You just can't live in the Bay anymore, that's all there is to it. Anything within a 2 hour commute requires a minimum of $200k salary to afford, let alone get ahead. Unless you're inheriting your parents house or piling into a roommate situation, it's just completely undoable. Compare this to NYC which has innumerable options when it comes to suburbs, with better transit, lower taxes, and reasonably priced homes.
SF is my favorite city in the world, but as a tech worker in a flyover state I've given up on it being anything but a nice place to visit. I couldn't afford it alone, let alone with my family.
Unfortunately I don't particularly care for SV. I left my heart in San Francisco. I love the fog, the density, the hills, the food, the diversity, the transit, and the ocean. Silicon Valley has some of that, and it's in close enough proximity to be able to work in SF or visit regularly, but my dream is to live in Sunset or Haight-Ashbury in an ancient house and ride my bike around town with my girls. Maybe someday.
This, 100%. Seattle is ranked #2 but the cost is ballooning and the environment is very much east coast vs west coast USA.
It used to be better, remote I feel is better in Seattle but the hidden costs of being in the Seattle region involve possible commute, car purchase and the general RTA, fragmented neighborhoods, public transit is improving but nothing near what is nyc. Housing… I feel is cheaper in nyc, food across the board is much more inexpensive in much. Hotels are varied and more inexpensive in nyc.
One thing I have enjoyed is time zone differences. 3 hours difference is a lot and if you can balance that you can have a wonderful Seattle afternoon.
I lived in Seattle for a couple of years, out in one of the suburbs (West Seattle). I would say that housing cost is the primary issue in Seattle, but its nowhere near San Francisco. Outside of that, public transit is pretty good. I have gone back and forth across the city, to Bellevue, even to Olympia, on public transit very cheaply and within a reasonable amount of time. The light rail recently opened up to Bellevue, though Bellevue is not really all that much cheaper lol.
The food didn't feel super expensive, but it definitely wasn't great. San Francisco and NYC are so much better. I have been consistently disappointed with the food in Seattle.
The one issue I see with Seattle is that they have a 30% or so vacancy rate for office buildings in downtown. A lot of companies have left, or will be moving. Many to Bellevue. The city decided to target businesses to fund more progressive policies, but with remote work, the businesses just moved across Lake Washington. Or to other states (like Starbucks). I don't see that changing. So now they have a budget deficit, lots of office vacancies, and the looming threat of more companies leaving. Not sure if that'll change it's standing or anything, but its not great.
It's not accurate. I don't know where people get these numbers from, perhaps they just vibe based on headlines without looking at the actual data.
Studios all within 1 hour of SF by BART cost at most 2,500 but usually around 2000, cheaper if you're in Oakland/Daly city. 2000*12 is 24000, so if you're take home salary is at least 73,000 you're making a healthy multiple over rent. Just making 120k in the Bay area you're taking home 84,000 per year.
So if you're making 200k you're taking home $10,700 per month, so you can afford a 3,500 rent at most, which could easily get you a nice 2 bedroom within 30 minutes of downtown SF.
In the bay area you have mild climate all year, high quality public transport, culture, food. I do agree that rents are too high given a lack of development, but for many people that is worth it. The bay area is one of the few places in the world that pays fresh college graduates 120k+, so naturally there will be high rents, and to be in that environment is a privilege especially in growing a network.
>You need a 200k salary to live without roommates within 2 hours of downtown SF
That's a bit of an exaggeration. You could rent a 1/2br in SF proper with that salary. You could easily live within 40 minutes of SF in East Bay/Daly City comfortably at 120k.
Bay Area does not have much industry outside of tech. New York City is a hub for banking, investing, insurance, government, healthcare, consulting, real estate, fashion, law and more. All of these are now increasingly hiring tech workers directly and also retraining and transitioning their existing workforce to be more technical.
So just by numbers alone Bay Area will never maintain a monopoly on tech jobs. It will still grow but However if you just filter to the tech sector the numbers will be very different.
If you're talking about programmers working at non-tech companies? Maybe. If you're talking about people excited about technology, then no.
I lived in NYC for a decade. NYC is media and finance. And while I liked the people "in tech" that I met in NYC, the passion for the work just wasn't there enmasse.
I'm not sure why this is remarkable. San Francisco is still the overall #1 thanks to whatever this report means by "quality" of talent. It seems some larger city was bound to overtake San Francisco in total quantity eventually. New York Metro has nearly three times the population of the Bay Area.
The three-year negative growth for San Francisco (-6%) seems to be the reason here. Obviously, with Hacker News being so heavily populated itself by people living there who love to complain, we're going to see all the comments we're already starting to see citing housing costs as the reason, but San Francisco has had high housing costs for a long time now, and its negative growth is nowhere near the worst on this list. Milwaukee, Columbus, Phoenix all had even greater losses. Do those places have similar housing crises? Seattle is just as bad as San Francisco, isn't it? Yet it saw 13.1% positive growth, one of the largest numbers for an already large city. Toronto is expensive as hell, isn't it? They saw 26.5% growth.
What other explanations are possible? Recent layoffs have affected web tech more than other tech, which is highly concentrated in the Bay? They've affected startups more than well-established Fortune 500s, also highly concentrated in the Bay?
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] threadHousing it a lot more reasonable (nowhere near cheap, but feasible) in the actual Silicon Valley.
It used to be better, remote I feel is better in Seattle but the hidden costs of being in the Seattle region involve possible commute, car purchase and the general RTA, fragmented neighborhoods, public transit is improving but nothing near what is nyc. Housing… I feel is cheaper in nyc, food across the board is much more inexpensive in much. Hotels are varied and more inexpensive in nyc.
One thing I have enjoyed is time zone differences. 3 hours difference is a lot and if you can balance that you can have a wonderful Seattle afternoon.
Problem is winter sucks in PNW.
The food didn't feel super expensive, but it definitely wasn't great. San Francisco and NYC are so much better. I have been consistently disappointed with the food in Seattle.
The one issue I see with Seattle is that they have a 30% or so vacancy rate for office buildings in downtown. A lot of companies have left, or will be moving. Many to Bellevue. The city decided to target businesses to fund more progressive policies, but with remote work, the businesses just moved across Lake Washington. Or to other states (like Starbucks). I don't see that changing. So now they have a budget deficit, lots of office vacancies, and the looming threat of more companies leaving. Not sure if that'll change it's standing or anything, but its not great.
Studios all within 1 hour of SF by BART cost at most 2,500 but usually around 2000, cheaper if you're in Oakland/Daly city. 2000*12 is 24000, so if you're take home salary is at least 73,000 you're making a healthy multiple over rent. Just making 120k in the Bay area you're taking home 84,000 per year.
So if you're making 200k you're taking home $10,700 per month, so you can afford a 3,500 rent at most, which could easily get you a nice 2 bedroom within 30 minutes of downtown SF.
30% of income to go right back to rent in the Bay Area for the privilege of living in a studio is…
For most people, including me, not worth it.
“Oh but this is nationally average numbers” yes and no.
Plus your numbers are gross not net.
$73,000 to live in a studio, let’s be generous and say under 300sq ft, commute over an hour daily..
For what? The privilege to work in Bay Area?
> The privilege to work in the Bay Area?
In the bay area you have mild climate all year, high quality public transport, culture, food. I do agree that rents are too high given a lack of development, but for many people that is worth it. The bay area is one of the few places in the world that pays fresh college graduates 120k+, so naturally there will be high rents, and to be in that environment is a privilege especially in growing a network.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. You could rent a 1/2br in SF proper with that salary. You could easily live within 40 minutes of SF in East Bay/Daly City comfortably at 120k.
2 hour commute is a huge distance, so this is nowhere near true.
2 hours east is roughly Grass Valley, or anything in between (including Sacramento).
2 hours north is roughly Boonville, or anything in between.
2 hours south, depends which way you go, but could be Soledad, or anything in between.
(commute times from google maps)
That's a huge range, and all of those towns are far cheaper than anything in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley.
Tell me you've never lived in the Bay...
2 hours is Antioch/Pittsburgh in an average rush hour.
I guess I'm a newcomer, only lived in Silicon Valley for ~30 years (will be 30 in a few months).
You can't out-build yourself out of high living costs.
The only way to fix this is to start taxing dense office space as if it's toxic waste sites. And promote remote work to re-invigorate smaller cities.
Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones?
> Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones?
Dense offices in downtowns.
By that definition they use, the leader in "tech" employment is simply the metro with the most employees.
Bay Area does not have much industry outside of tech. New York City is a hub for banking, investing, insurance, government, healthcare, consulting, real estate, fashion, law and more. All of these are now increasingly hiring tech workers directly and also retraining and transitioning their existing workforce to be more technical.
So just by numbers alone Bay Area will never maintain a monopoly on tech jobs. It will still grow but However if you just filter to the tech sector the numbers will be very different.
If you're talking about programmers working at non-tech companies? Maybe. If you're talking about people excited about technology, then no.
I lived in NYC for a decade. NYC is media and finance. And while I liked the people "in tech" that I met in NYC, the passion for the work just wasn't there enmasse.
NYC is around 8.8 million and the Bay is around 7.8 million.
The three-year negative growth for San Francisco (-6%) seems to be the reason here. Obviously, with Hacker News being so heavily populated itself by people living there who love to complain, we're going to see all the comments we're already starting to see citing housing costs as the reason, but San Francisco has had high housing costs for a long time now, and its negative growth is nowhere near the worst on this list. Milwaukee, Columbus, Phoenix all had even greater losses. Do those places have similar housing crises? Seattle is just as bad as San Francisco, isn't it? Yet it saw 13.1% positive growth, one of the largest numbers for an already large city. Toronto is expensive as hell, isn't it? They saw 26.5% growth.
What other explanations are possible? Recent layoffs have affected web tech more than other tech, which is highly concentrated in the Bay? They've affected startups more than well-established Fortune 500s, also highly concentrated in the Bay?