throwthisawayt
Joined 10 years ago
Joined 10 years ago
I completely agree that there is way more to life than economics, but for the young single engineer the business case for Bay Area (and even more Seattle) is very compelling.
To put it in perspective, when I compare myself to a friend with similar skills my net worth is already 2x greater.
Let me level set by saying I went to a bootcamp and have two years experience. I make 165K (25% higher than 130) and my 3 close bootcamp colleagues all make around the same. I don’t work for some hot company like Google - 95% of people reading this haven’t heard of us. And just to be clear this is all liquid compensation (cash, bonus, and public stock equity).
So yes for me and my closest friends with comparable experience SF is by far the best option economically.
Note as others have mentioned; I don’t think that will be the case when I start a family.
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”.
As such, it makes sense that people pour millions of dollars to target the 1%. They've got a shitload of more money than the rest of the country. Seriously, if you've got an product that every rich person wants but that no other person cares about, you will have vcs knocking on your door. We need to think of vcs as building cash machines, not as the money behind "changing the world". Yes occasionally vcs fund companies like Google that have broader impact but that's not their primary aim.
If we want more people building ventures that impact society we need to either * change the funding model * build bootstrap ventures * build non profit ventures * ask the government to step in (a socialist approach)
A good example are institutions like the Gates foundation and WHO eradicating polio in the last few years. Yeah it's not sexy but organizations like that are making real societal impact.
If they figure it out, they will own their markets because frankly their products are better since they were user first.
I think it's important part of building a company - recognizing that the heart and soul that led you to say $100M sales can completely differnent from what leads you to $1B. It's almost like a mini innovators dilemma for startups.