Looking at median wage data can be deceiving. For example, doctors salaries are bi modal. A lot of people making 40k/year then all of a sudden they jump up to 180k. I would make the argument that software engineering is probably logarithmic from 90k, with very few people making over 140k. Is the median salary for a "programmer" 92k? Yes. Is that fact useful in the prediction of home ownership for certain local markets? I doubt it.

Obviously it's hard for a median wage teacher to but a home by themselves in SF, but I question this methodology.

From these numbers, it looks like it be hard for a dual income doctor/astronaut couple to own a home in SF.

I'll be honest and say my key learning here was that astronauts don't earn all that much money (and presumably none of them are homeowners in SF!).

On the other hand, some astronauts could get significant money out of giving talks and writing books, etc. At least if they are the first to land on the Moon, or Mars, or similar.

However, I suppose most of those who enter training will never even enter space. It's a rock star earning model: very many try, very few succeed completely. But people do it also for other reasons than money.

The fitness program is a nice perk.

I couldn't help feeling some schadenfreude when watching a video where 72-year-old Buzz Aldrin is pestered and provoked by some (much younger and bigger) nutjob who is in denial about Moon landings and yells at him and pushes him, and eventually Buzz smacks him for good. He sure did his aerobics when he was younger and seemed to be still quite fit.

They all live in Houston (or near it), so they make a decent wage for being there.

But yeah, you don't enter the Astronaut core to get rich. :)

Me too. I guess I figured astronauts must get risk pay. If you're an astronaut you have a sizable likelihood of dying on the job.

Then again, this is probably just supply and demand. Every kid growing up wants to be an astronaut, and very few get to.

Astronauts fly very rarely though. Most of them are training for years and get very little chance to be actually sent to space.

Sure. But when you do fly I’d say it’s pretty risky.[1] Even some of the training can kill you. Seems more risky than a typical desk job, but maybe that depends on how deadly boredom can be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

For context: 4 out 301 spaceflights have resulted in fatalities, or 18 out of 546 people who have been to space. 13 people have died in training, but I have not been able to find the total number of people who have trained as astronauts or cosmonauts. I suppose we would also have to account for health risks due to spaceflight: radiation exposure, accelerated aging, respiratory issues among Apollo astronauts due to lunar dust in their capsules, etc. It's certainly riskier than a desk job, but it still doesn't seem that risky to me.

[1] fatalities in space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

[2] number of spaceflights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights

[3] number of people who have been to space: http://www.worldspaceflight.com/bios/stats.php

[4] accelerated astronaut aging: http://lemire.me/blog/2015/12/01/the-mysterious-aging-of-ast...

[5] Apollo respiratory issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_health_effects_from_lu...

Thanks for compiling the numbers.

18 "work"-related fatalities out of 546 "workers" represents a massive amount of risk over any widespread form of civilian employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fishing is the riskiest job these days, with an annual fatality rate of around 12 per 10000.

Even granting that safety has improved with experience and better engineering, I think it's safe to say that being an astronaut is at least 10x more dangerous than the most dangerous civilian job.

You're right; when I say "not that risky" I'm comparing reality vs. perception of space flight more than reality of space flight vs. reality of dangerous civilian jobs.

On the other hand, for an accurate comparison to BLS numbers I think we would need the total number of astronauts, not the number of spaceflight participants. As for safety improvements, 3 of the 4 fatal spaceflight accidents (and 11 of 18 deaths) occurred in relatively new vehicles. Only one of the accidents occurred in a tried-and-true vehicle, and the fatality count is inflated by the number of people NASA put on each shuttle.

Swings and roundabouts. An astronaut has a greater risk of dying in an accident than most people, but the greater amount of fitness required increases the chances of living a long life if they don't have any accident.

Conversely, there is much less of a risk of a fatal accident in a desk job - but long, stressful, hours combined with a bad diet and lack of exercise can massively increase the chance of dying early from heart disease or stroke.

Astronauts aren’t doing it for the money. The government doesn’t pay it’s people well for risk. Contracting with the government is much more lucrative in this regards. Military can often pay less than $50k a year[1] to people taking a ton of risk when a contractor taking significantly less risk is making $1000 a day. This is one reason privatizing so much of the military is corrosive.

http://www.militaryrates.com/military-pay-charts-e1_e5_2016

Why is that corrosive? Increasing the cost of going to war sounds great to me.

It would be great, if that cost reigned in our willingness to go to war. However, it just provides even more incentive for all the people making money off it directly or indirectly to support the war.

Like everything in life, it is a matter of supply and demand.

At the height of the Iraq war, there was a suddenly increased demand for the services of private military contractors relative to their supply.

Now, the demand is reduced and the market rate for private military contractor services is much less expensive.

Those pay charts obscure the near-match of base salary for Basic Assistance for Housing (untaxed!) and free medical, $300/mo grocery allowance, etc.

That E-5 is earning comparably to $65k or so, depending on the locality.

Yes, but that number goes up when you're getting shot at. Your point about contractors stands, though.

I'd do three years as an astronaut on cost of living.

If they add London everyone would be at or close to 0%. Total disaster here, need to plan an exit. You must have a large inheritance to buy or not have a typical occupation, ie millionaire busines owner.

I moved away from london, I'm lucky that I don't have family there or an emotional attachment to the city itself.

I feel bad for the others, I made an above average wage and chomped over 60% of my salary in rent (+20% in bills and taxes), even if I could have afforded to buy when moving there initially, the rate of incline was so great that after 1 year I was completely unable to buy a studio apartment.

Crazy.

There are even anecdotes about how "my home earns more than I do". :|

I grew up and still live in London and I have no possibility of ever buying anywhere to live in the city, let alone remotely near to my parents.

I would say the house earning more than I do is probably more the norm than the exception at this point, save for some very large high-fliers.

London is very much overdue a correction.

Unless it's a 50%+ drop in prices it's going to make little difference to affordability for the occupations listed on this site (fire fighters, programmers, even doctors etc). Remember even if you are some high salary like £100,000 you can only borrow 3.5 times that. That buys nothing a family can live in here. The only option is to move, inherit a fortune or become a millionaire.

The situation has become extra-bad only in the last 2-3 years, but there are plenty of people that bought before 2012 across a wide variety of occupation. Especially zone 3 and up: 3 year ago a 3 bed house could be acquired for 180K GBP in ok-area zone 3 - not cheap, but not outrageously expensive for a couple - same house goes for over 400K GBP today.

Nowadays, there are still a lot of part-buy/part-rent scheme being built all over zone 2. Sure you only buy 25% to 50% share, but the flat under those scheme have very conservative estimation and rock bottom rental price ( for the other 50 - 75 % ) There are even better deals for key workers ( nurses, teacher, police officer, ... ) So strangely that is easier for a couple of nurse and teacher to get on the property ladder in London than for 2 reasonably paid city workers or said differently basically if you don't qualify for government benefit you must be real rich to afford London.

I agree with you, when a couple making 100K GBP would require social benefit to afford a modest 2 bed in the cheapest area your city, your housing market is fucked.

I fail to understand why in this hyperconnected age real estate prices are going up. There is no need to be in a big city anyway, the prices are absurd, houses are tiny, and immigration/globalization has made most cities look alike. Or is it because the rich have thrown their money at it, inflating prices?

It is mostly the later - phantom "investment" in real estate, where people store wealth and own empty property rather than buy precious metals or actually invest it.

But as we trend towards automation, more and more jobs are disappearing. In many areas, there is not enough density of both people and work to be able to regularly switch jobs as your current one is obsoleted or downsized. People trend towards cities if you want reliable income - jobs everywhere are going away, and the more you are paid the greater the pressure to eliminate your position. You need to be somewhere where, while the unemployment figures / workforce participation figures aren't great in cities, the density means there are more chances to get a job there than elsewhere when your current one inevitably discards you.

The other thing is that mobility is a luxury. You can be rich enough to relocate - paying down payments on houses and apartments, moving or buying furniture, going through the incredible amount of state bureaucracy involving changing address and all necessary documents, and for those who are working poor you don't have the time or savings to do it. The other option is abandon everything, damn the state bureaucracy, and just jump on a bus and go somewhere you think work is plentiful, and then find out nobody will hire you without paperwork and proof of residence.

It is not a solvable problem where you just tell the working poor how to succeed, because everything is systemically rigged to exploit them and keep them in the condition they are in now.

1) toggle to San Francisco 2) weep

3) Work remotely from Detroit

The vast, vast majority of companies in SF are uninterested in hiring remote software engineers.

I guess if you were the kind of company that would hire remote software engineers, then you'd have very little reason to have the rest of your operation in expensive SF either, so there's a weird chicken-and-egg loop there.

There seems to be enough money sloshing around that you'd think someone would be arbitraging it successfully and employing rockstar programmers that live in cheap shacks around the country/globe, but apparently for the mainstream that's not considered viable.

This happens more than you think. There are plenty of ex-tech engineers who started their own contract dev companies with just a couple of local (SFBA) folks who run things and assign work to inexpensive programmers, designers, etc elsewhere in the country/world.

Typical current contract dev rate in the SFBA is in the $250/hr range (negotiable down to $150-175/hr for larger contracts).

At those prices this is the yearly salary for a lot of people

I wonder when will they pull their heads out of the sand

It works for RedHat but I guess remote working detracts from the love of pointless meeting and daily face-to-face contact by upper managers

I think thats it. 1/4 to 1/2 my day is pointless meetings. Some days its 100%. Every company has those odd people who just go to meetings all day (or so it seems). When they are not in a meeting they are sending slack/email about past and future meetings. I don't understand the appeal of those jobs. They are just black holes for productivity.

The only time I can concentrate for long periods (which is vital to programming) is if I stay late. I get more work done from 6PM to 8PM than I do all day. But then you have no life.

Even working from home is so much more productive. Remote work is great if you can find high paying gigs.

Also, an interesting observation: a "computer programmer" (presumably with median income) will be able to afford 100% of homes in Detroit! Each one of them!

Most people are focused on salaries. May be salaries wouldn't be such a big deal if houses weren't that expensive.

- It is killing the middle class. And the lower class is hopeless.

- Beyond individuals, it makes the country as a whole less competitive. (Higher costs).

- It affects consumption. (Less available income)

- And hardly anyone is benefiting. Since you cannot sell your house to realize gains. (You still need a place to live)

Are we ready to start a conversation about a Land Tax ?

I think urban housing demand is relatively inelastic, so I would worry that a sizable portion of a land tax would get pushed down to renters via higher rent and exacerbate the problem of high housing costs.

What about when you have student loans? That reduces your effective income and makes it more difficult to afford a home. Same with a car.

I'm curious how they arrived at affordability as a function of income. I'm surprised they weren't transparent about that.

I'd love to be able to hire developers for $92K/year in SF, but these numbers are completely off base for average salary. Even offering $160-200K (plus options), I probably lose half my recruiting battles to big companies offering total compensation in the range of $450-800K/year.

Who do you think is making housing so unaffordable? It's the tens of thousands of software developers earning $200K-800K/year!

Of course, there is an above-average number of super-rich entrepreneurs in SF, but that's still only a tiny fraction of the population compared to developers. Moreover, the city makes it virtually impossible to combine apartments or houses into mega-mansions, so even the super rich don't consume that many housing units per-capita in SF.

This is the most ridiculous and exaggerated comment I've read here for quite a while. The median salary for a software engineer in SF is $103K [1][2]. If you are offering $160-200K, you are not losing out on half your candidates due to salary. And $450-800K is ridiculous--probably 5-6 standard deviations into the salary tail. If you are seriously offering 200K for a software engineering position and having trouble, please look up my LinkedIn profile (shouldn't be hard, check the username) and hit me up.

These "salary" threads that pop up on HN every so often are so silly.

A: Software Engineers make like $120K on average!

B: Naahh, I heard they make more like $150K.

C: I know someone at Google that makes $200K. Software Engineers are clearly rolling in the money!

D: Oh yea? I can't find decent candidates and I'm offering $220K plus a BMW!

E: I think $250K is kind of the baseline nowadays...

Come on, people listen to yourselves.

1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en...

2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...

I'm confused at the nay sayers. There are two ways I interpret it.

1. People are telling the truth, but theres selection bias. Remember the software world is very broad. A software engineer at Logitech doesn't make nearly as much as one at Google.

2. People are liars. It's really rare for an engineer at Google to make over $200k.

I can sympathize with the first point (which I think is what you are saying), but I have also seen the second point. People get angry when they realize they are underpaid. The truth is that startups take advantage of people. Most engineers don't realize this. If talented engineers in the valley all realized what the opportunity cost of working for a startup is, then startups would have to start paying closer to what BigCos pay. And that's a good thing. It means those of us trapped by golden handcuffs at BigCos (mortgage, kids, whatever) have alternatives.

It's probably both (although I don't think people are liars--how does one benefit by lying to a bunch of people on HN?) Do a handful of engineers at a handful of companies make big salaries? Of course. But they're outliers. There's also surely selection bias at play. Do you think this site's audience is more or less likely than a random sample of software professionals to know someone who makes >$200K?

"a handful of engineers at a handful of companies"

I think that phrasing is ambiguous. It makes it sound like even at Google only the outliers make that much. Most engineers make a lot of money at Google (relative to startups). It's not just the outliers within Google that make good money.

The entire set of engineers at Google can be considered outliers, especially given the sample set of all software engineers in the valley.

The point I try to make is that from a talent perspective, I don't think Google engineers are significant outliers. At least, not to the degree they are outliers from a compensation perspective. That's the gap I'd like to close. There's plenty of Google level talent at startups not making anywhere near what they would make at Google, and a big part of that is misinformation.

So the point is that in a super tight housing market, it doesn't take that many outliers to have a big effect on housing prices. Obviously I'm aiming at fairly high-end developers--like people with Ph.D.s or a decade of industry experience. But there are tens of thousands of people like that in San Francisco. And I've seen google, facebook, salesforce, vmware, and the like offer unbelievable compensation to these people when I'm trying to hire them.

The pattern is such that I don't think people are lying. In some settings, lying about offers could be a way to get leverage, but these people are not trying to negotiate--they know a small company can't offer those kinds of salaries, and do not ask for a counteroffer.

That said, note that I am not talking about salary, but "total compensation." Obviously prospective employers have an incentive to paint as rosy a picture as possible about that. So the base salaries might be even slightly under $200K, but with hefty guaranteed bonuses for the first year or two plus stock grants worth in the hundreds of thousands of dollars even if the stock stays flat.

Another way to look at this is that the housing market is a function of three things: income, interest rates, and the fraction of people's income they are willing/able to spend on housing. So obviously interest rates have been super low recently, and maybe people have increased the fraction of their pay they spend on housing--but that still can't go above 100%. The main driver of the San Francisco housing crisis is soaring income (and of course inequality) combined with inadequate supply.

Deleted comment

Then, congratulations for being a significant outlier! But a handful of outliers does not say anything about what's normal.

My suspicion is that the $103K figure is itself quite high, since Glassdoor and Payscale base their numbers on self-reporting and surveys. My guess is that people with lower salaries tend to not want to self-report that fact, whereas people with high salaries have no problem doing so.

Oh okay. You're one of those people that Google a few links and then claim domain expertise.

Never mind then. You're right the average salary for programmers in Silicon Valley is below $100k.

What % of developers are you seeing get 450-800k/yr offers? That's really high even for the obvious options, unless you've got 10+ years direct experience or are being hired into senior manager++ management positions.

Why not build up? You don't have to even go too high. Just take existing housing or strip malls and add a floor. So many strip malls in the valley and peninsula that could be repurposed to have a dual purpose shops and condos/apts on top. Just one or two floors added would mean tens of thousands of new housing units.

Ultimately, supply is the only solution. But there are very tricky political issues involved. See, e.g., http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/

A similar thing happened in DC. Defense contractor bubble rapidly expanded in the '00s, housing prices shot up drastically.

Putting aside their dubious methodology (see other comments) I'm glad to see Atlanta fared so well.

I lived in ATL for almost 19 years and it's one of the most livable places I've ever been. Sad to be gone....

In Atlanta, I actually feel like my dev salary puts me in the upper middle class. NYC, LA, or SF, I'd be just getting by. Only other city that compares, I think, is San Diego. Maybe Austin. Love this place.

It feels the same in most cities that aren't nationally known as tech hubs. Especially if you work remotely from them, but that's a whole different ballgame.

Interesting that NYC isn't included but SF is.

Why in the lower chart there's only one salary figure for each profession, without different values for different cities?

Hi there,

We showed the median national salary for reference, but for the city calculations, we used local median salaries.

Kelly from Estately

What about houses with more than one income?

If you live in Vancouver, every occupation is priced out except maybe CEO.

Vancouver (my city) is always rated as less affordable than every other Canadian or American city (except maybe NYC). And yet somehow I am a homeowner (mortgage-holding, not outright) in the city of Vancouver proper (not in a cheap suburb), which I purchased when I was making the most I'd ever made in my life, $50k/a (Vancouver junior dev salary around 2010).

What can we conclude from this? The only conclusion I can reach is that most people who complain about not being able to afford real estate are merely people with unrealistic expectations about what type of home they "need". I just can't make heads or tails of it otherwise.

Note: sure, some people really are locked out. If you're a 22yo single parent with no marketable skills and having to work 60 hours a week to feed your kids and etc-etc-etc, you're authorized by me to complain about your real estate woes.

I conclude that you haven't looked at prices in Vancouver proper lately.

I recall reading stats of 50% year on year recently. So GP, check your house price and pat yourself on the back. Rest of us aren't so lucky.

Sorry, that's wrong. I've checked my home price, and I know what every unit in this building sold for this year. And I have, to some degree, been keeping an eye on alternatives in the Vancouver market.

Insufficiently lucky? No, those who "cannot afford real estate" are (in most cases, as disclaimed above) insufficiently disciplined and/or insufficiently realistic.

You're talking about condos, others are talking houses.

This is not economic research. This is social media marketing intern pulling numbers out of their butt and drswing pictures.

Kind of funny to see that programmers can only afford 4% of houses in SF where most programmer jobs are.

Every one except the real professional occupations, like lawyer, doctor, pilot, auditor, ibanker

Restaurant servers at zero percent? I know some who own houses in the Bay Area. Shit, I don't own one, but I know multiple restaurant workers who do. Granted, these people don't exactly work at the Olive Garden (we're talking at least one Michelin star), but it's not as simple as this article makes it out to be, not by a long shot.

Restaurants with Michelin stars are so rare that their servers, even if they do better than others, probably won't make a dent in the zero percent. Their impact on the average earnings of restaurant servers is negligible.

Overall, this study is very US-specific, of course. In some industrial countries the norm is to rent and only a minority own their homes anyway.

It's what percent of houses someone making the median wage can afford. Not what percent of people can afford a house.

I wonder when there will be headers like "homeownership is unsustainable".

teachers in general earning $50k, either teachers have to super good in U.S. or this doesn't include everything like high school, elementary schools, kindergardens and whatever else there is.

starting pay in cities is usually around $40-45k. it goes up the longer you're there. i had middle/high school teacher that's been doing it for 20yrs making 100k+.

If they are making that there is no way it's just for teaching. I assume they have some administrative/leadership work involved. And probably a few degrees as well.

When I was in school my freshly minted Calculus teacher was earning $60k with her MS Math. My English teacher, $120k, was also the English curriculum coordinator and had a PhD.Ed.

And experience counts. The green, math teacher could barely keep a bunch of pubescent teenagers in their seats. Some of the exchanges were borderline sexual harrassment. The English teacher knew how to command a classroom.

In San Diego teacher's salaries are set according to a schedule.

Fresh out of college you start at 40k and can increase to 90k after 15 years. But you can increase by doing clubs or other activities + advanced degreees.

The downside is if you are a superstar teacher straight out of college you still make 40k. Similarly if you are a crappy teacher after 15 years you still make 90k

Thanks unions!

First year, superstar teachers (which I truly believe are unicorns) have options to make more money. They can get advanced degrees or work in poor performing schools with federal funding. The former takes time and the later no one honestly wants to do. I don't think even superstar teachers can do it year after year.

As far as pay. Like most jobs the first few years are low with a steep curve. Then it tapers off to COL increases once you've put in many years. This can be said of any job. Union and nonunion.

They were more of a leadership role as well. 8th grade english teach probably had more than 20 yrs as a teacher, he was nearing retirement age (~60) and if memory serves me right he was the cluster leader. The high school history teacher was probably doing admin/leadership work, she eventually got her phd and became the vice principal.

The area was pretty cheap too. Looking up citydata (2013), median household income: $50k, Median income per capita: $27k. For comparison in the same year SF was $77k and $52k respectively.

Cultural differences must just be insane between US and Finland. Because I doubt any teacher here earns 7500€/mo (which would be $100k/yr). But I've been through this multiple times with software developing. All U.S. based developers are talking about $100k/yr starting salaries and shit, when here average is $37k/yr (software engineer starting salary according to union)

I'm not sure on that 100k middle school teacher number. My mother was a teacher for over 15 years and I doubt anyone except maybe the rare administrator or the superintendent of the whole school system were making 100k. Most teachers are in the 40-60k range. One thing you can do if you have student debt is too work in a low income area for 5 years or so and have your loan forgiven.

College is a little different. In my IT degree teachers were making anywhere from 70k-150k.

It just constantly bogles my mind that apparently everyone in the US is earning six digit incomes on yearly bases. Either my family is poor (which I never thought) and I'm currently working for practically free (since I'm earning less than $40k/yr) or everyone over in the US is just way over reporting their incomes or value of goods is just so different that things some how equals out

http://imgur.com/5bxGwMl

Some commentary:

1) 7 million households (can be single or married people) earn over $200,000 per year in the USA 2) 25% of US households make less than $25,000 per year 3) 25% of US households make more than $100,000 per year 4) Median income for average US household is $53,000 5) Asian/White households are significantly higher, 70-90k per year

So I'd say not everyone is making above $100,000 per year but quite a large number are... say 31.1 million households (8-9% of the US total population)

One thing to keep in mind is that HN is very focused on startups and Silicon Valley where salaries are very inflated. In Atlanta, a good average starting salary for a junior dev would be 50-70k.

I have 2-3 years experience on the platform I work on and I'm expecting to find my next job soon somewhere between 80-100k.

You're working for practically free (or to be specific, for less than $20 an hour at a 2000hr/yr base.) Redo your resume and get it out there. Get some offers, ask your current job to match them, and if they don't, leave. If we can fight for $15 at McDonald's, as a programmer you should at least be able to hustle $30.

possibly relevant: I'm not in SF, I'm in the midwest.

You did read that they were located in Finland.

If you take into account healthcare, college education and housing costs, all quite low in Finland and completely out of control in the US, your $40K may be not that bad.

It also might just be that I'm a recent graduate and as such my current employment brings in (literally) 9 times as much income as I've used to have for past 5 years (since I moved out from my parents), so I have more money than ever, but it might level off as I get used to it, but it's just been 6 months, so I'm still constatly surprised when I see my bank account's balance.

this is garbage, the geographic variation of salaries are significant (maybe not for teachers or servers, but for others certainly). also, all the astronauts live in florida or houston ;)

Hi there,

We did take the local salaries into account in our calculations. They actually do vary quite a bit for teachers! For example, the median teacher salary in Chicago is $71k, but it's only $52k in St Louis.

Kelly from Estately

Don't you spoil my kids' dreams of being astronauts while living in San Francisco! /s

This is interesting, but consider that income varies widely by location, and is generally higher in areas with a higher cost of living. Both restaurant servers and computer programmers make more in San Francisco than they would in Scranton.

I think they have accounted for that. FTA:

> After finding the average annual salary for each profession in each city from Glassdoor, Estately then determined how much people in each profession could afford to spend on a home

That's accounted for in the study. They looked at salary info from Glassdoor for each profession by city

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