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Comment by pmiller2 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. What region do you live in, and how do you think your bottom line compares to what you’d see in a comparable role in the Bay Area?

I’m not really architect / principal level just yet (probably 3-5 years of continuous improvement from that I would say), but I feel like I’m just barely getting ahead as a senior making $200k paying $2300/month in rent with no hope to buy and about a 40-60 minute commute (depending on whether I drive to BART or walk). Just wondering if there’s something better out there.

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Metro Atlanta GA.

My commute is 30-40 minutes depending on traffic and we just bought a 3000 square foot 5 bedroom/3.5 bath house + a large office, new build in a great school system for $335K with 5% down. Our mortgage all in is a little less than $2100/month.

The most senior hands on developers/individual contributors/team leads can make between $130K-$160K. Even with that, it leaves more than enough to max out a 401K, and have enough fun money to do most of the things we want.

But like I said, just from talking to hiring managers over “informal lunches”, there are positions for overpriced “digital transformation consultants”, “enterprise architects”, etc. where you can get $200K and live in a lower cost of living area as long as you live near a major airport.

Good info, thanks.

Nice!

Man, 200k is about 8k a month after taxes... with only 2300 in rent, you should be able to save a ton... how do you feel you aren't getting ahead?

It’s more a matter of how far behind I am. I spent a lot of years being underpaid and my net worth is about $-100k due to student debt. I am also not in my 20s anymore. I have also only been a software engineer for about 5 or 6 years.

My wife had about 130k in student loan debt when we married, and we went on a ten year repayment plan. Total payment is about $1700 a month...

So your rent plus debt servicing should be around $4000... leaving your around $4000 a month for everything else. You should be able to live pretty well on that! That is more than most people make total.

Well, I’d also like to retire in less than 20 years, so, factor that in (probably $2000-2500/month). Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately), etc. I think you can see where this is going.

> Well, I’d also like to retire in less than 20 years

Don't we all.

> Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately)

We all also pay for this.

> probably $2000-2500/month

Dude you still have $1000 probably free just chilling if you are strict.

I don't get this, "you are not where you should be" mindset.

The student debt sucks, but you are doing extremely, extremely well. Making more than some doctors.

What if I told you I was 35? 45? 55? Does your perspective on “not where I should be” change given my already stated negative net worth? I’m old enough to be worried about being employable in this industry in 10 years. Do you not see how a 20 year time horizon for retirement, starting not from 0, but from -100k, is a source of anxiety?

As for “doctor money”, according to https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie... I make below the average salary for every physician specialty except public health & preventative medicine, and I’m several years older than the typical newly minted physician.

I also live in an area where you need to make at least $80k or so to qualify for a 1br apartment, according to the “3x rent in gross salary” rule used by a lot of landlords. With my large, fixed expenses (student loans), I’m not convinced moving to a lower CoL area actually improves my bottom line, either.

I’m not poor, and, like I said, I’m getting ahead slowly now, but I’m by no means rolling in it.

I know where you are coming from. Because of $bad_life_decisions until I was 35 and purposefully choices since then, I am behind financially by any objective measure.

You could say my career trajectory is behind being in my 40s and still being an individual contributor, but I don’t see any scenario where I would have wanted to be a person manager. (Been there done that. Went screaming back to an IC role).

But, I do see a narrow path where I can retire at the standard retirement age and be okay with a paid off house, enough savings to be okay, and hopefully social security between me and my wife collecting half of mine instead of her own.

should be more than 8k

Excuse me, but at $200k you're making $100k net so about $8k per month. With rent at $2.3k, you should be able to save enough to buy something at some point, no? Or at least you could rent something more expensive, closer to work?

> Excuse me, but at $200k you're making $100k net so about $8k per month. With rent at $2.3k, you should be able to save enough to buy something at some point, no? Or at least you could rent something more expensive, closer to work?

Without knowing regional pricing information it's hard to say they "should be able to save enough to buy something at some point".

Maybe not in the Bay Area. But certainly could save for something elsewhere.

Two words: Bay Area. There really is no possibility for me to afford a ~$1M house anytime soon, and renting significantly closer to work (as in a 30 minute public transportation commute) would cost me at least double what I pay now.

Even so, he’s making $200K and his rent was $2300. But he says he is scraping by.

He is me and I said no such thing. I said “barely getting ahead.”

He said BART so he is in SF bay area.

If he is only paying 2300 rent he is living in a small apt even 60 minutes out. The cost of everything in the bay makes you wonder where money goes.

Lunch is a minimum of 25 bucks, bottle of cheap beer 10.

Don't buy beer, meal prep?

Beer and lunch money isn’t the problem.

Lunch/beer are certainly above nat'l average, but they do not cost that much in the bay area. It's mostly the housing (Childcare also up there).

Orlando, FL. Same cost as Atlanta with a 15 min commute and places like disney/seaworld/etc

I have a friend who worked in Orlando. I got a chance to see what life was like in Orlando as a non tourist. It’s a nice place.

Depending on your age you might care about what it would be like in a few more decades (I honestly don't know, it's far inland but Florida is low-elevation & would certainly get very hot either way).

I'd like to toss North Carolina out there as a great up and coming tech hub as well. Cheap living and lots of software jobs.

Where are the software jobs in NC? Who's hiring?

Raleigh. I was just hired by Bandwidth as a SE, but I'll be working at one of their satellite offices in Rochester, NY.

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