Every article on salaries seems to really screw up two things. One is, salary is only a portion of total compensation. Which do they mean here? If you don't look at equity packages, my intuition is you're going to think SF sucks, since I think more companies there use stock incentives. I'm not sure anybody has good data on equity packages/total comp, and at the very least, it's not trivial even if you have that data, since for example you can't just treat an Uber RSU the same as a Google one. So comparing total comp, which is what matters, is a subtle issue with lots of methodological decisions to make that will alter the results, and when articles (including the original source at hired.com) don't even mention any of that, it's hard to take the results seriously.<p>Second is, you can't just scale up salaries by the COL adjustment when the comp is this high. If you do that, you'll think the following are equally good:<p><pre><code> - monthly income 10k, 3k on rent, 2k other expenses
- monthly income 5k, 1.5k on rent, 1k on other
</code></pre>
Not all expenses scale linearly with COL, and in particular, one of the most important imputed expenses, savings, doesn't scale that way, unless you plan to retire with the exact same lifestyle.
This analysis may be reasonable as far as it goes, but it can still make financial sense for someone to live and work in the Bay Area. I recently took a new job near San Francisco paying ~$160k. Living cheaply, our actual consumption for my family of 3 is about ~50k a year. (Yes, this is possible -- and life can still be enjoyable if you like spending time in nature/other inexpensive activities.) After taxes, that leaves me $50-60k a year to invest/save for retirement.<p>Compare that with a salary of $105k in inexpensive Salt Lake City, which is where my second-choice offer was. After taxes and consumption for a similar lifestyle, I'd be saving somewhere around $30-40k/year, a substantial decrease. Not to mention the fact that if the startup that made that offer went under, it would be much harder to find another interesting job with similar compensation in Salt Lake than San Francisco.<p>I don't plan on living in the Bay Area long-term, but in the early stages of my career I can accumulate a lot more savings and also grow my skills faster by living here than probably anywhere else in the world.
The problem with straight-across cost-of-living adjustments is that they're only relevant when you're talking about a more-or-less zero savings rate.<p>Assuming you can save 10% of your annual salary a year, you're better off living in higher cost-of-living areas, assuming all other things being equal. Then you are growing wealth (retirement funds, etc.) instead of just getting a more expensive lease for your car or apartment.<p>So what you really want to measure is something closer to "savings rate" or "disposable income" or something like that.<p>I'm open to thoughts on how to practically do this math. It's very relevant when considering job offers in other cities.
As someone who's gone through hired's process last year with a close friend, I feel this does a disservice. Primarily because COL is never 1:1 in spite of the very best analysis available and I feel like this becomes a credible source those in hiring positions. The train of thought goes something like this, seemingly from anecdotal evidence from my close friend: "Oh you're making $70K in Atlanta as a PHP developer? That's like $150K in SF!" (the SF value was plucked out of thin air because I don't quite know the calculation). When the reality is in Atlanta that's well below market rate for a seasoned developer. This is also the state of their data compiled from last year but I suspect more than most will treat it as a projection or try to run the increase/decrease as one.<p>My understanding may be seriously flawed because I view salary negotiations as nowhere close to a zero sum game it should at least attempt to aspire to be. From the get go, everything is entirely skewed in the employer's favor and this just feels like more ammunition.<p>My close friend and I shared the train of thought that if a company based in SF has $x for developers, while they can likely get more remote developers for the total at their COL decrease, splitting some of the difference with those employees would go quite a long way. Employees likely wouldn't see that total compensation range anywhere else in their current location and that difference becomes its own motivator, at least for someone like me who has struggled to reach market rate. It becomes a double edged sword when that offer is vastly above market rate as finding another job in that range would be increasingly difficult. Employees would likely be way more tempted to stay well after burn out sets in because what should be closer to the norm becomes more of a golden ticket.
A lot of the cost of living calculations are wrong. I had moved from LA paying 1400$ a month rent to Austin and paid nearly the same rent in Austin for a one bedroom. The plus is no income tax in Washington and Texas but food costs are more and property taxes are double in Texas when compared to California.
SFBA is great for (at least) the following types of people:<p>1. Those who are completely happy with small apartments or long commutes. Typically coming from populous city in a developing country, SFBA traffic was an improvement (if not for duration, then at least for discipline and stress levels). Also, apartments are decent sized compared to what one is used to back home. Cheap cars are still good enough compared to what you had back home. And savings are HUGE, especially if you carry on the frugal lifestyle.<p>2. Those who are frugal. Because if you can save a higher percentage of your salary, then SFBA savings would outpace salaries in (most) other regions even accounting for high COL<p>3. Those who seek tech opportunities to make big money - eg. getting within top 10-15% engineers in GooSoftFaceFlix, who can easily earn >400K per year including Salary, Bonus and RSUs. If you are decently smart (no need of Turing Award smarts), work hard and position yourself right for growth, its not rocket science to get promoted into top 10-15% ranks within 6-8 years. Such opportunities in tech are relatively fewer in (most) other places.<p>Source: been in all 3 buckets at various points in my life; observed tons of my friends who were in similar boats.<p>Edit: clarified wording
...and Vancouver, BC doesn't even show up on the radar because our average is roughly $53,000 USD / year.<p>Might wanna consider outsourcing here. Same time zone as SV, similar culture, speaks English, tight job market means loyal workers.<p>source: <a href="https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/vancouver-software-developer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,9_IM972_KO10,28.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/vancouver-software-develop...</a><p>USD/CAD as of today: 1.31
I think there data on Cost of Living is outdated, specifically as it regards Seattle, which has recently seen a significant increase in COL. According to their calculations Seattle is cheaper than DC, however the data I can find online suggests the opposite.<p><a href="http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/seattle-wa/washington-dc/50000" rel="nofollow">http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/seattle-wa/washingt...</a>
I have a much different cost of living equation supporting my decision to live in the bay.<p>The big expense is obviously rent, which I'm sure they have represented... The average 1 bedroom in Austin around $1,000 and in SF let's say $3,300. Difference of $2,300 * 12 = $27,600. After that, that other $40,000 cost of living difference seems a bit of a stretch.<p>In SF, my company buys breakfast, lunch, dinner and my transportation to/from work (like many others in this area) so I don't have to factor that into my cost of living. The difference between cost of living adjusted salary tilts toward the SF bay, especially with bay area equity options over what is competitive in Austin (I have no insight into that, I think that would be an interesting study though).
Lived in Tokyo and realized it wasn't worth it after some time considering the amount of money to be made in the states. In the states, higher salary, lower cost of living, larger homes, more room. I miss Japan, but I don't want to work forever and living and working there just meant I was delaying the point at which I could stop working.
What is interesting is looking at the actual growth rate of salaries in software engineering. For all the talk about not being able to find qualified people, the salary growth seems stagnant.
I'm wondering why the entire southeast of the US was left out of the analysis? I'd have imagined ATL or Miami would have enough data to add to the report and cost of living is fairly low even in comparison to many of these other cities.
I'm legitimately interested to see how much software engineers make if they're not White or Asian. Given the lack of women and minorities I'd say minorities are better off being an MD than a SE. In addition, I'm skeptical that an average SE can get offers at places that give them this kind of compensation.<p>---<p>Take Google for an example. [1]<p>The earning "likelihood" (whether this is cultural, sociopolitical, socioeconomic, etc. is irrelevant. This is just observable fact, given Google's data) of Blacks is 1/17s of Whites and 1/5s of Asians (Google numbers scaled for Black representation in the US).<p>What I am getting with this? In this model I'm describing, you either work at Google, making $100 or you're unemployed, making 0. This means Whites and Asians will continue to make much more as Software Engineers, because the average wage as White or Asian person as a software engineer is higher, <i>because</i> of the higher rates of them <i>being</i> software engineers to begin with. This results in the average reported wage for software engineering being closer to $100 (the ceiling) even though it's more like $20 if you're a woman or minority.<p>Therefore, for an article like this to be useful for minorities and women, it would have to illustrate companies that have high (where high is equal to US demographics) rates of employment for software engineers. Otherwise, this might as well just read: "2017 State of Global Millionaires"<p>[1]<p>- <a href="http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/" rel="nofollow">http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/</a><p>- <a href="https://www.google.com/diversity/" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/diversity/</a>
It's crazy how much more you get paid in America than elsewhere. On the other hand, I can cycle to work, get actual holidays and actually work leave work at 5pm.
And here I am making $72,000 in New Hampshire...45 minutes from Boston. I have a B.S. in computer engineering and now have 4-5 years of professional experience in software (specializing in DevOps). Am I severely underpaid?
It's really hard to compare real world adjusted incomes because each government/country has varied outlooks on social benefits and safety nets. In the US salaries are high, but the government doesn't give you anything in terms of cheap educational, access to cheap healthcare etc.<p>I'd be curious to see if there's a way to factor in a global compensation number that includes all factors like stock, education cost and so on.<p>Completely anecdotal, but my experience with Hired wasn't great. Didn't have many good companies to choose from, the "hiring advocate" wasn't very helpful.
Where's Detroit? We had a bit of an exodus back in 2008-2012 but finding people today is like pulling teeth. I'm sure it's a way better financial deal than the bay area.
Hired is trying to present meaningful statistics while conveniently leaving out the sample size? (although I understand for business reasons they don't reveal it)
The article is misleading. The average software engineer salary in Toronto is <i>not</i> $197k CAD. It is closer to $80k, according to online sources like <a href="https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-reasonable-salary-for-a-software-engineer-in-Toronto" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-reasonable-salary-for-a-softwa...</a> .
There are so many large tech companies in the Bay Area that all include stock-based compensation as a meaningful portion of your salary.<p>Everybody on HN fixates on startup employment in the bay area. Sure, there are plenty of "starving" engineers here working for $90k at a startup. But that's a choice. Every large tech company you can think of, and many you can't, have been hiring here non-stop for years. Within a 2 blocks of where I write this is Yelp, Salesforce and Zillow/Trulia. These are not even the large tech companies.<p>This place is not meant for everybody, but it really has not been hard to get ahead here if you're an engineer aiming to make money.
Would like to see distributions of desired experience levels for jobs in each city. Unless they're fairly consistent, these numbers will all be skewed by the relative seniority of available roles. I'm not convinced they'd be vastly different but could imagine differences. For example, greater numbers of entry level positions in areas with higher concentrations of industry giants who can effectively train swarms of new grads.
Interesting, I thought Toronto would be much lower. Does anyone have any data on cost of living expenses compared to other major US cities?<p>- A Canadian who wants to go to the states but probably won't for the time being due to political/family/friends factors.
Is there any sense of how corporate benefits effect the real cost of living?<p>Meaning, companies which offer free food, transportation, even limited housing, the net effect of cost of living increases could be somewhat offset?
I bet the percentage (and the distribution) of engineers using something like hired.com to find a job is way lower in the hyper-fast-paced Bay Area than anywhere else.
Hah, I'm actually somewhat disappointed. I read "making" as "creating" - as in what people are making app-wise around the world right now.<p>Free idea if anyone fancies it (I wish I had the time!) - a live update map that sources geo-tagged tweets with a specific hashtag (#ShowHN?)
It's utterly stupid that the link goes to TechCrunch instead of the actual study itself: <a href="https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2017" rel="nofollow">https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2017</a><p>The hired.com page gives a lot more information, including baseline numbers before cost of living adjustments, and doesn't have such a click bait title.
Austin and Seattle <i>average</i> salaries of $190K for developers?<p>And yet SF and NYC are still stuck around $130K, which is only 20% higher than what it was 10 years ago, and these cities are far more expensive to live in?<p>What's the draw, why don't more developers move to Austin or Seattle?