Hacker News Reader

Comment by dataflow | Hacker News Reader

A $107k/year salary is around $76k after taxes.

I'm Googling and here are a couple of numbers I find:

- Median rent in Berkeley seems to be around >= $3k/mo for a ~700 sq. ft. (2-bedroom?) apartment. [1]

- Family of four estimated monthly costs are ~$4.5k without rent. [2]

I don't know how accurate that estimate is, but it's around $90k/year in expenses, which is $14k more than the post-tax salary.

Curious what your numbers are that suggest this is pretty doable. Of course I'm sure there are people scraping by with much less, but it seems like doing so would need a fair bit of creativity and not be something that would seem "very doable".

[1] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/be...

[2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Berkeley

View on HN

I can give my actual numbers - my mortgage is around 3K/mo plus property taxes. Nanny is $3600/mo. I have another baby coming in a few weeks, so my childcare next year will be an additional $1800/mo for the older one to start preschool. My partner and I split most costs.

We recently bought a house, so we've had some home maintenance costs, which was the big issue that popped up this year - I didn't have the money to split roof-fixing costs, and a big rainstorm caused a leak which caused us to have to tear the drywall out of our bathroom wall. I look forward to having a bathroom wall again in the near future! :)

To the original comment: I agree that my salary was doable (and higher than many Unit-18 lecturers! and than many in the bay area! I am quite fortunate indeed). However, given that I am able to earn much more as someone with a CS background in other roles that I also enjoy, I made the decision to leave the lower paying role.

I did do research this year, by the way, as I managed to get a grant even as an adjunct lecturer. That was one of the things that added to the courseload. The other Unit-18 lecturers in EECS are also involved in research.

Hopefully my reflections make it easier for others to do their homework. :D

The Unit 18 union has done a pretty good job across the UC in making it possible to be a temporary lecturer for a few years as a viable part of a career path. It's not a permanent job, and the costs of living have gone up quite a bit more than either the union or UC projected when the contract was last negotiated. All that said, compared to the pittances that adjuncts are paid at other Institutions, it's a lot better.

This is true, but it also sucks if we assume "part of a career path". That means there's virtually no teaching-focus career paths in the UC system which is terrible for basically everyone. (Students as well as other faculty.)

In reality, there's spots where it very well could be a career path but it's incredibly difficult to make it work in CS. (And in many many other fields too!)

Yeah, this is largely true. Teaching-focused career paths in California Higher-Ed would be at Cal State or the Community Colleges. UC is about research, and expects all faculty to focus on research, although there are some continuing lecturer positions here and there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com