That BART figure ignores very generous benefits[0]. I'd like to see your source for calling that the "median" wage (as opposed to the starting wage).
Santa Clara County VTA benefits are even more generous. "Just down the road, Amalgamated Transit Union employees of the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority pay a flat $35 a month for health care and nothing toward their pension."[0]
I think "average cost including benefits" is the important part. For me, I was concerned with finding out what the average base salary was for a union employee - and not just any union employee, but those that are affiliated with SEIU and ATU, since those are the ones in negotiation. What I found was that the average base salaries were between 45k to 70k for these SEIU and ATU workers.
A lot of the information on salaries that's published out there include overtime, pension, medical benefits, PTO, etc., but that's the total cost for BART, and not necessarily the annual income that an employee pockets. For me, I wanted to see if a BART employee could make a comfortable living in the bay area, and for that, things like overtime and pension aren't as relevant since you either have to work more to earn them, or you don't really see them until the future. Thus, the much lower 45k to 70k I arrived at.
Do you know what the average salary is in the Bay Area? You’re completely out of touch if you think $250k is “insane inequality”. Take a look through the salaries paid for working at public transit there (BART): https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/Salary%20Sched...
this is pretty terrible compensation for such high impact work in such a high cost of living area. 150k is less than many Bart workers make a by the time they are senior level (http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area/2014). Many of these companies are making billions, further increasing the wealth gap of the founders vs. the ones who create their fortunes on the ground level.
The companies have even been proven to collude to suppress wages. Software engineers are in desperate need of unions
In 2018, the SF median household income was $97k [1], which suggests a median individual income of about $76k [2]. An average private-sector employee receives benefits worth 42% of their wages/salary [3]. So a hypothetical median SF worker earning $76k in salary would receive about $32k in benefits, for about $108k total.
So it seems to me that the "pooper scoopers" combined salary+benefits of $184k really is, in fact, extraordinarily high.
Weirdly thus seems to hit just above the average skilled union worker pay in San Francisco. This means that A Lot of the workers will, basically, just be taxed to work as there's no reasonable way for them to take public transportation into the job (though they often car pool).
- Why is 217 too much, and 150 is better? Presumably some organizations need lots of management, while others need very little- how do you, as an outside observer, come up with a reasonable number?
- Where did you get 17%? According to [0], there are 3430 bart employees. 217/3430 = 6.3%.
The average pay for a Bay Area worker is $65K. That worker is a professional with a college degree. Why does unskilled transit work deserve so much pay?
I would say most bay area and CA cities pay their public sector employees rather well (with pensions). It's the artists, private-sector service employees, and other low-income jobs that are squeezed the most.
Okay, maybe lowest was not the best word to be used. What I meant was a lot of the city employees get paid six figure salary. And that's because it's expensive to live here. Comparing game dev salaries from the bay area to UK kind of misses that point.
Sure those numbers exist, because the city has to have pay scales for every job category, but I think the more important thing to ask is what percentage of the workers are actually low paid employees.
I couldn't find a report that would easily displays that info, but here's a news item from a couple years back where 75% of the bay area city employees were earning 6 figures. [0]
Another question you want to ask is what positions exist in that excel spreadsheet, do people even take those jobs full time and what percentage of people do sit in that spectrum? For example here's another story that reports a starting wage of almost 50k for a Janitor. Of course there's going to be a few jobs that exist in lower end of the spectrum, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that it's expensive to live here and therefore, you shouldn't compare high salaries in the bay with others elsewhere one to one. [1]
Our median income in California is the highest in the nation at $70k. Bay is $100k. California seems to be doing everything right in terms wage growth.
150k is still a great wage in most major US metros. The bay is expensive, but this is still a top-10% compensation package compared to the general population.
If you make $130k in California as a programmer, plus maybe $10k in employer health insurance contribution and another $10k in 401k matching ($150k total comp), you're in the same overall pay bracket as a "sewers supervisor" in San Rafael or a BART train operator: http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?appSession=8741....
Try looking at one of the later pages in the document -- average salary is around 30k! I believe your numbers for sure, just wanted to offer a clean example of "no, not everyone gets paid 80k base + 120k overtime."
The Federal minimum wage is a useless metric. California's minimum wage is $12 (and higher, in some counties) and is set to increase to $15/hr by 2022 (assuming COVID doesn't have some major echoing effects).
Also, they're referring to white collar tech employees. All salaried, all well above minimum wage and most definitively the highest paid (in that industry) in the world, including outside of SF/the Bay.
Last time I read on HN about the Bay Area developer salary, it seemed to me that consensus was that a $100-120k salary in the Bay Area is considered bang-on middle-income. BART technical jobs are well below that, and one can argue these are low-income. If $100-120k/year salary is middle income what's the exact issue with BART salaries?
The link that showed the 90 employees making $300K or over is a link to a page about San Francisco city employees specifically, and says there's 40,951 total. (And it is 90 exactly according to that page.) So is 0.2% of workers earning that much a lot compared to tech companies, do you think?
How about employees making $200K or over? That's 1790, or just about 4%. $100K or over? 15997 employees, or around 39%. So over 60% of SF city employees make under $100K. The median salary, in fact, is just under $86K.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that's lower than Facebook's median salary.
Santa Clara County VTA benefits are even more generous. "Just down the road, Amalgamated Transit Union employees of the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority pay a flat $35 a month for health care and nothing toward their pension."[0]
[0] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-...
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