[throwaway812]

I agree with the sentiment, but I think your facts are a bit off and reflect HN insularity. The median 33% household income ("middle class") in the US is $30,000 to $62,500 (household).

Even if you are the sole earner in your household, it is still unlikely that you make less than $62,500. If you do make less than that, ask for a raise. If you don't make less than that, or your combined household income is more than that, you are a member of the upper class, and you should try and remember your privilege. (Hey, life's not so bad.)

[allochthon]

By any reasonable definition, being well-off means being able to take out a mortgage on a house, afford occasional vacations to other parts of the world, invest in the stock market, support a family, put your kids through college, give to different charities, save for retirement, all in addition to helping family members in need, which one would do under any circumstances. A software developer might be able to do these things in California, but only barely, unless they have a very cushy arrangement or they've ridden an exit for a startup. Those at the median household income in the US (or anywhere else) are being shafted. The economy is broken.

[oinksoft]

  > A software developer might be able to do these things in
  > California, but only barely, unless they have a very cushy
  > arrangement or they've ridden an exit for a startup.

You can live in an affordable part of the state...there is a California outside of LA and the Bay.

[hugs]

I agree, and took it one step further. Even though I grew up in LA and am co-founder of an SF-based startup, I don't live there anymore. I choose to live in Chicago for a higher quality of life and lower cost of living. My attitude is thus: I'll move back to SF when I'm rich, but when I'm rich, I won't need to move back to SF.

[ForHackernews]

Hint: Don't live in California. There are plenty of well-paid software jobs in places like Boston, Chicago, Northern Virginia, Atlanta, Florida, Austin, etc.

They might not have the glut of "hot" startups that Silicon Valley does, but they have much more reasonable cost of living.

[alex_young]

Another perspective:

What you get as a developer in the bay area is way better than other US cities.

I've lived in a couple of those places over the course of a decade and a half, and I can tell you that while the cost of living is lower there, so also is the pay. Significantly lower.

You figure in the relative scarcity of jobs, and you're looking at making a lot less, limited carrier mobility, and real stress when layoffs invariably roll around.

Sure, I can't buy a house here, but I certainly make a lot more than I spend and I stock that extra away. This creates something many people don't have: options.

Options like:

Being picky about jobs. Starting something on your own. Buying a house with cash somewhere else if you decide to move.

These are hard to replace outside of this bubble many of us live in.

[chipotle_coyote]

Sadly, this seems to be the case. I waffle a lot about whether I want to stay in the Bay Area, given the combination of currently being underemployed, the ridiculous cost of living and how much I'd need to make just in order to maintain the status quo, let alone finally live without a roommate.

But when I poke at other markets, with very few exceptions the pay differential for web developers is so steep and the choices are so few it's startling. (And I'm also frequently reminded how much of the rest of the United States is still populated by Microsoft shops rather than living in OSX/Unix-land like I do.) This is why I ended up moving out here in the first place a decade ago from the Tampa Bay area -- I was a Unix-head in a land of very few opportunities, and to my dismay, that really hasn't changed very much.

It's hard not to notice that a lot of the HN crowd that takes mobility for granted are people who co-founded their own startups and/or work at companies with a strong telecommuting culture. I think that's awesome, but finding such roles is not as easy -- even out here -- as I think people who've found them sometimes believe. (And I say that as someone who's primarily worked from home since 2011.)

[meowface]

So clearly you should get a remote job at a company in SF, and live elsewhere. :)

[djb_hackernews]

As a software developer with several years in Boston and DC each, I can tell you 100k does not allow for a mortgage on a SFH within a 20 minute commute to work in either place, which is basically the american dream.

Boston is even worse, the available real estate is all older and smaller and nearly as expensive as SF. I'd say feature for feature your money probably goes further in SF than in Boston.

[JPKab]

DC fucking blows on top of it. At least in other places, you have to be smart to make 6 figures. Here, every idiot that rides their desk long enough gets 6 figures and therefore you have to pay huge sums of money for a single family home within 90 minutes of DC.

[nsxwolf]

You can certainly do this in Chicago. Especially if you're flexible on the commute time and can handle an hour on the train.

The suburbs also have developer jobs.

[djb_hackernews]

That's true anywhere right?

But we shouldn't have to be flexible with an hour commute on a train while at the same time being told we live a life of luxury and are over paid. It appears to me the cognitive dissonance going on here similar to the SF people who say "It's not so bad, I found a studio for 2k/month in Oakland!"

If we were truly overpaid and in such demand we wouldn't live in crappy studios or be priced out of the neighborhoods we work in.

[ForHackernews]

Look, unless you're a billionaire (and really, even then) life comes with tradeoffs. If you want to live in a super-expensive area, you're going to get a smaller/crappier place. If you're willing to put up with a longer commute, you'll get more for money in terms of housing.

The point is, you have the luxury of being able to make those choices. What about the people who sweep the floors in your office? What about the people who work at the trendy cafe where you eat lunch?

[nsxwolf]

I'm scratching my head a bit that anyone would balk at an hour long train ride. I did it for years. You can read, work on a some project, or just relax.

I guess it's a Chicago thing.

[Touche]

What I was alluding to with my comment was that software developers create a tremendous amount of wealth while seeing little of it. That is as true outside SV as it is inside.

[nostrademons]

I'd encourage you to set up shop as an entrepreneur, consultant, or ISV. Then you will a.) get to keep all of the wealth you create (well, minus taxes - damn you Uncle Sam) and b.) get a true idea of how much wealth you actually create.

Personally, I've done both the entrepreneur and employee route, and I created and kept a whole lot more money as an employee. I may go back to being an entrepreneur in the future - I'm certainly a lot more skilled than the last time I tried it - but the experience of founding my own startup and working 5 years in a big company has taught me a whole lot about the value that other job functions create, like sales, design, management, finance, capital, etc. It's really easy to look at your output as a software developer and say "I built the thing that makes my company hundreds of millions of dollars, and I only get to see hundreds of thousands of it", without realizing that none of that hundreds of millions in value would've been created without marketing to understand what people want, product design to understand how to supply it, UX to make it usable, sales to let people know about it, management to make all these functions work together, or finance to pay for it.

[coldtea]

>I'd encourage you to set up shop as an entrepreneur, consultant, or ISV. Then you will a.) get to keep all of the wealth you create (well, minus taxes - damn you Uncle Sam) and b.) get a true idea of how much wealth you actually create.

Or you know, you'll get an inflated idea of how much you "actually" created, just because you get to tell people what to do, and belittle their contributions because, after all you are in charge.

[dasil003]

When I start my own company I will definitely take credit for the business I build. For the past 15 years I have been paid to build things for other people, I have been praised and I have been well paid, but I certainly don't claim credit for the creation of the companies that employed me. Even as a co-founder in my current position, there is a huge difference between coming on in a paid position and taking the risk to build something from nothing.

Developers sometimes get big heads because there is so much dead weight in the corporate world pulling paychecks for bullshit. I get that we build stuff that creates real tangible value. But just as people sometimes misunderstand the challenge of our work and the value that we bring to the table, it's easy to dismiss business-oriented entrepreneurs as just being privileged or having inside connections—all of which may be true, but until you have the stones to go put everything on the line and found your own company you don't have a leg to stand in terms of proclaiming who is bringing what value. Without the founder, nothing happens, period.

[nostrademons]

Usually if you do that too much, they'll leave, your startup will tank, and (in a possibly painful dose of cold reality), you will find out exactly how much you actually created.

[dragonwriter]

> What I was alluding to with my comment was that software developers create a tremendous amount of wealth while seeing little of it.

Elite workers are still workers. The people who receive most of the wealth created by workers are capitalists, not workers. There's a fairly strong ideology dedicated to preserving that state, with a name that makes that orientation quite clear.

[Touche]

We're not elite workers though, in terms of compensation.

[ForHackernews]

True, and that's a fair point, but it's basically true of all employees anywhere in a capitalist economy. Even much-reviled Wall Street traders who receive million-dollar bonuses do so while bringing in many multiples of that in revenue for their firm.

[djb_hackernews]

However you don't see the politicians or those traders employers banging the drum to dilute the trader pool with foreign workers on extremely employer friendly worker visas.

[Iftheshoefits]

I've lived and worked in two places you mention (Florida, Chicago, although very briefly in the latter).

There are "well-paid" software jobs there, if one adheres strictly to a comparison of salaries with the median. However the quantity of software jobs is lower, the type of software job is generally slanted toward the "crappy" end of the spectrum (software developers are an expense, and therefore to be treated as enemies to the mission of the company), and the pay is just not even in the same ballpark as the Bay area, even if it is (relatively) good.

Then there are other factors, such as quality of life, public services and other things that make it easier or even pleasant to raise a family. In Florida all these things, in my opinion, are seriously lacking or underwhelming. Coupled with the high level of job insecurity there, I didn't have to think too long or hard to decide to move my family from there to the Bay area.

[EpicEng]

I live in San Diego. I don't make any more than your average programmer around here (very low six figures.) I can do all of those things, and in a nice area.

[coolsunglasses]

This is highly location dependent and programmers are often located in expensive cities.

100k in the bay area is just middle class, no upper qualification. Very unlikely to afford a home within 25 minutes of work unless they're in the south bay.

You need 200k total household income before a mortgage on a $1.3mm house (starter home cost in most neighborhoods) is realistic.

There is a 10x difference in the cost of a home in SF and Austin (where I just moved to from SF) and a 20x difference between SF and where my father lives in Ohio.

There is not a 20x difference in income between developers and the 30-60k US median. The medianites live out in the sticks where their mortgage is $150-600 a month.

[refurb]

$1.3MM will get you a VERY nice home in some of the more exclusive neighborhoods in SF (Noe Valley).

Only in SF do you have people complaining that they are "middle class" because they can't afford a single family home (already a luxury in major US cities) in a ritzy neighborhood and have to suffer through a >25 min commute.

Houses in SF on the edge of the ritzy neighborhoods cost $700k. But that's not living the american dream right

[coolsunglasses]

$700k is still freakin' crazy.

[crpatino]

Sorry, but splitting "classes" in thirds is just ridiculous. The way the economy works is by concentrating wealth, so any class definition based on clustering according to income/net-worth cannot be linear. A logarithmic scale would make much more sense, by example: Poor:= 0-50%, Middle class:= 51%-75%, Upper class:=76-100%???

This model is extremely rough and inaccurate, but is a step in the right direction. The main problem it has is to assume that there has to be only 3 classes, which is arbitrary and does not describe the actual lives of real people. A second, related defect is that it does not recognize the existence of a small group of very vulnerable people below the "working poor".

For these reasons, I think it is best to model this clustering classification using a log-normal distribution, with at least five classes (Underclass < Working poor < Middle class < Upper-middle class < Upper class). Still, the "upper class" category lumps together the merely wealthy (smallish business owners, the most successful professionals) with the extremely rich, and all possibilities in-between.

[ahomescu1]

> Still, the "upper class" category lumps together the merely wealthy (smallish business owners, the most successful professionals) with the extremely rich, and all possibilities in-between.

It also lumps in the high-income earners with the high-net worth people (the ones everyone thinks of when they say "rich").

[crpatino]

agreed, you can only do so much when modeling a complex system with a single variable distribution.

[vonmoltke]

That is not how "class" is defined. Social class is based on socioeconomic power, influence, and security. Generally, the upper class is the top 1% or 2% of incomes or net worths, and the lower/working class is far larger than the lower 33%.

Additionally, tying class tightly to income is nonsense, because it ignores people with significant wealth but little income and ignores the different socioeconomic climates across the US.

[afterburner]

The median household income is $55,000, with a median of 1.5 earners at that level. So, it seems to me quite likely an earner makes less than $62,000. Also, the median personal income is about $30,000, although this includes everyone older than 15.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...

[aidenn0]

You arbitrarily picked the midle tertile. There is a much bigger difference in lifestyle between the 33rd and 67th percentile or the 90th percentile and the 99th percentile than there is between the 67th percentile and the 90th percentile.

I would argue that wealth is a better measure of class than income anyway. There is an inflection point on the wealth curve, which (when you cross it) all you need to is not screw up really badly, and you will be wealthy for the rest of your life.

[arg01]

Yep, at about 2 million dollars you could go to a small friendly town buy a house there and have an income close to the median (and have your assets track with inflation) assuming you can get a 5-6% return on investment, not at all unachievable on 'safe' long term investments. This is all without doing a single hour of work after hitting that point.

[khuey]

Software engineers are concentrated in major metropolitan areas, often high cost ones (e.g. the SF bay area), so comparisons to the national median income are not necessarily accurate.

[walshemj]

You would need to compare it to other professions lawyers/medical doctors and other types of engineers - and I woudl bet that the median for those working in the tech industry's is lower than MD's and lawyers

[eLobato]

So is the average level of education of people working in the tech industry and the barriers of entry.

[walshemj]

A Ceng/PE has the same requirements as a MD or lawyer arguably more so in the case of lawyers - but a Ceng or PE will earn less than a MD or lawyer for the same level of experience

And dont you need a First from a good university to stand a good chance of high paying job in SV?

[auctiontheory]

Despite the name, "middle class" does not mean "around median income." This is more apparent in countries like India and Brazil, but it's increasingly true in the US. "Upper class" definitely does not mean "top third by income."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class

[vehementi]

> The median 33% household income ("middle class") in the US is $30,000 to $62,500 (household).

What does this even mean? Median 33%? Median is 50% How can it have a range? Are you saying the 33th percentile household income in the US ranges from 30k to 62.5k depending on the state?

[jaimebuelta]

This means that the 33% of Americans that are "in the middle" (between the 33% with less income and the 33% with most) are in the range of 30K to 62K

(Or so. I understand the data)

[aidenn0]

That is definitely what the GP thread meant, but the terminology was wrong. They wanted "percentile" median specifically refers to the 50th percentile. You could also use "tertile" (e.g. "The second tertile has income between 30k and 65k) which refers specifically to spliting into thirds.

[logfromblammo]

$30k is the 1st tercile. $62k is the 2nd tercile.

They are also the 2nd and 4th sextiles, on either side of the median, which is the 3rd sextile, and approximately the same as the 33rd and 66th percentiles, or the 333rd and 666th permille.

Income is not a normal distribution, so the two numbers don't tell much of a story by themselves. Usually, the statistics are shown as quintiles, plus median, 95th percentile, and maybe also 99th percentile and 999th permille, depending on whether the statistics presenter wants the audience to gasp or not.