If you’re a software engineer, where should you live to maximize your income?
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
This leads to Baltimore being #1 and San Francisco 17th. I think this is overly simplistic and not representative of "opportunity", I used to live near Baltimore, I wouldn't say it has more opportunity for Software Engineers than SF.
How do you decide how to combine "adjusted salary data" and "opportunity data"? They aren't even in the same unit. I find that this is often the problem with these city rankings (not only this one, but also "quality of life" or "most expensive city" rankings). There is no universal way to weigh these factors, and your result highly depends on the particular weightages you assign, often arbitrarily.
Anecdote: at my current job in Houston, I know I earn a significant amount more than my counterpart in Austin, and I get a way less cost of living also. I also know that Austin has way more opportunities than Houston does, so I'm screwed if I ever want to leave this job. My personal situation matches the chart in the article.
If you're a "median" engineer, I would not recommend SFBA.
I often fantasize about leaving "my" city of Frankfurt/Germany, but I always wonder if anywhere else is actually better for ME, wherever on the bell curve I might be.
Before I was 30 I became CTO of a great company here, i really wonder if I had made such a career anywhere else if I'd moved to somewhere with a more vibrant tech-scene where my specific skill combination isn't as relatively uncommon as it is here.
Same with my lifestyle situation of being the working Dad in a one-income household. Doesn't matter that i'd be making a killing in SFBA if living with a family simply costs so much more there.
For younger people without responsibilities, I do suggest they think about the Bay Area. If you have the right set of skills, you can skyrocket your career rapidly. If you don't like it, move back home and hopefully you gained some valuable life experience.
I've seen staff engineers at age 25 at Facebook and Google... Very rare, but having this amount of impact, responsibility, and trust from others is basically unheard of anywhere else (outside of other major Google offices worldwide).
My coworkers and I are doing all sorts of things that seem unlikely in the Bay Area. I have 11 kids. I once lived in San Jose, where that would not come cheap. The person in the office next to me has sheep on 11 acres, and he can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. He grew up in San Francisco, where that would be... difficult. Other people live in beach condos.
If you aren't careful, you can let the years pass by while hoping that just a bit more will get you financially secure enough to do something you really want to do in your life. One day you notice that the years are just gone.
I think its a pretty safe assumption that your paradigm of life differs significantly from most people on this forum. More concretely, having that many kids automatically make it a different calculus to decide an optimal place to live.
Other benefits: your high comp lets you live close to work. Walking to work has been an amazing quality of life improvement in itself. Not worrying about traffic/train schedules relieves your brain of that added calculus (but it might just be that I worry too much). Perks are also better at SF based companies (catered lunch, better health plans, fresh coffee in the office etc.). SF food is comparable to Austin (although a lot more Michelin Starred restaurants, I'm not fancy enough to go to them regularly). And lastly the much touted Amazing weather. Its 100 in Austin right now but a cool 60 in SF.
Being from Germany myself, the additional salary in the Bay Area usually compensates for the higher cost of living unless you're fresh out of University.
At least that's what I've seen for Engineers that remain mostly technical in Germany. I don't exactly know what CTO salaries are like in Germany, but I'd assume it's usually less than 200k Euros. Most experienced Engineers in the Bay Area make easily more than that in total compensation (salary, bonus, RSUs).
Even if you have to pay another 100k a year for rent/... , chances are you'd still come out ahead. Plus the weather is great.
That being said, society is a lot different in Germany, so it's not just about money and job opportunities :)
Perhaps the HN title should be updated to the title of the original article: "What's the Best City for Software Engineers?"
"What's the Best City for Software Engineers?" (Adjusted Salary & Opportunity)
But it was changed by a moderator for some reason...
Perhaps this figure is brought down from the sheer quantity of code school (Galvanize, Turing, General Assembly) grads we have in the city, but even then i find it hard to believe 50% of the se's in Denver are making south of $67/yr.
Edit: I'm dumb. The median salaries are adjusted for cost of living of the city.
If you're trying to maximize your income as a software engineer, you move to SF. If you're trying to maximize your standard of living as a software engineer, you move to Seattle. Adjustments for "opportunity index" only obfuscates that.
When I think Seattle I instantly think Amazon, which isn't particularly well-regarded around here from a work-life balance perspective.
The sheer number of Amazon employees would lower the average, correct?
2) Amazon's not a bad place to work: it only is thought so because of comparisons with other big companies. And even its negative aspects are as much team dependent as they are company dependent.
3) In general, working at a big tech company in Seattle will give you a small haircut in income while offering a far lower cost of living than SF/SV.
This ended up being a bit of a ramble, but it's one (perhaps relevant) transplant's perception.
Being in Washington DC and knowing I can drive to half of those places in 30 mins, I wonder which metropolitan area definition the numbers in the article are using.
Does (NSA, SAIC, Ft Meade, NASA Goddard) really pay that much more than (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman)?
Edit: Adjusted for cost of living, Baltimore > DC makes more sense.
there aren't a ton of software jobs within the city, but there are many software companies paying DC salaries within a 30-60 minute commute to the southwest.
the cost of living in baltimore is also quite low, but many of the neighborhoods probably fall short of what your typical SWE would be willing to tolerate.
I used to live and work in San Antonio. Five years ago it was beginning to show signs of a tech scene. Geekdom had been around for a couple of years and acted as the hub of the community. TechStars had a program there (though no more).
I left four years ago for Boulder so I've been watching it grow at a distance. From what I see, deal flow has picked up and Houston Street in downtown has turned into the epicenter, anchored by Geekdom on one end and Codeup on the other.
It's a great place to live and I'm constantly tempted to move back, though I expect that I'd need to find remote work to maintain the pay I currently make up here in Colorado. Excellent food and low cost of living in a city that's rapidly growing up.
I mean, if we're JUST talking about maximizing income here and not anything else, this is the way to go.
(Obviously this data does not take that into account)
And where exactly are you going to live for $55K in the Bay Area? At least in Detroit you don't have to commute that far to live somewhere that's quite nice, and even own a house.
I don't have to google San Francisco to tell you that you'd be lucky to afford to rent with three roommates on $55k in San Francisco.
I get where you're coming from in terms of crime and such, but cost of living is a major part of choosing where to live and on that front there's no question.
The point is that the bay area housing market is on one extreme and Detroit's is on the other.
Based on your question I think we have different core beliefs about what's important in raising a child.
Good for you. That doesn't answer the question of why you would choose to do that now when you don't have to.
Is that particularly helpful here in this discussion?
> That doesn't answer the question of why you would choose to do that now when you don't have to.
Nor does it answer the question of why that dichotomy is being presented as the only option.
I presented what I found to be the median home price, a price unimaginable to the average SF resident. It's a comparison point to highlight the vast gulf between the two markets. It's not a declaration of intent to drop what I'm doing and move to a $35k home in Detroit without critical analysis.
It's as helpful as you saying that you've lived in worse conditions in the past.
Generally, here’s what I’ve seen gets you equivalent size/convenience/safety:
1m in NY
500k in DC
300k in Philly
150k in Pittsburgh.
I would absolutely believe you could find something nice for 5 figures in Detroit.
Most tech people do not choose SF at $55k. That's all I'm saying.
For example, maybe an apartment in the Bay Area costs, say, 300% what it costs in a major mid-western city. Groceries are 150% more expensive and other necessities are equally as expensive. (All numbers made up for the sake of example)
After you pay for the things you need though, you move on to things you want. Investments in stocks and bonds still cost the same no matter where you live. Flights actually are often cheaper from major, HCOL cities. Mobile phones cost the same online no matter where you live.
So basically I don't know if the cost of living calculators properly scale with the incomes that SWE provides in certain markets (specifically the PNW).
Does this make sense? I'd be interested if anyone had more information about this.
If you aren't weird, the cost of living calculators work fine.
I mentioned in another comment that I have a coworker who moved from San Francisco. He now has an 11-acre lot with sheep, goats, and chickens. He can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. OK, he's weird. Imagine the cost of living for him in San Francisco. Step 1 is to find 5 acres. Step 2 is to lobby the state legislature...? Even if we downgrade to a California-compliant gun, that 11 acres seems likely to cost roughly $366,666,666.
Wow. For him, it looks like San Francisco is nearly 1000 times more expensive. Thousands turn into millions.
He does commute a half hour. Perhaps there is a city a half hour away from San Francisco where he could get his kind of home for "only" a hundred million dollars.
The financial upside is so much that its just ridiculous. The comp ceiling does not exist in SFBA or is substantially higher than anywhere else in the US. From a purely financial success, you should absolutely seriously consider moving to SFBA.