DD moving to bay area

[Geoffrey Thomas]

(Apologies for the discussion of salary, but it's unavoidable for a proper 
reply.)

On Mon, 15 Jun 2015, Linux Top Gun wrote:

> Sky-high rents: agreed, SF and bay area rents are higher than LA or
> other parts of CA.  Sky-high rent doesn't put me off as long as there
> is a good prospect of a sky-high salary.
> 
> Who is really paying $4000/month for a 2-bed apartment in central SF?
> Are developers really paid enough to pay those rents?  Are these apartments
> only suitable for power couples where both partners are
> earning above-average incomes or people like doctors who have
> weekend/overtime pay?
> 
> I've lived in cheap cities and expensive cities and I've always found
> a developer salary (net of tax) that was at least three times the rent.
> Does this hold true in SF today?

In 2012, my straight-out-of-college offers in SFBA were all $95K, before 
negotiation, and without counting the Google offer that I didn't have the 
patience to wait for. I have heard rumors of good college grads being 
offered 2-3 times that amount. If you're working in the private sector as 
a software engineer/SRE/sysadmin, with experience, and you have an offer 
less than $100K, something is very wrong. (I did Debian 
packaging/debugging, which is a somewhat hard skillset to hire for, and 
got promoted up to $140K by a company that ultimately didn't have the 
money for it. So I imagine you can do better if you want to work at a 
better-funded company.)

So assuming a post-tax salary of at least $72K as a nice round number, 
one-third of the monthly salary comes out to $2K. You can definitely find 
housing in the city for less than that, e.g. you could get the $4K 2BR you 
mentioned and split it with a housemate. You probably won't be able to 
find 1BR housing for that price, though I bet there are studios. My 
friends who live with housemates pay, I believe, somewhere from 
$800-$1500/month. If you can bump your price range up a bit for a 1BR, 
$2500 is probably doable in good areas, which gets you a $90K post-tax 
salary, which isn't uncommon at all.

> If a short commute (using any means of transport, walking, car, bike, bus
> or train) is a primary concern for somebody, which locations are
> feasible?  Who thinks it is better to live and work downtown?  Are
> there other hotspots in the valley (or even further afield)
> where there are a range of job opportunities, shops, restaurants, other
> services and stuff all within 10-15 minutes of home?
> Or is this really impossible except for those people who already
> bought/rented a home in a desirable area when prices were lower?

In 2014 I lived in north Oakland, paying $1700/mo for a nice, 
new-construction 1BR. Part of why I moved there is that my employer opened 
an office in Emeryville, which was a short bike commute. But I could 
definitely find tons of shops, cafes, restaurants, groceries, and other 
businesses within a 15-minute walk or really a 5-minute bike ride, and 
given the geography and the lack of precipitation, biking is rarely a 
problem. The BART station was about that far away, at which point I could 
head into SF (with my bike) without too much difficulty. Berkeley was also 
an easy option, either by BART or bike. This area (sometimes called 
"NOBE", North Oakland/Berkeley/Emeryville) is getting increasingly 
popular, as is living in downtown Oakland close to BART, as a way to get 
larger or single-person apartments without the high rent. (Or houses, in 
fact, for some of my friends who have several years of savings.)

Downtown Palo Alto is also nice and very walkable. However, it's harder to 
get to SF from Palo Alto, so I'd advise against it unless your employer is 
in that area of the Bay and you're not optimizing for access to the city. 
BART runs much more regularly between Oakland and SF, and even the 
transbay buses are more frequent and faster.

-- 
Geoffrey Thomas
https://ldpreload.com
geofft at ldpreload.com