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Comment by teej | Hacker News Reader

A cost of living adjustment is one of the easiest calculations to do. Is it as simple as this (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount...), or did I misunderstand your point? It doesn't seem that complicated to take a $100k salary point and normalize for cost of living.

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Seems like a good idea but I doubt the data is very accurate. I live in Montreal which is well known to be one of the cheapest places to live in North America (very cheap housing, very cheap energy, etc.) but WA puts Montreal as the most expensive? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount...

Higher Taxes. Quebec has generally higher taxes vs. the rest of canada, and places like washington have no state income tax. Also the locations it could be comparing could be downtown metro area's and their costs. 3km away from the downtown core and you get a huge drop in price.

The taxes aren't that much higher. And the rent is cheaper than Toronto.

You're looking at approx 30% deducted at source for 50k in Quebec, I think. You get quite a lot for your tax dollars in Canada though.

And this is utterly ridiculous.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from+Montreal+to...

I nearly spit-taked when I saw that, it's so distorted... until I noticed that it's for Vancouver, Washington. Ah, well, maybe.

Wolfram Alpha says: "(UN retail price index data in Canada available only for Montreal)"

WA has good data on cost of living in the US, but I don't think it has comparable data for Canada. For example, if you take out a few of your terms there you'll see that for Toronto it's using the US national average, which is way off. If you try and check their sources, all they list is http://www.coli.org/, which has US data only.

It's just another data point. A lot of kids about to graduate will look at these salaries, go "holy crap! I'm headed to the Bay!" and completely overlook other parts of the country where they could make comparable or even better salaries, relatively speaking.

And yes, I did read the part where Google adjusts for region in their other offices. I just don't think other companies always do the same.

That's a bad strategy. If you're going to move away from family and friends to the dead middle part of the US where you'll have less opportunity, less useful connections, etc., then the salary you get is going to have to be much higher to offset this career hit.

Further, if you're on $100k+ in the Bay and you can get down to a ramen lifestyle with roommates, etc. you could potentially save more than you'd even make in the midwest.

I've lived in one of the lowest cost of living places in the US and I'm now living in one of the more expensive countries in the world. I am a lot more financially successful here than I ever was there and I was single there. Now I have a wife and kids.

>And yes, I did read the part where Google adjusts for region in their other offices. I just don't think other companies always do the same.

This makes no sense. You think other companies have offices in the middle of Oklahoma but pay employees a Valley wage? They must have people literally getting into gun fights over the janitor jobs.

Cost of living is very complicated. Most software engineers making $100,000 are young, single, don't have kids, and are comfortable with renting. Most software engineers making $200,000 are older and have kids, which means they need larger living spaces and have a strong preference for owning rather than renting. On this alone, you need different conversion factors. Also, the distance/price curve is different for different cities. Manhattan is very expensive but there are affordable neighborhoods 30 minutes away; the Bay Area isn't as expensive at its core but the catastrophic prices cover a larger area.

Unless the salary is commensurate with increased value or output, I see no reason why older SDEs should make more than younger devs. To be clear, there is often great value in older SDEs, but "because they have kids and want a house" is not a reason to pay them more.

He wasn't saying that, he was saying that their cost of living was different.

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