2017 State of Global Tech Salaries
This analysis may be reasonable as far as it goes, but it can still make financial sense for someone to live and work in the Bay Area. I recently took a new job near San Francisco paying ~$160k. Living cheaply, our actual consumption for my family of 3 is about ~50k a year. (Yes, this is possible -- and life can still be enjoyable if you like spending time in nature/other inexpensive activities.) After taxes, that leaves me $50-60k a year to invest/save for retirement.<p>Compare that with a salary of $105k in inexpensive Salt Lake City, which is where my second-choice offer was. After taxes and consumption for a similar lifestyle, I'd be saving somewhere around $30-40k/year, a substantial decrease. Not to mention the fact that if the startup that made that offer went under, it would be much harder to find another interesting job with similar compensation in Salt Lake than San Francisco.<p>I don't plan on living in the Bay Area long-term, but in the early stages of my career I can accumulate a lot more savings and also grow my skills faster by living here than probably anywhere else in the world.