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mychael

Pros/Cons of living in the Bay Area for most tech workers:

Pros

- Proudly displaying "San Francisco" in your Twitter bio.

- An abundance of career opportunities.

Cons

- Making six figures, but still living with roommates.

- Commuting to work in awful public transportation.

- Becoming desensitized to poverty and fecal matter on the streets.

- Feeling unwelcome by locals.

- Not being able to afford to live in a cool part of town.

- For straight men: Unfavorable male/female ratios at bars & nightlife.

- Monoculture.

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You forgot at least two pros:

- Large salaries lead to higher savings rates

- Opportunities are just not comparable almost anywhere less expensive: there are tens of thousands of jobs from hundreds of employers here in the Bay Area for technology that pays well, compared with hundreds or maybe a few thousand jobs for maybe a dozen or few tens of employers

Also the "monoculture" dig applies to tech specifically: in terms of actual cultural diversity very few places are as interesting.

> - Large salaries lead to higher savings rates

not in san fransisco https://www.mytrove.com/ca/san-francisco/cheddar/software-ap...

Commute a little: https://www.mytrove.com/ca/santa-clara-county/cheddar/softwa...

Or just work in the South Bay. All the really dominant Bay Area tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix - also Cisco, Intel, Juniper, NVidia, even Hewlett-Packard and IBM) are here.

Cons: Bad traffic, bad public transportation, boredom if you're single.

And if you are simultaneously looking to maximize hipness:

https://www.mytrove.com/ca/oakland/cheddar/software-applicat...

We had a dev working for the summer who got a job at an SF startup this past week. He's making $2k a week, but his rent for his apartment costs $3k and he's got roommates. As someone who has lived off of $40k and rented a $1.4k a month loft that was absolutely palatial, in the middle of the city with great views, this sounds like insanity. My coworker who is from the Boston area was similarly aghast at the differences in cost of living.

Have fun at your nice job, but I'm not coming home to roommates for $3k a month. The numbers don't really seem to work out, a lot of people are basically selling great living conditions for the chance to go work at companies that probably won't be there in a few years and really aren't doing anything interesting.

Also the "monoculture" dig applies to tech specifically: in terms of actual cultural diversity very few places are as interesting.

I feel like people who say this about any city haven't gotten out much in other cities.

FYI, you don't need to pay $3k - I lived in the Mission / Potrero Hill area (with roommates, mind you) for a few years, and my rent had always been between $1000-1850/mo.

Centrally located, safe(-ish), and beautiful. You can run through Bernal Heights Park, get ice cream at Humphrey Slocombe, and bike to the 24 Hour Fitness on 16th and Potrero. If you're in tech, you can definitely live well in SF :)

My rent in Boston was $600 a month with roommates in an amazing renovated 2,600 sq ft apartment. A cheap vegetarian lunch was $5 instead of $10. My groceries were cheaper, there weren't homeless folks everywhere and salaries are about the same. In Boston I was rich; here, I watch what I spend and clean my own house. Too bad the jobs there were brutally boring.

The inability of this area to build sufficient housing has a significant, material impact on our quality of life.

Or commute a little. If you're paying multiples the cost to live 30 minutes away and commute, that's because you've attributed a high value on that locality, so complaining that it's too expensive doesn't make much sense.

yes - when people complain about their own revealed preferences, just smile and nod!

Yeah, living with roommates for 3k a month is a choice. I know people (myself included) who live with roommates, in nice places in desirable neighborhoods in SF, for 1/3 to 1/2 that.

Most comments here don't even mention kids. Childcare is very expensive on top of your rent/mortgage.

It's highly likely that by the time you are 35-40 you will be paying for rent/mortgage AND childcare.

Yes, it is very expensive (2 kids here). It's not appreciably more expensive than a Midwest town unless you really want that super premium private school.

Schools in the Bay Area can become pretty poor once you are in a more affordable area. If you want a decent school the rent/mortgage will reflect that.

You can get plenty of nice apartments in $3k range. I don't understand why he has to have roommates if that's not a personal preference.

Large salaries only lead to higher savings if they don't get gobbled up by taxes and a high CoL.

You should be putting away a small percentage of your salary per month. Or else you are living above your means. So 5% of a high salary is larger than 5% of a lower. Or can be even higher than 10% of another area.

I don't think it's reasonable to say you should be putting away a percentage of your gross. You have taxes and expenses, and your savings comes out of what's left. My point was that "what's left" part can be larger even with a smaller salary, depending on where you live.

For jobs in this industry salaries everywhere are sufficient that a person should be saving the maximum percentage his company will match away in a 401k as a minimum (it's free money, more or less), if it's offered. Personally, I put 50% over the minimum in my 401k and then have after-tax allocations to savings and conservative stock (dividend paying) investments. If a 401k isn't offered, there are plenty of other ways to save some (smaller) post-tax amount.

Here's the thing: for tech jobs in these low CoL areas the salary is also lower, so the 401k contribution is lower and one is more likely to have to contribute a smaller percentage because a greater percentage of the gross is spent on living expenses.

The only cost of living item that is grossly out of whack with reason in the Bay Area is housing. It's not out of whack to the point that the entire boost in salary is consumed by housing expense.

Seattle is pretty close on salary/jobs and cost of living is much lower/no state income tax.

Although there are some people that seem to only find enjoyment bitching about the weather which I find hilarious coming from the midwest where the temperature can swing 60 degrees in a day, summers are so hot that you sweat sitting down, and winters are so cold that you only see bundles of clothing walking around. I'll take mild temperatures, mountains, lakes/oceans, and a little bit of overcast over wild temperature swings, flat land, no water, and a bit more sun anyday.

Good point. Updated the list to include opportunities!

Also in the pros category:

- Great weather. 8 months out of the year, it's basically guaranteed that if you walk outside it'll be sunny & 70.

- Good outdoor parks.

- Openness to ideas.

- Every kind of food imaginable.

- Relatively bike-friendly (Peninsula; uncertain about SF itself).

Additional cons:

- Traffic.

- Poor public transportation

In my experience, 8 months out of the year it will be very windy and ~60 degrees. Even if the rest of the bay has good weather on a particular day, there's a good chance it's foggy over much of the peninsula.

This isn't my experience. I've lived in the bay area for a while now. It's very warm and sunny most of the year. The peninsula gets too much sun if anything. It's getting over 95F too many days of the year now.

Fog is really only a thing to Pacifica/San Bruno. After that, fog doesn't really occur that much.

Look west. Are there substantial mountains between you and the Pacific? No fog. No mountains? Fog.

More Pros

- Drive to work in your Tesla

- Free gourmet food at work

- A lot of Whole Foods Market to shop at

- Being rich AF

None of the points you list are at all unique to the Bay Area.

The person you are replying to is highlighting the high cost of living and tax burden in the Bay Area (relative to other parts of the US). It is disingenuous to respond by claiming that a pro of living in the Bay Area is "Being rich AF".

If you can get the same salary in Montana then you should move there.

Are you disputing that wages are higher in Bay Area than rest of the country?

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