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I would say first, it depends on your personal life.

Depending on where you're coming from, moving a family out here may be a challenge. If it's just you I absolutely would recommend it, if not I still would recommend it, but there just are far more considerations to think about.

How many hours you'd work tends to have a wide range. All the current responses suggest insane hours are guaranteed. I probably work between 40-50 hours a week. The week before our last big feature release it was probably 60 or so, but that is the exception not the rule. This is going to depend entirely on the stage of the company you work for and the company itself.

As for salary, I make about 60-70% more than I would have if I stayed in the midwest. I also would be making 30% more if I was working for a big company as opposed to a startup, though with substantially less equity. That being said, I pay 2-2.5x for my apartment than I would have paid back home. However I can walk to work and have my groceries delivered - thus don't have a car payment, car insurance, etc, so it is somewhat evened out. At the end of the day, I make enough to have plenty to live on.

The biggest thing for me though is the atmosphere, not just where I work, but in general - tech is the norm and walking down the street (at least in soma) I frequently hear people talking about database performance, or whether AWS is worth the price, or about a new library being released that makes doing X easier. I love it - for the first time in my life I'm surrounded by people who are as passionate (and often even more so) about the same things I am, it's something I don't think you can really get anywhere else. And is absolutely worth whatever the difference between what my net income after expenses is here as opposed to the midwest.




I used to be able to relate to this. After about 10 years in the industry I find that I crave more diversity. I tend to try to eat lunch with the sales guys to get a break from discussing database performance.


>love it - for the first time in my life I'm surrounded by people who are as passionate (and often even more so) about the same things I am, it's something I don't think you can really get anywhere else.

Are there any universities with a similar atmosphere?


I'm curious about this. I went to a good university (though not known for CS), and I thought that most of my classmates were apathetic/just in it for the money. I certainly never saw the sort of enthusiasm that I see from people on HN (or my co-workers at my startup job).

Are places like CMU or MIT utopias of hacking-related discussion?

(I mean at the undergraduate level, that is)


I went to Harvard and spent a lot of time at MIT. While not universal through the campuses, you can definitely find environments with the feelings described above.




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