[adventured]

That has gradually changed a lot in the last ten years.

A decent house is $150,000 to $200,000 where I'm at. That's 2,000-2,500 sq feet, 0.75 to 2 acres of land. The murder rate here is almost zero, violent crime is very low, and I have access to high speed Internet and normal shopping / consumer goods. I can day trip to multiple major metros. Public housing here is actually nice, safe, clean. The homeless rate is nearly zero. And I spend zero time in traffic.

Put your $50,000 down on the home. Your mortgage payment is now $725 to $750 or so.

Make $6k, $8k, $10k, whatever per month doing Go, Python, JavaScript, etc. remote contracting. Or just take a decent remote job.

Your take home is ~$54k on $85k income contracting, before any deductions. Your bills are $2,500 per month. You can easily pay your house off in seven or eight years.

And that's not a crazy scenario or a high-end outcome in terms of contract work. That's doable for anyone in the top 50% skill wise.

You can pull off that scenario all over the US.

Or make $150,000 in Seattle, and that same house costs $1.2 to $1.5 million. Somehow figure out how to come up with your $325,000 down payment. Now your mortgage is $5,000 per month. Your property tax is over $10,000. Your take home pay is $9k to $9,500 per month. Your house, for just the mortgage and taxes, is going to cost you around ~66% of your take home pay, versus ~16% in my scenario. That house is going to cost $2 million total - minimum - over 30 years of mortgage payments, plus another $300,000+ in tax payments.

I feel pretty bad for engineers making ~$150,000 or less in Seattle or San Francisco. Telecommuting will set you free.

[pm90]

Engineers in sf make a lot more than 150k in their late 20s/early 30s even outside big 5

[adventured]

And housing is even more expensive in San Francisco than in Seattle, general cost of living is a bit higher, and CA has income taxes, adjust the figures accordingly.

The $1.3m house in Seattle will cost you $2m in SF.

Now you need $500,000 for a down payment. Your mortgage + taxes will cost you $110,000 per year, out of your $158,000 take home on a $250,000 income. You'll burn $3.8 million over 30 years on the equivalent of a typical middle-class house, before accounting for any repairs/improvements or tax increases.

You have $4,000 per month left to cover basics like: car, utilities, homeowners ins, food, home repairs, savings, life.

That's all assuming a $250,000 salary, which few people make in SF. The average is a lot closer to $200,000 total compensation, the median is even lower.

$250,000 salary is a helluva line to have to perpetually stay above for 30 years just to barely afford a modest middle-class house, while saving almost nothing besides that.

[dmode]

That's not how the math works at all. 25-30 yr olds making 250k don't live in 2m homes. They usually share an apartment in SF and pay ~$2000-2500 on rent. Then when it is time to get married or move in with a gf, you get a starter home for 500-600K, putting 10% down. Now in a couple of years, your starter home has gained $200k in value. Sell that and use the proceeds for a larger single family home around 1-1.5mn. Meanwhile, since your partner is in the Bay Area, your household income is between 400-500K. Now you are 35 and you get a couple of promotions and are either a senior Engg manager or an architect/tech lead at L6 or L7. You then start pulling 200K just in RSUs. Meanwhile your house also appreciates in value. At this point, said engineer has 300-400k in liquid savings and another 300-400k in home equity. There is a reason why people move to Seattle and SF as the math largely works out

[z0r]

That path is as rarified among software engineers at bigco as software engineering at bigco is among software engineering at large as that is to the general population.

[someguydave]

No, they move there because they hope that math works out that way, and they think they will be the one guy out of 10? 20? 100? where it actually does work out.

[pm90]

I don’t understand what is the unlikely thing to happen in the scenario described. If you’re talking about striking millions in startup exit/IPO money, I def agree with you it’s unlikely.

[z0r]

Plenty of engineers hit their cap at L5 or thereabouts (I'm sure if you look at the distribution of levels at your local bigco you'll see there's a sharp decline in numbers at some point), and not everyone is going to be part of a DINK engineering power couple.

[mythrwy]

But at this rate in 30 years that modest middle class house will be worth 2.6 billion dollars!

(kidding. I think).

[inteleng]

As is apparent here, most (software) engineers can only understand things as linear models.

[robertAngst]

That is after you include stock.

Not a bad deal today, but I'm still questioning if 1 trillion dollar companies exist or are overvalued.

[pm90]

That is a fair point. Liquid salary doesn't usually go much beyond 200k; all of the additional comp is in RSU's. If there is a huge downturn, a lot of engineers will lose a great chunk of their assets.

[jackgolding]

My current "quarter life crisis" is around this number, it appears to getting from $150-200k in liquid salary is MUCH more difficult than $100-150. So if liquid income is your "north star metric" job wise, what do you do?

[jmalicki]

RSUs in a public company are liquid, they can just be volatile.

[pm90]

Correct. And a lot of folks deal with this volatility by immediately liquidating a certain fraction of their stocks and investing in e.g. Mutual Funds and the like.

[surge]

Doctor's and lawyer's have been noticing this sooner and taking advantage of this too.

It's called geographic arbitrage or geoarbitrage, and factor's in more than just salary. You can actually make less in many places and live better.

[justaguyhere]

Which city/state are you in?

[ataturk]

I'm in the midwest. I've had zero luck with remote work. Zero. The rest of what you said is spot-on.

[s73v3r_]

The problem is, telecommuting is still not common. Hell, the running joke is that Slack, a company who's entire purpose is improving communication among teams to enable more remote work, does not allow remote work themselves.