I left Baltimore for Seattle, having left a position that included govt funded research, and with many friends in related positions. The ease of finding, stability, and pay of jobs all seem DRASTICALLY better in Seattle than Baltimore. This is a very subjective comparison, because I was a much more junior dev back then, but even when going for internships/starter jobs, I had far more opportunities in CA/WA/CO than on the east coast (excepting NY, of course). Now, don't take this to mean there isn't a tech job ecosystem, I was able to keep a gainful chain of good employers, but as said, they were by and large much smaller, less stable (not as a pejorative, but when compared to the BigCo's I've worked at since) and paid far less; while each time I switched jobs I felt like I had to _search_ to find the next, whereas in Seattle, I couldn't throw a stone without hitting a mid-to-large tech co. (I'd be lying if I said COL didn't hurt, but the amount one can put away with a good paycheck is _substantial_)
This ended up being a bit of a ramble, but it's one (perhaps relevant) transplant's perception.
Being in Washington DC and knowing I can drive to half of those places in 30 mins, I wonder which metropolitan area definition the numbers in the article are using.
Does (NSA, SAIC, Ft Meade, NASA Goddard) really pay that much more than (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman)?
Edit: Adjusted for cost of living, Baltimore > DC makes more sense.
they don't state how they do this ranking very explicitly, but it seems to be some combination of number of jobs, median pay, and local cost of living.
there aren't a ton of software jobs within the city, but there are many software companies paying DC salaries within a 30-60 minute commute to the southwest.
the cost of living in baltimore is also quite low, but many of the neighborhoods probably fall short of what your typical SWE would be willing to tolerate.
It's interesting to see Phoenix so high up. Living there now, and there does seem to be a lot of Software Engineer jobs. But I'm not sure how it's handling the newer programmers. I spoke with 7 companies yesterday that asked if I would relocate to San Fransisco for entry level or internship opportunities.
(Obviously this data does not take that into account)
> I think many people would still rather make $55k in SF than $91k in detroit
And where exactly are you going to live for $55K in the Bay Area? At least in Detroit you don't have to commute that far to live somewhere that's quite nice, and even own a house.
You're joking right? A quick googling shows the median price of a home in Detroit as $35k. I don't care how bad you are at budgeting, with $91k/y in Detroit you could buy two homes.
I don't have to google San Francisco to tell you that you'd be lucky to afford to rent with three roommates on $55k in San Francisco.
I get where you're coming from in terms of crime and such, but cost of living is a major part of choosing where to live and on that front there's no question.
You probably wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood where a house costs $35k. I used to live in Philadelphia, the median house price was around $100k, but it was skewed by neighborhoods with high crime rates.
Is that particularly helpful here in this discussion?
> That doesn't answer the question of why you would choose to do that now when you don't have to.
Nor does it answer the question of why that dichotomy is being presented as the only option.
I presented what I found to be the median home price, a price unimaginable to the average SF resident. It's a comparison point to highlight the vast gulf between the two markets. It's not a declaration of intent to drop what I'm doing and move to a $35k home in Detroit without critical analysis.
The "Opportunity index" is "determined by dividing the number of job openings listed on ZipRecruiter by the number of active job seekers in that area"
This leads to Baltimore being #1 and San Francisco 17th. I think this is overly simplistic and not representative of "opportunity", I used to live near Baltimore, I wouldn't say it has more opportunity for Software Engineers than SF.
"Finally, it combined the real adjusted salary data with the opportunity data, giving double weight to the opportunity data."
How do you decide how to combine "adjusted salary data" and "opportunity data"? They aren't even in the same unit. I find that this is often the problem with these city rankings (not only this one, but also "quality of life" or "most expensive city" rankings). There is no universal way to weigh these factors, and your result highly depends on the particular weightages you assign, often arbitrarily.
And they're still way off. The only reason Detroit's number is so high is because they're counting the $1k condemned houses for sale, all over the city, that nobody wants to move into.
Do cost of living calculators take into account the more static pricing of non-necessities?
For example, maybe an apartment in the Bay Area costs, say, 300% what it costs in a major mid-western city. Groceries are 150% more expensive and other necessities are equally as expensive. (All numbers made up for the sake of example)
After you pay for the things you need though, you move on to things you want. Investments in stocks and bonds still cost the same no matter where you live. Flights actually are often cheaper from major, HCOL cities. Mobile phones cost the same online no matter where you live.
So basically I don't know if the cost of living calculators properly scale with the incomes that SWE provides in certain markets (specifically the PNW).
Does this make sense? I'd be interested if anyone had more information about this.
They do account for that. Normally, they assume you are a person with average desires. The more complicated cost of living calculators will let you enter in your actual expenses to produce a personalized adjustment.
If you aren't weird, the cost of living calculators work fine.
I mentioned in another comment that I have a coworker who moved from San Francisco. He now has an 11-acre lot with sheep, goats, and chickens. He can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. OK, he's weird. Imagine the cost of living for him in San Francisco. Step 1 is to find 5 acres. Step 2 is to lobby the state legislature...? Even if we downgrade to a California-compliant gun, that 11 acres seems likely to cost roughly $366,666,666.
Wow. For him, it looks like San Francisco is nearly 1000 times more expensive. Thousands turn into millions.
He does commute a half hour. Perhaps there is a city a half hour away from San Francisco where he could get his kind of home for "only" a hundred million dollars.
I disagree with the other comment; the COL calculators must NOT be taken as face value. Just like you pointed out the rent and state taxes are perhaps the biggest increase in expense. Groceries are more expensive but NOT by 150%; especially if you shopped at higher end Grocery stores (like Whole Foods v/s Walmart). Other major things, like furniture, appliances, electronics are more or less the same (except there is a CA recycling fee for electronics, but it isn't that much).
The financial upside is so much that its just ridiculous. The comp ceiling does not exist in SFBA or is substantially higher than anywhere else in the US. From a purely financial success, you should absolutely seriously consider moving to SFBA.
This is bad. If your metric for best city for software engineers excludes from its top 10 not only SFBA but Seattle, New York, Austin, and Atlanta, your whole piece better be a prolonged and detailed explanation of how you concluded that metric was valid. I love Chicago and think we benefit in a lot of ways from running a tech company (mostly) from here, but there is no way Chicago is a better place to be a software engineer, careerwise, than SFBA.
I mean, "Best City" as described by the article is a really loaded term because it means a bunch of different things to different people. Some people like to optimize for net income. Others might want to optimize for like-minded folks, support networks, and peer collaboration. Still others might want more health oriented amenities and pleasant weather. I think you're right though; by excluding these software engineer-dense cities, I think the article is missing the point of what might be the "best city" for a software engineer. After all, if they aren't even in the top 10, why are people even there? :)
Anecdote: at my current job in Houston, I know I earn a significant amount more than my counterpart in Austin, and I get a way less cost of living also. I also know that Austin has way more opportunities than Houston does, so I'm screwed if I ever want to leave this job. My personal situation matches the chart in the article.
I think this list would look a lot different if the jobs it considered were scoped down to software companies, and excluded the line-of-business development jobs that characterize most of the openings on cities outside the big tech centers.
I often fantasize about leaving "my" city of Frankfurt/Germany, but I always wonder if anywhere else is actually better for ME, wherever on the bell curve I might be.
Before I was 30 I became CTO of a great company here, i really wonder if I had made such a career anywhere else if I'd moved to somewhere with a more vibrant tech-scene where my specific skill combination isn't as relatively uncommon as it is here.
Same with my lifestyle situation of being the working Dad in a one-income household. Doesn't matter that i'd be making a killing in SFBA if living with a family simply costs so much more there.
If you're happy, stop fantasizing about leaving :) You already have a family.
For younger people without responsibilities, I do suggest they think about the Bay Area. If you have the right set of skills, you can skyrocket your career rapidly. If you don't like it, move back home and hopefully you gained some valuable life experience.
I've seen staff engineers at age 25 at Facebook and Google... Very rare, but having this amount of impact, responsibility, and trust from others is basically unheard of anywhere else (outside of other major Google offices worldwide).
Perhaps you can skyrocket your career rapidly, at least in terms of tax bracket, but is that what you want your life to be about?
My coworkers and I are doing all sorts of things that seem unlikely in the Bay Area. I have 11 kids. I once lived in San Jose, where that would not come cheap. The person in the office next to me has sheep on 11 acres, and he can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. He grew up in San Francisco, where that would be... difficult. Other people live in beach condos.
If you aren't careful, you can let the years pass by while hoping that just a bit more will get you financially secure enough to do something you really want to do in your life. One day you notice that the years are just gone.
I think its a pretty safe assumption that your paradigm of life differs significantly from most people on this forum. More concretely, having that many kids automatically make it a different calculus to decide an optimal place to live.
Recently moved to the Bay from Austin. Got a lot of flak for going in the opposite direction, but I've been super happy with my decision. People talk of the quality of living difference, but if you don't have a family, that is complete bullshit. My compensation immediately doubled and even after paying higher taxes, paying higher rent and so on, I'm still saving substantially more, all the while when working with smarter people and learning a lot everyday. And if anything were to happen to my current job, there are SO MANY Opportunities that it wouldn't be hard to quickly find another job.
Other benefits: your high comp lets you live close to work. Walking to work has been an amazing quality of life improvement in itself. Not worrying about traffic/train schedules relieves your brain of that added calculus (but it might just be that I worry too much). Perks are also better at SF based companies (catered lunch, better health plans, fresh coffee in the office etc.). SF food is comparable to Austin (although a lot more Michelin Starred restaurants, I'm not fancy enough to go to them regularly). And lastly the much touted Amazing weather. Its 100 in Austin right now but a cool 60 in SF.
> if living with a family simply costs so much more there.
Being from Germany myself, the additional salary in the Bay Area usually compensates for the higher cost of living unless you're fresh out of University.
At least that's what I've seen for Engineers that remain mostly technical in Germany.
I don't exactly know what CTO salaries are like in Germany, but I'd assume it's usually less than 200k Euros. Most experienced Engineers in the Bay Area make easily more than that in total compensation (salary, bonus, RSUs).
Even if you have to pay another 100k a year for rent/... , chances are you'd still come out ahead. Plus the weather is great.
That being said, society is a lot different in Germany, so it's not just about money and job opportunities :)
Yeah, I think for many engineers at the top companies they'd still come out way ahead even if they spent $100k more in rent. But realistically, rent is not that much higher. Maybe $20-40k more per year, depending on where you come from and how big your place (and family) is.
The image of Chicago has been tainted lately especially by the news of everyday shootings. How safe there is in comparison to let's say typical large city in Mexico?
Crime is very much concentrated; if you live in an area where a software engineer is likely to live, it is perfectly fine. IMO, much better quality of life than SFBA. If anything, you are not likely to step into human excrement...
If you were only earning the median salary, why on earth would you pay the median amount for an apartment? A much better metric would be where is the best place to live, assuming you're making significantly more than the median salary and living in an apartment with below average monthly rent.
The "Median Salary" figures are surprising to me for a number of reasons. To isolate Denver specifically (where i live, work and hire routinely) i do not know a single developer who is making < 70/yr.
Perhaps this figure is brought down from the sheer quantity of code school (Galvanize, Turing, General Assembly) grads we have in the city, but even then i find it hard to believe 50% of the se's in Denver are making south of $67/yr.
Edit: I'm dumb. The median salaries are adjusted for cost of living of the city.
San Antonio is interesting. Have only visited. Enjoyed touristy bars on the Riverwalk. But its less than an hour from Austin. And I'm guessing even more affordable.
(I'm sure @mgirdley will show up here in a moment)
I used to live and work in San Antonio. Five years ago it was beginning to show signs of a tech scene. Geekdom had been around for a couple of years and acted as the hub of the community. TechStars had a program there (though no more).
I left four years ago for Boulder so I've been watching it grow at a distance. From what I see, deal flow has picked up and Houston Street in downtown has turned into the epicenter, anchored by Geekdom on one end and Codeup on the other.
It's a great place to live and I'm constantly tempted to move back, though I expect that I'd need to find remote work to maintain the pay I currently make up here in Colorado. Excellent food and low cost of living in a city that's rapidly growing up.
I would not recommend San Antonio, except if you've decided to work remotely (and can find remote gigs). Yes its definitely more affordable but you're very limited in the job opportunities to those in defense/IT kind of work. Rackspace was the big exception, but its not doing all that well recently. If you had to move to a new city, definitely go for Austin, even with the overpriced real estate. The opportunity-gap more than enough makes up for the difference, and Austin is booming.
Good or at least decent kings have to work quite a lot. Or at least had to when being a king meant something. You still have to rule the kingdom, and watch you back so your lords and your relatives do not depose you. Of course, you can give up and just relax, but this can end up bad for you and the state...
The adjustment they make on income is opaque. It's hard to judge what those values actually represent. I can't believe that the median salary in San Francisco before adjustment is anywhere near $55k.
The HN title and first sentence in the article are potentially misleading. It's not just about maximizing salary, it's also about cost of living and "opportunity", as described later in the article.
Perhaps the HN title should be updated to the title of the original article: "What's the Best City for Software Engineers?"
The link doesn't even try to answer what it claims it tries to answer.
If you're trying to maximize your income as a software engineer, you move to SF. If you're trying to maximize your standard of living as a software engineer, you move to Seattle. Adjustments for "opportunity index" only obfuscates that.
1) I'm also including cities like Redmond and Kirkland with Seattle.
2) Amazon's not a bad place to work: it only is thought so because of comparisons with other big companies. And even its negative aspects are as much team dependent as they are company dependent.
3) In general, working at a big tech company in Seattle will give you a small haircut in income while offering a far lower cost of living than SF/SV.
Hmm, I'm not sure I want to move to Baltimore or Detroit even if they have tons of "help wanted" ads published. Especially after reading something like this: https://www.baltimorebrew.com/2015/08/07/baltimore-surges-pa...
Of course, it's from 2015, but has much changed in 3 years?
A lot of people would rather maximize their retained earnings rather than their income. No point in working like a dog so that your landlord can lie on the beach in Maui all year.
The best to maximize income? One of those places in middle America or Alaska that pay people to live and work there. Work remotely on something boring so that you can spend the rest of your time investing your savings. Live in a small part of your house and rent the rest out to people if you can find tenants.
I mean, if we're JUST talking about maximizing income here and not anything else, this is the way to go.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadThis ended up being a bit of a ramble, but it's one (perhaps relevant) transplant's perception.
Being in Washington DC and knowing I can drive to half of those places in 30 mins, I wonder which metropolitan area definition the numbers in the article are using.
Does (NSA, SAIC, Ft Meade, NASA Goddard) really pay that much more than (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman)?
Edit: Adjusted for cost of living, Baltimore > DC makes more sense.
there aren't a ton of software jobs within the city, but there are many software companies paying DC salaries within a 30-60 minute commute to the southwest.
the cost of living in baltimore is also quite low, but many of the neighborhoods probably fall short of what your typical SWE would be willing to tolerate.
(Obviously this data does not take that into account)
And where exactly are you going to live for $55K in the Bay Area? At least in Detroit you don't have to commute that far to live somewhere that's quite nice, and even own a house.
I don't have to google San Francisco to tell you that you'd be lucky to afford to rent with three roommates on $55k in San Francisco.
I get where you're coming from in terms of crime and such, but cost of living is a major part of choosing where to live and on that front there's no question.
The point is that the bay area housing market is on one extreme and Detroit's is on the other.
Based on your question I think we have different core beliefs about what's important in raising a child.
Good for you. That doesn't answer the question of why you would choose to do that now when you don't have to.
Is that particularly helpful here in this discussion?
> That doesn't answer the question of why you would choose to do that now when you don't have to.
Nor does it answer the question of why that dichotomy is being presented as the only option.
I presented what I found to be the median home price, a price unimaginable to the average SF resident. It's a comparison point to highlight the vast gulf between the two markets. It's not a declaration of intent to drop what I'm doing and move to a $35k home in Detroit without critical analysis.
It's as helpful as you saying that you've lived in worse conditions in the past.
Generally, here’s what I’ve seen gets you equivalent size/convenience/safety:
1m in NY
500k in DC
300k in Philly
150k in Pittsburgh.
I would absolutely believe you could find something nice for 5 figures in Detroit.
Most tech people do not choose SF at $55k. That's all I'm saying.
This leads to Baltimore being #1 and San Francisco 17th. I think this is overly simplistic and not representative of "opportunity", I used to live near Baltimore, I wouldn't say it has more opportunity for Software Engineers than SF.
How do you decide how to combine "adjusted salary data" and "opportunity data"? They aren't even in the same unit. I find that this is often the problem with these city rankings (not only this one, but also "quality of life" or "most expensive city" rankings). There is no universal way to weigh these factors, and your result highly depends on the particular weightages you assign, often arbitrarily.
For example, maybe an apartment in the Bay Area costs, say, 300% what it costs in a major mid-western city. Groceries are 150% more expensive and other necessities are equally as expensive. (All numbers made up for the sake of example)
After you pay for the things you need though, you move on to things you want. Investments in stocks and bonds still cost the same no matter where you live. Flights actually are often cheaper from major, HCOL cities. Mobile phones cost the same online no matter where you live.
So basically I don't know if the cost of living calculators properly scale with the incomes that SWE provides in certain markets (specifically the PNW).
Does this make sense? I'd be interested if anyone had more information about this.
If you aren't weird, the cost of living calculators work fine.
I mentioned in another comment that I have a coworker who moved from San Francisco. He now has an 11-acre lot with sheep, goats, and chickens. He can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. OK, he's weird. Imagine the cost of living for him in San Francisco. Step 1 is to find 5 acres. Step 2 is to lobby the state legislature...? Even if we downgrade to a California-compliant gun, that 11 acres seems likely to cost roughly $366,666,666.
Wow. For him, it looks like San Francisco is nearly 1000 times more expensive. Thousands turn into millions.
He does commute a half hour. Perhaps there is a city a half hour away from San Francisco where he could get his kind of home for "only" a hundred million dollars.
The financial upside is so much that its just ridiculous. The comp ceiling does not exist in SFBA or is substantially higher than anywhere else in the US. From a purely financial success, you should absolutely seriously consider moving to SFBA.
Anecdote: at my current job in Houston, I know I earn a significant amount more than my counterpart in Austin, and I get a way less cost of living also. I also know that Austin has way more opportunities than Houston does, so I'm screwed if I ever want to leave this job. My personal situation matches the chart in the article.
If you're a "median" engineer, I would not recommend SFBA.
I often fantasize about leaving "my" city of Frankfurt/Germany, but I always wonder if anywhere else is actually better for ME, wherever on the bell curve I might be.
Before I was 30 I became CTO of a great company here, i really wonder if I had made such a career anywhere else if I'd moved to somewhere with a more vibrant tech-scene where my specific skill combination isn't as relatively uncommon as it is here.
Same with my lifestyle situation of being the working Dad in a one-income household. Doesn't matter that i'd be making a killing in SFBA if living with a family simply costs so much more there.
For younger people without responsibilities, I do suggest they think about the Bay Area. If you have the right set of skills, you can skyrocket your career rapidly. If you don't like it, move back home and hopefully you gained some valuable life experience.
I've seen staff engineers at age 25 at Facebook and Google... Very rare, but having this amount of impact, responsibility, and trust from others is basically unheard of anywhere else (outside of other major Google offices worldwide).
My coworkers and I are doing all sorts of things that seem unlikely in the Bay Area. I have 11 kids. I once lived in San Jose, where that would not come cheap. The person in the office next to me has sheep on 11 acres, and he can shoot an AR-15 in his yard. He grew up in San Francisco, where that would be... difficult. Other people live in beach condos.
If you aren't careful, you can let the years pass by while hoping that just a bit more will get you financially secure enough to do something you really want to do in your life. One day you notice that the years are just gone.
I think its a pretty safe assumption that your paradigm of life differs significantly from most people on this forum. More concretely, having that many kids automatically make it a different calculus to decide an optimal place to live.
Other benefits: your high comp lets you live close to work. Walking to work has been an amazing quality of life improvement in itself. Not worrying about traffic/train schedules relieves your brain of that added calculus (but it might just be that I worry too much). Perks are also better at SF based companies (catered lunch, better health plans, fresh coffee in the office etc.). SF food is comparable to Austin (although a lot more Michelin Starred restaurants, I'm not fancy enough to go to them regularly). And lastly the much touted Amazing weather. Its 100 in Austin right now but a cool 60 in SF.
Being from Germany myself, the additional salary in the Bay Area usually compensates for the higher cost of living unless you're fresh out of University.
At least that's what I've seen for Engineers that remain mostly technical in Germany. I don't exactly know what CTO salaries are like in Germany, but I'd assume it's usually less than 200k Euros. Most experienced Engineers in the Bay Area make easily more than that in total compensation (salary, bonus, RSUs).
Even if you have to pay another 100k a year for rent/... , chances are you'd still come out ahead. Plus the weather is great.
That being said, society is a lot different in Germany, so it's not just about money and job opportunities :)
Perhaps this figure is brought down from the sheer quantity of code school (Galvanize, Turing, General Assembly) grads we have in the city, but even then i find it hard to believe 50% of the se's in Denver are making south of $67/yr.
Edit: I'm dumb. The median salaries are adjusted for cost of living of the city.
I used to live and work in San Antonio. Five years ago it was beginning to show signs of a tech scene. Geekdom had been around for a couple of years and acted as the hub of the community. TechStars had a program there (though no more).
I left four years ago for Boulder so I've been watching it grow at a distance. From what I see, deal flow has picked up and Houston Street in downtown has turned into the epicenter, anchored by Geekdom on one end and Codeup on the other.
It's a great place to live and I'm constantly tempted to move back, though I expect that I'd need to find remote work to maintain the pay I currently make up here in Colorado. Excellent food and low cost of living in a city that's rapidly growing up.
Perhaps the HN title should be updated to the title of the original article: "What's the Best City for Software Engineers?"
"What's the Best City for Software Engineers?" (Adjusted Salary & Opportunity)
But it was changed by a moderator for some reason...
If you're trying to maximize your income as a software engineer, you move to SF. If you're trying to maximize your standard of living as a software engineer, you move to Seattle. Adjustments for "opportunity index" only obfuscates that.
When I think Seattle I instantly think Amazon, which isn't particularly well-regarded around here from a work-life balance perspective.
The sheer number of Amazon employees would lower the average, correct?
2) Amazon's not a bad place to work: it only is thought so because of comparisons with other big companies. And even its negative aspects are as much team dependent as they are company dependent.
3) In general, working at a big tech company in Seattle will give you a small haircut in income while offering a far lower cost of living than SF/SV.
I mean, if we're JUST talking about maximizing income here and not anything else, this is the way to go.