
Ask HN: Where to go for max profit? High coder salary, low cost of living - api
What the title says. I&#x27;m curious about what cities&#x2F;regions in the U.S. or Canada have high programmer salaries but also have relatively low cost of living, especially very affordable rent and real estate.
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jasonkester
For maximum effect, you'll want to telecommute. Work in the Bay Area, live in
Malawi. I bet you can find a reliable Internet connection in Nkata Bay and a
room for $3/night. Coupled with a middle of the road $100/hr contract rate,
you should be able to save a few pennies.

It's the future. There's no reason to live in a city unless you want to. Since
your goal is max bang for the buck, the obvious choice is to live in the
sticks and work over the Internet. Well chosen. It's nice out here!

~~~
w1ntermute
The OP clearly stated that he was interested in only the US and Canada, both
for working _and_ living.

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meowface
And also, a lot of high-paying jobs don't want employees to telecommute 100%
of the time.

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lifeisstillgood
That's their loss.

Schumpter will have a word.

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nilkn
Austin and Houston are considerably more cost-effective places than the Bay
Area, though both are becoming more unaffordable quite quickly, especially
Austin since it's the hip place to move to. Its current affordability won't
last much longer than a decade, possibly shorter.

In general, though, you want to carve out a niche for yourself in a place
which is not a hot spot for technology. This makes you much more valuable
locally; you don't have much competition because others in your industry don't
like your city in general and aren't moving there; and it thereby allows you
to attain compensation which is very high relative to the COL.

Another strategy, which I would _love_ to capitalize on myself in the next few
years, is to work remotely. Find a nice suburban area to live in which has a
lot of amenities without the high home prices. What holds me back is the fear
of settling down in such an area, then getting laid off from my remote job 10
years down the line and having to rebuild my whole life to re-enter the game.

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jaredsohn
One general thing to keep in mind is that if you have a simple lifestyle it is
better to maximize profit in an absolute sense over profit in a percentage
sense since after doing so for awhile, you could move to a place with a lower
cost of living / salary and your larger accumulated savings will go further.

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deardenlaw
I had very good luck living in Central Florida (Orlando) and working for a
company based in Silicon Valley (Yahoo). I had a SV salary with Central
Florida expenses. A telecommuting opportunity OR a satellite office
opportunity gives the greatest ability to arbitrage cost of living vs salary.

~~~
cgtyoder
I knew that Marissa didn't totally pull the plug on telecommuting - some small
percentage got to keep doing it. Nice job with that gig.

~~~
toyg
The fact that he "had" such a job doesn't mean he's still there.

~~~
deardenlaw
True. I left in 2008

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adkatrit
I had a cheap place in the outer DC area for a while. 750 a month near a
military base with >125k salary as a contractor.

I know some people very well off in Denver, CO as well.

Using public data(data.gov, enigma.io) you can find the areas that have the
most positive trend in population weighted with average/median income and
percent software jobs and/or locations of companies recently funded on
crunchbase.

Might be best to start with a data set of cost of living and just apply
functions to the ranking of the index depending on what matters more to you.
[http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/prices/consumer_...](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/prices/consumer_price_indexes_cost_of_living_index.html)

Good Luck!

~~~
kposehn
I'm going to second Denver as well. Lots of places to live, good job market
and plenty to do outside.

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bluedevil2k
Austin, TX if you're a Rails programmer. $100-$120k salaries, homes about
$100/ sq ft.

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delucain
Home prices in Austin are climbing though. It won't be too long until homes in
that price range come with a minimum 45 minute commute.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
A lot of people are moving from the Bay Area to Austin, paying crazy prices
for real estate, displacing locals.

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clavalle
Prices in Austin for housing have always been high.

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bluedevil2k
Umm, no, they have never been high, when compares to other tech spots in the
US. $100/ sq ft is not expensive.

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clavalle
Well, everything seems cheap when you compare it to the Valley or SF.

Now compare Austin to Houston or San Antonio. (Besides, $100/SF is low unless
you are talking about the East side.)

~~~
bluedevil2k
Pflugerville is $65, Round Rock and Cedar Park are around $100.

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jakestl
Wolfram Alpha is pretty good for things like this, though the data is a bit
stale:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=computer+software+appli...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=computer+software+applications+engineers+mean+wage+houston%2F+cost+of+living+houston)

~~~
clavalle
Houston is looking pretty good.

I've tried for New York, San Francisco (both terrible), Austin, Dallas (pretty
close), Boston, St. Louis, Denver (also pretty close) and Seattle among others
and Houston beats them all.

~~~
jntamm
As a native Texan, I will tell you that most Texans would like to live in
Austin. Houston is and always will be an oil town. It is full of oil men, deal
makers and their lenders. If you are a young person that is starting out in
life and you have the skills to get a job and build a career in the place of
you choosing, do not choose Houston. Spend a little more and get the most out
of life, You only get one!

~~~
clavalle
Yeah, I am an Austinite. I wouldn't move for the world.

But I have a friend that has been in Houston since he went to Rice and he
swears by it. His girlfriend even lives here in Austin and we can't seem to
convince him to move back.

I love Austin, but I think Houston is big enough that you can find your
people.

~~~
kevinrpope
> His girlfriend even lives here in Austin and we can't seem to convince him
> to move back.

This may be indicative of something else entirely.

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walesmd
I've lived and worked in both Augusta, GA and San Antonio, TX since leaving
California in 2009. Both cities have huge military and intelligence
populations, it shouldn't be hard to find a job if your records is clean.

In GA I was making $78k, about twice the average household income but could
have probably landed $95k pretty easily with a smaller company and better
negotiation. Mortgage on 1750 sq ft townhouse is running me only $830/mo.

Moved to San Antonio on 2010 when position just landed in my lap (it required
this location initially but is now 100% telework). Started at $95k, with
annual raised in around $108k now, which I think is around 2.5 times the
average household income for this area. Mortgage on a 2700 sq ft suburban home
runs about $1300/mo. Girlfriends housekeeping business in which she's the sole
employee does well, roughly another $60k/yr.

My advice: stay south of I20, east of Phoenix. Government contractors were
easy money but its starting to slim down and I'm not seeing a lot of new hires
within the "old guard." Instead, Silicon Valley veterans like Amazon/Google
are landing this money and filling positions in mini-hotspots like Austin,
Atlanta and Charlotte.

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ggreer
It's hard to pull off, but the best option would be to work remotely for a bay
area company.

Quality of life might be lower though. Unless everybody communicates over IRC,
video chat, etc, you'll feel alienated. Even if they use the right tools,
you'll miss out on any conversations your coworkers have in-person, such as at
lunch.

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dustingetz
if you are exceptionally talented at something valuable, and have a decent
understanding of what a business owner values, i believe you can double the
glassdoors average in any city.

A lot of people don't believe in "10x-ers", but perhaps they just haven't met
one. I am not one but I know several. They make a lot of money. It's not
something that they like to talk about.

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actionbrandon
coders for trading companies in Chicago are paid extremely well, and Chicago
is awesome.

~~~
mortenjorck
Chicago has a great diversity of housing stock, too, a lot of which is quite
commutable. Find an enterprise job in the Loop, then find a reasonably-priced
rental in Old Town or Edgewater; you're only about a half hour away on the Red
or Purple lines.

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canadiancreed
I only have experience with Eastern Canada (aka Southern Ontario, Montreal,
and the Maritimes), but the only way that I've seen where you'd get a high
salary and low cost of living is if you can get Torontoesque salary with a
company based in rural areas (which in IT I've found is anything outside of
the GTA, K-W, Ottawa, and Montreal...possibly Halifax). They're incredibly
rare (I've found two in the 13 years that I've been in the industry), and if
the company does go under you're pretty much forced to move to a place where
there's high salaries (because there's high competition for talent, natch),
and high cost of living (because everyone's moving there...again, obvious I
know), as telecommuting opportunities in Canada are practically non-existent.
Usually if a place has a low cost of living/low housing costs/etc...., it's
because the unemployment rate is ~15% or so, and the IT work is something
around 35-40k a year.

tl;dr If you're looking in Canada, you're looking a LONG time.

~~~
michaelmior
Montreal has at least cheaper rent went compared to Toronto. Also, the startup
scene is arguably more interesting than Toronto if that's something you're
interested in. Plus Montreal is a pretty fun place to live. (I lived in
Montreal for a year and a half working for a startup.)

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tazzy531
How do people here value the opportunity costs of living in a major tech
center?

With the lower cost of living of not living in a tech center, you also give up
other non-monetary things.

I would think that a lot of innovation comes from being surrounded by like
minded people and the access to tech talks and networking events.

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lnanek2
Go somewhere expensive, live in cheap shared conditions. You'll make far more.
I'm always amazed at the prices people pay in the East Bay when you can get
very cheap living renting a spare room in a house. Once you have a family and
need your own house, then maybe switch.

~~~
nilkn
I imagine someone asking this question is already in the category of people
wanting his/her own home.

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edwingustafson
Consider Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan
[http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-jose-ca/ann-
arb...](http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-jose-ca/ann-arbor-
mi/100000)

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saryant
I live in San Antonio but work for a company in Boulder. Works pretty well for
me.

~~~
grannyg00se
How is the quality of life in San Antonio? Austin gets a lot of great mentions
here, but I don't hear about San Antonio all that much.

~~~
jntamm
Different vibe in San Antonio. It is know as a military town closer to the
boarder butt obviously is more than that. For a young single person though,
Austin is definitely superior.

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dandrewsen
Someone should build an app for this problem, if it doesn't already exist.

~~~
skyraider
This is kinda helpful, but it's only for tech-y cities and only for certain
skills, and only for startup-y jobs:
[https://angel.co/salaries](https://angel.co/salaries)

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xauronx
Cleveland isn't terrible. You could buy plenty of houses for $70-$90k which is
about the yearly salary for a great developer here. It seems like the tech
scene is coming up, but the salaries are lagging. Right out of school it's
hard to expect more than $40-$50k. Otherwise, the food scene is great and cost
of living is pretty low from my experiences.

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fastforward85
Nashville and Chattanooga. Jobs range from $50k-$125k and rent is from
$700-$1500/mo. Chattanooga is cheaper of the 2, but fewer jobs. Chattanooga
also has gigabit internet and is practically in the middle of Nashville and
Chattanooga. Great outdoor access for paddling, biking hiking and climbing.
Not sure why I haven't moved there yet!

~~~
nsmartt
Disclaimer: The following isn't accusatory in any way. "Genuinely curious", as
some are apt to say.

Can you explain why Chattanooga is more expensive?
[This]([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+chattano...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+chattanooga+and+nashville+and+buffalo))
says otherwise. I'm considering both (and a number of other cities), so I'd
really like to know.

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musgrove
Louisville has a very low cost of living and negligible commutes. Companies
around here are always looking for programmers, but I can't quote a salary
range, unfortunately. Lots of good companies, including Zappos and Amazon, in
the area.

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rayj
Seattle. Live out in the suburbs for like $500-600/mo for a room, and take an
express bus into town for work for cheap. There is no state income tax/weed is
legal(sorta)/gay marriage is legal/most guns are legal.

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alexdowad
Find your own (remote) freelance consulting jobs, live wherever you want. In
our industry, there's no reason why work and residence need to be coupled
together.

~~~
canadiancreed
There isn't, but it is quite strongly (looking for remote opportunities since
2009)

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BerislavLopac
This might help:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6275510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6275510)

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ronreiter
I think algo trading in New York is very profitable.

~~~
nilkn
It's probably mediocre compared to the cost of living in NYC, though. There
are far too many bankers and big firm attorneys there making $250k+, driving
up housing prices.

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LordHumungous
Seattle has a great combination of hot job market and affordable housing imo.
Don't know if it's the _best_ though.

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earless1
The Atlanta Metro area is a great place to be. cost of living is low and there
are many big companies located here.

~~~
abalashov
Speaking as an Atlanta resident of seven years, I'm not sure about that.
Atlanta is ultra-hyper-suburban and sprawling in ways arguably unmatched by
even Dallas-Ft. Worth and Los Angeles, although LA's traffic is worse. It is
right up there with Phoenix. Maybe if you want to live in a car (which,
incidentally, is quite cheap).

Midtown/downtown, where I live, are exceptions, but not so great ones--Atlanta
is still a fully car-oriented city. What's more, the centre is definitely not
where the corporate tech jobs are.

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volandovengo
Seattle.

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michaelochurch
You shouldn't focus only on "high coder salary" but also on quality of life.

Here are some that come to mind, in no particular order: Austin, Portland,
Boulder, Baltimore, Chicago, Durham.

~~~
VLM
There's a tradeoff between the two. If you want quality of life you'll be
infinitely better off in Madison WI or a suburb of Milwaukee WI than in
Chicago, both much less than 2 hrs away from Chicago for the occasional
business meeting or weekend getaway. Perhaps Minneapolis.

On the other hand if you're trying to pile up money to do "something" once the
pile reaches a certain size (take time off and go to Nepal, or perhaps do a
startup) you're probably better off with a much lower quality of life in
Chicago with correspondingly higher pay. Look out for taxes and AMT, a guy
making $50K/yr more than I do in Chc is only making $2K/month more after
taxes, but his cost of living an equivalent lifestyle would be far in excess
of $2K/mo more (probably more like $5K to $10K more, from what I've seen), on
the other hand if he's willing to live worse than a student, he could bank all
that extra money...

