US cost of living is ridiculous. You shouldn't just compare two numbers one to one. 150k in California is basically just scraping by.
We would probably need about $20k more for the same lifestyle had we not gotten lucky with timing buying a house (we bought in 2011, right before a big increase in prices). Alternatively we could have kids sharing a bedroom and live otherwise the same.
Second, yes after taxes your take home pay per month is ~8k, and a little more if you have dependents. But here's a couple of things to put into perspective:
1. It's not a lot of money if that's your household income and you have kids. Buying a house is nearly impossible with that salary and the average rent for a two bedroom apartment goes 3.5k which also includes a significant commute. Houses are even more expensive to rent. You can definitely get cheaper deals, there's no shortage of shitty housing in California. There's also rent control deals if you never moved out of a house for a decade.
2. A decent employer sponsored health insurance costs about 350 a month for the family.
3. Car payments and insurance on an average are about 400 per month.
4. you put about 500 per month to 401k if you want any decent future savings.
5. Utilities (Internet, water, electricity, gas) comes to about 300 per month
6. That leaves you about 3000 for groceries, gas, medical expenses, school related expenses, recreation, clothing, and bunch of other expenses for say a family of 3-4. That's not a lot of money tbh if you want to save anything at all.
Sure 150k is a great salary if you're fresh out of college and share an apartment with other people. But 150k isn't a starting game dev salary. And it isn't a remote part of CA salary either. This is a salary paid in big cities that are too freakin expensive to stay in.
PS: most of these estimates are conservative, it can easily exceed the cost. For eg, we only have one internet service provider in our area. And if you want the worst plan with bad speed and data caps, you still shell out 80$/month after they finish adding all the bs fees.
Er, they don't. The median, not lowest, pay for employees of the City and County of San Francisco is barely into six figures. [0]
The lowest pay categories (calculated by annualizing the biweekly max,so this is probably a slight overestimate) pay $36,114/yr, which is far short of 6 figures. [1]
[0] https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2019/san-francisc...
[1] https://sfdhr.org/sites/default/files/documents/Classificati...
Sure those numbers exist, because the city has to have pay scales for every job category, but I think the more important thing to ask is what percentage of the workers are actually low paid employees.
I couldn't find a report that would easily displays that info, but here's a news item from a couple years back where 75% of the bay area city employees were earning 6 figures. [0]
Another question you want to ask is what positions exist in that excel spreadsheet, do people even take those jobs full time and what percentage of people do sit in that spectrum? For example here's another story that reports a starting wage of almost 50k for a Janitor. Of course there's going to be a few jobs that exist in lower end of the spectrum, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that it's expensive to live here and therefore, you shouldn't compare high salaries in the bay with others elsewhere one to one. [1]
[0]https://www.dailyrepublic.com/all-dr-news/solano-news/fairfi...
[1]https://sfist.com/2016/08/29/san_franciscos_city_worker_sala...
Its about 50% above median family income in California for a family of four, and most of those families of four aren’t getting by with just a single worker.
> That leaves you about 3000 for groceries, gas, medical expenses, school related expenses, recreation, clothing, and bunch of other expenses for say a family of 3-4. That's not a lot of money tbh if you want to save anything at all.
Yeah, it is. I mean, its not “eat out every day” money, but its quite comfortable.
> Sure 150k is a great salary if you're fresh out of college and share an apartment with other people
150K is almost the median household income of households headed by a Ph.D. holder (not the single personal income of someone who just graduated with a Ph.D., but the median of all households headed by a Ph.D. holder.)
> And it isn't a remote part of CA salary either. This is a salary paid in big cities that are too freakin expensive to stay in.
Then don’t stay in the big city; Sure, SF the Bay Area core cities are quite expensive, but you can drop to a much lower CoL within a reasonable commute distance, either within the 9-county Bay Area or adjacent, such as southwestern Solano County; that’s how plenty of people with families get by making far less than gamedev salaries working outside tech in core Bay Area cities.
You're missing a key point, that this thread is about game dev salaries and most of them tend to be in major cities (and require you to go in). Sure you can central California and work on a farm, but that's irrelevant.
>Yeah, it is. I mean, its not “eat out every day” money, but its quite comfortable.
It depends on where you are and for most game devs, I wouldn't consider it "quite comfortable".
>150K is almost the median household income of households headed by a Ph.D. holder
Sure, but they'd still won't have it easy if it's a family of 4.
>but you can drop to a much lower CoL within a reasonable commute distance, either within the 9-county Bay Area or adjacent, such as southwestern Solano County
I used to work for Ubisoft in San Francisco and let me tell you there isn't a single county within "reasonable" commute that is cheaper to live in. My commute was one and half hours each way and was still paying $2200 for a single bedroom apartment (two bedroom was unaffordable).
There's no denying there's people in California who make way less and live far from the big cities. But there's a reason why the limit to be considered "low income" is $120000 in San Francisco for a family of 4 (and similar in other big cities where game studios have offices).
That’s where (to within viable commuting distance) the majority of the people in California live, so, no, that doesn’t make the statewide aggregates inapplicable comparators. More than 20 million of the just under 40 million state population lives in the 9-county Bay Area, LA County, or San Diego County, and that doesn't even cover all the major cities or the full reasonable commute distance from those it does.
> I used to work for Ubisoft in San Francisco and let me tell you there isn’t a single county within “reasonable” commute that is cheaper to live in.
Almost every other Bay Area has a substantially lower cost of living; within a 90-minute commute radius you can be in a place with literally half the cost of living (e.g., Vallejo.)
If you're living in a more expensive area, its because you prefer a more expensive area, not because its all there is within a reasonable commute radius.
> There’s no denying there’s people in California who make way less and live far from the big cities.
There’s plenty of people that make way less and live in the big cities (not just their commute radius); per capita annual income in SF is about 70K, median household income $112K. [0]
> But there’s a reason why the limit to be considered “low income” is $120000 in San Francisco for a family of 4 (and similar in other big cities where game studios have offices).
It’s actually $146,350 in SF. (Including Marin and San Mateo; the San Francisco HUD Metro FMR Area).
But just next door its $109,600 (Oakland-Fremont, CA HUD Metro FMR Area, which includes Alameda and Contra Costa Counties) Out to Solano County its $77,600.
In Sacramento County, where EA’s Capital Games studio is located, its $72,500. [1]
And, again, those are all household thresholds; supporting a family on a single earner’s pay has been a luxury for decades; that you can only just barely do it above the local “low income” threshold on the game dev salary you quote if you choose to live in literally the single most expensive place possible, despite other less-expensive places being close by, isn’t a sign that the pay in your field isn’t great.
[0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...
[1] All low income threshold data from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html
That's complete nonsense.
150k is scraping by when attempting to live in any of the most desirable cities of the USA, some of which happen to reside in California.
It's a huge state, there's plenty of housing outside of Santa Monica and San Francisco.
That being said, the way healthcare is paid for in the US is complete garbage for basically everyone that doesn't have that same (more or less) guarantee of employment (with benefits) and is a huge problem. It just isn't for upper middle income (and above) workers.
Same with college. In my experience most SW engineers in the US make enough money to drop money in some kind of investment account for their children monthly so that college isn't so burdensome unless their children go to the absolutely most expensive places or they have a ton of kids.
Again, it's the people in the middle and bottom that are getting screwed. The top 20% of earners in the US come out ahead i think.
EDIT: I'm not advocating this as a positive thing or anything, just noting that I think SW engineers in the US have a pretty good gig compared to many other people both globally and at home.
Also as the average age of many high tech companies increases, expect more cost limiting changes from offered benefits.
I'm general, QOL is going to be better in Europe if youre in a low income bracket because you get so much as a public service. But if you make real money, you're going to be better off in America.
It's a huge problem nationwide, though, and ultimately needs to get addressed at the federal level. It's absolutely insane and fraudulent that an in-network hospital has out-of-network providers within it.