[skerrit_bwoy]

WHY DO PROGRAMMERS THINK LIKE THIS?

A radiologist makes $350k whether he's in Manhattan or Memphis. A hedge fund analyst makes comparable, whether he's in LA or Louisville. A BIGLAWyer makes comparable, whether he's in Chicago or Charlestown. They are paid for the value of services rendered, and the doctors, bankers, and lawyers I know seem perfectly content to maximize their income while minimizing their expenses. Only the programmers seem interested in making as little money as possible.

Put differently: a radiologist thinks about moving from Manhattan to Memphis and says "Boy, that $350k will let me live like a king down there!" Meanwhile, a programmer says "Boy, I only have to make $75k down there to live like I'm living up here for $150k!"

/facepalm

[bmelton]

I don't think that's true at all, actually.

I just did some (admittedly) anecdotal job searches for radiology, and there's a $150k price difference between New York and Indiana.

I knew a few attorneys that have moved into the DC area to raise their rates (and one who commutes two hours in to DC because otherwise, his billable rate is halved.)

The positions people are paid also depend on the cost of living in the area. If the median income for an area is $28k vs. $50k, they're simply not able to afford legal services that cost twice the market. This might mean that lawyers in rural areas only work half as much at the same rate, but that means that without some clever accounting, their yearly income is still (approximately) halved.

I'm not saying that no such positions exist, but I know that doctors, lawyers and the like ARE subject to cost of living variance. I don't know of any position in any field that isn't at least somewhat affected by the median income of the municipality in which they operate.

[skerrit_bwoy]

You've got it exactly twisted about docs, read this for clarity: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2012...

Choice quote: "As in Medscape's 2011 survey, the highest-earning physicians practice in the North Central region, comprising Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and South and North Dakota; the mean income of physicians there is $234,000. The next-highest earners were doctors in the Great Lakes region ($228,000). Physicians in the Northeast earned the least, at a mean of $204,000."

As for attorneys, I said BIGLAW. Not "get local joe bob out of jail." (But law does have a bifurcated career path, i.e. T14 or bust these days.)

I note your silence about hedge fund analysts.

Here are the people who are paid in accordance with COL: labor. Programmers seem to think of themselves as laborers, despite having the intellectual caliber to be professionals. Or maybe I am overestimating my tribe. Perhaps we just anemic right hemispheres in our brain, leading to savant-like abilities in the left, leading to the warm embrace of pathetic compensation.

[kamaal]

>>Programmers seem to think of themselves as laborers

Worse than that in fact. Never heard of any labor union that would be OK with workers putting in extra hours without overtime pay.

[bmelton]

First, let me start off by clarifying that I didn't imply that pay should be based on cost of living. Rather, that I believe it's more market forces at work, but that cost of living plays a huge factor in that.

From the article you linked, that statement is reinforced:

"There's less competition among physicians in smaller communities and rural areas," says Bohannon. "There isn't that same downward pressure on reimbursement that you have in metropolitan areas. Generally, smaller communities have to pay more to attract physicians."

This is the market at work. It doesn't matter what the cost of living is in those areas, what matters is the demand for the position.

I also can't ignore that that study is done against 'regions' so large that the cost of living within any of those regions probably swings wide in both directions. This is to say that a doctor in the "Northeast region" could either be in NYC, or way up in the Aidirondacks. Both New York state, both factoring into the ranges on the study, but huge differences in CoL. If you have something more specific, I'm happy to be proven wrong, but in my experience, I don't have anything to refute it.

Regarding BIGLaw, I wasn't referring to ambulance chasers either, but I concede that I don't personally know of any biglaw attorneys that have jumped locality. I also don't know anybody in hedge fund analysts, nor do I know anything about the job market.

[eli_gottlieb]

Most of the software companies in Memphis are probably selling to relatively local customers, thus tying their income to the local markets. The software companies selling to everyone everywhere are in the big tech hubs.

[bmelton]

You're probably not terribly wrong there if you're specifically speaking about software companies, but the largest employers in the area are multi-nationals.

FedEx is headquartered in Memphis, as is International Paper, AutoZone, etc.

Of course, they aren't exactly software companies.