Hacker News Reader

Comment by talmr | Hacker News Reader

To be fair -

I used to live in Ohio and my parents and I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment that cost $600/mo about fifteen years ago. You could buy a 5 bedroom house for $250k. The school district I attended was also top notch. It was a great family area and I remember the mall, rec center, and numerous parks.

I checked zillow recently and 5 bedroom homes are ~$300k and apartments are about $800/mo.

At the time, my dad was the sole breadwinner and he was earning about $40k a year.

I'm out in California right now making a comfortable six figure salary, but I can't really afford a 1+ million dollar house in a good area where I can send my future kids to school.

If I was earning even $100k a year, I could comfortably afford to live in that Ohio suburb about 15 miles from a major metro.

View on HN

If you were able to afford a $250k house on $40k/year salary, why can't you afford a $1 million house on a "comfortable six figure salary" (if, presumably, that means at least $160k/year)?

Because everything else is also more expensive in California.

Way higher taxes. Gas costs double. My car registration fees for two cars was over a thousand dollars. The houses you can get for a million dollars have 3 small bedrooms, dated interiors, and pathetic back yards. If you want to live in an area that's safe and has good schools, you really need to pay a huge premium. A friend of mine purchased a 3 bedroom house that's really nice, and his down payment was almost as much as a house in Ohio. I do love living here, but it isn't really a fair comparison when it comes to housing. The houses I am mentioning in Ohio have acre plots, and large rooms.

If someone was to make less money in Ohio than their counterpart in California, I would say their dollar would stretch more in housing. Right now, even though I make decent money, I still live with house mates. I park my cars on the street, and I've had to deal with numerous crimes (bikes stolen, car registration stickers stolen, someone stole my bike rack, etc.)

FWIW I'm not the kind of person to trash California. I think there are still a lot of merits to living here.

Also my parents couldn't afford a house there, and still don't have their own home. We were immigrants here, and our experience in Ohio was honestly a really good one with a supportive community.

So if you lived in that Ohio suburb, your code quality would be reduced vs living in California?

I don't think my code quality would be reduced by location. If anything, I'd probably have less stress and more time to learn and improve. Making software and learning new stuff is pretty much a hobby, and more time to devote to hobby would be awesome.

Personally, I have not ever worked at a remote-friendly company. If the tides were to change and facilitating remote work becomes a first class priority, then I don't see why I couldn't thrive. My biggest irk right now is we can't just have ad hoc breakout sessions with different stakeholders (product, ux, eng) and come to quick conclusions. Zoom meetings are horrible, and I'm not really sure which tools are great for easily whiteboarding ideas. Someone recommended Google Jamboard.

Another concern moving inwards would be that I lose access to the hordes of other like-minded individuals who love technology. I won't be getting the same quality of meetups there for sure, since the area isn't a tech hub.

I'm going to take an unpopular/wrong sounding opinion and say it's possible. If you leave the bubble filled with world-class programmers, techies and entrepreneurs, it's possible your code quality will be 'reduced' because you don't see the value in it as much compared to taking care of your kids, building up your local community, etc. Peer pressure is important and if your peers are teachers, cops, store managers, etc would you care more about learning the ins and outs of the newest JS framework or about what dishes to make at the BBQ you're throwing this weekend?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com