Even Techies Can’t Afford San Francisco Anymore | Hacker News Reader

Even Techies Can’t Afford San Francisco Anymore

buzzfeed.com

25 pointszgwhoa15 comments

I don't think it's that they _can't_ afford San Francisco anymore, it's that they don't _want_ to afford San Francisco anymore.

I'm in the same boat. The rent prices are insane, so much so that it's actually cheaper to live in Las Vegas, fly in once a month, and get a hotel, than to pay rent prices in the Bay Area.

I can elaborate if wanted, but I didn't go to college so that I could graduate, plow my entire paycheck into rent, and live like a college student again.

That's a pretty good point, care to elaborate?

I assume you're talking about the not wanting to afford the area. You can run the numbers on rent vs rent + hotel + airfare, or I can type that out later if interested.

The median rent for a one bedroom place in SF in January of this year was 3400. (http://sf.curbed.com/2016/1/5/10849608/whoa-sfs-median-rent-...)

Now, when you graduate from college, getting 100K+ a year sounds exciting, except when you're plowing 40K (after taxes) a year into rent.

I can't speak to the value of making connections, but I'm already pretty advanced in my career and have plenty of connections (not a humble brag, just stating a fact). Maybe when you're just starting out, it helps a lot to be surrounded by a zeitgeist of tech, where everybody knows a least a little something about software and startups, just for an initial career boost.

I'd rather take a smaller check and save money for retirement. Or, you know, blow it on ponies and whiskey - just not live hand to mouth, worrying about every little expense you're incurring. What's good about living in San Francisco when you're worried about affording everything?

> so much so that it's actually cheaper to live in Las Vegas, fly in once a month, and get a hotel, than to pay rent prices in the Bay Area.

That doesn't really make sense at all. Are you saying you only need to work or be in the office "once a month"? Or does flying in "once a month" mean flying in on the 1st and leaving on the 30th?

http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/rent-in-vegas-commute-to-...

If you can swing a four day workweek, is the key. Otherwise, if you can work onsite only one week a month, Vegas (and other places) is the clear value winner. You know, if you don't mind the airport.

What's the end game for this if nothing changes and new housing doesn't materialize? Is it just a real estate bubble that will pop during the next economic dip? If there is another tech bubble will occur in a city like Seattle or Denver? Will the big players start to pack up shop and move to cheaper cities, because even fresh talent now requires +200k just to pay rent?

Constant influx of 100k recent grads and an efflux of others who didn't hit the equity lottery to afford at a minimum a down payment..

As someone who graduated in 2011, I feel like I really dodged a bullet with San Francisco. I've had managers in job interviews (even living in Boston!) tell me that I was crazy for not moving west, in my position, that you had to be in SF if you wanted to get into tech, do it now while you're young, etc. One person flat out told me I wasn't really serious about tech because I wasn't moving west. Recruiters assume that you'd be willing to relocate to SF, friends are constantly moving there -- there were definitely a few times that I considered it.

All said though, I think I've received much better opportunities in Boston, I love being around a more culturally/educationally diverse group of people, and I'm not sure the social pressures in SF would have molded me into a "better" person. Honestly, I'd probably hate "SF me," and I couldn't have asked for (or really wanted) a better early career than the one I'm having.

Although I have friends who are regretting their choice to move, and that sucks, I have to admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude, watching everything unfold in the last couple years. I'm sure San Francisco will be a tech hub for years to come, and I'm sure other tech hubs will continue to emerge, but it was a great early lesson for me that moving for a career often isn't the magic bullet that people think it is (or that staying put is a death sentence) -- especially in tech.

Certain extreme examples aside (it's hard to be a lumberjack in New Mexico), "career options" should be only one factor in choosing where to set your roots (or whether to set them at all), and, at a certain point, you can only take advantage of so many opportunities in a lifetime, so there is a saturation point at which more of them become meaningless. Also, watch out for terrible advice when you're young :-p

The Boston region was, once upon a time, thought to be competitive with SV. But it fell behind in hype at some point during the 80's and never came back. I would be unsurprised that it is a decent tech market even today!

Yeah, it's great! More than enough tech jobs to go around, "average" software engineer salaries are only ~$10k less than San Francisco, and with all the MIT and Harvard grads around, you get to hang out with an interesting bunch of folks.

There are little hubs of "SF-like" technology centers, like Kendall Square: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square#Businesses_and_... and and the south Boston Innovation District (hate the name, it came from Mayor Menino, but he was very successful at getting it running). But if you walk a few blocks in a straight line, you can easily get out of the tech bubble and go to a hundred year old Irish pub, or hang out with people who don't know how to program, which is why I like it!

There's also the "holdover from the 80's" tech office parks in Burlington, where MITRE is and Sun Microsystems (RIP) used to be. Lots of good newer companies there too, and my husband keeps trying to convince me to consider working in Burlington because real estate is so much cheaper, but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon! The good thing is that all the guys who used to work there are often working in the city now, so you get a LOT of graybeards and people who developed Java, or Linux tools 30 years ago, or are influential in the IETF hanging out. It's just a really great culture. Obviously different from San Francisco, but I love it!

If you moved there in 2011, you probably could have at least afforded to buy a house. Now that prices have double/tripled, it's a stretch.

I've only just entered the market for a house in Boston. I didn't try especially hard to put together a down payment, and definitely could have done it sooner (especially if I hadn't gotten a part-time master's degree for four years), but, if I had moved to SF, I probably would have still been renting.

"Even techies, who want to raise a family, can't afford San Francisco anymore".

Dublin/Livermore is pretty cheap. If only more tech companies would take a hint and start building East Bay locations. If your employees can't afford to live close enough to your offices, then you should move your offices closer to them, or where real estate is more reasonable.

I think that's pretty reasonable. An alternative would be to create a culture of working remotely without decreasing productivity. I remember reading something about Buffer and their approach to remote work and having a more distributed team.

So why are firms locating in SF rather than the valley or east bay where their workers actually live? The commute to SF is long and parking fees are ridiculous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com