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Comment by DoofusOfDeath | Hacker News Reader

I'll be curious to see how Boston-area software-developer compensation changes over time.

My impression is that dev compensation in SF is higher than in Boston, but SF also has higher property prices AFAICT.

We are currently in a weird place where, while compensation is growing, it's not growing fast enough to keep up with the rising property prices. There's been a huge surge to build luxury apartments in the downtown areas, but outside of that, available land is at a standstill and we are starting to see the same problem that SF has. Nothing is affordable anymore, and no one in the state/city government is really putting in an effort to slow things down.

The property prices are largely driven by compensation increases. As long as there are more Apple/Google/Facebook engineers seeking houses than houses on the market, then there will be an incentive for housebuyers to bid up the price of available housing right up until it equals the extra money they earn from working at one of these Bay Area tech companies. Existing landowners will continue to capture basically all of these tech wage gains until the supply of housing exceeds the number of tech workers who want it.

The tech workers who are getting rich are the ones whose living situations resemble college students or service workers. They compete in the housing market for cheap apartment rentals with folks making maybe 1/5 as much, which holds down rents (well, sorta...rent is still insane, but only about 1/3 what a typical mortgage payment would be) and lets them bank the excess.

MA, particularly the Boston area has spent just shy of 400yr embracing micro-managerial busybody government at every level (several other New England states exist because living in MA was too onerous for various groups). Local governments have a lot of power. They use this power to implement self-serving bylaws and zoning rules that cause the cost of living to skyrocket relative to cities/towns that have more of a "you want to have an adult entertainment store two blocks from a high-school, ok fine, just don't forget to pay your taxes" attitude. It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Everyone wants to zone the strip mall, the lumber supplier, the mechanic and the big box store out of existence or relegate them to some small commercial area. Every town thinks their a special snowflake that should be able to embody picturesque New England town in Yankee magazine. Well actions have consequences and all those things all have to go somewhere and if every town makes doing business (or at least the kind of business that doesn't fit their vision) hard and expensive those costs get passed on down.

You can still be a homeowner, buy good groceries and keep your fridge full of beer on a single entry level tech salary in MA. The catch is you just have to do it in one of those "bad" cities like Worcester, Fall River or Fitchburg.

I welcome the SF problems in the Boston area.. You reap what you sew.

> You reap what you sew.

On the other hand, our cities are willing to spend money on schools.

I have long believed that the real solution to Boston's housing crunch is high speed transit to Worcester, Fall River, Lowell, New Bedford etc.

Build HSR out to these areas and drop in lower cost high density density housing. Essentially use these old mill towns as Boston's Brooklyn -as none of the closer in cities are willing to take on the role.

Quincy and Lynn could be vastly improved first. Lynn needs blue line access and Quincy needs to build up its downtown and along its four fucking Red Lines stops.

Also I would love Worcester high-speed transit, but that's a bigger and more complicated problem than just getting the wheels turning in the two big cities right next to Boston.

You already have an example of a city with HSR to Boston: Providence. Amtrak does this run in 38 minutes, Acela a few minutes faster. Providence is seeing a recent uptake in tech activity; GE Digital is hiring downcity, and other companies like Virgin Pulse and a small startup scene. Still, there are a lot of people who ride the rails between Boston and Providence every day.

It's 38 minutes to the 128 station, which is hardly Boston proper. It's an hour between Providence and Boston (South station), and the cost difference between the commuter rail or even Amtrak regional with the Acela is crazy. $12 MBTA train vs $16 Amtrak regional vs $50-$80 or more for the Acela. For what amounts to a 5-10 minute savings.

Looks like it depends on direction. Southbound trips are scheduled for 38 minutes from S. Station to Providence, but around an hour going north. MBTA is currently $11.50 each way. Amtrak is $.50 more if you buy two weeks in advance.

They have rail out to all those cities (and Fitchburg too). It's just not "HS" and it's beyond overpriced for how reliable and fast it is.

It appears that you had an utterly miserable experience living in Boston, and that's unfortunate.

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