Why you're having trouble hiring
blairreeves.me
blairreeves.me
Outside of the bay area I can actually afford to have children and a house without being a millionaire. Yeah, I know, its weird. I have enough money left over (even though I have kids and a large house) that my wife isn't forced into labor to prevent immediate financial ruin.
I simply cannot imagine (I mean those words very literally) the horrid state of affairs of making six figures and still being on the verge of poverty.
NYC is rolling out free schooling for children aged 3 and up, known as Pre-3K[1]. It's not a full solution, but it helps alleviate some of the childcare costs in the early years.
The article mentioned: "One semi-local daycare in Manhattan quoted me a waitlist two years deep." Some daycares are in high-demand, but there are also other decent private daycares where the waitlist is (much) shorter or non-existent. While the caregiver outlay is believable, the waitlist datapoint sounds like it was cherry-picked. Depending on the age their child, the author might have had access to free public Pre-3K or Pre-K programs too.
[1] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/enrollment/enroll-grade-by-grade...
As a result of citywide school choice, people don't really get gentrified out by parents looking for good schools. But many kids will also have really long commute time, and applying for middle and high schools is like a mini college application process, and only people with the time and money can truly navigate it.
Mayor De Blasio kicked off an integration effort[1] in Brooklyn with plans to roll something similar in the other NYC school districts in an effort to counteract the mini-college application process, with mixed reactions depending on where your child would have placed. Reforms are under way for both middle and high school admissions.
[1] https://nypost.com/2018/09/20/de-blasio-kills-admissions-sta...
- general confusion; the guide to high schools, for example, is bigger than the Yellow Pages, and that's with all the information of a high school summarized into a single-sided page. Couple that with Bloomberg splitting failing schools with five schools in the same building and it's just far too overwhelming.
- horrible commute times. Schools were designed to serve their local neighborhoods and usually aren't placed well, particularly in the outer boroughs. If you have to go to a school other than your neighborhood school it can be quite the schlep, especially once you factor in start times. It's impossible to design start times that work for everyone when students come across the entire city, and the lack of coordination also affects things like the overburdened public transport, which gets slammed when schools let out.
- extreme stress on parents and students. You have to go around and tour schools. You have to meet with teachers and principals. You have to attend multiple massive school fairs with staff pushing their schools on you. It's like a college application process, already stressful enough, except you're doing this to children going through puberty. It's absolute madness for even wealthy parents with time to do all of this; working class people working long hours or odd hours or multiple jobs basically don't have a shot. And can you imagine what not getting into your top choices does to kids' well-being?
If school choice were limited to the borough level, it would be more manageable. But at the city level it's far too much.
I'm living in Boston, which admittedly also has a pretty terrible cost of living, although not yet quite NYC or SF. Somerville is trying really hard to catch up though.
It's hard enough here to be able to have space for a partner and/or kids, and maybe 100 sq ft of grass in a yard - but it's at least imaginable, and possible to have a semi-decent commute.
I don't know what Facebook or someone would have to pay me to move to SF and be able to imagine similar. $400-500k? Like, the concept of owning property in SF with any amount of space is mind boggling. Same with NYC. I don't want a 90-minute commute daily.
Priorities for me right now are:
- Space for at least a 1 car garage (in which to keep tools, projects, and a few motorcycles) - At least 100 sq ft of grass/yard - 3 bedrooms for myself, my partner, music and potentially family expansion - A decent commute (under an hour, preferably 30 minutes or less) - A decent kitchen and space to entertain a dozen or so friends for dinner - A down payment that isn't going to be $200k
This isn't going to happen in SF or NYC. Maybe if I live in NJ or San Mateo?
I'll stay with my already-higher than this article mentions salary, and have some prospect of space and such.
NJ commute into a Manhattan office from a suburban home like you describe would pretty much never be less than 50-55 minutes each way, and often longer.
(and they are quick to follow it up with "South Jersey is different.")
IMHO, the unfortunate economics of high urban density in big cities means that the american dream of a patch of green grassy lawn might be something people need to abandon. Kids grow up and become functional, well balanced adults while living in condos, townhouses and apartments in dense cities like Amsterdam, Berlin or in the center of downtown Vancouver BC, without having their own yard. If you go fully condo lifestyle you can pick a location near good schools and public parks.
For some reason I'm reminded of a description written by William Gibson in one of his "Bridge Trilogy" novels about a person in the SF area, in his envisioned near future, maintaining a closely guarded tiny patch of pristine grass lawn...
For reference, I live in NYC with a partner, kid and dog.
The problem arises when you have more than one kid and need more than 2 bedrooms. That's when single income can't afford a bigger apartment, and dual income can't afford double daycare. The kids will always share a bedroom. (I grew up in a family of five sharing one bedroom. Parents slept in living room)
The best you can hope for is to space them out so you never have to pay for double daycare: the new one is born when the old one starts free public school. But then you're at the whim of the quality of public schools.
However, sometimes it takes a while. Especially now that I'm really picky with jobs.
However, if you live out in the boonies where the only employer is Walmart you'll definitely need to move or get a remote gig.
Also, though the article is focused on tech workers, the Bay actually does have other inhabitants. I went out for an interview for a biotech position on the Peninsula recently. Overall, it went well and they offered me $60k. My jaw, of course, needed to be picked off the floor. When I mentioned that, per CA state law, even auto-mechanics make that without a HS degree in their city, let alone the BS/MS/PhD that they required for the position, the company said "well, that's the going rate". I asked if they had hook-ups/dump-points for the RV I would be inhabiting in the parking lot. The req. is still open all these months later.
Tech, and Prop 13, have severely distorted the CA property market to near total dysfunction for proper societal functioning.
This is the great slow-motion tragedy of cities, especially in the modern era. The phrase I've heard is "IQ Shredder". It's probably not great for society in the long run to concentrate your smartest, hardest working, most conscientious people into a few large metros where an unwinnable rat-race leads to them having zero or 1 kids, since parental IQ has a large influence children's IQ.
I'm actually quite concerned personally about the effects of high IQ couples not having children and low IQ couples having a lot but it's not an easy discussion to have since, as I mentioned, people see it as a racist argument when I don't mention race at all.
Different individual humans do have different potential intelligence. Cities everywhere attract intelligent people of all races and genders, this has nothing to do with the racial history of the US.
[0] https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-sc...
I never said there weren't; the question is which what is the net internal migration? Do more smart people move out of cities and have more kids, or do they move into cities and have fewer?
> let's not forget that California is near the bottom of the list for average IQ
My point was about cities, not states. California has 3 large major cities, some minor ones, and a very large rural area.
> which is a ridiculous measure, anyway
IQ is not everything, but it's strongly correlated with a host of positive outcomes (longevity, educational attainment, income, cooperative behavior, etc).
There is a bit of hope outside the big cities. Farmers tend to be smart. Not every software developer has been lured to the big city.
The value you lose from your current and future network alone is so devastating that any NerdWallet estimate of your costs is total BS. Lookup how much networks are worth to lifetime earnings
Now your job sucks? Good luck getting a new one you like. Either move back or find something that 'works'
Lastly, your coworkers will be from a smaller pond and instead of learning with the most experienced, you'll atropying your progress as you argue for basic things with people who've never worked in a big pond.
There's a reason people go to hollywood for movies and SF for tech. A bunch of them actually.
What I have observed from listening to recruiters and hiring managers in the bay area is that they are desperate for any talent they can get, which is great if you are a junior or if you simply suck. As a senior developer the work looks for you (like the zombies in World War Z) regardless of the metro.
The problem with being a senior though is whether your teammates operate on your level or whether they are juniors. The problem with being a senior on a newb team is like being a 50 year old man marrying an 18 year old girl. Beauty and first impressions diminish quickly and you are left chasing busy work for immature bullshit.
I think SF is great for people who live and die for the technology. For everyone else just trying to live a good life they can get not quite to SF Sr. level salaries in affordable regions and come out very far ahead. But if I do agree if you are looking for the bleeding edge, SF and NY is where its at.
When I'm interviewing, I don't mind reversing a linked list doing a binary search. It gives me an indication that the company is actually concerned with whether its employees have some baseline competency. I regard it as a positive signal.
Duke Mu did so, and subsequently despatched him on the quest for a steed. Three months later, he returned with the news that he had found one. 'It is now in Sha-ch'iu,' he added. 'What kind of a horse is it?' asked the Duke. 'Oh, it is a dun-coloured mare,' was the reply. However, on some one being sent to fetch it, the animal turned out to be a coal-black stallion! Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo. 'That friend of yours,' he said, 'whom I commissioned to look for a horse, has made a nice mess of it. Why, he cannot even distinguish a beast's colour or sex! What on earth can he know about horses?'
Po Lo heaved a sigh of satisfaction. 'Has he really got as far as that?' he cried. 'Ah, then he is worth a thousand of me put together. There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses.'
When the horse arrived, it turned out indeed to be a superlative horse.
- Liezi
Hopefully, the job they are hiring for isn't "master code riddle solver", making the whole process irrelevant whether you're junior or senior. In any case, the interview checks whether you know this problem and its solution or not. That's not a junior/senior distinction.
Bottom line up front here is the difference between seniors and juniors:
Seniors want to accomplish the work so they can either move onto the next task or simply zone off into space. The goal is to accomplish all requirements as aggressively as possible with the smallest result possible. Less is more, but more time is less.
Juniors want to play with tools and code style. Frameworks are a huge deal. Seniors don't want to dick with any of this unless it is in place to intentionally police the juniors. Yes, I understand that juniors can be policed by simply having the proper automation in place, but that doesn't make the juniors feel like they are contributing to a cure for cancer.
I find the wages in my area are the same as Cali. SE Michigan FYI.
But I agree about quality of people. Very few are talented, however that is enough to get me through my personal projects.
That is my experience. Current pay 55 an hour, opportunity for 59 an hour.
Bring on the downvotes.
Improving network for people in non-geographically dense areas seems like a problem waiting for a solution.
When combined with a generally snooty attitude about "small pond" people, it seems like you simultaneously feel that you're going to be the smartest guy in the room and yet aren't smart enough to see the MASSIVE potential benefit of that in a smaller pond. If you have even rudimentary soft skills you could end up a VP of a Raleigh or ATL based company while possibly never even making it out of middle management in SF.
Movie people from Hollywood don't go to Atlanta. Tech people from SV/NYC don't go to other cities. But there are significant incentives for people from everywhere else to consider different aggregator communities as their base when they are planning out their careers.
I don't have a SV or NYC network to lose. The proposition of moving doesn't automatically give me one. All it gives me is a pay raise, which is more than eaten by higher costs of living.
New industries will be born somewhere, and it probably won't be in SV.
The idea that there are just a bunch of small-pond professionals in places like Austin/Atlanta/Raleigh is just...not accurate. A ton of the folks I've worked with actually lived in the Bay until they decided they wanted to start a family and moved to a place where that is possible.
Moved from SF to Chicago about 18 months ago after working in the Bay Area for 17 years. I can't speak for other cities but Chicago is fine from both a network and comp standpoint. The profile of the type of work that's done here is different, sure, but nothing wrong with that. Depending on your point of view, it could be considered refreshing.
On top of that, comp is moving upward here. I'm not sure the trigger but recruiter reach outs started jumping here (like for a couple a week to 10+ a week) about a year ago and I'm seeing a definite upward trend in salary numbers.
Now, this is Chicago, so there is still a lot of dev shops that aren't modernized but there were a lot of shops in the Bay Area I wouldn't touch either for varying reasons. I don't regret moving away from the Bay Area other than the roads suck here due to having real seasons.
For example:
* There's usually only a few large employers in town, and switching jobs is a very diplomatic and drawn out affair
* Buying a house is cheap, but good luck selling it.
* Your salary is lower which is fine due to living costs, but your equity grants will also be lower. This is a big deal.
* Talent learns from talent, and the pace of life in many lower COL is "this is just a job I get paid for" compared to "this is something I will do for life". Learning opportunities are slim.
It works for some, but buyer beware.
But of course it is the only place to be if you want to "change the world" with the next Earth-shattering break-through like Theranos or Juicero.
I have a hard time recommending that someone who is trying to have a family live here. If they are single, and willing to have roommates - sure.
I am hoping that the California High-Speed Rail project opens up housing arrangements that change the equation.
A 2.4 hour round trip commute to Fresno doesn't sound bad if it is on a train. (https://www.hsr.ca.gov/Newsroom/Multimedia/maps.html)
What is also interesting is that Facebook is willingly paying for reactivating the Dumbarton rail bridge. ( https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Fast-growing-Fa... )
As far as networks go, my network is spread all over the country. I have former coworkers in Seattle, San Fransisco, Portland, Austin, Dallas, New York. It hardly matters where you live when you've worked with remote teams for half of your career.
I've worked in tech hubs around the world. I still go back to SF a few times a year and keep connections fresh, because they can make or break things sometimes.
Must have changed a lot in the couple years since I left, because I was having trouble finding senior jobs that paid over $100k/year.
And my cost of living was approximately 30k/year. That's the part I really miss.
When I left Raytheon in 2012 I was making $82,500 + 3%-5% performance sharing. I would probably be about $100,000 now if I had stayed there.
Who around there is paying $140,000 for seniors? If I could have made that I would probably still be there, since I moved to New Jersey for $180,000.
The last time I wanted a new job I just updated my resume on Monster and had 3 interviews a week later and started a great new job two weeks after that.
Sorry you had a negative experience from your move, hope things turn around for you.
There's been one exception to this. A single exception. Of all the recruiters who have contracted me one has been local.
EDIT: To the dead commentator that replied to me:
1) I didn't say people don't want to hire me, I politely decline all recruiter spam with "sorry, I can't relocate." It's just the more I get the more I silently get enraged. I find local jobs and get hired locally just fine without recruiters.
2) Being a senior engineer with as many years experience that I have usually means you are old enough to have put down roots where you are. Very few people make long distance moves for a random job when they are older than 35, unless they are unemployed or changing careers or something like that.
3) No need to use scare quotes around senior.
Recruiter: Your resume says you have .net experience, we are looking for a Sr. .Net developer, interested?
Me: My resume says I developed some tools in .Net and that the bulk of my background is in php.
Recruiter: Great, would you like to apply?
Simplified but generally accurate. Either way I have had pretty good luck getting jobs via recruiters but there is a lot of chaff you have to get through. Your mileage may vary but I have been happy so far.
1) Send it to the correct email address. Not my personal one, use what's on my resume.
2) Give some indication you've read my resume, such as mentioning a technology listed on it. Not something I've never included.
3) Something about the job. Anything at all, even just what city it's in.
That I can recall, only once has a recruiter passed. Kinda felt bad at turning down what seemed like the only recruiter who was competent at their job.
Unlike many, he was an actual SF native. He grew up there, and has family there. He is a highly competent software developer. He now works in Melbourne, FL. He has in fact switched jobs several times while remaining in the area.
He lives on 12 acres with a commute of about a half hour. He has sheep and a couple dozen chickens. He can shoot his AR-15 in his yard.
What salary would he need in SF to get all that?
If what excites you is web-focused startups, then yeah, you're probably not going to be happy in a lot of other places, but that is just one area of software development and I'd argue it doesn't have any exclusive license on interesting problems or top talent.
That’s not even what a fresh college grad would make in total compensation at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc, let alone “mid level”.
A senior engineer at one of those companies would make several times that in total compensation.
P.S. The biggest common mistake I see in salary comparisons is the omission of scheduled stock grants, which sometimes can comprise even the majority of one’s compensation.
As a mid-level engineer currently job hunting in NYC, the salary range for most non-FAANG companies (including most start-ups) seems to be $90-150k.
From my experience, the idea of "mid-level" and "senior-level" employees in our industry seems to be skewed to the left. Mid-level employees are generally 2-5 years into their careers, and senior-level can be anywhere beyond that. When you think of senior-level employees in other industries, you generally assume they have 10-20+ years of experience under their belt.
0-3 years-Junior:You don’t know what you’re doing.
3-8 years-Mid-level: You think you know what you’re doing.
8+ years-Senior:You know that you don’t know what you’re doing.
The best setup IMO is to work at a FAANG company outside the bay, it’s the best of both worlds. Supposedly Amazon pays p90 of market rate, but in my area it’s more like p99.
Source: live in PDX, work at Amazon.
Compensation is, broadly, very generous. They're competing with three of the FAANGs, after all.
As for publishers, please find me one that routinely pays anywhere near FAANG salaries.
EDIT: changed "SWE software engineers" to "SWE salaries". Oof.
(Serious question, not snark).
The vast vast majority of tech firms in SF do not compensate at that level; Yelp, Uber, Square, Twitter, etc, that list goes on. They're all right around that $125k + $5-$20k signing/moving + a fraction of equity for entry level, then scaling up ~5-10% for each position above that.
These Engineer 3/Senior Engineers at a place like Facebook making $400k total comp are, for the most, true stories. But it's not even close to representative of the bay area as a whole.
If an engineer can get a job at one of these companies, and work on exciting & fulfilling work, what’s the incentive to work elsewhere if you get paid a fraction of what you’re worth?
Because — A lot of the time when you see a company complaining about how difficult it is to hire “good engineers”, when you look closer, what you’ll really see is manager(s) (in denial) who really want to hire top-20% engineers at bargain rates.
Because you’re spouse wants to be close to family and there’s no tech where family is located?
But also "work on exciting & fulfilling work"? Hasn't it already been established in previous discussions that the average engineer at Google or wherever may not be doing the most fulfilling of work, becoming a cog in a larger machine, as opposed at a startup? There's only so many roles that gives both high big tech pay and meaningful individual contribution.
With absolutely no offense intended, I've never been offered one of those FAANG-grade packages, so if you were, hypothetically, to try to hire me away from a present position, I would have to insist: fuck you, pay me, I won't leave things I already like to get the same middling compensation.
FWIW I've been working in tech FT professionally as a line PM, head of product, developer, or founder since 2001 - 15 years at the time.
In other words his numbers aren't that far off. FAANG is a different compensation class but shouldn't be the base case as you can't do a comparison of FAANG in Raleigh to FAANG in SFBay/NYC.
Secondly, distributed teams are nonsense, from an economic point of view.
Why on earth would I pay someone in a "flyover state" $80k when I can get very similar talent for half as much in Argentina? If I'm willing to compromise on time zones, I can pay even less in Eastern Europe or South Asia.
The only reason that your bloated American wage is justified is communication. Good English skills can be purchased in any market in the world, for much less than what Americans demand. Being on site, in the damn office, is how you earn that money.
It's the entry-level wage at top-tier tech companies, and a few second-tier who can compete with them at the junior levels (like Bloomberg). It is not what the average new grad should be expecting.
Is this true? My experience differs; even hiring semi-technical roles where the most important factor was "high-level English competency" I've had really disappointing results. It gets better if you're willing to deal with less than that, but that's a pretty rough compromise for a lot of highly collaborative roles.
Strong technical skills are easier to source, but strong technical skills without good communication is tough to square.
So I think it would depend on if you could convince a judge that the TOEFL score is relevant to the job at hand, and not just being used as a discriminatory stand-in for an IQ test.
It breaks my heart the way this city is squandering its potential with backwards-looking policies that make it impractically expensive for basically everyone, tech employee or no.
This blog post also has the side effect of being framed in a naive way that also has people who do live in NY or the Bay Area discuss the sheer ridiculousness of it, which is why it's already got 51 comments in less than hour.
People move to the Bay Area because of the idea of opportunity. Maybe a friend's startup makes a billion dollars and you get to do your own after, or maybe it goes bust and there are 100s of other jobs that are more interesting and make more than you would in NC, Austin or other small metros. I'm not a billionaire, but I have found MUCH better work and opportunities, and if I choose I can move to a lower cost of living area and buy a house in cash and start my family there.
Put another way, would you rather spend the first 5 years with your kid at home, or would you rather worry about slaving away to a bank for $100K hoping you aren't laid off in a downturn? Being smart with your money even with expensive housing can go a long way.
The working class worry about making rent.
A senior professional (in any field) cares about building a secure life, buying property, raising a family, saving for retirement.
For a whole bunch of people it's the entire reason they put all of that effort into their craft in the first place (otherwise they'd move out into the country and work on OSS all day).
You're going to struggle to hire competent, rested, mature, well rounded individuals if you expect them to rent tiny flats downtown and have that be their life.
I don't have a visa anyway, but that's part of the reason I haven't bothered looking in to moving to SF.
It seems to be built around the idea that you spend your youth grinding in a rented flat, with rental furniture, using rental cars, buying every meal outside, so that in your 40's you might be able to move out and live a decent life with some modicum of security.
Baffling. Like, what are you going to do socially? You think you'll just "be rich" somewhere else and live in your house with all the other SF migrants?
It's a home first and foremost, and a monetary asset second.
If your model is 'grind your 20s-40s away living in a box and then move out' then I implore you to read my comment again.
I often wonder if London looks worse externally than it actually is (you can afford a house or apartment here if you have a professional job, it's just probably going to involve commuting and not be in a prestigious area).
Of course, if you're something actually socially useful like a teacher or fireman, you're buggerino'd.
I use the term 'house' out of laziness. It's more a commentary on the fact that a 30 year old renting is just incompatible with a decent life in the UK (outside of some secure older council tenancies) whether you live on the ground floor or the fifth floor.
You'll probably have to move every year or two - it's not yours to decorate - the furniture might not be yours - it's not a home, it's a longer-term hotel.
That might be different elsewhere.
I am in my late 20s currently, and I'm open to a change in perspective. Maybe there's value in consistency that I will appreciate more at some point. But being told that I won't count as a senior professional until I care about buying property irks me.
My claim is that a senior professional (in _any_ field - not just a senior developer) doesn't care about the cost of rent.
It includes your scenario - of course you should be able to rent and move about if you want to.
If the cost of the rent is heavy on your mind, your position is not that of a senior professional.
The title has become meaningless because it's effectively become an entry-level job.
(Externally it looks like in SF, real entry-level jobs result in, well, homelessness or living in a van or something).
Money-wise, you're no longer throwing it away on rent, but paying down a mortgage that eventually is paid off entirely.
On top of that, you're also no longer racing against the end of the rent contract, and can wait a bit - or move earlier - to find a new place you really like.
The turning point for me was, here in Chicago, when I was renting and my dad sent me some properties with the costs laid out: These places were significantly nicer, and the mortgage cost per month was ~60% what I was paying in rent.
- Illinois is broke and is going to increase real estate taxes every year for the foreseeable future. So while you can also sell to escape the tax bill, the value will just drop to compensate. - There are many fixed costs to buying a place that aren't reflected in the monthly bills. Such as closing costs on both the purchase and sale (including chicago's lovely transfer stamp tax, realtor commissions, etc).
Also keep in mind how many high-rise condo buildings are going up right now. This can only be bad for prices of "old" condos around the city.
You're not going to afford to buy real-estate in San Francisco on a salary. Full stop. You don't buy multi-million-dollar houses when the company might go pear-shaped and leave you without a paycheck, even if your paycheck is in the six figures.
Isn't that double what was discussed in the article?
It would be helpful to us who are accustomed to American social life to learn about what you perceive your social life tied into your work life to be like.
There are a whole bunch of people in London doing the flat-share-can't-afford-anything-rent-it-all lifestyle too.
I think it was good that he focused on rent instead of for-sale price. The sale price includes other factors (property taxes, interest rates, expectation of rent increases) that do not affect the cost of living, and many authors get confused when they complain about rising prices while ignoring rents; see https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2017/10/housing-part-264-... for further explanation
Sure, the capitalist-economy middle class is defined by having substantial property investments as well as labor income, but there's no reason that has to be in one's primary residence. There are pros and cons of tying up capital in an owner-occupied residence.
The median housing price in SF is $1.6M. There is no choice but to rent, or perhaps suffer an absolutely terrible commute.
(And since someone inevitably quips that the entire Bay Area makes $300k+: the $125k in the article is a bit low; the median tech salary is ~$135k. Some lucky souls pulling down massive stock benefits at a FAANG might be making enough total, but those of us not at a FAANG are not so lucky.)
Not everyone wants to live in a tacky huge McMansion that they can fill up with trinkets and garbage they don't use. See? I can make snarky judgemental comments about your lifestyle choices too.
But seriously, not all "competent, rested (???), mature, well-rounded" individuals think living in an rental apartment in a vibrant, walkable neighborhood is the rank indignity you seem to believe it is. They're perfectly happy living in small spaces and spending their money on travel, hobbies, food, and saving for retirement instead.
That and, factor in a yard large enough for me to have BBQs and store my sailboat and then we’ll talk.
It's not that you can't take a bus with kiddos, it's the emergencies, especially in a place like SF with less than 'efficient' mass transit.
Your kid puked in class today? Gonna need a car to come pick them up.
Your kid broke an arm at the park? Gonna need a car to go to Urgent Care.
Your kid has a science fair project due tomorrow that they just told you about? Gonna need a car to go pick up supplies.
If you're a company without a great culture, or other issues, it may still impede your hiring, but just comp people fairly to start with -- plenty of medium sized companies are doing this, and are thriving.
This article is mostly about COL differences and why people may not choose to move, but the premise about the reasons for the volume of recruiting spam is flawed. It's not because "recruiting is hard" (though it is) so much as it can be explained by "sending spam is easy and free".
For ambitious introverts like myself, remote consulting/contracting feels like the best option.
A childhood buddy of mine moved to SF last year and got a job at a big corp downtown. He manages to save around $3,000/month as a senior developer with a ~$200k salary. No children, living with a partner who works as a teacher, and they're both quite frugal.
I work as a remote contractor from a small European town and am able to consistently save way more than that. I was saving more than that even in the past while working as a sub-contractor through platforms like Toptal.
How big of a salary would one need in order to save > $100k/year in SF (Single, small rental apartment, no car, average middle-class lifestyle)?
The numbers for 125k indeed do not add up. However mid-level in Bay Area is 200k+ and Senior is 300k+. Not sure where 125k comes from.
Finding people with skills expexted for Bay Area’s mid level (forget about Director or VP) is a massive challenge.
140k is a very low offer for someone with 10 years. Offers like that are typically made by desperate startups.
Seniority is assessed by skills and not tenure. Requirements for senior positions are pretty stiff in Bay Area. Seniors need to deliver regarless of circumstances.
Ouch, that feels very low to me. Granted, I'm in Boston, but you can get that at nearly any startup around here (I've both held those jobs and hired people for them). The bigger companies can then throw some real equity on top of that.
Lead is a senior engineer.
However, as 'they' say money isn't everything, so it could be worth the trade off to a particular individual or family to make less and live elsewhere.
Can I afford 6 acres within a 10 minute commute from work?
That narrows down my options quickly, and makes my current job, which I really enjoy, seem extravagant.
Allow me to offer an alternative view, this is entirely speculative.
Director level and above people are paid quite well in the Bay Area, after stock compensation it can get to to close to half a million dollars per year. Folks outside the 'bubble' as it were, might still be amenable to $150K to $200K for a salary. Thinking "wow that is double what I'm currently making, its a huge jump for me!" and its half of what other directors make.
So maybe they are trying to get senior management "on the cheap" and cut their payroll costs, they know that locally sourced candidates won't go for what they want to offer so they try to entice people from lower paid locales. If it works they get a director and still have enough left over to hire another engineer right?
Seriously. The companies that make remote work happen aren't stupid and they aren't failing at it.
It reads like just another rant against sf/nyc. Some back-of-the-envelope math with conclusions that we all knew already.
I have actually very few emails from the Bay Area in the past few months. Maybe recruiters have gotten together and blackballed me.
There is lots of fun stuff in the Bay Area outside of San Francisco. I always have a blast going to shows, openings, etc in Oakland and Berkeley.
And before you say I “don’t know any better,” note that I spent the vast majority of my life living in and loving NYC.
Those who say the “South Bay is boring” haven’t spent enough time in it. In fact, I have friends who specifically come down to the South Bay to do things. Furthermore, SF is only a 45 minute drive from Mountain View, about what it is from Brooklyn to Manhattan, so I get the best of both worlds, without the defection and the homeless.
Get over this trope.
If you don’t try to go out and look for things, I agree you won’t find them. I am very social, and have found no shortage of things to do. People who complain about this haven’t tried it.
Ones I've visited in San Jose are were extremely underwhelming.
Nob Hill on Grant Rd. in Mountain View.
I come from NYC, where we had fancier things than you’d find in SF, and the South Bay comes close. SF doesn’t.
Then you have to fight the crowds for your activities.
If not, it gives you access to an almost limitless variety of indoor and outdoor recreation.
The cost of these programs must be phenomenal (permanent police presence on the Civic Center plaza, full-time attendants in many subway elevator cars are just a couple examples I've seen near my work), but in a city as rich as San Francisco I think many would say it's a price worth paying to clean up the commons.
What is this half baked clickbait doing on HN?