[toomuchtodo]

> I'm not trying to be hard on the author of this piece, but I do think it's important for people to know that engineers in SF even in dual income families struggle with housing and child care payments, not with luxury cars, expensive vacation, lovely luxuries.

Choosing to work in a locale where a median home price is a million dollars is a luxury. Engineers could pick from other metro areas, and get fairly close to $100K/year with much lower costs of living (Austin, Dallas, Durham come to mind, there are many more).

[s73v3r]

"Choosing to work in a locale where a median home price is a million dollars is a luxury. Engineers could pick from other metro areas, and get fairly close to $100K/year with much lower costs of living (Austin, Dallas, Durham come to mind, there are many more)."

And have their potential job prospects cut in half or worse.

[devonkim]

I haven't heard of many $100k+ software jobs in Durham. It's almost all RedHat, that one small MS office, and Ansibleworks I would imagine that make up much of the ones north of that I'd imagine. I worked with a team in Cary and I got the impression that they were paid less than us in the Seattle area for sure for comparable experience.

[toomuchtodo]

What good is a job when you need $100-150K/year to lead a middle class life in SF?

[ryandrake]

The point is that they are plentiful in SF and Silicon Valley, and that reduces risk. When you lose your job in the Bay Area, you walk across the street, resume in hand, and lo and behold there's another tech employer. When you lose your job in, say, rural Florida, you have to move or take up bartending to survive.

I'd love to move back east, and would in a heartbeat, but I'd have to settle for a single digit number of local employers, and that's not a risk I'm willing to take. The fact that houses are $1MM+ here in the Bay Area is the price I pay for a bit of employment security.

[sliverstorm]

Still, it's easier for John Doe to empathize with a family that is struggling to pay for their ordinary-house-in-expensive-neighborhood, than it is for him to empathize with a family that is struggling to pay for their three Jags, butler, and Caribbean cruise.

Although oddly enough both probably cost about the same.

[dilap]

Most of my family is here in SF. Since when is "living near your family" a "luxury"? Fuck that.

[scott_s]

When it is a choice, and other people do not have that choice because of their ability to pay for it.

[shard]

Living near or with family is a luxury in many cases. Consider the parallel situation where the father moves to somewhere else for a job, leaving wife and children behind, due to lack of opportunities in his area. Being able to say "fuck that" is a hell of a privilege.

[toomuchtodo]

How many tech workers live in or move to SFBA because their family lives there?