[Zimahl]

But coming to SF and floundering around is no better than aimlessly moving to LA to become a movie star.

Not to be nit-picky but getting start-up experience isn't quite the same as going to casting calls while working at Olive Garden to make ends meet.

[sliverstorm]

What about when you work at a no-name software shop to make ends meet while you pitch to VCs to get your own startup off the ground?

The analogy may be more apt than it first seems! ;)

[integraton]

Except that working at a no-name software shop will pay significantly better, and then you can take your SF developer experience to middle America and get decent paying corporate job and a McMansion.

[johnjlocke]

Except that all the money you earn goes to paying the rent on your $2000 studio apartment.

[nostrademons]

I think you underestimate the amount of money that Bay Area developers make. $2k/month is $24K/year, which is a relatively small fraction of your after-tax income when you're making $150K/year.

One thing people don't take into account when figuring out cost-of-living adjustments: while expenses like rent, taxes, and meals out are typically a percentage of income, expenses like durable consumer goods and savings are measured in absolute dollars, and are fungible between locations. So while it sucks that cost-of-living might still eat up 80% of your income, the remaining 20% is a measly $8k/year at a $40K/year middle-America programmer job, but $30K/year at a $150K/year Bay Area tech job.

And the difference gets even more stark with added income - if you make $300K/year (quite doable as a senior engineer at a major tech company in the Bay Area), your taxes go up, but every other expense category remains the same, and so you end up banking about $100K/year. It's not unreasonable for a programmer in the Bay Area to save up half a million over a 4-5 year stint at a company; ask someone in Kansas or Ohio how long they think they'll have to work to save up half a million.

[sliverstorm]

Since when does your average kid fresh out of college make $150k/year in the Bay?

[nostrademons]

Fresh-out-of-school salaries at Google/Facebook/Twitter are in the low six figures (2 years ago I think they were around $105K), get promoted to senior dev after 2-3 years and $150K/year is very doable. It's probably lower at J-random-startup that nobody has ever heard of, but most VC-funded startups will pay market rates.

[bubbleRefuge]

300K for a senior engineer? Maybe a few people at Google. I've heard of some 200K jobs at Apple for low level systems programming people that are hard to find.

[doktrin]

Well, not really. It's possible to get valuable, career-relevant experience at just about any software shop, name or no. With the exception of some people skills, that's not usually the case when waiting tables.

[ritchiea]

This kind of comment makes me wonder what percentage of HN has zero idea of what's it's like to be legitimately broke/poor. Even if you're joking, since you include the winky face, what about actual poor uneducated people who will never have a chance to work in a no-name software shop?

[sliverstorm]

What does that have to do with anything? I'm just bemusedly thinking of the parallels between the kid who moves from Small Town, USA to be a star in Hollywood, and the kid who moves from Small Town, USA to make it big with his own startup in SV.

"No-name software shop" was probably the wrong choice; a closer tech analogue to waiting tables to fund that acting dream would probably be working IT/helpdesk.

[pharrington]

There is nothing in the corporate tech world that's analogous to trying to live off tips.

[malebolgia]

Counterpoint: salespeople.

[johnjlocke]

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