[toomuchtodo]

You will be accepting a decline in quality of life to move to SF for work (increase in salary is not congruent with your increased expenses), and must decide if its worth it.

I'd suggest looking for full stack remote jobs where you'll make $100k-130k/year while remaining in Ohio (if thats where you want to live). Leaving a support system/family behind if you have a child (and considering another child) is not trivial.

Work remote, live better, visit SF once or twice a year for conferences to network and mingle.

[brandur]

As an SF resident of ~5 years, I agree with this.

$130k - $150k isn't really big money around here. You'll be able to live, but I suspect that you'll start to feel pretty quickly that your quality of life has been overall compromised since leaving Ohio. Real estate is the biggest expense — a $3k apartment won't even be a nice one, but you'll feel it everywhere — expensive meals, goods, lots of taxes, etc.

Long term prospects for property aren't great either. Property prices have been trending for a while in only one direction (straight up) and properties that would be considered very modestly nice in other cities are easy $1M+ in and around SF. Real estate agents play bidding games so everything goes for well above listing prices. NIMBY practices and regressive taxation laws (Prop 13) guarantee this isn't going to be fixed anytime soon.

As someone with a daughter, it's also worth considering that the public schooling system is in a pretty bad state. It seems that almost everyone will either use private if they can afford it, or move out to Marin or the South Bay so that their kids can go to a functional school. Don't take my word for it though, I have lots of anecdotes, but have never needed to seriously look into it, so do your own research.

Another big factor to consider is just the city itself, and how nice it is to be here. A combination of huge wealth disparity, unaffordable real estate/rent, poor treatment for the mentally ill, and moderate weather means that the number of deranged people that you'll meet on the streets and public transportation is way above average. Property crime is essentially rampant at this point (mostly in the form of smashed car windows and bike theft), and the police force is quite ineffective, so I don't expect that to go anywhere but up. If you're a reasonably sized guy it's all mostly tolerable (in that you don't really fear for your well being), but I'm not sure it's an environment that I'd want to raise children in. As far as I can tell, a lot of other industry workers just seem to take Uber/Lyft everywhere to avoid it.

All that said — SF is a fun city, and the nature around it is beautiful. It's one of the very few walkable/bikable cities in North America, which is great. As a tech person, it's also neat to be right in the thick of things.

[evgen]

I will concur with the others who are suggesting you explore remote options first. Besides the quality of life hit you would take in moving to SV, you are also increasing your risk if things don't work out. Start-ups, even well connected ones that seem like a sure thing, fail all the time. While your path to savings and local support network sounds like it will provide you with a nice cushion in Ohio, you would not have this in the bay area. With only one income in the family a six-month or more stretch of unemployment might be devastating.

Look for remote work, and see about building a network both in SV and NYC. The latter is a bit closer to you and you might find it easier to land a remote job with a NYC firm.

[awaythrow101]

I've been leaning toward that perspective recently.

I actually had a remote job in the pipeline but they ended up not being able to pay a commensurate salary or benefits (i.e. it was a significant pay cut from what I'm making now).

At least this process has got me back to studying data structures and algorithms again, so perhaps I can interview at Google Pittsburgh again and try for a better outcome this time. Any tips for finding a good remote position?

[toomuchtodo]

> Any tips for finding a good remote position?

Always be looking, and don't relax your criteria (compensation, work/life balance) because its remote.

Just because a position is advertised as on site doesn't mean you can't negotiate it to be remote.

Here are some remote job resources I keep bookmarked:

https://remotebase.io/

https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

https://remoteok.io/

https://weworkremotely.com/

https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote-developer-jobs

https://www.wfh.io/

https://jobmote.com/

Salary negotiation cheat sheet: http://salarytutor.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Salary-Tut...

[jdavis703]

I think this is a myth. I went from making $55,000 per year as a software engineer in Virgina to making over $100,000 per year in the Bay Area (I'm not anonymous on here so keeping exact amount secret). My rent went from $1500 per month to $2100 per month. My salary increase has more than covered the increased cost of rent.

[natch]

That works for a single person. Not so much for a family looking for a good school district.

[jdavis703]

I didn't grow up in a "good school district." In fact, we were frequently at, or near the bottom in local rankings. However I think I've managed to do all right in life -- the experiences a child learns from outside of school, from libraries to good parenting, to just being allowed to roam -- are way more important than what you learn in the classroom.

[donnfelker]

> Leaving a support system/family behind if you have a child (and considering another child) is not trivial.

So much this. Soooo much.