
21 Years of Income as a Software Engineer in San Francisco - scottmcdot
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7zsfhz/21_years_of_income_as_a_software_engineer_in_san/
======
walrus01
Meanwhile, Vancouver BC boasted about the famously low salaries of its
software engineers and people with similar skill sets, in a failed bid to
attract Amazon HQ2:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+amazon+hq+bid+sala...](https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+amazon+hq+bid+salary&num=100&client=ubuntu&hs=4WZ&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWjcnCp77ZAhUG2GMKHYE3CH4Q_AUICigB&biw=1337&bih=1301)

In my opinion a pretty stupid thing to do, considering the low probability of
Amazon choosing either Portland or Vancouver as second headquarters. Too close
to Seattle and still within the same regional talent pool, and regional market
demand.

~~~
fro0116
Former Vancouverite here.

I really wanted to work in Vancouver, but I simply could not justify taking
the ~$80k CAD offer I had in Vancouver over an ~$140k USD offer from a company
in SF.

Even when taking into account the cost of living difference, which worked out
to be about the same as the ratio between the salaries, the higher salary in
SF wins out because given similar savings rates, the higher your salary, the
larger your raw savings in dollars will be (unless you have a savings rate of
0% or lower, which is a rarity among well-paid software engineers). This is
before even taking into account the difference in purchasing power between the
two currencies.

Collectively, the tech industry in Canada would reap great long-term benefits
from offering salaries that are competitive with those in the US. But
companies acting in short-term self-interest only try to pay their employees
the bare minimum they can get away with in order to be able to claim to offer
these pathetic, so-called "market-rate" Canadian salaries, with little regard
to the fact that so much of the higher end of this talent pool that they could
have competed for have already been brain-drained away.

This then inevitably leads to the industry generally undercompeting as a
whole, which results in poorer revenues and lower interest from potential
investors, which then means there's less available capital to invest in the
workforce, and so the whole vicious cycle repeats itself. So many once
prominent Canadian tech companies have already fallen prey to this sorry state
of affairs. I wonder what kind of wake-up call the industry will need to
finally break out of this pattern.

~~~
crdoconnor
I felt exactly the same way about Singapore. Penny pinching, MBA-ish types who
don't get tech running everything, a confucianist predilection towards
authoritarian managerial styles and nobody rocking the boat makes it something
of a tech wasteland.

Ironic cos the government has Silicon Valley envy and they've got it real bad
- spraying cash liberally at everyone except actual developers in an attempt
to clone the magic.

~~~
mailshanx
Interesting perspective! As an engineer contemplating SG, I would love to hear
your Singapore story - what did you find there, and what did you eventually
do?

~~~
crdoconnor
I found it was 98% companies like ^^ that. The companies I actually worked in
were bad.

I found two companies that seemed more or less sane (ok, but neither blew me
away). One of them was receptive to hiring me but I got a different offer
before we worked things out which I took and regretted. The other deliberated
for, I think, two months before giving me an offer. That was more or less the
last straw.

I turned them down, returned to London after that and doubled my take home
pay.

Not long after I returned I discovered that not one but _both_ of these
companies were acquihired by Google when they opened an office in SG. I had a
good chuckle at that.

Yeah, I'd avoid it. There are pockets of good stuff as there are anywhere, but
I think they're fewer and further between.

~~~
lzy
> Not long after I returned I discovered that not one but both of these
> companies were acquihired by Google when they opened an office in SG.

Do you mean the 2 companies were both acquihired by Google when Google opened
the Singapore office?

Since that's many years ago, out of curiosity, do you mind sharing the 2
companies' names? Thank you.

------
montrose
The graph seems related to the graph of venture funding over the same period:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_VC_funding.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_VC_funding.png)

Which is not surprising considering that salaries are the number one thing
venture funding is spent on.

~~~
zbentley
> salaries are the number one thing venture funding is spent on.

Are you sure? I think that's possible, but my first guess would be rent
(anywhere, not just in SF--unless you're all remote, even tiny corporate real
estate is _expensive_ ), followed by salaries/benefits.

Regardless, it would be interesting to see some data explaining how VC funding
is spent. Even better to see how the spending percentages change over
time/stage.

~~~
falcolas
Well, if you take the WeWork style co-working spaces as a real estate cost
baseline, each employee in a private office will cost somewhere around $1,000
a month for the space. In contrast, an employee making a salary of a mere
$120,000 will cost the company somewhere north of $13,000 a month (salary +
taxes + benefits).

------
andrew_wc_brown
I live in Canada and its quite upsetting to see salaries just a skip over the
border that are 120K USD for remote positions but they won't even entertain
hiring a Canadian, meaning in Canada the remoting range is 55-70 CAD USD.
Going above 70K is possible but in my experience those jobs can only be
acquired through personal networking in the GTA which is self-defeating
because it keeps you tethered to the GTA.

Imagine if I could live somewhere like Thunder Bay and make a 120K remote. The
only possibility has been freelancing and I was successful for a while
remoting though running your own company came with downsides which led to my
eventual decision to work back full time for a company.

~~~
falcolas
Hiring someone across a national border adds a lot of complexity and cost to
the employment process. A few companies I have worked for which did have
foreign employees ended up with an umbrella company paradigm, with individual
corporations in each country to help ease the complications and reduce the
costs.

~~~
hota_mazi
> Hiring someone across a national border adds a lot of complexity and cost to
> the employment process

It's not really true for the US and Canada thanks to Nafta.

~~~
bzbarsky
You have different tax withholding procedures, differences in labor law and
what sort of employment contracts are allowed, differences in mandated
benefits (e.g. parental leave).

This is an issue even if you want to hire in more than one US state.

The question is whether all that adds up to "a lot", which is a value
judgment.

------
fyfy18
As someone who hasn’t even worked in the US, let alone SF, is this a typical
wage for that area?

I live in a small European city, earning around half this, but my outgoings
are a lot less (under €1k/mo) than what I would be paying in SF, so I’m
probably saving more at the end of the day. I’d argue my lifestyle is a lot
better too.

~~~
sevagh
>I’d argue my lifestyle is a lot better too.

Looks like the majority of the European "better lifestyle" involves convincing
people on the internet that making a fraction of a Bay Area salary is somehow
a good thing.

~~~
CalRobert
I moved from CA to Europe. Don't regret it. I get a month and a half of
vacation, a nice walkable city, and don't feel like I live in a dying
democracy.

Two days ago my infant was sick. Made one phone call and thirty minutes later
a qualified gp showed up at my apartment and made sure everything was fine. At
2 AM. For free.

In the US I could make more money but would spend it all on rent and cars (and
private school tuition in a few years), and my time on commuting and
explaining to colleagues that I never check email on vacation. Ever.

I'll keep what I've got. Also, lower eu salaries should make it easier to
start a business if the mood strikes.

~~~
toephu2
Nothing in life is "free". Europeans pay way higher taxes than Americans.

"would spend it all on rent and cars" Excuses. If you don't want to make it
work that's fine. But there are tens of thousands of people making it work in
the Bay Area.

#1 Don't have a car and live in SF, or buy a used cheap Honda or Toyota.

#2 Look at Rooms on craigslist, you can easily find a room or in-law room w/
own private bathroom IN San Francisco for under $1600/mo.

All this for a <30min commute to your tech company of choice in SF.

The media and everyone else likes to talk about how expensive it is to live in
SF saying it costs $4k/mo for a 1bed room apartment...except these people are
cherrypicking the most expensive and nicest places to live in SF. You can
easily find cheaper on craigslist.

~~~
philipwhiuk
Healthcare in the US is twice as expensive and outcome significantly worse.

~~~
toephu2
Do you not have your tech company paying your health insurance?

Outcome is significantly worse? Then why do world leaders and rich people from
other countries visit the U.S. just for healthcare?

I don't hear people from Google/FB complaining about healthcare costs..

~~~
CalRobert
I'm not who you were responding to, but I like knowing that the poorest person
in the country still gets decent care.

------
lilsoso
He may have been better off as a federal government worker, if you include
pension and benefits into the equation, which I find discouraging.

~~~
5555624
I don't think so. If he didn't go into management and the working level was a
GS-13, he'd eventually max out at a GS-13, Step 10, which is $133,967 a year
in San Francisco.

His pension, under the current system, would be his "high three" average times
1% times years of service ($133,967 * .01 * 21) = $28,133.

~~~
metaphor
Also worth noting that retirement after 21 years in industry isn't a
financially sensible consideration for most federal civilians: assuming 27
years old in 1997, minimum retirement age would be 57 (9 years shy after 21
years), and even 2 years short of satisfying early retirement age requirement
of 50[1].

[1] [https://www.opm.gov/retirement-services/fers-
information/eli...](https://www.opm.gov/retirement-services/fers-
information/eligibility/)

------
chvid
I can tell you it is the same for a software engineer in Copenhagen. Salaries
peeked in 2000 and have yet to catch up in real terms.

~~~
marvin
Certainly it isn't the same in absolute terms? You can get a two-bedroom
apartment in Copenhagen for $300,000 or so. I haven't heard of any place in
Europe where you can expect to make anything close to this for any normal
software engineering role.

(I earn around, maybe less than half the average in this graph, in Norway).

~~~
ddalex
The thing about Copenhagen property (and I expect this is true for all the
Nordic countries) is that is closed to foreign investors - you can only buy if
you're a permanent resident, and even if you come from EU, you can get the
status after 5 years of living there. So not an easy market to get into as a
buyer, but it helps having sane prices for locals, which IMHO is the way to
go.

~~~
Symbiote
Any foreigner can buy in Denmark, they just need to show its their residence.
They're thus limited to one property.

------
akhilcacharya
Is this salary or Total Comp? I’ve seen new grads with equivalent total comp
or more.

~~~
Kephael
This is very low compensation for experienced work in the Bay Area if it's
total compensation. Yes, new graduates do regularly make ~200k/yr total
compensation.

------
jokoon
I'm French, I'm not a software engineer because I don't have the degree, but I
can read every language out there, I speak English pretty well, I know how to
do proper research to fix things, and as I saw in the comments, the situation
here is very weird.

I have been unemployed my whole life, my medical condition might have
something to do with it, but when I hear that French companies put a lot of
faith in a degree I'm still disappointed. There might be some hr failure
somewhere.

Job markets are weird. I'm still curious about working remotely for an
American company. Can it be achieved? How is that done?

~~~
nikhizzle
Try applying through triplebyte. Their goal is a candidate blind, pure merit
application process.

I used them in my last job search, and was super impressed with every step
along the way. Low stress, and lots of constant feedback on how to make myself
a better candidate.

~~~
tw1010
Triplebyte doesn't support applicants from outside the US.

~~~
compumike
We're currently able to work with applicants from a small number of countries
outside of the US: see
[https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-8](https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-8)
for details. (I'm an engineer at Triplebyte.)

~~~
lotyrin
So far really liking everything you're doing. Is there a mailing list for when
you guys expand into other metro areas or add remote opportunities? I am a
little surprised I can't set my work location preferences in my profile such
that it might show up on a report somewhere.

------
seanalltogether
Keep in mind the data is adjusted for inflation, I'm not sure why the OP chose
to do that.

~~~
kelnos
I'm curious: why wouldn't you adjust for inflation? That seems to make it more
of an apples-to-apples comparison to me.

~~~
stfwn
Inflation is a very broad trend to adjust for. Maybe a dollar was worth 2%
more in some part of the country while it bought you 5% less elsewhere. The
ups and downs in local cost of living are probably extreme in SF, so adjusting
with a nation-wide trend (which is probably nowhere near representative for
SF) might be a bit arbitrary.

~~~
kelnos
Excellent point. I just did a quick search and can't really find figures on
"regional" inflation or CPI. That's... annoying.

~~~
dragonwriter
[https://www.bls.gov/cpi/regional-
resources.htm](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/regional-resources.htm)

------
telltruth
This is quite shocking and I am sure it’s not a pattern. My compensation has
doubled roughly 6 years over similar period in inflation adjusted dollars and
I have considered it as slow growth. Note that most of this is without
climbing up management ladder. Most of my friends have also experienced
doubling every 5-7 years as far as I can. There are few folks who haven’t
moved much but that’s usually because they didn’t kept up with tech or kept
chasing next startup or find non dev roles where they can excel. Living in
SF/bay below $200K is quite unimaginable these days.

------
botskonet
I see people with lower salaries complaining and I feel bad and then I see
people saying $200-300k is normal for their region and I complain.

------
ionwake
Does anyone know what the take home pay is after tax for a 200k job - a month
- after typical rent - in Frisco?

~~~
pmorici
You can go on sites like Zillow or PadMapper and see rental listings. $4,000
seems typical now days for a 1 bedroom or studio. If you really want to slum
it or have roommates you can find situations for less but for someone who has
grown out of the roommates and frat house life style those options probably
aren't appealing.

~~~
joshuamorton
Wat? Try 3k for a 1br, 4k for a 2br.

That said, even with a 4k/mo apartment, you're looking at 4-5k after tax,
housing, and retirement savings.

------
pmiller2
I'd like to see the correlation with SF residential rents over the time
period.

------
j45
$150k in 1997 would be a little higher than 150K today.

Sharing on average dollars of income available to save after taxes per year
would be interesting. At the end of the day it's not just what you make, but
what you are in a position to save.

~~~
steeeeve123123
How much do you save per paycheck? What is the average?

~~~
j45
150,000 in 1997 is about $230,000 in 2017 dollars based on an average
inflation calendar.

Which would you rather have had to save with?

Saving as much of salary as possible is rarely a bad thing.

With salaries this high - it could be between 40-70% depending on where you
live (maybe even more) and if you co-habitate with someone.

