• Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1]
• Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2]
After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent
You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a year. For me it would never work having 2k per month in student loans.
Also compare that to a place like D.C.
• Average engineering salary in D.C. : 105k / year [3]
• Average rent for a one bedroom: $1,392 / month [4]
After taxes you'll have around 68k / year - 17k / year for rent
That's 51,000 per year. About 11k more per year and a place that is significantly less expensive to live in. That can really make a difference and you may miss out on being in sf but you're in a large city with a healthy tech environment none the less.
Your math is reasonably fair, IMO. That being said, the type of work being done in DC and SF is vastly different. I attended an iOS conference in DC a few months ago (I'm based out of NYC) and was shocked at how few "tech company" people were present. Nearly everyone was working for a government agency, a government contractor, or freelancing with a primarily government client-base.
Personally I don't think I can do it. Nearly everyone I talked to came from gigantic, monstrous organizations (either private or public) with huge, massive layers of management. I might just die in that environment.
At the end of the day, the spiraling cost of living in SF is a serious problem, and one that threatens the well-being of our industry if we can't curb it. Unfortunately, in the city being pro-development is almost as bad as pushing your grandma down the stairs.
DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking.
SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it.
This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Personally, I'm unable to imagine myself going back to east coast weather ever again.
As somebody who has lived here for 13 years, let me strongly agree. This is a terrible place and nobody should ever move here. Also, if you have friends living here, ask them to come home.
The rent comparison isn't exactly fair - you are looking at the rent in the city of SF vs the entire Greater Washington area. There are certainly cheaper places than SF to live in the Bay Area. Also, almost all apartments in SF proper have rent control meaning that rent pretty much never goes up.
I live in a smaller place that isn't very exciting, but I make a SF style salary and pay $1,300/mo for a 4 bedroom house in a residential neighborhood. My office isn't a table with 4 rock stars and a dog, but the company will be there in 10 years too.
A good friend moved out to SF and loves it. He's mid twenties with no family, and living in sublets for 3 months at a time is fun for him. I probably would have dug that 20 years ago, but doing that now, with the prospect of moving to some lame suburb and commuting 2 hours when I start a family isn't so appealing to me.
In other words, most people do what works for them, today.
Are you sure that the average rent for 1 bedroom is $2,700? I lived on Market street in a studio apartment with a pool and a gym in our building and I paid only $1500, that was couple years ago tho, but I dont think that the average rent is $2,700...sorry
Why do you have to live in SF? You can live in SJ/MV and save more than half on rent. You can use BART/Caltrain for commuting. Life is great in Bay Area doesn't matter if you are staying in SF or in other cities in the Bay. I seriously don't the understand whats so special in living in SF. I do commute to SF on weekends whenever I want and on weekdays for work.
I'd gladly give up that $11K three times over to live in San Francisco instead of DC. And, looks like other people would too, hence the ridiculous rents here.
What a sweet and good-natured write-up. It's not cynical, and you can feel a positive outlook on life and people throughout. It's an outlook that's probably very helpful in being productive and happy generally.
> The coffee is very different than the Italian one
I've heard this many times :)
His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the peninsula will get families and SF will get DINKs.
I moved to the Bay Area, with my family, 8 months ago. We tried to make SF work (and did live in temporary housing in SOMA for three months), but SF is not a place for young children (unless you are beyond financial constraints). I commute to SOMA every day from Rockridge. Rockridge is nice, except for Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force!
All the tech things antirez outlined are true, but the reality is, it took some commitment and blind faith to move out with a family and no friends or contacts. Its like moving to another country :). There is more of everything in SF (bay area really), success and destitution, beauty and ugliness, brilliant people and charlatans, opportunity and desperation. I'm loving it, but it's a balancing act.
On one hand, you have people earning six figures fighting for the dwindling, ever inflated supply of conventional housing options, and on the other, you have people like Nadia Eghbal who display the utmost resourcefulness and manage to live in SF for $20k a year (http://helloimnadia.com/post/52242701025/how-to-live-in-san-...). Really goes back to what pg says about being relentlessly resourceful.
In the end, if you really want to get settled in SF, all it takes is some persistence and a healthy network. (I moved here when I knew next to no one and managed to find home at a coliving space called Startuphouse for most of last year; not only was my stay free but it gave me a fantastic network on which to jumpstart life here.)
Haha, yeah, I stayed at the StartupHouse a bit too. It was great being right in the middle of the city and being able to walk a block for groceries or tech meetups. Got a lot of coding done too! Too bad someone filed a complaint and got it shut down.
I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling. The most I've ever paid for that is $2000/month in the center of SF. Dropped down to $1000/month in the southern hills, which was still an easy BART/bus ride into downtown. East Palo Alto was $600 a month, but you had to take a bus to the Caltrain to get anywhere. Currently staying in Walnut Creek on the BART for $1000/month. I only ever rent month to month, so could get way cheaper buying longer too.
The person in your link had a room in SF for $575 per month. She also does not have student loans, and the spreadsheet has no list item for health insurance. It's a nice story but not really an option for many/most people living here.
San Francisco truly is a wonderful city, all things considered. I'm currently traveling throughout Europe and while I'm having a blast seeing how another portion of the world lives, I'm more thankful than ever I can call my home SF. It has temperate weather, is relatively clean, Napa, Stinson Beach, and Pt Reyes to the North, Pacifica, Santa Cruz, Monterey to the South. Tahoe for skiing and summer fun is 4 hours away. And if you are craving more warmth, just have to cross over a bridge or two. There are awesome dog parks complete with doggie ice cream. There are endless amazing restaurants. There are enough singles to keep your dating life occupied for months. And there are fun festivals nearly every weekend. Every neighborhood has something different and unique to offer if you keep an open mind. I've also found that people are incredibly family oriented, not because they have families of their own, but because their families live 20-30 minutes away. You also experience different cultures and homelessness -- something which many people go to great lengths to hide. But IMO it keeps the city grounded and humble. Yes, SF is expensive. It has cost overruns and mismanagement. But I have yet to meet people (in person) who seriously dislike where they live.
Is it a common experience that, as a single person in SF, you'd make $100K and end the year without any money saved? I'm not asking with any judgment or critique implied. I'm genuinely curious if that's normal in SF.
But it's also the lifestyle that forces this. I was continually perplexed at how all of my colleagues seemed to be able to afford to go to all these conferences (not always on company dime), buy the most expensive coffee, upgrade their bleeding-edge laptop the moment Apple puts out a new one, and so on. I figured out later that they just weren't saving or investing any money, and often were even accumulating debt despite their high salaries.
The culture of always being at work (or at least seeming to be) is a factor too. More and more of your meals are eaten outside the home. A lot of people use cleaning services.
Some people feel they need to do all this to keep up. I'm not sure they're wrong. When I pulled out a three-year-old iPhone, people gawped at it, like it was the Ark of the Covenant or something. I lived in a district which was not the Mission or SOMA and people acted like I lived off the edge of the world.
You can certainly save money if you make that much living in sf. Your take home would be about 65k. A very nice apartment shared with one roommate should not cost more than 2k a month, leaving you with 40k for food, entertainment, and travel. If you can't save some of this that is a comment on your priorities, not the fundamental difficulty of living in sf.
I'm not sure if it's normal, but I can at least offer my own anecdotal experience: I'm a single guy who's been out of school for almost 10 years, living in SF for the past 3 years. I make a bit more than the $100k figure you're asking about, but if I were to adjust my income down, I'd still be saving ~35% of my take-home pay every month. And this is including eating out 8-10 times a week and going out to bars 3-4 times a week. I've since paid off my college loans, but while I was paying them I was tossing close to $1k at them per month while maintaining my savings rate. I'm not frugal, but neither am I a crazy spender either. At this point I've developed enough of a cushion that I could take 2-2.5 years off work if I wanted to.
So it's definitely doable. I think as another poster commented, it's more about priorities than ability. There's certainly enough to do here and spend money on that you could spend all your money with nothing to save, but you'd have to work at it. Especially for someone working in tech and making 6 figures, living in SF and not saving is a choice, and by no means a necessity.
Yes. Taxes are pretty high, so making $100k w/ benefits, you take home roughly $63k/yr. Then factor in rent and utilities: 1br ($2500+/mo), 2br w/ roomie ($1800+/mo), 3br w/roomies ($1500/mo). So let's assume 2br. You walk away with around $40k/yr. Then take out transport, cell phone, random monthly bills like student loans, etc and you're down to $28k disposable. Take out food and random living expenses and you don't have much left.
I think this is normal everywhere in the US. I expect this has little to do with SF and more to do with the fact that many people all over the country, regardless of income level, are living far beyond their means and lack the discipline to make saving a priority; the US average personal savings rate has fallen to 2.5%. But what percentage buys cable tv, smartphones with data plans, auto loans for more car than they needed, etc?
Yes, I've heard this from just about everyone. If you're making $50k in this city, you're basically working poor. With the average 2 bedroom condo renting for $2500+ and houses renting for more, you're dropping a ton of your income just on a place to live. Its not uncommon to see a single bedroom renting for $1600+ in the city.
Salvatore, the author, is the lead developer on redis, very interesting perspective on a visit to SF from Europe for a person that is globally connected.
What forces do you see bringing together SF as a melting pot? I've only spent a small amount of time there, and with a very small subset of people, but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry).
I absolutely agree about the motivated, friendly people part. There's definitely a "pay it forward" culture in the tech community which you can feel in the atmosphere.
"UK people are especially hard for me to understand, and I guess the opposite is also true. Fixing the language if you don't practice it is either impossible or requires a lot of time, probably I'll star to travel more."
One very enjoyable way to improve at least understanding spoken English is to watch movies and (if you like that) tv shows. BTW, I agree that UK pronunciationS are much more difficult to understand (I wonder if that's only true for Italians, or for other foreigners too).
I was reading up on Catania (the city from which he hails) and it looks like a beautiful place - very different from SF, but still having a large number of tech companies.
I quite like the writing style, and I'm thankful that the author took the time to write this all down!
Hopefully this isn't taken as offensive, but I wanted to read this in a less plain-text way, so I've mirrored the article here with full attribution: http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68
It's just a bit easier on my eyes, I hope that's alright.
This story reminds me of my most "San Franciscan" experience. I was lucky enough to spend a weekend at Mark Hopkins InterContinental and pretty much the entire time there were protesters yelling things (peacefully of course). One of which was: "Mark Hopkins, you're no good; treat your workers like you should". I went down and talked to the guys and got to hear their side of the story (fighting for minimum wage concessions for the workers there).
What a cool city to be a geek in. Where else can you see more billboards for web browsers and video games than you can for lawyers and liposuction?
First I am glad this is not another post about how many homeless people he saw and how he cannot believe it and how people in SF should fix these problems.
Thinking of the areas the author was around (Nob Hill, SOMA, FiDi) he is probably not going to see many families. You'll definitely see way more strollers and kids if you head south to Noe Valley or head north to Pac Heights.
Just out of curiosity... I assume the waiters, waitresses, receptionists, taxi drivers etc. of San Francisco are not all on $70K+ salaries? And if the answer to that is yes, how do they manage to make it work? Either there's a lot of #firstworlproblem esque moaning going on in this thread or taxi drivers in SanFran are the best paid cabbies in the world.
I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck, there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really that high, it probably won't be a good idea.
This is very specifically about the San Francisco city area. The peninsular and south bay are much more suburban and family friendly.
Palo Alto isn't a lot cheaper that San Francisco it has a reputation as being much more family friendly and has some good schools. Also, Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunny Vale, Santa Clara are all more affordable and family friendly than San Francisco.
Disclaimer: I'm a single guy with no kids, so what would I know?
The schools in Palo Alto itself are very good. Palo Alto HS has an excellent reputation amongst people I know. It's a bit of a pressure cooker, as everyone in the school has parents in the tech industry who care about education, but the quality of teaching is great.
The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will require some sacrifices.
Palo Alto is about 30 miles away from San Francisco and it's a very different place. Those 30 miles will probably take you somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour depending on traffic.
Palo Alto is the traditional headquarters of the venture capital business. Sand Hill Road in particular is famous for its concentration of VC offices, and people use expressions like "the view from Sand Hill Road" to describe how VCs see the world around here. As you might expect, there are a lot of golf courses, excellent restaurants, and some really nice clubs. The Stanford campus is nice, but you'll need a bike or a car to get around (it's over 6000 acres). It is not walkable, but it is a nice place to bike.
Palo Alto has two downtown areas. There are a bunch of places catering to students which are kind of fun, like the Nut House. Palo Alto has a lot of families, at least relative to SF, and it doesn't have that many homeless. But you will probably need to be loaded to get an actual house there.
If you just want to move somewhere in the Bay Area, and you're middle class, I recommend Campbell or perhaps the Willow Glen neighborhood. There are also some nice places in the East Bay. The penninsula and SF are overpriced unless you need to be there for business reasons, or you have so much money it doesn't matter.
Regarding the hotel gym: the most likely reason you couldn't find any free weights is America's penchant for lawsuits. The hotel's lawyers and/or insurance company probably insists on less "dangerous" fitness equipment.
Do you have some specific citation? I've seen plenty of hotel gyms with free weights. And any real gym has them, even though they face similar liability concerns.
I can think of a number of other reasons that hotels would avoid free weights. Fitness machines need less tidying, are harder to steal, are more friendly to novices, and look fancier to people looking at the hotel brochure.
I want a SF job but work remotely from Barcelona. I'm willing to travel 1 a month :). I know the pains of work and live there, it looks amazing but all my friends told me the same: it feels artificial.
[+] [-] ryanSrich|12 years ago|reply
• Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1]
• Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2]
After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent
You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a year. For me it would never work having 2k per month in student loans.
Also compare that to a place like D.C.
• Average engineering salary in D.C. : 105k / year [3]
• Average rent for a one bedroom: $1,392 / month [4]
After taxes you'll have around 68k / year - 17k / year for rent
That's 51,000 per year. About 11k more per year and a place that is significantly less expensive to live in. That can really make a difference and you may miss out on being in sf but you're in a large city with a healthy tech environment none the less.
1.) http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-San-Franc...
2.)http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_...
3.) http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Software+Engineer&l1=Washing...
4.) http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate?a=MSAAvgRentalPrice&msa...
[+] [-] potatolicious|12 years ago|reply
Personally I don't think I can do it. Nearly everyone I talked to came from gigantic, monstrous organizations (either private or public) with huge, massive layers of management. I might just die in that environment.
At the end of the day, the spiraling cost of living in SF is a serious problem, and one that threatens the well-being of our industry if we can't curb it. Unfortunately, in the city being pro-development is almost as bad as pushing your grandma down the stairs.
[+] [-] lobotryas|12 years ago|reply
DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking.
SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it.
This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Personally, I'm unable to imagine myself going back to east coast weather ever again.
[+] [-] wpietri|12 years ago|reply
(Let's see if that helps with the average rents.)
[+] [-] jcdavis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|12 years ago|reply
A good friend moved out to SF and loves it. He's mid twenties with no family, and living in sublets for 3 months at a time is fun for him. I probably would have dug that 20 years ago, but doing that now, with the prospect of moving to some lame suburb and commuting 2 hours when I start a family isn't so appealing to me.
In other words, most people do what works for them, today.
[+] [-] usaphp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kumarm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trapped|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] thufry|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcgwu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnriot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ladon86|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bifrost|12 years ago|reply
I've heard this many times :)
His point about SF lacking children is very very accurate. SF basically forces people with families out because its so expensive and the school situation is bad (your kids don't get to go to the neighborhood school). One of these days SF will wise up and at least fix the school problem, but until then the peninsula will get families and SF will get DINKs.
[+] [-] pfarrell|12 years ago|reply
All the tech things antirez outlined are true, but the reality is, it took some commitment and blind faith to move out with a family and no friends or contacts. Its like moving to another country :). There is more of everything in SF (bay area really), success and destitution, beauty and ugliness, brilliant people and charlatans, opportunity and desperation. I'm loving it, but it's a balancing act.
[+] [-] jechen|12 years ago|reply
In the end, if you really want to get settled in SF, all it takes is some persistence and a healthy network. (I moved here when I knew next to no one and managed to find home at a coliving space called Startuphouse for most of last year; not only was my stay free but it gave me a fantastic network on which to jumpstart life here.)
[+] [-] lnanek2|12 years ago|reply
I've never found the cost for living terribly high. All I need is a private room in a shared dwelling. The most I've ever paid for that is $2000/month in the center of SF. Dropped down to $1000/month in the southern hills, which was still an easy BART/bus ride into downtown. East Palo Alto was $600 a month, but you had to take a bus to the Caltrain to get anywhere. Currently staying in Walnut Creek on the BART for $1000/month. I only ever rent month to month, so could get way cheaper buying longer too.
[+] [-] fibbery|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tommaxwell|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] physcab|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agilebyte|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charliepark|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilk|12 years ago|reply
But it's also the lifestyle that forces this. I was continually perplexed at how all of my colleagues seemed to be able to afford to go to all these conferences (not always on company dime), buy the most expensive coffee, upgrade their bleeding-edge laptop the moment Apple puts out a new one, and so on. I figured out later that they just weren't saving or investing any money, and often were even accumulating debt despite their high salaries.
The culture of always being at work (or at least seeming to be) is a factor too. More and more of your meals are eaten outside the home. A lot of people use cleaning services.
Some people feel they need to do all this to keep up. I'm not sure they're wrong. When I pulled out a three-year-old iPhone, people gawped at it, like it was the Ark of the Covenant or something. I lived in a district which was not the Mission or SOMA and people acted like I lived off the edge of the world.
[+] [-] jamesaguilar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|12 years ago|reply
So it's definitely doable. I think as another poster commented, it's more about priorities than ability. There's certainly enough to do here and spend money on that you could spend all your money with nothing to save, but you'd have to work at it. Especially for someone working in tech and making 6 figures, living in SF and not saving is a choice, and by no means a necessity.
[+] [-] bherms|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jurassic|12 years ago|reply
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt
[+] [-] bifrost|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingkilr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bretpiatt|12 years ago|reply
He met up with a good crowd one night: http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-Meetup/events/1231...
[+] [-] bherms|12 years ago|reply
While there is a lot of crappiness in the city, it really is a melting pot (not as much as 10-20 years ago of course) of motivated, friendly people.
[+] [-] michael_miller|12 years ago|reply
I absolutely agree about the motivated, friendly people part. There's definitely a "pay it forward" culture in the tech community which you can feel in the atmosphere.
[+] [-] danmaz74|12 years ago|reply
One very enjoyable way to improve at least understanding spoken English is to watch movies and (if you like that) tv shows. BTW, I agree that UK pronunciationS are much more difficult to understand (I wonder if that's only true for Italians, or for other foreigners too).
[+] [-] wowoc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keiferski|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austinz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lelandbatey|12 years ago|reply
Hopefully this isn't taken as offensive, but I wanted to read this in a less plain-text way, so I've mirrored the article here with full attribution: http://xwl.me/md/3o6oo6u52127g68
It's just a bit easier on my eyes, I hope that's alright.
[+] [-] wallio|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yhippa|12 years ago|reply
What a cool city to be a geek in. Where else can you see more billboards for web browsers and video games than you can for lawyers and liposuction?
[+] [-] swang|12 years ago|reply
Thinking of the areas the author was around (Nob Hill, SOMA, FiDi) he is probably not going to see many families. You'll definitely see way more strollers and kids if you head south to Noe Valley or head north to Pac Heights.
[+] [-] corford|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesjguthrie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkem|12 years ago|reply
Palo Alto isn't a lot cheaper that San Francisco it has a reputation as being much more family friendly and has some good schools. Also, Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunny Vale, Santa Clara are all more affordable and family friendly than San Francisco.
Disclaimer: I'm a single guy with no kids, so what would I know?
[+] [-] michael_miller|12 years ago|reply
The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will require some sacrifices.
[+] [-] cmccabe|12 years ago|reply
Palo Alto is the traditional headquarters of the venture capital business. Sand Hill Road in particular is famous for its concentration of VC offices, and people use expressions like "the view from Sand Hill Road" to describe how VCs see the world around here. As you might expect, there are a lot of golf courses, excellent restaurants, and some really nice clubs. The Stanford campus is nice, but you'll need a bike or a car to get around (it's over 6000 acres). It is not walkable, but it is a nice place to bike.
Palo Alto has two downtown areas. There are a bunch of places catering to students which are kind of fun, like the Nut House. Palo Alto has a lot of families, at least relative to SF, and it doesn't have that many homeless. But you will probably need to be loaded to get an actual house there.
If you just want to move somewhere in the Bay Area, and you're middle class, I recommend Campbell or perhaps the Willow Glen neighborhood. There are also some nice places in the East Bay. The penninsula and SF are overpriced unless you need to be there for business reasons, or you have so much money it doesn't matter.
[+] [-] VeejayRampay|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ef4|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wpietri|12 years ago|reply
I can think of a number of other reasons that hotels would avoid free weights. Fitness machines need less tidying, are harder to steal, are more friendly to novices, and look fancier to people looking at the hotel brochure.
[+] [-] meerita|12 years ago|reply
I like Europe, with their pro/cons.