[dbish]

Sure and that’s still not the majority of your income over a 10+ yr period if you’re getting paid good bay area wages as a senior+ engineer.

Not to mention that buying a house isn’t a requirement of living in a location (and isn’t the right financial choice for many places when comparing to rent).

[newspaper1]

A decent house in the Bay Area is >$2M. Why would I pay that when I can make the same money and buy a much better house for $500k, work from home, not have a commute (which is hideous in the BA) and not have some little micro manager breathing down my neck all day? It's a massive quality of life improvement all around.

[dbish]

Because the point is you can’t make the same money working from home elsewhere. So you have to make a tradeoff

[newspaper1]

That's not true, I definitely make the same money remotely that I would make anywhere else. Full remote companies don't care where you live and pay just as much as RTO places, often more.

[dbish]

I’m willing to bet this isn’t true for the average dev and you haven’t compared to in person pay from to companies, but there are definitely exceptions and sure it can be true for a particular person.

[newspaper1]

I know a lot of people working from home. Unless you work for a place that specifically adjusts for where you live (which is rare, especially with startups), you're going to get paid your market rate, no matter where you reside.

[dbish]

Pretty much all the FAANGs adjust for location so not what I would call rare. In addition it’s not about adjusting, many jobs just aren’t offered remote for better or worse (look at many Bay Area YC startup location expectations for the last year), so yes your current job might be ok with it, but the next bump up to make more isn’t even an option because many high paying jobs will be in office.

[plasticchris]

Sure. But if you didn’t have to pay it (ie living there wasn’t a requirement)?

[dbish]

We’re talking about trade offs here right? Not saying you get everything.

But no I wouldn’t live in rural Arizona over the Bay Area or most cities unless there was a very strong extra reason to live there (like a manhattan project) and definitely not for a pay cut even if cost of living was near 0.

[bluGill]

What about urban arizona? Or someplace like onaha which is a city with plenty of city things todo but still low cost