US tech salary discussions always throw around incomprehensibly large numbers and complain that they are "small"
Currently, a family of 4 would spend $35k plus or minus $5k on premiums, plus the $34k you need on hand for out of pocket expenses because it’s per calendar year, so if something happens at the end of the year, you need to be able to pay for 2 years worth of out of pocket expenses.
And that is today, so account for quite a bit of inflation if you are starting a family in your 30s, you need to be able to providing until 55 to 60, when the kids should be able to provide for themselves (at your expected quality of life).
Plus education prices, and insuring yourself from legal expenses. I know, 90% of Americans are not and will never be insured against these risks, but once you are in the $200k to $400k income range, you can actually achieve it and come to expect it.
It's not Goldman Sachs we're talking about here.
Is this the norm definitely not but there are a lot of good companies out there paying well.
Yet, everything changes if you consider housing, medical expenses, childcare, pensions: ta-dah the ratio between income and expenses is worse than in Europe.
Then count your real working hours over a 30-years period and redo the math.
In my part of Canada, a decent dev salary for a new grad is about 45k USD. After taxes you'll be left with about 32k USD. Rent for a 1 bedroom apartment within a half hour drive of the city is about 1k USD, food for one person for a month is 200-250 USD if you don't eat out but do eat reasonably healthy (frozen vegetables, ground beef or pork chops, pasta, stuff like that). After internet, power, car expenses, telephone costs, etc. come out, you're maybe left with 10k USD to spare each year.
If a new grad in California making $180k+ is left with that little after the same expenses in the USA, I'd be impressed.
Granted, other things become more expensive later on. No doubt childcare is more expensive in California, as is housing. But it's not cheap here - a cheap house within a 30 minute drive of the city here costs about 500k USD, while that might be, what, 1-2 million in California? But a senior dev salary here is about 80k USD, vs 300k+ in California. And sure, the ratio might seem not too bad - 80k vs 300k is like a ~4 times difference, 500k to 2 million is like a 4 times difference. But after you deduct living expenses, you're looking at a much different ratio - unless every living expense is 4x more in California. But I'd be shocked if, for example, 1kg of medium ground beef that costs $10 USD in Canada costs $40 USD in California. Or if a $100 internet plan for 100 Mb/s up/down here costs $400 in California.
The theory says that once those older folks start to die off their children will inherit the windfall, but I'm not really that sure. Its definitely not true for my parents which for various reasons didn't manage to benefit from the real estate/stock market booms over the past ~50-60 years. I know a couple people like this (they have middle class jobs and live in apartments while their parents have tens of millions), while others are like me because their parents burned up imense amounts of money in their later years with travel/health care/etc.
this is a gigantic cope. it may be true for lower middle class earners, but in the tech sector american workers really truly are staggeringly more affluent than their british and european counterparts even after you subtract the tuition money and healthcare costs and all the other shit americans have to put up with.
There are a lot of people making 100-200k salaries.
There are also a lot of people making subsistence wages in a system with no universal public health care and meager government benefits.
Those are two very different voting blocks. The first group doesn't want to do anything too radical to rock the boat and mess up the good thing they have going. The second group wants radical change but has trouble organizing against the high paid lobbyists and campaign donors.
And then the really mind bending thing is those two groups often vote for the opposite party you would expect, considering their economic position.
I'm guessing the San Jose, pay scale for the same job was probably 3x+, the HR person who gave me the offer letter actually apologized and suggested I negotiate for more.. Which I found pretty funny, but they wouldn't budge on the PTO vesting schedule, and I'm at an age where I refuse to be in a situation where I have two weeks of PTO, which isn't even enough to take the kids on a couple trips a year during spring break, summer break, etc.
Plus, for a company with 10's of billions a year in profits, I've never seen so many red flags... From the HR department to the inexperienced parts of the team I met with (and the experienced guys who where apparently "lifers" and unaware of the outside world if you will).
It surprises me that a company will pay someone $$$$ and work them like dogs rather than paying $$$$-10% and hiring another 1/10th of a person so they don't have to work 50+ hours a week with 2 weeks vacation.
Of course if you're willing to take 20-30% less pay, immigrating to Canada and working for one of these tech companies in Vancouver or the Toronto area is much, much easier.
For instance, folks doing well-paid jobs in let's say China or Hong Kong aren't underpaid, they're paid well, relative to their local market. The same is true in Canada, it's just that Canadians live very close to a very different market with a very different cost structure and externalities - but 'feels' about the same from the other side of the fence. Consider 50% more folks live below the poverty line per capita in the US than in Canada so clearly it's not all bad.
Remember, Canadians can show up at the US border with $50USD and an offer letter in a SWE job and get a 3-year TN status adjudicated on the spot. There's clearly more to it.
The vast majority of employers will not sponsor you for a H1B, esp. if you don't currently work for them.
After one year, you qualify for what's called an L1B 'internal transfer' visa. You can then transfer to another team within the same company that's based in the US. In many cases the company will sponsor your visa application and even the cost of moving (e.g. plain ticket, cost of shipping your belongings, etc.)
Once in the US, you can start the application process for a green card. As long as you're not a citizen of either India or China, this should take 2-3 years.
I'm Dutch and this is the path I took.
Whats different with these two? Why does it take so long in general?
It just feels ridiculous that US salary can be 10x this, when costs of living are very similar. Apartments in my city in Sweden is about 200k$, houses 500k$.
After working here for just six years I could move back home and buy a house outright with the money I've been able to save.
I don't need a big house or a big car, but making more money means I can coastfire in the next five years, so it's absolutely worth it to me.
Those $350k jobs exist, but are very rare and hard to get.
Discussion here is often about a bump to the right of the graph :)
What? Seattle has one of the most utilized public transit systems in the US.
Are we talking about Seattle? We definitely have public transit here.
> Sending children to a good colleage is probably 50k+ a year just in tuition.
If they don't get into UW you mean? UW in-state tuition is only $11,745 (I say "only", but it is much higher than when I went there). However, it is a very competitive state university to get into.
I suppose this light rail train I am watching go by outside my window is just a mirage or something. Same for these buses, obviously a plant.
If you took the same amount of high earners and dropped them in an area with five times as many equivalent utility houses, then prices would not be high even though there are the same number of high earners. Hence high housing prices are not a result of a population of high earners simply existing.
As an example, I can afford and am willing to pay $5 for an apple, but I will not because I can easily find an equivalent one for $1.5.
Pay is usually max(COL, local market rate). You don't need a super high COL if the local market is very competitive, but COL can raise the pay because you still need to convince people to move to your location and most people won't do that if it has an abnormally higher cost of living without a corresponding pay increase.
The reason house prices are high in Seattle is because geography limits how well they can sprawl to build new houses and lots of people don't like higher density housing.