
Cities with High Salary to Cost of Living Ratios for Software Developers - tgeo
http://tgeonetta.com/cost-of-living-vs-salary-best-cities-for-software-developers-and-engineers/
======
SwellJoe
I suspect the cost of living data for Austin trails reality by some
significant margin. The sources don't indicate the age of the data, but even
if it's only a couple of years old, it's going to be wrong by enough to be a
factor.

I have lived in Austin for a couple of years, and also lived here (and owned a
house here) about 8 years ago. The cost of homes here has gone up
_tremendously_ since then. I was shopping for a house a few months ago, and
was simply unable to buy one; those in my price range wouldn't accept my offer
because it wasn't an all-cash offer (despite being $5000 or more over the
asking price). Investors paying cash are buying aggressively here, driving up
prices. Rental rates have risen at an even faster pace.

Certainly, it's cheaper here than in Silicon Valley. Five years ago, I was
paying $2145 a month in rent for a house a couple of blocks from downtown
Mountain View. Today I'm paying $1690 a month for a house quite far outside of
downtown Austin and on the east side; renting in downtown is not an option,
even at $2000+ a month. Apartments are somewhat cheaper, and buying a house is
still notably cheaper than Silicon Valley, but the gap has been closing
rapidly.

In short, Austin has grown incredibly fast in recent years, and the real
estate market hasn't been able to absorb that growth in anything like a
reasonable manner. So much so that I'd be shocked if the graphs in this
article still reflect reality for Austin.

~~~
mark-ruwt
This is a common refrain, but one I consider misguided, having lived in Austin
since the first .com collapse.

While Yes, housing costs have moved up, others have remained flat (so
relatively compared to other cities, have moved down).

As silly as it sounds, my favorite metric is "Cost of Drinking". Find the
fancy cocktail bars in any city's downtown. In Austin, nothing on the menu is
above $12 at Midnight Cowboy or The Garage. Now compare that to the other
cities on this list.

~~~
adrianparsons
It's true that cocktails are extremely high quality in NY and generally the
same price as they are elsewhere.

That said, you can't get a $2 Shiner Bock here.

~~~
clavalle
Please tell me where to get a $2 Shiner.

~~~
jkestner
HEB.

More seriously, it takes a happy hour. Doc's takes half off all Texas beers.

------
nilkn
If more employers understood the value of distributed teams, this wouldn't
even need to be an issue. You could live exactly where you wanted to live.

Want a 700 sq ft studio in Manhattan for $3k/month? Great. Want a 2000 sq ft
ranch home next to a river out in the country with your own garden? Done. Want
to just save as much as you can, with a cheap apartment in a cheap town
outside a cheap city? You got it. Maybe you even want that $600k suburban
McMansion to raise your family in. That's not a problem either.

Most readers are probably going to prefer urban environments, but that's
because the demographic of software developers is somewhat self-selecting.
When it's nearly impossible to get a job as a developer _not_ in an urban
environment, people who don't like urban cities are going to self-select out
of the profession. The high achievers among them will instead choose to become
doctors, dentists, lawyers, etc. -- careers that aren't so location
restricted, despite ironically being far less amenable to remote work. I had
some _really_ smart and hard-working friends growing up, and all chose to go
into careers of that nature simply because they didn't want to be forced to
move to a big city.

~~~
gfodor
> If more employers understood the value of distributed teams, this wouldn't
> even need to be an issue.

If something like this seems obvious to you, and obviously a _lot_ of smart
people are acting in the opposite way, maybe you should re-consider your
assumptions.

In reality, online communication tools currently are a poor proxy for in-
person communication in many situations. Online tools do not pick up the array
of non-verbal cues humans make when talking to one another, are not
stereoscopic, do not allow freedom of motion, do not permit the collaborative
use of 3d space, etc. They are a piss poor real time communication medium
compared to an in-person conversation in a room with whiteboards. If you can
never actually have a face to face conversation with someone on your team,
there's an entire dimension to communication you are completely prevented from
ever experiencing with that person.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
I've worked remote for quite awhile now at a pretty broad range of companies.
For the jobs that have had remote teams and local offices I do agree that I'm
able to get a lot of communication done quickly when I visit the office.

However I find that the amount of "heads down" work I get done is greatly
diminished when I'm in an office. And, much worse, there's a lot of noise in
that added communication of being in the office. Remote teams, in my
experience, have dramatically less "office politics".

Office space is great for communicating "big ideas" but these aren't anywhere
near the bulk of communications being had. For most of the communications
needs of software remote works fine (in my experience better).

I work on a quite a few "big idea" projects and I've found the best solution
is to visit the office quarterly, get all the big idea brainstorming done,
then scurry off to my remote office where I'm not distracted by office
politics and can just get things done. A little face time goes a long way, and
annual, or semi-annual all hands meetups can do wonders at filling in the gaps
created on remote teams.

------
wallflower
I remember once meeting an old high school friend in NYC. He was hanging out
at one of those non-descript but unfathomably loud bars. Some of his coworkers
stopped by. The conversation switched to the car one of them had bought. A
Lexus SC430 convertible. He was complaining about how he never got to get out
of The City and drive it enough. They were all super-sharp CS graduates
working for one of the most successful hedge funds in the world.

My point with this story is that if you are making way above the median salary
in NYC ($200k+ range at the time, this was 10 years ago) - the world is just
different. You are making enough money to enjoy one of the top cities in the
world. With the $125k-$140k salaries some software developers report making,
they are barely getting to "enjoy" living in NYC. Finance has distorted the
baseline of what it means to be successful in NYC. I mean, my school friends'
coworkers were 2-3 yrs out of Harvard and talking about the travails of $80k
car ownership like it was an Accord.

Software salaries outside of Fintech and top-tier companies like Google and
Facebook and a handful of others in globally attractive cities are the
equivalent of middle class in the burbs. You're doing OK but you're not going
to be relatively 'really doing well'. In a city like NYC, there are more than
enough free events to overwhelm anyone. However, in San Jose, what do you do?
Hang out on the Palo Alto main drag?

Check out the size of the dogs being walked near Central Park. Where do these
people live?!

~~~
jasonwocky
> Check out the size of the dogs being walked near Central Park. Where do
> these people live?!

True, it's NYC is an expensive place to try and mix in all of the creature
comforts of suburban life. The big dog, the fancy car, lots of square footage
of living space. And to young kids, just out of college, who've never known
anything other than suburban living before moving to NYC, these may seem like
"baseline necessities" that you have to sacrifice in order to live here.

Once you accept that the baselines of city living are different from the
baselines of suburban life, things get a lot simpler (and cheaper).

If there are developers unable to "enjoy" living in NYC at a $125-$140k base
salary, then that's on them. Plenty of single people love life here on
salaries of $45-60k, and are even able to save money.

> Finance has distorted the baseline of what it means to be successful in NYC.

This is obviously only if you try to keep up with them and the other Joneses.
There are too many people here. Nobody notices if you don't have a dog, or a
car, or a big apartment.

I own a place in a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn, don't want for much, and
provide for my family all on a way less than Google/Finance salary. I think
that's a perfectly fine definition of success.

~~~
avn2109
>> "Plenty of single people love life here on salaries of $45-60k, and are
even able to save money."

Here's some anecdata: I lived _like a king_ on my $30,000 grad student stipend
for years in Manhattan. And maxed out my IRA every year at the same time. The
trick is just to get an apartment somewhere uncool, then you're rich.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Where in Manhattan did you live?

I'm going to guess Washington Heights.

~~~
avn2109
Yup, Hamilton Heights in fact. Price per square foot as a function of latitude
is a pretty flat curve for a long distance north of 125th, so there's no
reason to go into the extra deep boonies to save money. I was on 139th on the
West side.

------
eranation
Weirdly Atlanta is not on the list, but this is why I'm probably never moving
to SF. Yes, all the cool jobs are there, but for what price?

GA tech is releasing very high quality engineers and the startup scene here is
great (Mailchimp and many others), and you live in a frikin mansion 10 minutes
commute to work (if you live in Alpharetta). Tons of technical meetups and
both thriving startup scene and established enterprise presence.

West coast based companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon
et al keep trying to offer me jobs in SF like it's obvious that this is where
I would want to move, I really don't understand why they don't open offices in
Alpharetta. Dead cheap office space, great talent pool, and if you ask me -
awesome weather. and they will have to pay me 50% less than what they would in
SF, and I won't have to switch my 3,500 square feet house (which is 10-20
minute drive to a myriad of tech companies) with a 2 bedroom and an hour
commute to work

~~~
madcaptenor
_and you live in a frikin mansion 10 minutes commute to work (if you live in
Alpharetta)_

Yeah, but then you have to live in Alpharetta. Would be nice to see more jobs
ITP. I currently work for a large enterprise company, at an office in Roswell
(our office was moved here from Alpharetta a few months before I started) and
I see lots of people (including me) commuting up. I'm coming up 400 the whole
way so it's not too horrible. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the
people who have to use the east side of 285 (we have lots of people who live
in or near Decatur) work from home a lot. Still, it beats living in San
Francisco... I actually moved here from SF when my wife and I realized there
was no way we could afford to settle down there.

~~~
eranation
Alpharetta is great (if you are 35+ with kids)

Not so great if you are a young couple before having kids and want to have
some city action, I agree... I think that most ITP jobs are more tending
toward younger startups, Rails, Python etc. Alpharetta is much more enterprise
/ Java / .NET, funny how your tech stack needs to change dramatically based on
where you choose to live...

I actually think the cooler jobs are midtown ;)

------
jasonwocky
Decisions based on average (a/k/a "mean") salaries, however, are only relying
on a small part of the picture. Personally I'd like to see standard deviations
accounted for in here. I have the feeling that it is easier to make 1.5x to 2x
these "averages" in some cities than in others, especially for people with
experience.

~~~
jessedhillon
Agreed.

The other data I'd like to see is distribution of non-salaried incomes --
bonuses and equity. I have the feeling that SF and SV are the only places
where you have a realistic shot of working for a company for 4-6 years and
coming away a millionaire.

In other places, it'd be base salary, maybe a bonus, and that's it. For life.
And if you ever have ambitions to start your own startup, would you want to be
in Atlanta?

------
xacaxulu
This is something a lot of us have instinctively felt for a long time, hence
all job action in places like Austin, Denver, Raleigh, etc. And I've worked in
SF, Denver and Raleigh, NC enough to know the differences. If I can make 6
figures in both SF and Raleigh, the cost of living and quality of life are
insanely better in Raleigh. I own a condo, a car and have tons of
discretionary income. For the same type of work in the bay area, I'd have to
contend with ridiculous rents, ridiculous taxes, longish commutes and
increased expenses on food/misc items. These increases are not commensurate
with the increase in salary that usually goes along with moving to the bay
area. My actual income when adjusted for these factors is better than friends
who make ~200k in SF.

~~~
s73v3r
"If I can make 6 figures in both SF and Raleigh, the cost of living and
quality of life are insanely better in Raleigh."

The keyword is "if". Employers in places that say they're lower cost of living
are more reluctant to pay the high developer salaries that one gets elsewhere.

~~~
ild
Raleigh though is a still better deal (salary/COL) than say Portland or random
place in Midwest.

------
m0th87
I've lived in several of these cities briefly (Seattle, Austin), and a long-
term (Raleigh, NYC).

If you can put up with the car culture - which you have to if you want to live
outside of NYC or Chicago - Raleigh is a great city. Very low cost of living,
a burgeoning downtown night-life and cultural scene, and very warm, likable
people. Austin has a much better downtown, but I'd be concerned about traffic
moving there, which is not a problem (yet) for Raleigh.

~~~
tootie
I love how "put up with car culture" is a thing for our generation. Previous
generation it would be "put up with not being able to drive". I'm fighting a
losing battle against life in the suburbs but my one hope is that by the time
I give in, I can commute in a self-driving car.

~~~
johnward
That's only a thing for people who live in NYC, Chicago, and maybe the Bay.
The rest of us still need cars. I live pretty far away but my commute to
Pittsburgh is ~2 hours each way.

~~~
cozzyd
And Boston, Philly, and most of the rest of the world :)

~~~
wcummings
and DC.

------
tilly132
Except cities aren't really fungible. If you like big cities, then NYC may be
the best place to live regardless of salary. If you like the outdoors, then
maybe another city. If you are raising a family, then maybe you want to be in
a quieter area with good schools. If you want to be in a tech hub, then you
should be in Silicon Valley. And if you have a spouse, that is all adjusted by
their needs and the industry they work in.

On a software developer's salary, you'll get by regardless of what city you
live in, so you should be choosing the city which suits your personality and
your stage of life.

~~~
eitally
Cities aren't fungible, but on the other hand, it can pay benefits to live in
a city where there is a plethora of opportunities just in case you need to
find a new job.

~~~
timbuckley
Which, in this line of work, happens to be just about everywhere.

------
apaprocki
Anecdote: The "average" salary reported for New York is very close to the
entry-level starting salary for college graduates at most large (names you've
heard of) tech employers in NYC. Companies routinely check what each other are
doing and adjust entry-level pay packages yearly to compensate for
competition, inflation, demand, etc. which makes data from each successive
previous year not as relevant for someone interested in making a decision now.
I do not think it is hard to imagine that more senior employees that are
currently not interested in another job do not have any incentive to report
pay to these sites, particularly if their pay is higher than what the site is
reporting. (i.e. selection bias)

Related -- I believe the distinction between "engineer" vs "developer" being
discussed here lately is less relevant than people think. Many people choose
their own title when reporting information on sites used as sources in the
article and companies may choose to post job listings using a completely
different title. Even if the data could be traced back to an actual official
title at each company, a large well-paying (or low-paying) company in a
particular city could skew the entire number based upon whether they randomly
refer to their employees as developers, programmers, or engineers internally.
Similarly, a social trend to prefer "engineer" could skew all the anonymous
reporting on these sites but actually had no bearing whatsoever in how
salaries are determined. Given the noise in the data, I don't see how
distinctions can be drawn from the outside.

~~~
steve-howard
Agreed, the salaries on these sites are generally way lower than I expect. It
makes me wonder if my current job is paying above market (and thus moving to
another employer would be a significant pay cut) or if the data is really
really wrong.

------
s3nnyy
I think averaged adjustments for cost of living are senseless as this is quite
individual.

Let's take me as an example: I manage to live modestly but well on around 1000
CHF (1050 USD) in Zurich while making around 6400 CHF (6700 USD) in net-
salary. I am a junior software engineer hacking on Python in a SMB.

(Full disclosure: My company is hiring; feel free to reach out to me at
iwang{at}fastmail.net. Also, my experiences working in Switzerland can be
found here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT"
[http://goo.gl/EIX4UX](http://goo.gl/EIX4UX))

~~~
BSousa
But do you think you are the exception or the norm? I've looked into Zurich
real-estate last year and 1000CHF wouldn't even come close to the prices I saw
for a small 2br.

The idea of the average adjustments is to get a general idea of the cost of
living.

~~~
s3nnyy
I am an exception as I rent a room for 500 CHF (the norm is 750-1000 CHF).
Also, I pay 200 CHF for the cheapest insurance. Then, I budget about 300 CHF
to buy food.

If you insist on renting a nice 2bd aparment, you can do so for 2500 CHF in
Zurich-city. If you move just slightly out of town, prices drop. I live on the
southern end of town and my company is in the north. It takes me only 35 min
to go through the whole city (Zurich is rather small).

In my opinion, cost-of-living averages give a misleading idea because people
mentally give "cost of living" equal weight as to net-salary.

Although my life in Zurich costs more than my life in Munich, the ridiculous-
high salaries and excellent working-conditions (I pay only 16% as taxes) make
me feel that I win the lottery each and every month on pay-day. However, in
case of sickness I would probably take a day off work and go to Germany (45
min trip) to go to the doctor there as doctors in Zurich also earn double as
much.

~~~
illumin8
It's easy to say COL is innacurate if you're a single person willing to live a
frugal lifestyle. These are typically based on average family size, so in the
US, that's a family with 2.3 children. I'm not sure what the average family
size is in Switzerland.

My point being- I used to be able to save a tremendous amount of money;
something like 65% of my after tax income, when I was single. Now that I'm
married with two kids, I'm only able to save a much smaller 35%. I still live
frugally, however, when you have young kids going to school, it's no longer
possible to live like a monk. School is expensive, and kids are expensive to
raise.

Cost of living is a very valid metric. At a minimum, it reflects the local
property tax rates, which are basically the cost of schools and other
government services.

~~~
akgerber
Even so, the way a family with 2.3 children lives can differ significantly
between cities. A successful middle-class family with 2 children isn't
abnormal if they live in a 2-bedroom apartment in NYC, but they are well
outside the norm in most other cities.

------
sferik
I’m curious how Europe’s tech hubs (specifically London, Paris, and Berlin)
compare to U.S. cities.

I suspect Berlin would compare quite favorably, despite the relatively high
German tax rate. I moved there 18 months ago and currently pay €500 ($565) for
a one-bedroom apartment in a nice part of town (Prenzlauer Berg). In San
Francisco, I paid 5X that for a studio apartment in Hayes Valley.

~~~
kokey
I would say Berlin would look good, cost of living there is decent mainly due
to the reasonable rental costs and good transport, and the demand and job
mobility that has improved a lot there. Dublin also wouldn't rate too badly.
London would probably look more like New York.

~~~
ilghiro
I wouldn't be surprised if London came out bottom.

Anecdotally, salaries are lower and rent higher as compared with both NY and
San Francisco. Taxes are obviously higher as well.

~~~
notahacker
Glassdoor suggests "software developers" or "software engineers" in London
earn around $60k, which would put it far below the salaries listed here.

In the absence of the COL index for the UK we can use the "London living wage"
\- supposedly a baseline for a minimum acceptable standard of living[1] which
translates to £18k (a little under $30k). The tax paid on the amount earned in
excess of this living wage is around £7k (<$11k) That would leave around $19k
of savings or "discretionary spending", actually slightly better than NYC and
Portland despite the low salary, but based on what is almost certainly a much
less generous view of essential costs of living.

[1]Since it assumes dependents it's quite a generous _minimum_ standard;
indeed excluding tax payments from the equation I've never spent more than it
whilst living in London on substantially higher income. But it's also almost
certainly less generous than the COL assumptions for the US cities.

~~~
kokey
£18k/year in London, I suppose you didn't live alone, that's the only way to
make ends meet on that budget.

~~~
V-2
I did live in London on my own, on a budget tighter than that. Admittedly, a
few years ago

~~~
kokey
Interesting, average rent in London is around £1000/month, plus £44 council
tax (e.g. Wandsworth), plus monthly travelcard £120, gas and electricity £45,
broadband/phone £16, mobile phone £15. Leaves about £60/week for food,
clothes, etc. If you do manage to find a studio flat for £700/month then that
brings it up to £130/week, so you could actually go to a pub sometimes.

~~~
V-2
I'd pay 65 quid for a mothly bus pass (I didn't have to use subway on a
typical day), and the rent was £65 a week plus electricity (3rd zone just
outside of the 2nd, Streatham Hill) - for a bedsit, kind of a shithole, but
I've seen worse. It was around 2010.

------
totalrobe
Would be nice to see more SE cities in here like Atlanta, Miami/Ft Lauderdale,
Tampa/Orlando, Jacksonville, Charlotte, NOLA, etc..

 _edit_ the software market is pretty hot up in DC/North Virginia too

Salary/COL is typically high in the bigger SE metros from what I've observed
growing up in the region.

~~~
serve_yay
That's true, however DC & Northern VA specifically are actually pretty
expensive to live in. In fact, I would argue that they're not great places for
a lot of devs, because the cost of living is high but you also don't get much
in return for that COL - it's high because people in the region have basically
guaranteed jobs between all the gov't and contracting jobs. Plus, all that
gov't and contracting stuff is what the software jobs are. So sure, you can be
gainfully employed writing AbstractFactoryFactories in some gigantic
consulting firm.

But overall, you're really paying for the job security of people in very
different fields than you, and you will spend your off-hours surrounded by
lawyers and gov't employees. I don't recommend it, but YMMV of course.

~~~
totalrobe
Agreed on the COL in NOVA - I moved there recently from FL and regret it every
time I pay rent, and can't even wrap my head around house prices. That's why
I'm curious to see data from the Southeast and FL in particular.

Also in NOVA you're paying for some of the best public middle/high schools in
the country, which I don't care about yet but if I had kids would be something
to factor.

------
CmonDev
Suggested title change: "American Cities with ...". Not everyone lives in
Murica.

------
joshAg
Is that itemizing the CA taxes or just taking the standard deduction? The rule
of thumb in CA is if you make more than $100,000, your state taxes are larger
than the standard deduction.

~~~
tgeo
OP here. Good point, it is definitely using standard deduction.

~~~
joshAg
well, based on the ADP site, that's about a $3k difference in annual state tax
vs. standard deduction for CA, so I don't think that changes things too much,
but good to know for someone like me who's already here in san jose.

------
mattybrennan
When the final analysis results in 5-10k difference, I'm just going to live
where I want

------
pXMzR2A
This is happening more and more. WTF web devs?

Me: Where are the charts themselves?

Me: Oh, I'm using noscript.

Me: Displaying PNGs now requires javascript.

~~~
ph4
Sorry, the trivial amount of people using noscript is simply unimportant to
me.

~~~
vinceguidry
This attitude is, quite frankly, pathetic. People have no respect for their
craft.

~~~
serve_yay
On the contrary! We just conceive it differently than you :)

~~~
vinceguidry
Craft is not a personal conceit. You're thinking about art. And even then,
most arts have a craft. Knowing your craft usually makes you a better artist,
but is not strictly necessary.

------
collyw
Has anyone done something similar for Europe or other parts of the world?

~~~
ldng
Yeah, I'd love to see the said for London, Paris and say Brussels and Madrid.
I'm pretty sure we'd have surprises (or maybe not ...)

~~~
disputin
This doesn't have developer salaries, but might be of interest. Edit: Forgot
the link: [http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-
of-living/)

~~~
ldng
But precisely, that's the interesting part. For instance COL in Madrid and
Barcelona are similar yet salaries in Barcelona are lower. It's kind of the
point of the article, crossing COL data and salaries after taxes. COL alone in
itself gives a hint but it's not enough.

------
fndrplayer13
I still feel like Chicago developers miss out on being exposed to the culture
of SV or Seattle. I've worked and lived in Chicago all of my professional
career, and one of the intangible non-money aspects to this field to consider
is how you grow as an engineer. If you love writing software, this isn't a
very good place to work compared to SV/Seattle. There just isn't a very large
or strong culture of software development here like there is in those cities.
Also the tech scene here feels super small and tight knit. If you work for a
startup here its hard to interview or talk to people outside your company
without somebody knowing somebody from XYZ company who can get the inside digs
on you. That's been fine for me in my career, because I think I'm a decent
performer, but it makes things awkward when you want to move on.

~~~
ild
Agree. Chicago is a great city experience for affordable price, but nothing
compares to SV, even Seattle does not really match.

------
pavanred
One thing I have noticed during a recent job search - I used the cost of
living calculator from bankrate.com[1], relocation from city A to city B from
wolframalpha [2] and the salary information available on websites like
glassdoor, indeed and salary.com to get an estimate of a par salary at
different locations for a particular position. In these websites, I noticed
that indeed.com has extremely optimistic estimates of the salaries for most
positions when compared to glassdoor or salary.com, so much so that I stopped
using data from indeed.com e.g. here are the salaries for a software engineer
in Chicago, IL

\- glassdoor.com ( avg $74,426 ) [3]

\- salary.com ( median $62,257 ) [4]

\- indeed.com ( avg $114,000 ) [5]

Even when verified by converting the par salaries from 2 different locations
using bankrate or wolframalpha the indeed estimates were quite high. Since,
the author used data from glassdoor and indeed, I wonder how accurate the
analysis is considering the underlying data from indeed isn't necessarily
accurate.

[1] [http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-
of-l...](http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-
calculator.aspx)

[2]
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=relocating+from+seattle...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=relocating+from+seattle+to+miami+with+a+salary+of+$35000)

[3] [http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software-
engineer-...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software-engineer-
salary-SRCH_IL.0,7_IM167_KO8,25.htm)

[4] [http://www1.salary.com/IL/Chicago/Software-Developer-I-
salar...](http://www1.salary.com/IL/Chicago/Software-Developer-I-salary.html)

[5] [http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-
Chicago,-...](http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-
Chicago,-IL.html)

~~~
bradfa
There's probably a huge difference in salary ranges for someone with minimal
experience and someone with lots of experience, and this isn't even counting
if you're really good or just mediocre.

Personally, with 10 years of experience, if I was to move to Chicago right
now, I would expect to make more than $114k due to the highish cost of living.
There's no way in hell I'd move anywhere to make $74k, let alone $62k per
year.

------
forrestthewoods
Nice. A slightly more useful analysis would be for a fixed, user defined,
salary. Showing results for Glassdoor is pretty cool. But I don't care what
other people make. I care about what I make and what I think I can make in
particular cities. All the figures are pretty low for a senior engineer which
limits it's use.

Also, the chart that takes taxes into account is really cool. Super useful.
People who move from Seattle to California know that cost of living is a big
difference, but they don't properly account for state income tax! They often
try to, but get the math wrong.

------
kushti
Nice! Would like to see similar rating for Europe. From my experience, Prague
could be the leader.

~~~
afarrell
Is it possible for non-Europeans to get work visas in Prague? Last I checked,
they have out 3 visas a year or something.

~~~
kushti
In 2011 it was pretty easy for a Czech company to get business visas for its
workers.

------
smrtinsert
They should've added Washington DC and Boston to this list.

~~~
garyrule
I was surprised that Boston wasn't included.

~~~
ild
Boston wages appear too low: for 75% increase in COL than Chicago you have
almost no increase in salary - too many universities drive wages down.

------
davidw
Very nice work! I'd love to see it expanded and "opened up" in the form of a
Google Spreadsheet or something else where people can plug more cities into
it.

------
shanemhansen
Sadly there's no data for Utah. Salt Lake City has an amazing ratio between
software developer salaries and cost of living. 6 figure salaries are the norm
for non-junior developers. According to trulia, housing is about half the
price (450k vs 950k).

It's hardly a technical wasteland either, historically or economically. Utah
was the 3rd or 4th node on what became the internet. Alan Kay began research
on what he would later call "object oriented programming" at the University of
Utah.

In the startup world Utah is number 7 when it comes to venture funding
[http://siliconslopes.com/blog/2015/01/19/utah-ranks-7th-
nati...](http://siliconslopes.com/blog/2015/01/19/utah-ranks-7th-nationally-
in-vc-funding-for-2014/). Personally, I've spent time working for a google
venture funded Utah based startup.

I've had multiple offers to relocate to areas like Sydney, Las Vegas, Seattle
and they've never been able to beat Utah's salary to cost of living ratio.

Also, having the world's best snowboarding and mountain biking is a perk for
some of us.

Of course the one thing that beats working for a Utah company and living in
Utah is working remotely for Bay Area company and living in Utah. Win/Win.

------
WhitneyLand
For those that wish to own a home, make sure to consider property taxes.

Texas has no income tax but very high property taxes at ~3% per year of home
value. So a 350k house will add ~$900/month on top of a mortgage.

SV has a much lower rate but you'll probably pay more than Texas in absolute
terms because 350k houses do not exist there.

Colorado is a nice balance. Home prices in between SV and Texas, but one of
the lowest property tax rates in the country.

~~~
tomkinstinch
Homeowner's insurance is also to be considered as a non-negligible fraction of
the monthly cost of a house. When I bought a house in 2008 in upstate NY, I
was moderately surprised to see that with taxes and insurance my monthly
payment more than doubled from the amount I was to pay from mortgage alone
(granted this was at a time with a historically low interest rate).

~~~
steveax
Homeowner's insurance, or mortgage insurance? The former is cheap, the latter,
not so much.

------
Murkin
Can someone explain the numbers,

I see averages of $100K/year for developers and then keep hearing of
freelancers raking $150-$200/hour ($300K/year).

How can this be ?

~~~
PeterisP
As a freelancer, "hour worked" and "billable hour" are two very different
things. If you're billing $x/hour, then you're earning much less when you
count in all the hours that are work that's required for sustainable
freelancing but aren't billable - finding clients, negotiating with them,
making proposals for prospects that in the end don't become clients, handling
your business/taxes/legal/advertising/etc.

Taxes/etc are a different issue on top of that, but a freelancer should expect
to work many hours at a high rate, and many hours at the rate of $0/hour.

------
omegaham
Is this for the city proper, or does it take an average of the suburbs, too?

I live in a suburb of Portland, (Hillsboro) and I live a perfectly decent life
making about $44,000 a year before taxes. I'm also young and don't have kids,
but I would happily commute half an hour into Portland if I had a job in the
city. It's not that bad of a drive as long as it isn't during rush hour.

------
archagon
FYI, something about this page is bringing my iPhone 5S to a crawl. Safari
routinely stops responding for 10s at a time. Is it the graphs?

------
Iftheshoefits
Cost of Living is just one factor to consider, and everybody has different
priorities.

I discount the CoL "bonus" because of the generally poorer environment with
respect to culture, public institutions like libraries and parks, and
educational opportunities. I grew up and lived in the south for most of my
life. With precious few exceptions I found it to be mainly a canvas upon which
the bigoted (race, gender, sex orientation) and extreme anti-government types
painted most of the landscape. You could give me 100% of my current
salary/year tax-free in a high-yield/low-risk investment account and I
wouldn't move back to one of those places. I may have considered it before I
had kids, but not now.

~~~
mkr-hn
Metro Atlanta might not be representative, but things aren't too bad for me
here. I can get just about any book on the PINES system, and I find most books
I want in the local branch's ebook loan program. There are several decent
parks (Fort Yargo is the closest). Downtown Athens is a 30-40 minute drive if
I need a higher dose of culture.

Things used to be a lot worse, just ten years ago. Winder was a crumbling,
traffic-choked hole. It's less crumbly now, and the traffic situation is
improving. And the editor of the local paper didn't get run out of town when
he endorsed marriage equality, so there's that.

------
s3r3nity
Would love to see Boston, Boulder, and Los Angeles added to the list for
comparison

------
jkot
How about Chiang Mai or other city with large digital nomad community?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You won't be pulling in any local income in those cities (all work would be
remote, you would be dodging thai taxes on income taxed in a western country),
so it wouldn't be a very realistic comparison.

~~~
jkot
Not really:
[http://www.rd.go.th/publish/6045.0.html](http://www.rd.go.th/publish/6045.0.html)

Also there are many people who are permanent and pay Thai taxes.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes, but if your income is usa sourced but you are working in Chiangmai, both
the thai and U.S. governments have first dibs on taxes, there is no tax treaty
that can help you.

------
allochthon
The distinction between "software developer" and "software engineer" seems
like a spurious one. Almost invariably I've seen the two terms used as
synonyms.

~~~
_puk
The whole piece feels like a reference to [0]

Main comments on that one were the difference between software developer and
engineer's salary, but also requests for the real cost of living. This
addresses the latter.

0:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9096002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9096002)

------
thorntonbf
Selfishly, I'm glad to see that Nashville isn't on this list! Though I'd be
interested to see how it compares.

There seem to be a lot of cities that offer good talent with a great cost of
living - sort of cities poised for a breakout. I wonder what kind of critical
mass you have to have in other areas - i.e. concentration of tech talent,
infrastructure, educational resources, etc... to really be a great tech
community?

~~~
tsotha
There's definitely a network effect. And abundance of tech jobs draw in and
abundance of tech workers, which draws in companies (jobs) looking for
workers, which draws in workers looking for jobs...

That's why you see municipalities failing at becoming "the next Silicon
Valley" so often. It's not impossible for new tech hubs to form, but it's not
as easy as you'd think by looking at CoL.

------
baddox
It is nice a cost of living discussion that looks at total discretionary
earnings rather than useless metrics like percentage of income spent on
rent+food.

------
lexicalscope
I'm curious if the salaries include stocks and other compensation - my stocks
are a large portion of my compensation package, and I work for a major
company, not a startup. It makes me wonder if this might skew more in favor of
west coast, where (I think?) those compensation schemes are more common - as
where I'm at, those numbers all seem really low compared to what most people I
know make.

~~~
sgk284
There is a lot of selection bias in the type of people that post on those
sites. The salaries are almost always deflated. Software engineers making
$200k+ aren't posting on indeed.com.

~~~
dbenhur
> The salaries are almost always deflated.

Really? Last I looked self-reported numbers tend to be _inflated_ compared to
govt collected figures (from tax returns and payroll reports). My intuitive
understanding of this is that people being underpaid tend to not want to brag
about it, even anonymously.

~~~
johnward
I agree. The salaries seem inflated compared to talks with co-workers. If I
look within my own company and even within my own company+city+job title
Glassdoor is way to high. Honestly the most accurate numbers we get are
probably from the H1B visas because they are required to be reported by the
employer but I don't know how that correlates to pay of national citizens.

I guess the best way to know if you are underpaid is applying for other
positions and see what kind of offers you get.

------
johnward
How accurate is glassdoor? If I look at my city, for my position, inside my
own company it seems highly inaccurate. Either that or I'm paid half of what
everyone else makes, which seems unlikely. According to this site indeed seems
probably even more inflated.

Then I can't figure out what the incentive to inflate your salary would be
when reporting it to glassdoor unless companies are doing it themselves.

~~~
justinsteele
It's unlikely that it is inaccurate by that much. The company would not want
to show higher salaries either (resentment).

You are probably underpaid.

------
k3oni
I am a bit surprised to see the salaries for Denver. For anyone
leaving/working in Denver area is that on par with what you see?

For some reason i was expecting Denver to be a bit higher on that list in
terms of salaries.

------
crimsonalucard
Most of the cost is from rent or housing. If you lower that cost by living
more minimally, San Jose may still be the best place overall in terms of
discretionary spending.

~~~
briandear
You could say the same about Austin. If you lower you costs in housing, in
Texas you'd pay less in property taxes, so you save twice (more discretionary
plus a lower tax bill) In San Jose, it doesn't matter how cheaply you live,
your income is still taxed at the same rate and things still cost the same.
And the cheapest San Jose place would still be far more expensive than the
cheapest Austin place.

------
heydenberk
Would love to see Philadelphia included in such a calculation.

------
GnwbZHiU
what's the difference between engineer & developer ?

~~~
mathgeek
One's called an engineer, and the other is called a developer.

The difference is supposed to be that an engineer works more in the design of
software than the developer, who works more on the implementation. In reality,
the difference is rarely that concrete and generally the two are
interchangeable for many people in the middle of the overall bell curve.

------
nhstanley
What would "Extra Discretionary" look like for SF?

~~~
alandarev
Yes, I missed the SF entry too.. Though, it will very likely be on par with
NYC.

------
encoderer
I look at these numbers as curve-fitting. If you want to rationalize why you
stay in Austin or North Carolina or someplace, this is great data to do it
with.

------
stevebot
In Seattle, taking a 45 minute train ride can be the difference in 300K or
more for buying a house. I wonder if other cities are similar?

~~~
jdminhbg
So...

1.5 hrs/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks/year * $80/hr = $30,000/year. Obviously
those numbers are fudged in a bunch of places, but maybe it's not so crazy to
spend $300k extra to avoid the commute?

------
geogra4
A shame Detroit was not included. Salaries are similar to Chicago and CoL is
much lower, although probably not as low as Raleigh.

~~~
coldcode
I would think people would pay to get out of Detroit.

~~~
ctrager
I lived in Detroit until the mid 80's, now Chicago, but just went back for the
first time with a touristic mindset. I met software developers from New York,
Boston, and San Francisco who had moved TO Detroit and liked it. Detroit
overall is as horrible as the media says, but the central core, which includes
a big university, medical center, and downtown, is livable, bikable, and....
just cool.

~~~
geogra4
..And we have fiber[0]

0:[http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2015/02/22/dan-
gil...](http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2015/02/22/dan-gilbert-
rocket-fiber-internet/23838849/)

------
theRhino
an international version of this would be good

------
Navarr
I wish I could just plug cities into this thing and it spits out the same
data. Would be an incredibly useful tool

------
iopq
Looking at SF would be very interesting since being in the bay area I have the
choice of both SJ and SF

------
jimktrains2
No mention of Pittsburgh! We have a fairly low cost-of-living and decent
salaries for tech.

~~~
serve_yay
I'm from there originally, and I agree, but the weather really is a problem.
It's terrible. I live in Portland now, an area renowned for its gray rainy
days and lack of sunlight. And yet, it has been 50º-60º and sunny for nearly a
month now. Whenever I check Pittsburgh it's hovering around 0º. It's really a
shame because I love Pittsburgh.

~~~
akgerber
Pittsburgh's weather isn't that bad, having gone through 4 winters there in
college. This year has been an outlier, with the Western US generally
experiencing record heat and drought while the Eastern US has experienced
record cold:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/02/19/freezing_c...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/02/19/freezing_cold_temperatures_hit_record_lows_in_missouri_and_kentucky.html)
[http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-east-west-
weat...](http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-east-west-
weather-20150222-story.html)

------
hackerboos
Things like schools, healthcare, crimerates and public transport should be
added.

~~~
briandear
The original poster was addressing costs versus salary.

------
StudyAnimal
Be interesting to compare this to some Indian cities.

------
bbody
Very in depth, nice work OP!

~~~
tgeo
Thanks, I hope it helped.

------
imaginenore
Texas personal income tax is zero. That's a huge advantage. But then you have
to live in Texas.

~~~
tsotha
States have to collect taxes somehow, and though Texas doesn't have a personal
income tax, you pay through the nose in property taxes.

And parts of Texas are very nice.

------
michaelochurch
I would guess that New York is getting underrated, because in finance, once
you get a serious, adult job, you're usually called something other than
software engineer. "Vice President" is the typical title for someone of my age
(31) even if you're a full-time programmer with no reports. Only at Managing
Director (30-35 if you're lucky or good, 40-45 more typically) are you
culturally expected to start having reports. I've heard of full-time engineers
getting "Portfolio Manager", even if the job has little to do with managing a
portfolio.

So, I'd guess that there are a lot of high-paying full-time software jobs in
New York (and Chicago) where the title is something like "Vice President,
Technology" or "Quant Trader".

~~~
coned88
Nobody is getting VP titles and is still doing much programming. There would
be maybe one VP per dept.

