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Comment by jankotek | Hacker News Reader

Is it even possible to get rich in SV? Obscene cost, no housing, high taxes, life time alimony... It seems like the worst place to start the business.

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It's possible. I came to Silicon Valley with a Honda CRX and the stuff that would fit in it, a degree from the University of California and a net worth of about negative $2500. I left sixteen years later a multimillionaire.

I'm glad I left. It is a good place to get rich if you're a programmer. But I'm never going back.

I enjoyed the first couple of years in Silicon Valley. I started to hate it more every year after that.

If I was 21 years old now with a CS/CE/EE degree, I'd go to another second-tier tech hub, like NYC, Austin or maybe Boulder.

I made it six years; that was enough for me. I wonder what percentage of coders secretly resent the place.

I was there for about that amount of time when I manged to build enough reputation and connections to get into one of the hot startups at the time. I was 29 at the time. I really wanted to leave Silicon Valley, but I already realized that I had made my big break if I played it right.

If I hadn't gotten into to this startup (now a big company on the NASDAQ), I would have left and moved to Austin.

I continued to hate Silicon Valley more every year, but it made me rich.

I'm hating it after four. Nothing quite like the realization that you can either afford a house or to retire elsewhere.

Yes. There are many rich people in SV. That is why the costs are obscene.

Even if a house costs $2M in SF, you can earn that in a few years on an engineer's salary.

If you pick the right companies, and are relatively successful, it should be possible to accrue millions of dollars in SV, even with the costs of living. That's rich in my books.

But really rich? There are of founders of tech companies who earn $100M or more from a successful startup. SF is probably one of the most likely place to make that happen.

This is somewhat analogous to film industry, isn't it? It attracts lot of potential actors. Lot of stories about their struggles and how unforgiving the industry can be. All they see are super-famous and super-rich actors and they all want to like that.

Entry-level programmers are paid $100k per year, entry-level actors are paid exposure.

> Even if a house costs $2M in SF, you can earn that in a few years on an engineer's salary.

Yes, because everyone knows that average engineer in SF earns ~400k per year.

I have to bang a drum here, because it's a really important drum for HNers to hear and internalize:

It is factually the case that AppAmaGooBookSoft pay mid-career professionals in the engineering track approximately that at whatever the local equivalent of Senior Engineer is, and Senior Engineer is a level that everyone in the engineering track who is not fired is expected to get to.

Don't forget tax and living expenses (rent isn't cheap). Saving two million on a single engineering salary is going to take closer to a decade than a few years.

If you can save USD 2M in ten years, and buy a house outright then you are in a position to get a mortgage on said house in a much shorter timeframe.

Whoa, so it's going to take ten whole years to own a house? ...and that's considered bad?

I was addressing the original assertion that an engineer could save enough for a house in a few years.

My approach was to save and then fun as far from the Bay Area as I could. Much quicker.

There's a bit of wiggle-room between "is it even possible to get rich" and "average salary".

Salaries are paid based on what a very competitive market demands in a place with high cost of living and taxes, but they're a large amount in absolute dollars. Anyone moving to the Bay Area when young and maximizing their savings rate can easily and quickly save a fairly large amount, which can then be invested with an eye to long term growth.

Nobody is twisting your arm to use that money to buy a Bay Area house and settle permanently. After a decade, move away and you're suddenly rich.

It's the best place to start a business if you're rich or build a business if you already have good revenue.

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