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Comment by arohner | Hacker News Reader

At my last corporate job (in Austin), we interviewed an engineer currently at Apple. We asked him why he was moving. He answered "I can work at Apple for $120k/year, and pay $1m for a house, or I can work in Austin for $100k/year, and pay $200k for a house".

This was pre-bubble and I didn't fact check his numbers, but are the cost of living in SV numbers correct?

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Not exactly... and it's most definitely not an apples-to-apples comparison.

That $200k house in Austin is in a suburb. All of those nice walks to the grocery store? Gone. All of those nice close local eateries? Gone.

You can find that in Austin, but the price jumps up pretty significantly.

Isn't a $1M silicon valley house also in suburbia?

Depends on what you mean by suburbia. Most of Palo Alto, Menlo Park, etc are what I'd think of as "dense suburban". It's generally walkable to restaurants & shopping.

It'll cost you more than $200k, but dense suburban housing is still more affordable in Austin than it is in the Bay Area.

Look in Rosedale. You can still get a good house for under $500K.

I have lived in SV, and I currently live in Austin. The $1M for a house is not completely out of line, It does depend on how far you're willing to drive and if public school quality is a factor.

I think is $200k for Austin is a little low. It is possible to buy a home in Austin for $200k. Like all things housing, location is very important as is public school quality. If you don't care about the quality of the schools and don't mind a commute, then it is possible.

If your employer fires this engineer after a year, how many other potential employers would he have as options in Austin? When I think about relocating to a new place, the "what about the job after this one?" question is something foremost on my mind.

The number of tech employers in Austin is extremely high for any non-silicon valley location. Sun, IBM, Google, Intel, Dell, Motorola, Apple, Cisco, etc. all have offices in, or very close to, Austin.

It's not as many as in the valley, but it's not crazy for a nerd to move to Austin, even if the job that takes them there is fleeting.

But, I'd rather Austin stays just the way it is: just big enough to be exciting and just small enough to be friendly, affordable, and not cramped. So, don't move to Austin. It's terrible there. There are no jobs, no nerds, and the women are ugly and mean.

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