In my opinion this article and others I've seen like it seem have everything backwards. For new graduates I wouldn't recommend living in downtown San Diego, at least not right now. It's (relatively) expensive and can get old real quick.
Instead I'd suggest trying to find a job downtown or elsewhere and live somewhere more exciting/fun like the beach (Mission/Pacific) or any of the neighborhoods surrounding downtown (North/South Park). The rent is generally <$1000/month, the commute from any of these places is <20 minutes, and there's always something to do.
Also, haven't seen the University of San Diego (USD) mentioned in any of the other comments, but they just opened a standalone engineering school last year, so I'm sure that will also start to attract a lot more talent to the area (biased USD alumnus here).
After doing a 4 year stint in Orange County and just moving back last year, I'd say things are looking better than ever for SD, not worse. I'm glad I moved back and excited to see where it goes from here.
I was in San Diego last year. Speaking to recent graduates as well as people looking to go to university, a great many, more than I expected, mentioned wanting to move to the SF bay area for either work or study, once I mentioned living in the SFBA --admonitions about the cost of living didn't seem to have much sway.
I think young locals see SD as an outpost of (US) civilization and have a desire to move to the actual center of jobs, education, technology and a little bit of culture.
If it's any consolation, most engineers here are not senior/staff engineers and they make less. Rent here is very steep (~$3500/month is the median price for an old 1-bedroom in San Francisco), but the home prices are really insane.
Also, there are many companies and start-ups up here that pay much less. Lots of people scrape by, and lots of people move away.
I personally really like LA (which is not something I can openly admit up here) and hope to transfer there or to San Diego.
I did a brief contracting stint in SF, and considered relocating up there for work (the pay is indeed much better) but ultimately decided against it. Note that I grew up in the Bay Area.
In SD I pay $2300/month for a 2500 sqft house with a yard and garage, 4 blocks from the ocean. While in SF, I paid this for a single room in a shady neighborhood without a window.
After coming back here, I was struck by how clean it is compared to SF.
For the young people, SD has some of the best nightlife I have experienced (and I've been everywhere throughout California). SF has better food but our culinary scene is getting much better and has improved drastically over the last decade, IMO.
We also have a growing capital scene. Its not SV, but if I were an investor I would hole up here - its nicer, cheaper, and the burn rate is lower. Plus we have some big players here: Rockstar, Sony, Psyonix (Rocket League), Qualcomm, many military contractors, and so forth. Even a bit of history here - FTL (which made Dungeon Master) was located in SD.
Honestly it sounds like everyone who doesn't like San Diego would really like the bay area.
I tend to agree that salaries in SD don't match the cost of living - at least in tech. The southern California lifestyle isn't for everyone, but if you like the beach it's tough to beat in the continental US.
Bay area cost of living is tough too, even with the higher salary ranges. I had never even heard of a "micro-loft" until I came to SF.
In the end, I'm a big fan of both SD and the bay area. Both areas have huge benefits to offset their respective problems.
As a 23 year old software engineer that recently chose to live in SD over SF I find this article kind of funny. It didn't make sense to me to choose a place where i might make more money, but have to spend it all to live. Life can be pretty cheap in SD. I live 20 minutes/15 miles from work, a commute that would take an hour in the bay. I also pay <$700 for the master bedroom in my house. I'm also a 10 min uber to any downtown spot I want. Not much overpriced food here either, and many options if you drive 15 minutes. You may not be working at Google or Apple down here, but that might not be the worst thing.
As a recent grad myself, this is the only comment that rings true for me. Anecdotal for sure, but most people that I went to grad school with and stayed in the bay are doing fine, even at mid-size companies. You can find someplace to live (especially with a significant other) that enables a moderate amount of saving / investing with a little frugality; however, there's a lot of luck and privilege that plays into being a successful young engineer in the bay, and in no way do I want to downplay the seriousness of these issues for other groups.
Lots of people stay here despite the costs because of the positive externalities that come with living in the bay. There are many alternatives to a highway commute (bike in the city, Caltrain, work from home) that many new grads are able to take advantage of. There's easy access to nature, culture, and for a lot of people, an extended network of family and friends that probably wouldn't be so welcoming in other places that don't have the same strains on housing.
I expect that many will move away for opportunities elsewhere before ultimately returning, but that seems to be a desire for exploration rather than dissatisfaction with quality of life. Certainly, few of the people I know are itching to leave the city for even low-density suburban living, and that's a preference that just can't be squared with many of the commenters here that rave about living on their 3 acres of land for $200k in the middle of nowhere while working remotely.
There are a lot of problems in the bay (and even more in the city) that I hope we can address, but making it out to be unlivable for young engineers (again, a very privileged class) is ridiculous. Are there better places to raise kids? Yes. Are there cheaper places to live? Yes. Are there other urban areas that provide some of the same benefits? Yes. Do I want to live anywhere else? Not right now.
I'm older (54), live in San Diego, CA. San Diego is also high cost with a 440K median house price.
I was employed as an electrical hardware engineer for a computer peripherals company until November 2014. The job market for electrical engineers in San Diego is currently
in an awful state.
While I was employed, I managed to buy a vacation home which I converted to a rental property after I became unemployed. I also was able to build a large nest egg of investments and cash. I am using these to live off of at the moment.
I am Financially Independent to the point where I can pay for basic living costs, but not for fancy stuff like eating out or vacations.
When I became unemployed, I updated my home engineering lab with a new test equipment by selling items on Ebay which I no longer needed. I currently spend a lot of my time developing open source hardware,firmware, and software and upload my projects to Github.
If the job market in San Diego improves, I would consider going back to work, but it would have to be on my terms. I have enjoyed not having to commute to work every weekday. Any new job would have allow 80 to 100% telecommuting.
Financial independence can be achieved, but it requires sacrifice and dedication. For details on how to do this
I recommend visiting the Mr. Money Mustache blog: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com for ideas and support.
San Diego is awesome. The cost of living is probably 30% less than the bay area (I rent a 4 bedroom single family house for $2495), I live 3 miles from the beach, and there are a fair number of tech companies in the area, focusing primarily on healthcare and defense. And I love the outdoor activity opportunities. Direct flights to SFO are about $140 round trip, or less.
I feel like 'living in squalor' is an exaggeration, or at least a separate category from what a lot of young engineers are doing in the Bay Area. Maybe if they were living in SF, sure, they could be living in dinghy studios.
I know plenty of new grads in the South Bay/Peninsula living in apartments or rented houses that would be considered decent or nice in the rest of the country with plenty of money to spare. Mostly at bigger, established companies though. Anecdotal, I know, but it definitely seems like there's a portion of new grads living comfortably in the bay area.
Living somewhere and owning property are very different though.
I can't imagine why new college graduates would want to torture themselves by moving to the Bay Area. It might have made sense 20 years ago, but now there are better options for the vast majority of people.
We can complain about the causes including lack of housing development, zoning laws, infrastructure, progressive politics, whatever. There are some important public policy issues that we ought to resolve. But the reality is that no matter what we do, the Bay Area is going to remain a shitty place to live for most new graduates. Unless you can earn very high pay, or have reliable access to cheap housing, my advice is to move somewhere else where you have a better chance to get ahead. Don't set yourself up for failure.
Have you ever tried commuting from Pittsburg/Bay Point?
Have you seen what $680k will buy you in San Jose?
These are not at all practical suggestions. The outlook for a 20 something engineer in the Bay Area is absolutely brutal. The people who got in 10 years ago are doing ok so long as the housing market keeps up. But there's nothing left here for anyone trying to start a life.
Cost of Living is extremely high. Look at walkscore.com to see apartment prices. Traffic sucks. LinkedIn has a feature to compute commute times. Select a Facebook job, at the bottoms is the feature. You enter the address of your dwelling, it tells you the compute time.
Sounds like you are not in a relationship. Finding a Significant Other is very, very difficult.
The weather is really great. There are redwood forests, beaches and winter snow skiing within driving distance. Great stuff at Farmers' Markets.
Facebook is no longer cool. Apparently their CS graduate acceptance rate was much lower this past Spring.
People in the first category can probably afford to find a place to live in Silicon Valley / San Diego. Their salaries account for housing and housing prices account for their salaries.
It's cheap to live in San Diego? Please tell that to my landlord. Certainly cheaper than SF proper, but really you end up paying a lot for gas (Because you drive everywhere) and food. At the end of the day, you probably aren't saving much.
I don’t even see how it’s a realistic place to start out as a new college grad anymore either. If you don’t have a friend in a rent-controlled multi-bedroom house who can let you move into an open room, you’re unlikely to find rent for a decent price. A crappy house costs about a million here. If you have that kind of money, why not just buy something in cash somewhere else or just move to another city like Seattle or Denver or Austin where you can make 80% of the income for a fraction of the cost of living and taxes? I don’t think the differential income really makes up for the cost of living, taxes, or quality of life.
We absolutely have to be approaching or beyond the breaking point where it stops making sense for a lot of new college grads to want to move here. I have a friend who just started at Google but lives 3+ hours away... that’s crazy. Once workers stop wanting to live in the Bay Area, tech companies will have to shift hiring (even more) than they already have. I know at the company I work for they have been pushing more new hires to Austin.
Have you worked with a real estate agent and lender to see what properties you could afford? You might be surprised with what you can afford.
I recently moved from SF to San Diego about a year ago and just bought a house. It’s not that we couldn’t afford a house in the Bay Area. Just that in SD we could afford a house in a neighborhood we’d actually want to live in.
It’s a different market down here. Lots of biotech and defense contractors. Primarily Java, C++, C# but you can find some ruby and php positions. I haven’t seen any python and very little node.js positions but they are out there. Startup scene is obviously much smaller but if you look hard enough you can find some great companies.
Instead I'd suggest trying to find a job downtown or elsewhere and live somewhere more exciting/fun like the beach (Mission/Pacific) or any of the neighborhoods surrounding downtown (North/South Park). The rent is generally <$1000/month, the commute from any of these places is <20 minutes, and there's always something to do.
Also, haven't seen the University of San Diego (USD) mentioned in any of the other comments, but they just opened a standalone engineering school last year, so I'm sure that will also start to attract a lot more talent to the area (biased USD alumnus here).
After doing a 4 year stint in Orange County and just moving back last year, I'd say things are looking better than ever for SD, not worse. I'm glad I moved back and excited to see where it goes from here.
reply