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Comment by hudibras | Hacker News Reader

Anybody who lives in Manhattan would be thrilled to get a Tokyo-sized apartment at Tokyo-sized rent.

What is the delta between a wall-street programmer salary and Toyko programmer salary? I think it is 5x or 10x last time I checked...

Ya generally speaking a new grad programmer is doing great if he/she makes $50k/yr.

Engineers that'd get $300k comp offers from big5 tech here would make $80k--$150k, provided you go to a web/mobile company. If you go to an older industry you will make less.

Who gets $300k comp offers? Principal engineers?

You can hit $300K (All-in) as a senior engineer at Google.

Various finance firms on the east coast can also send recruiting e-mails, touting their >400K comp. I think the key to that one is having work experience in an investment bank, as well as at AMAPGOFA.

> AMAPGOFA

Amazon Apple Google Facebook

I prefer AmaGooFaceSoft, rolls off the tongue better.

Well, not all Manhattan residents are "wall street programmers".

Really? My TV tells me they are all waitresses, songwriters and lawyers living in a magical world of coffee shops and art galleries.

I was always impressed with the huge spacious apartments people working low paying jobs could get.

I guess Friends wouldn't have been that uplifting if it was shot in Rosses' cramped, leaky studio apartment.

For all it was, Friends did spell out some Manhattan realities. The main set, the girl's apartment, was an illegal sublet of an older relative and therefore subject to rent control. Even characters in decent jobs shared apartments. Several had wealthy parents who lived outside the city. A couple of the female characters made no bones about how they wanted to date/marry rich men, often significantly older men. And I got a kick out of the story arch where the Chandler character, despite a reasonable job history and a degree, had to work as an unpaid intern. The visual dimensions were certainly a total fiction, but I got the impression that some of the writing staff wrote what they knew.

That bit with the hanukkah armadillo and superman is still one of the funniest things I've seen on TV.

In Tokyo, the salaries for developers range from $50K to $100K. In order to get the 10K, you need to be a senior developers and bilingual.

All salaries include public Social Security.

But would they still be so thrilled on a Tokyo salary? People here (I live and work in Tokyo) have a much narrower pay band than you would see in NYC or any American city. You might make $25~30k to start, and $40~50k at age 40.

I'd love to move back to my native NYC, but I've been priced out forever, as the cliche goes. There are entry level people earning more than I earn as an 18-year veteran in Tokyo.

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