See Which Cities Pay the Highest Software Engineering Salaries Adjusted for COL | Hacker News Reader

See Which Cities Pay the Highest Software Engineering Salaries Adjusted for COL

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35 pointspascalxus15 comments

The big issue with this kind of calculation is that it assumes each dollar has the same marginal utility.

A much more useful calculation (and much harder) is how much money is left over living expenses, and how much utility (or enjoyment) is derived from that surplus. It might be nice to live in a low cost of living area, but if all the entertainment options are not appealing, it's not really useful, even if the options are cheap.

Great point, and it's also not counting total comp, which I imagine is much higher on average in California.

Which American cities, they mean. There’s a whole world out there, folks.

Reston, VA has has best salaries relative to COL? LOL.

Fairfax County, VA, is literally the 2nd richest county in the US; the #1 richest county is right next door. Traffic is heavy, and housing costs keep goin up. Salaries are decent, esp. in the cleared government sector, though civilian gigs are pretty lucrative too.

Don't get me wrong, you'll probably have a decent lifestyle there -- I think about moving back occasionally -- but it's nothing like Omaha or Columbus.

Source: am from there, ran data centers in Reston, Herndon, and Ashburn.

If you work in or around Reston itself, I think the situation is not so bad. There are plenty of places in Loudoun County in the 25-40 min commute range that are still relatively affordable, because they are too far away from Tysons/Arlington/DC/etc. to be a reasonable commute. They're expensive, but not nearly as expensive as a comparable commute would be in the NY, Boston, or even Atlanta areas. Overall I think the "live in Loudoun, work in Reston" is a comparatively good value compared to the other metro areas that have high software engineer salaries.

On the other hand, living in Reston/Herndon and commuting to Arlington or DC is both extremely expensive and a guaranteed miserable commute. The Silver Line will probably help when it opens, but it will still be a long train ride, and you'll be at the mercy of WMATA.

Using Zillow prices within cities is a flawed methodology, because it's sensitive to how city boundaries are drawn, which varies a lot - sometimes city boundaries only include their historic "downtown" core, while other cities include suburbs and even exurbs outside the "urban" area. For an example, compare the boundaries of Boston (https://goo.gl/maps/8DCq5vc4vyMR8BVU8) with those of Jacksonville, FL (https://goo.gl/maps/BA3sdH4X7iebiqpV9).

Ideally, you'd prefer to compare housing prices within a fixed commuting time of the job location. This is pretty hard, so an alternative would be to use housing prices within the Metropolitan Statistical Area[1], but that's often too coarse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

> If you want to have your cake and eat it too, go to Columbus. 130K in a city with super low COL! And its mostly thanks to 1 company: Root Insurance Company, which seems to be paying out some seriously high salaries.

So basically, you probably wont be getting 130k in Columbus unless you get into that company?

I had no idea that so many of these places besides CA/NYC are so much more expensive per sq ft average than Texas cities. Denver is quite a bit more expensive, for example, and Reston, VA, which I assume to be a nearby area to DC, is also up there.

I've not visited most of the top 10 on this list, but I wonder if what you trade for COL improvements makes up for the experience of living in those locations. (A complex question if you factor in commute times, community factors and personal interests at a minimum.)

That'd depend on what you'd want for QOL, different people value different things. Myself, I think quality of life in Chicago is so much higher than in BA that I'd take it even at significantly less money. Austin seems similar. Omaha on the other hand...

I can tell you from experience Baltimore is shit. Corrupt as hell and crime ridden.

Bentonville has terrible traffic because everyone commutes from surrounding cities (barely able to call them cities imo), there's only one expressway N-S, public transit may as well be non-existent, and the bike trails and sidewalks turn into grass, ditches, or roads without warning on major thoroughfares. And no one here knows how to deal with pedestrians because it's too spread out and hot to walk around. Fayetteville is better because it's a university town, but not much if you're used to real metro areas. Grew up here, moved to Seattle, came back and I hate it.

Edit: Also the only major employer in Bentonville is Wal-Mart. They own the town, and almost all employers in town service Wal-Mart in some way. There's not a single other major retailer in city limits, there are two options for groceries: Walmart and a local chain of grocers. I guess they did recently put an Aldi in, but it's outside city limits.

It seems like the sweet spot is around the middle of the list - places like Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Salt Lake City, etc. Good salaries and lower cost of living than California, but you will have all the quality of life features of a bigger city. I guess that's why those middle-tier cities on this list are also at the top of the fastest growing places in the country.

This is good however I want to take into account savings value also. So after paying for a basic living I save the rest. Eventually I move to a very low COL place so If the rest is much more I'm better off.

How many of these weird cost of living calculators need to be made ?

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