Honest question: at that point why not move closer to work? Or get a job at any number of companies closer to home that are desperate for talent?

The whole point of enduring SFBA rent is that there’s dozens of tech jobs at every corner.

Well that's where you live now. Average worker changes jobs 12 times in a career. Is your plan to just move 12 times (and pay the costs associated with that)? Or work at the same job for much longer (and pay the costs associated with that)?

One of the benefits of living in a large metro area is the amount of job opportunities, but it you put an 8 minute circle around your residence and only look for jobs within that, that negates those benefits.

Because everyone thinks this first which is why a 1 bedroom in SF is like 5k a month.

Curious, why? I am having no problem being hireable right now at all (literally just joined a FAANG recently).

As far as I know, it would be impossible to get the same pay I'm getting now anywhere else. Even after considering the high cost of living, the spread between income and cost of living is very high, and allows me to stash away a significant amount of savings every year, to pay for my future freedom. I really doubt I'd be able to save that much if I were working anywhere else.

What else would you suggest?

bay area market is crowded with young folks with faang salaries who are willing to share rent with several others. Would you consider moving to some other place with possible salary reduction?

1) Maybe they got the job at Google half way through their year lease in SF and are relying on the bus to get to work for 6 months until they can move.

2) Maybe they are fresh out of college and still live in their family home in SF and are only using the bus to get to their new job while they save up enough to move closer.

3) Maybe they live in SF because it is equal distance from their job south and their partner's job north or east.

4) Maybe they are in that group of people that thinks jobs come and go but your home is your home. These people don't move closer to their job.

That said, nobody HAS to live in SF. A fair number of people actually commute INTO SF.

IF

The problem is that most people in tech understand that your job in gone in 5 years, 10 years at the outside. Given that I need 4 jobs over my lifetime (at least), I'm going to stay where I can get my next job even if that area is expensive.

If I find a good job in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh, what happens when that job goes away? Now I have to move to San Jose, Austin, Boston anyway AND I'm going to have a difficult time because my family is used to that big house and yard in the suburbs, but I didn't put enough money away fast enough to make the jump to the more expensive area because my salary was 30% less.

Is this true? I work in a suburbanish portion of the bay area, and 90% of my coworkers commute in from San Francisco and Western Oakland. San Francisco is more expensive and is further away, but the advantages of urban living are multi-fold. Walkable neighborhoods, access to more restaurants, bars, and nightlife, access to more culture (museums, openings, concerts, etc), more people to meet and talk to, etc. Given the choice I would almost certainly choose to live in a city vs. a suburb or rural area.

You presumably wouldn't, because you have a set of preferences due because of various (from your description, non-rent) lifestyle impacts of location.

Which is, if you read my upthread post, rather than lobbing insults without doing so, exactly what I was talking about.

Now, in your case rather than overriding concern for commute time (which is evidently the case for lots of other people), neither those preference nor your commute time preference arr negotiable, so you would just resign if your employer decided to make your job an onsite job. Other people wpuld choose to commute. Other people, who dislike the commute and don’t have the other factors you have holding you in place, might move closer to the office.

In any case, the employer isn’t dictating commute time, but work site. Your preferences will determine commute time if you work (or, for that matter, will determime if you continue working at all.)

My wife dragged me kicking and screaming to a rural area that's a popular vacation area.

(I must admit that I wanted to end up in a different rural area that's also a popular vacation area.)

My neighborhood is excellent, and there's plenty to walk to. Rural areas still have dense spots with plenty of things to do. There's just a lot of open forests around the dense areas!

What's terrifying is that I still telecommute for the job I got when I lived in Silicon Valley. I have no idea what's going to happen when I need to change jobs.

(Edit) I still miss living right on University Ave in Palo Also, CA. But, that's not sustainable given how much it costs to live there, and our (me and wife's) overall lifestyle desires.

Not really. I'm not stating a hard and fast rule, but a tendency. People with more options are far more likely to take action to avoid a major disruption to their lives, and people with fewer options are more likely put up with shit.

I know if my employer decided to pack up and move to a new city, I'd almost certainly prefer to take another job locally than uproot nearly everything to move with them for little to no benefit to me.

Yes, and they choose to live in San Francisco, with bars, members of both sexes, restaurants, museums, parks, baseball, etc...

How fun do you think this theoretical company town is going to be for someone in their 20s?

Yes.

>living in the Bay Area sucks

Where'd you move to? I'm at the "trying out South Bay" stage, next I'm going to try downtown SF but after that I'm curious where people generally go. I was considering Vietnam and doing the remote work thing.

It seems like nobody wins in this situation. If my goal is to maximize savings, I'd move to the Bay Area to get the maximum salary from you and find the cheapest housing in the area. I'd be miserable because I'm living in a place I don't like in a shitty apartment. On the other hand, if you offered to pay the same amount while I live in the midwest, I'd be happier with my living situation and be pocketing more cash. This would make me more productive and make me stay at the company longer, with no additional cost to you.

Honest question: are there a substantial number of remote companies paying bay area FAANG salaries? You put in any decent time at these places and your total comp is at least $300-500k/yr.

You'd have to move somewhere really cheap for the math to work out in favor of that remote gig if you're leaving $100-300k on the table. Being in a place without state income tax moves the needle quite a bit, but you're still likely to come out behind.

Caveat emptor: lifestyle changes this math a lot.

I don't want to live everywhere. Unfortunately, my occupation has chosen to highly concentrate a ridiculous fraction of the jobs here. So I'm here. Moving is not impossible, but it's got a considerable "barrier to entry" if you will, and as someone still fairly new with the whole being-an-adult-with-a-job thing, it's not as simple as just getting up and going. Aside from the actual logistics of it, I've been with employers who look at resumes and think short gaps between jobs == bad, and so that means I can really only look if I manage to have held onto something long enough. There's also the fact that I might like my current work; finding a job that isn't soul-sucking (and isn't a startup with no hope of success) turns out to be tricky when it seems like 70% of the offerings boil down to "we sell ads".

For example, in my searches it appears that the Boston area has ~10% of the jobs that the Bay does.

Thankfully, I'm in a high-paying role. But surely the Bay Area needs janitors, transit workers, teachers, retail clerks, etc.? How are they to afford rent, let alone a home? Is the answer for them "sorry, you're priced out; commute 15-20 hours weekly?"

And, I know you're asking honestly, but when people out here say "high" w.r.t. housing in the Bay Area, they don't mean "it's above average", it means "it's literally insane". My father's current house was probably ~3 yrs of his salary; small houses are selling for ~$1.5M; an engineer making ~$100k (~starting salary) would need 15-16 years, and a very senior salary of ~$200k would still be ~8yr.

You can be an engineer and have tons of money to afford cool gadgets, but you'll never own a home.

You shouldn't. If you have a good job in such a location and are happy with the opportunities available, enjoy!

The problem is that markets naturally congregate in distinct locations so anyone who is looking to advance their career needs to make their way to a hub.

If they were willing to absorb a 50-100% increase in housing costs or downgrade their living spaces (giving up things like "going for walks at night without getting stabbed"), maybe. Living close to an urban office is an extreme luxury good that'll give any mainstream luxury car a run for its money.

>good transit options

The Bay Area has some of the best transit options in the country, and they are to stand with one arm over your head and one arm on your backpack, pressed up against hundreds of strangers, and just try to keep your balance and avoid eye contact while the bus or train lurches around for 30+ minutes. After walking or riding your bike for ~20.

I like driving, so maybe I'm just having trouble empathizing with people who feel forced to do it, but is a ~10 minute drive to a suburban office park really as miserable to you as the ~50 minute BART commute from Berkeley to SF?

If I had a suburban employer with a giant free parking lot (i.e. letting me live anywhere) moving to a downtown office in a hot real estate market without at least a 2x salary increase, I'd quit in a heartbeat.

I moved out of New York City in 2020. The overriding reason was not this, it was just a fluke that I got a very compelling out of state job offer in 2019, and they requested I move in 2020.

However, I am making about about $150-$160k as an SWE, and it goes a lot further here (although having to spend $700-$800 a month for a car, which I did not have to do in NYC, bites into that a little). I have a new, big, apartment with a front door to a tree-lined street in a nice walkable neighborhood near my workplace for less than $2000 a month. In New York I would have an older, smaller apartment on a higher floor in not as nice of a neighborhood for more a month.

I know people say to move to the Bay area because that's where the action is for tech jobs and where you make connections etc., but I don't see why not take a step on a way for a decent paying job in a cheap city where you can accumulate savings while your skillset is increasing.

The juniors/associates I work with making <$100k a year say they can barely afford their expenses now here. I don't know what they'd be doing in the Bay Area or New York. They have roommates too.

I saved up a ton of money down here, and gained experience as well. If I move back to New York (or to the Bay Area), I do so on surer footing - I have a lot of money saved up for a rainy day now.

It also makes for a situation where those with lower income - even associate/junior SWEs at Fortune 100 companies - can't afford to live in cities like NYC, San Francisco etc.