[kwindla]

I haven't hired in Boston in a few years, so my perspective may be out of date, but it definitely was the case up until 2014 or so (my most recent concrete experience making job offers to candidates in Boston) that Boston salaries for engineers were lower than SF and NYC.

That seems mostly to be a supply/demand thing (which is tangled up with local culture norms, too, in complicated ways). There is much, much less VC funding in Boston than in SF and NYC. But a great supply of engineers because of the universities. And there's no equivalent to Microsoft+Amazon (Seattle) and Wall Street (NYC) pushing up both demand and top-end base salaries for experienced engineers.

Also, you mention that your search was 18 months ago. In SF (and I think Seattle and NYC, too) the job market is crazily engineer-favorable right now. I'd bet there's been 10% inflation in average base senior engineer salaries in SF in the last 18 months. That would match your $145k against ~$165k (rather than $181k).

[jeffbax]

While not any HQs, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook and (pretty sure in some form) Apple are all in the greater Boston area and certainly have had an impact on salaries.

As for funding: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/04/boston-area-startups-are-o...

I don't think Boston is as much as a slouch as you think, in fact it's is pretty well positioned for the long term in regards to overall industry diversity and pretty respectable funding (though not as dominated by software like SF might be)

Salaries are probably lower because overall COL has traditionally been lower here (though housing sure isn't far behind anymore). Most people I know working for the big companies are getting ~$250k total comp (8-10 years exp). Other large, if more under the radar, companies are not too far behind.

[kwindla]

I wouldn't call Boston a slouch, at all! It is an amazing city with a lot of great tech stuff happening.

But having raised VC money for three companies, Boston definitely feels like it doesn't have the same VC culture as SF and NYC. In some ways, this is a really good thing!

A lot of Boston investment money is much more conservative about valuations and business models. There's more late stage money than early stage money. There has historically been a lot more life sciences money than "software" money (on the professional investment side). My memory is that the last numbers I saw (2017) put Boston overall tech venture funding at something like 1/8th of the Bay Area's totals.