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I feel that. Though I don’t have to live in a CA hellscape where half my paycheck has go to rent.


It’s really not that bad. I just took a job in NYC at Square making $420k my first year (though stock price increase is already pushing that closer to $500k) and my rent is $4300 for a 2 bedroom in a doorman building in manhattan. It’s expensive, but only about 10% of my gross income. Once you include my wife’s income, it’s even less of a big deal (and she makes under six figures).

You might consider CA a hellscape for other reasons, but the cost-of-living-adjusted salaries for big tech in SF, Seattle, and NYC are higher than anywhere else in the country.


> higher than anywhere else in the country.

Anywhere else in the world. For example, in London you’d probably pay at least 50% of your current rent, but only receive 25% of your current salary.


I tend to think that’s true, but I can’t say for sure. I do think someone working remotely while living in an ultra-low CoL place like Vietnam might come out ahead, but that has serious downsides as well, particularly if you ever want to move back to a developed country. You’ll have lived well in Vietnam but you won’t have built much wealth compared to your SF/NYC/Seattle peers.


That's somewhat a function of how much you get paid. However, leaving aside debates about remote work generally, in my experience once you get beyond five or six hour time differences, synchronous communications start to get really hard--especially if you're not willing to significantly deviate from a "normal" schedule.


> cost-of-living-adjusted salaries for big tech in SF, Seattle, and NYC are higher than anywhere else in the country

... if you do not have children.

Consider how much you would have to pay for a modest 2000 square feet house in SF or NYC.


For NYC, there are a smattering of houses under (to pick an arbitrary cutoff) 900K at 2000 square feet: https://streeteasy.com/houses/nyc/status:open%7Cprice:-60000...

Many have mortgage payment estimates under what senordevnyc mentioned paying for rent, now.


I don't think any of those houses are in locations that most people here mean when they say NYC (by which many mean Manhattan south of about 110th Street or a fashionable part of Brooklyn).


I'm not sure I can argue about exactly what constitutes NYC, given that I pre-excluded Staten Island. :)

However, I work in the flatiron district, and most of my co-workers live in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and NJ. One of the unexpected things I discovered when moving here two years ago is that there are a lot of reasonably-priced areas within an hour or so commute on buses or trains.


In general, you can get to fairly reasonable housing prices in quite a few places by going 60 minutes or so from expensive urban cores--though NYC is almost certainly better than most in transporting you into the city without making you drive a car most of the way.

The Bay Area is mostly an exception because you have such high prices not only in the city itself, but also the South Bay until you get way south and north in Marin County.


Most tech jobs in NYC are in midtown and lower Manhattan, but people live all over. In my office there are people living in all 5 boroughs, Westchester, NJ, and Long Island. It’s true that Manhattan and BK are more heavily represented, but there are options.


Sure. A very common pattern among my friends was that, when they had or were planning to have kids, they moved out of Manhattan to Greenwich or whatever. (This was a while back so the outer boroughs were probably relatively less interesting relative to the commuter rail destinations.)

But, at least in my bubble, when people are talking about the high CoL of NYC, they're mostly talking about living in the core.

The Bay Area is a bit unusual in that compared to a number of other expensive cities, it's hard to really commute out of the expense unless you have a really long commute. The East Bay comes closest I guess. By comparison, I live in the Boston area but you can get out to many suburban or even relatively rural towns within an hour. (Historically that's where almost all the computer industry jobs were anyway although that has changed somewhat.)


I do have a child. And she goes to a $55k / year private school. My point still stands.


Um is this a realistic salary in NYC


If you’re a senior engineer working at a public tech company, yes.

To be clear, this is total comp. About half is base and the rest is equity.


with a few years of experience expect over 200k for top tech in NYC




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