No where in the article do they mention how they factor in cost of living into the comparison. As other commenters have pointed out, most studies naively make a linear adjustment; i.e. if cost of living is 2x you need 2x the salary. This makes no sense. Say your cost of living is 30k and your salary is 100k in one city. In a 2nd City your cost of living is 60k and 180k. A rational economic decision would be to live in City 2 since it maximizes your savings. The linear adjustment based on cost of living only make sense if a person is saving 0% of their salary.
The other issue is I don’t buy the 110k vs 130k difference in Austin. They are not considering total comp in which case the delta is way bigger.
Finally, Hired is mostly used by startups and low to medium paying employers. There is a huger salary difference at large tech firms between SF and other cities.
What this study is really saying is “if you want to work at medium size companies, don’t earn anything beyond a salary, and spend all of your salary San Francisco is not worth it”.
The other issue is I don’t buy the 110k vs 130k difference in Austin. They are not considering total comp in which case the delta is way bigger.
Finally, Hired is mostly used by startups and low to medium paying employers. There is a huger salary difference at large tech firms between SF and other cities.
What this study is really saying is “if you want to work at medium size companies, don’t earn anything beyond a salary, and spend all of your salary San Francisco is not worth it”.