Dear employers: it's expensive to live in the bay area. I think for many people, you can credibly claim sf is as or more expensive than manhattan (particularly once you nearly require a car per couple in order to live an adult life, go grocery shopping, travel to tahoe, go places on weekends, get to the gym in under 50 minutes each way, etc.)
Options are fine and all, but they pay neither rent to landlords nor mortgages to bankers.
If you don't keep your employees well paid, there will be people whispering in their ears offering another $10 or $20k.
The cost of owning a car is one reason why I picked NYC over SF, when I was lucky enough to be given the option. I prefer SF in many respects, but the fact is that in NYC I can get to anywhere of interest without a car. And in the Bay Area I cannot. I simply can't.
Really? I live in SF, with a car that I haven't touched in over a year. I mean that literally. Not for grocery runs, not for weekend trips, not for visits to friends' houses, not for drives to work. It sits in my garage, collecting dust.
For groceries, there's a Safeway two blocks from my place (and also Amazon Fresh or Google Express). For anything else, there's UberX, Lyft, bike, Caltrain, and BART. (MUNI is, well, ostensibly an option, but I'll leave it be and maintain my uneasy peace with its existence.)
There's no question that NYC has a much better, more extensive, and more connected subway system. No question whatsoever. But SF's isn't bad at all.
Granted, I am an LA native, so I am predisposed to think of the mere presence of some form of public transportation as magical.
While I do have a car, I've found that I have to go out of my way to find a reason to need it in SF. I live in the Inner Sunset next a grocery store and Golden Gate Park. The Muni is two blocks away and there's a bus stop outside. The car is reserved for weekend trips North, South or East. SF is also a pretty compact city, so UberX, etc... usually isn't that expensive if you're hanging out in a part of the city that makes public transit a hassle. All this being said, public transit definitely takes you more places in NYC.
Never been to NYC, but I think it's super easy to live and move in San Francisco without a car. Publics (MUNI, BART) are good, Caltrain takes you to south and when in areas inside the city where you can't get bus/bart, Uber and Lyft etc. are easy to use.
Not to mention that this is quite small city so even walking is not too big of a problem.
I really don't understand the MUNI hate people here seem to have.
MUNI covers most of the city, goes frequently and is inexpensive. I use buses everyday to commute and to get around the city and find them surprisingly good.
Slow, dirty, delays/missing busses, infrequent service where I live, did I mention slow?
I ride my bike as my primary way of getting around. It's way faster than taking the bus (MUNI average speed is something like 8 mph) and I can leave work after 7:30pm (the time of the last convenient bus).
but but but Steve Newcomb's post from the other day states "getting a full salary is generally not a good dependency - if it is, you've got bigger problems with that candidate."
sorry, had to. absolutely crazy that developers latch on to jobs where they are abused and overused for a mythical carrot.
Options are fine and all, but they pay neither rent to landlords nor mortgages to bankers.
If you don't keep your employees well paid, there will be people whispering in their ears offering another $10 or $20k.