HN discussions are insanely biased. Our idea of what's normal is skewed by who we know. Everyone knows that one guy who is somebody's brother's nephew's co-worker's roommate who makes $250K at Google. The vast majority of practicing tech people in or out of the Bay Area are not pulling down that much by a long shot.
Are you really willing to tell me that that the average engineer in 3-6 years can pull in $250k? Your own source says the median is $100,690. How long do you think those people have been working in the industry? Are they all just fresh out of college? So if these people all just work 3-6 years should I expect a bunch of multimillionaires? Can the industry support $250k salaries for a wider amount of the population?
The average developer is average, not awful. You can make more if you are better than average and know the right people and speak the right language. I know people who are making $350k, but they are very much an exception and we both know and understand this. Much of how much you get paid is based around who you know, your location and your cultural fit. Most people do not live in the bay area for various reasons and salaries like that are extremely uncommon outside of there and the upper echelons of the NY finance market.
I was exaggerating, but if you save your money while making 250k you can easily live off 30k and pocket the rest. It's not hard to become a millionaire off of that salary in a very short amount of time.
> Most people do not live in the bay area for various reasons and salaries like that are extremely uncommon outside of there and the upper echelons of the NY finance market.
As someone who has actual experience with this, it's easier to get a high paying job in those areas because that's where the hard problems are being solved.
Hard problems are usually solved in high cost of living areas because you need to pay your employees a lot of money and those employees usually prefer to live in high cost of living areas. I actually have personal experience with this.
Yes, the cost of living argument applies if your salary is at the low end of the scale.
If you're solving hard problems at a company that values that kind of stuff, then you can makes just as much anywhere else. I actually have personal experience with this too.
No, the cost of living argument does not apply at the high end of the scale. Cost of living starts to become irrelevant as you make more money.
Sure, rent in NY is $60k per year vs $24k per year in Oklahoma, but it's just not that important if you're making $1m+ year.
Ok so first off, rent in Tulsa is 12k at most for a full house.
Second off a lot of the high cost of living has nothing to do with solving hard problems, if it did the civil engineers would have solved the hard problem of fixing the housing market in SF. What you are essentially arguing is Tom Cruise 2.0 makes 6 million a film after a few years in the industry so therefor everyone else sucks which you can tell because they don't make 6 million. Being generous I would claim it's a survivorship bias.
> Second off a lot of the high cost of living has nothing to do with solving hard problems
Actually, it's directly related. People who solve hard problems at companies that value that sort of thing make a lot of money. Generally, people who make a lot of money want to live in nice areas. Nice areas become expensive as housing gets bid up by high earners.
But your own link has the median pay (salary) across the job role at $100k. Is total compensation typically 250% of salary? That's a lot of bonus money and benefits.
HN discussions are insanely biased. Our idea of what's normal is skewed by who we know. Everyone knows that one guy who is somebody's brother's nephew's co-worker's roommate who makes $250K at Google. The vast majority of practicing tech people in or out of the Bay Area are not pulling down that much by a long shot.