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The High Cost of Valley Living
Small Hairy Troll writes "An ZDTV article
(requires Realplayer, Media Player or Quicktime) on how insane housing prices in Silicon Valley have become. An income of $50,000 with a family of four qualifies for government assisted housing.
Ties somewhat into the earlier Slashdot thread 'Too Old To Code?':
What interesting times we live in.
"
$220K is not a range.
nt
Yup, if PHB's had their way, we would all be using punch-clocks. Of course, if we come up with a clever idea in our spare time, they claim they own it, too...
Outraged at subsidizing California? Get a real target. Here's some info:
San Jose (Silicon Valley) exports more goods than New York city or any other metropolitan area in US. California pays more in federal taxes than it receives in federal spending. I believe Kentucky and Viginia were the leaders in the "receiving more than they give" department.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
I agree, I also moved from Chicago to California, and the housing costs, well, you get used to them. The food isn't that bad, cost-wise. But the Gasoline is fucking absurd, and this is due to stupidly crafted (but well-meaning) environmental laws, that restricts where California can import Gasoline from. Gas dealers tend to take advantage of slightly moderate rises in price as oil fluctuates, and spike the prices mercilessly.
Also, cable is out of hand, but then again, that's the same all over.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You make one excellent point. I've lived in a few different neighborhoods at a few different income levels, and this isn't a "hang-the-rich" argument here, but it seems like the higher the average income, the LESS FRIENDLY the people are. In my old neighborhood, people were actual jerks, they wouldn't invite us over for parties, they wouldn't come to our parties. Moved to a more up-and-coming pre-boom-ish neighborhood, where housing prices still had a ways to go, and man, we've had parties every other week where everybody comes. Stuck-up jerks in the expensive neighborhood. I could have bought any one of their houses for cash, and they were still jerks.
Heh, and SV, everytime I'm up there, it's all anyone talks about, is how expensive the housing is, and how miserable the commutes are, and how it's impossible to find and retain good employees. When are these companies going to move out? Silly goofs.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
yeah, and you can ride your bike like what, 2 months out of the year in Chicago? (I'm talking June and September - the rest of the year it's either too hot or too cold or too rainy).
Now, I'm not talking recreational riding. Sure, get on your slicks, and hop some mud in the rain. But try biking to work in a suit and tie in August when it's 100 degrees, 99% humidity -it's just not a realistic option for most people. Maybe you don't have to wear a tie to your Baskin-Robbins job, (I don't to my computer job), but a lot of people, most people, still do.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Well, I'm not telling you where I live.
3000 sq. ft. house for $450k (not BAD, still pretty steep). California climate, Ten minutes to the ocean, twenty to halfway decent rock climbing or mountain biking. Fifteen minute drive to work through vineyards and horse pastures, almost no traffic, high-tech job @~$70k-ish (plus substantial, very substantial stock options).
Yes, nowhere NEAR a big city. No, I don't really miss the big-city culture. No, you are NOT welcome to move here.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Wow. What happened? When I moved to CA two years ago from Chicago, gas was $.20 higher in CA (avg), now I just filled up fo an outrageous $1.79 in CA, and Chicago is $.10 higher?
I'm telling you, housing is more expensive, income taxes are higher, but CA is WAY better than Chicago. (I'm liking the weather - the only thing I miss are occasional thunderstorms).
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Orlando:
Big city hassles without all the big city culture.
yeah, the weather's nice, but not in the Summer.
Do you enjoy fire-ants?
Termites?
Do you enjoy alligators?
Do you enjoy very large cockroaches that hit you up for protection money?
Now, in Orlando, you don't have nearly the redneck problem you'd have in Hotlanta. And again, you have a huge gap in property values. Housing is VERY expensive in areas where there are decent schools (for your kids. remember them?), and not only are the houses expensive, but you end up more often than not with high association fees for maintenance for the golf course you live on. If you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, too bad. And in the areas where housing is affordable, not only do the schools suck, but you're facing rather high-crime, so buying a cheap house and sending your kids to private school isn't a great plan either.
Plus, all the cultural richness that is Disney and disney's parasitic competitors (Universal Studios, etc.).
No thank you.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Homer Simpson, on Florida:
"but, that's America's wang!"
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Sounds all "conspiracy theory"-ish, I know, but if you've ever been to Phoenix, and driven around, and look at the subdivisions, the traffic hassles, the way everything's laid out, you'll see exactly what he's talking about.
The same exact situation dominates Orlando FL, and the Chicago IL (at least the western suburbs).
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Some do - I have two friends (that's it, no more :( :)
Anyway, one lives in Athens, GA, and the other lives in MiddleofNowhere, GA, and they both work for a company based out of NY with no local office (about.com I think).
for his own good.
;-)
>5000 sq ft is a grocery store (500 X 100).
Not quite, do the arithmetic!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
So true. A couple things, though... There was a shortage of housing under rent control, but it was a shortage of _expensive_ housing. Those poor, suffering highly paid professionals were unable to get into the Cambridge housing market under rent control because the market couldn't support luxury housing. The end of rent control suddenly changed a lot of run down units into high-rent living spaces.
We've also contended with the paradox that "creating jobs" in Cambridge has actually made us suffer. New office buildings and businesses have sprouted up creating hundreds, if not thousands of jobs. However, people seem to have forgotten that people who live in the city might want to work there, as well, and lack of new housing development while we've had lots of new office buildings has wreaked a lot of havoc.
However, generally, things are a bit more affordable here compared to Silicon Valley and San Francisco, unless you want to live alone. You can find living situations with a bunch of roommates in a somewhat dumpy apartment at reasonable prices (eg, $500/per person, per month).
Also, there are many affordable neighboring cities nearby, whereas in Silicon Valley, you can't find anything affordable for a 50 mile radius.
-Dean
> Either build a bunch of high rise apartments and other high density living and then add some decent public transportation or -- de-populate a little. :)
I remember hearing somewhere (think it was a tv show on TLC or Discovery about SV) that the height of buildings was restricted by earthquake related building codes...thus no highrises were permitted. True? Sort of true?
imabug
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Why not let market forces drive people elsewhere? Is a Democrat just a Republican who got stuck in traffic?
Back in the mid 19th century gold rush to California, some people were able to make quite a bit of money taking extra durable items with them to sell when they reached their destination.
It's said that, while the '49ers burnt their gold in gambling, whiskey and whores, the people getting rich was Levi Strauss and all the slick suppliers.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Ah, I used to live in Waltham. (before moving to the Left Coast)
;)
In the Boston area, Waltham, Watertown and with some luck West Newton are all pretty good, affordable places to live. Easy to get into the city, though parking is always an issue in Boston. Even when cars are obselete and everyone teleports to work, parking will _still_ be an issue in Boston, for some reason
Quincy is also pretty good, and somewhat easier to get onto the T at (Red line instead of Green line)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Meh.
I live in Seattle where the local government has an annoying-as-hell habit of investing in a mass transit system and then changing their minds at great expense and at the loss of actually getting anything.
We used to have a fairly good streetcar system back in the day (most cities did) but this was all torn out. They built a monorail that's perfectly viable but only goes 1 mile from point A to point B. They built a tunnel under the city with tracks for streetcars (something like what they use in Portland, OR I suspect) but which could also be used for buses. Now they're planning to tear that out and put in bigger tracks for a real subway light rail system, at the expense of running buses underground.
Right now everything is buses, which is not the best way to do it.
However, even though I live in the burbs (within the minimum safe distance from MS) and need a car to go grocery shopping or anything practical there, I take the bus in. Why? Because otherwise I'd spend $30 a week on gas, $50 a week on parking and it would not save me any time at all. People who work in cities *need* mass transit to get there and move around through the city. Burbs need less transit (since it's more likely people can reasonably use cars) but they still need enough for people who live there to go to/from the city.
Private vehicles are great - they just cost a hell of a lot when parking isn't free. I like spending less than $10 a week for my commute.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
19 of which are Indian resturants.
;)
Not that I'm knocking it, it's just a weird clustering. Of course, there's always the fun combination of the Outer Limits and Lizzy's.
The best, best kept secret in Boston is IMHO West Roxbury. Nice place, convenient to Dedham, Brookline, JP, 9, 1 and the rest of Boston. Driving 70mph on the VFW is fun too
(oh like who hasn't done that on Storrow? it's Boston, it's okay to drive like a maniac)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Brrrr... Miami.
Miami has always seemed to me to be the east coast version of LA. Other than a few nice parts (like Miami Beach) it's solid urban sprawl. The same two convenience stores, 4 apartment complexes, sex store, florist and strip mall are on every other block.
And the city government is corrupt as hell.
Of course, I'm from Tallahassee (not a high-tech center but if you're going to live in the South it's not bad) so I wouldn't mind dividing FL just north of Orlando.
If you want a big city in FL, Tampa/St. Pete is probably better.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Let me tell you, being an H1 worker is a walk in hell and for the employer is an headache after the other. Besides, if you don't have experience it's very unlikely that INS will approve your application. In my case, for example, I had to prove my work experience since I don't have a university diploma. When I moved to the states, 6 years ago, I already had 10 years of programming behind me in Assembly/C++ and DBMS. It took several months to convince INS of that. Months that the employer had to spend waiting instead of having somebody working on the code. This thing alone would make employment of foreigner extremely unappealing.
Many of my colleagues that came from Singapore, Germany, France, India etc. are some of the top minds in their field. The reality, and it's been all too eveident when I interviewed several local candidates, is that there's a shortage of people that have actual knowledge of high-tech topics and that are able to fit in a team and deliver a product out of the door.
--Paolo
I moved out here to Summit County, Colorado this past winter. This place makes Silicon Valley look like a housing mecca.
Don't get me wrong, the benefits are great. Within 10 minutes of my house are 4 world class ski resorts (Keystone, Copper, A Basin, Breck) and Vail, Beaver Creek, and Winter Park are about a half hour away.
But try to buy any property here and you'll find yourself staring at an unpayable mortgage. $250,000 might get you a two bedroom condo. (But don't forget the additional monthly condo fees.)
Now, keep in mind that Silicon Valley, Manhattan and all other wonderful high rent districts have actual jobs that pay beaucoup bucks. All we have here is a seasonal tourist industry that relies on skiing in the winter and golf in the summer. They just opened an Internet Cafe in Breckenridge, that's about it for high tech jobs. (I'd be shocked if I could find a Linux user up here.) I'd love to find a tech job, but I'll settle for my hourly wage at the ski resort.
That's the price I pay to ski a hundred some days of the year and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
----- obSig
Hidden away in the woods of deep East Texas lies the 24th and 63rd fastest growing tech cities in the country, Tyler and Longview.
;)
Just watch out for weaving chevys 'round Arnette..
Your Working Boy,
YWDMV
so what's your startup going to do?
Florida is probably the LASt place on Earth I'd live. Mumbai or Bangladesh is slightly more appealing. Hurricanes. Fires. Strip malls up the ass. Lots of bimbos with implants and bad American cars. LOTS of older people (who shouldn't be on the road, but they are...). I think the white trash ratio in Florida is higher than anywhere else.
One can only pray for a monstrous tsunami to wipe out that state.
You: Here the argument falls apart. Of course higher rents will make building (or otherwise make availabe) apartments more profitable.
You need to investigate rent control more (that's advice, not an accusation). Rent control normally only prevents rents from being raised on occupied units. Any newly built units can be rented at market rates. Thus, the financial incentive is still there.
Again, I assert that removing rent control won't build more apartments.
You critizise people who just assert that supply and demand mechanisms apply. And that's a valid point. But just asserting that they don't work is no better. I'd even say it's worse, since those basic economic laws do apply quite well in most situations. So the burden of proof would seem to be on those claiming that housing is an exception.
Read my last paragraph again. I'm not saying S&D never works, or even that it doesn't usually work. I'm saying that many times it doesn't, and that it's dangerous to ignore those cases. From observation and specific analysis, I've concluded that it doesn't work for the housing market. (By "doesn't work", I mean that it operates to the sum detriment of the population.) I think S&D breaks down for any human necessity in limited supply, like housing. In effect, property owners as a group are a broad oligopoly, having cornered the market on housing. I believe free market theory relies on the notion that you can produce something yourself if you don't like the existing producers, but you can't make more land. Also, you can't really choose to not buy housing, thus some free market principles are skewed.
Imagine someone or a group cornered the market on food, and on the production of food (let's pretend you can't even grow a vegetable garden). They could charge whatever they want, and would get a larger and larger percentage of everyone's income, and people's disposable income would approach subsistence level. Society would in effect turn back into a feudal system within a supposed free market. That is effectively what would happen in San Francisco without rent control; to some extent it's already happened.
People could move away, but then you have disintegration of communities, endlessly. And in 50 years, I'm not convinced people will have anywhere to move to.
Ultimately, I think we need to move toward home ownership for more people. The less that people own more properties than they need (i.e. landlords), the more affordable housing would be for everyone to buy. In the extreme, if no one owned more than their dwelling, then supply and demand would mean that everyone could afford housing for one, almost by definition. The least desirable houses would sell the cheapest to those who could afford the least, but everyone would end up with something (assuming there's roughly equal amounts of housing needed and housing available).
Silicon Valley has a dirty little secret.....People who are earning 80k/yr and are homeless because the price of housing is too high. Search the archives @ salon.com for the article. The alternative to being homeless is to move 2.5 hrs away. The last time I checked the median single family detached house price was almost $900,000 in the heart of the county.
the first question a recruiter or hr flack is going to ask you is "will you relocate?" - - -oh sure, 3000 miles across the country, my family and I, 30% pay increase, triple/quadruple the cost of living, 90+ minute drive each way. Labor shortage, my ass. They seem sincerely shocked when you tell them you won't move.
One of the diferences is the sharp drop off in cost as you move outside the city. if you are willing to live an hour away, it becomes much more reasonable. For example, i live in waltham (directly west of boston) it takes me 20 mins to drive to cambridge, or 30 mins to take the train to north station(a 10 min walk from where i work) I live in a 2 bedroom apartment, for which i am paying $1000/mo, split with my roomate. There are a huge number of jobs in the Waltham(rt 128) area, with reasonable living prices around them, and now tech firms are starting to spring up around rt 495, (30 or so miles outside of boston) with even cheeper living conditions. boston can expand outwards, and keep the cost of living resonable.
--David
System Administrator
MGH Biostatistics
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology
Yes, you heard it right.
Hidden away in the woods of deep East Texas lies the 24th and 63rd fastest growing tech cities in the country, Tyler and Longview.
Scoff if you will, but when you realized that you're making 60-70k a year in an area with a mean income of closer to 25k, you're living pretty nicely.
Couple this with the abundance of lakes in the area, cheap, CHEAP land, and even cheaper living expenses with access to Dallas, Houston, and Shreveport, you've got it made!
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
End result? Long commutes don't really add up.
--
You're still using Windows?
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
I agree about the taxes. All of San Jose's money goes in to the downtown area. They buy statues, build new city halls, and build parking garages that aren't used instead of running the light rail lines out to where people live. Remember the Pavillion... the shopping center created in downtown ... that nobody goes to and every shop runs out of business at. Horrid waste I say.
If you live in Silicon Valley this is far from news. I am serious... I have been reading these types of complaints for the past several years. Look at the editorial section of the Mercury News for the past year and you'll find that high house prices and age discrimination have been around for some time. This also means that the problems have been around long enough for nobody to care enough to do anything about them... what I mean is that nothing has changed since people started complaining about this.
Umm.. the only way you'd get cost of living to drop in Silicon Valley is to make more places like Silicon Alley. The reason it is so high is because people make much money from tech jobs... if you move the tech jobs away then prices will drop.
No. Light Rail doesnt work because it travels from one business area to another. It takes me 20 minutes to travel by car into downtown San Jose or 30 for Santa Clara, it would take double that to drive to a Light Rail station, get on the train, then after getting off walk to my job. The problem with the Light Rail is that it does not stop anywhere near my residential area, which is Los Gatos, where many of the the high priced houses are.
There _are_ high rises, just not that many for housing. Most of the high buildings are in downtown San Jose and go to companies like Adobe.
From the Evening Standard
-- need more time?
Ug. EDA is a tough nut to crack, and a hard industry to be profitable in. I deal with Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor all the time, and a bazillion startups. The startups are constantly rising and folding, but the big 3 never move.
Best of luck to you, but be careful!!!
That is truly bizarre.
:-)
To insure a MY2000 Integra (value ~$24k) with full comprehensive($100 ded)/collision ($500 ded)/liability (500k limits!) in California (Bay Area, with its supposedly very high insurance rates) is $950/yr.
Same params as you almost (25 yr old male, 0 accidents, 0 convictions, 0 DUI, no claims). The cars would be about the same value, I think (used Accord vs new Integra), and I have outrageously high limits and low deductibles.
I suggest maybe that your insurance company is not exactly doing right by you. FYI I use 21st century insurance, which I think only does california and AZ policies at the moment, but has (some) discounts for engineers, teachers, etc...
I used to have state farm and it was at least 2x the cost (though I was also younger and probably more expensive to insure). Maybe that is what you are running into.
So I always wonder about the gas price problem when people yell about it. I think it's some sort of purely psychological thing:
/day)
I drive a small, sporty car (integra aka honda civic) like a f@#$%ing maniac, so I get about 22-24mpg, depending on city/fwy mix. I normally fill up 10-11/gal once/week to once/6 days. so let's take the worst case that I am buying 11 gal every 6 days to go 11*22=242 miles. That means I will go 242*365/6 = 14.2k miles/year. I think that is just slightly below average (15k/year?).
To do that I will need to buy 11/6*365=669 gallons of gas in a year. Since I need to buy 92-octane in the bay area I am paying about 2.05 at choose-any-chevron in mountain view (dead-center SV):
2.05 * 669 = $1372
If it was 1.75,
1.75 * 669 = $1170 (save $200/yr = 55 cents/day)
and if it was 1.45,
1.45 * 669 = $970 (save $400/yr = 1.10
And at 2.05 I am certainly on the high end of gas prices (yes there are higher like sand hill road shell, and just-off-101 in SF, but those are location-related prices). And this is for 92 octane. 87 octane you everything will fall 20-30 cents/gal, so as a percentage the amount saved will be even smaller.
So, when you are making $70k (or more), can you honestly tell me that the ~1 dollar/day difference that it would make is "fucking absurd"? The only people that are being killed by the gas prices are the service-industry people who live here, for whom that $1/day is a big deal.
Santa Clara thought that they could put in a light rail system without mandating the land use changes necessary to go with it.
The rail lines primarily wander through low density industrial and residential areas. They terminate in a very sleepy downtown (despite the hot real estate everywhere else). Meanwhile, San Jose is approving huge office complex developments that are not on the rail line. Their rail system doesn't connect with BART or CalTrain.
So, yes, it's a boondogle that was put in politically as part of freeway expansion deal. Well, Santa Clara's freeways are at 100% capacity, and there is no expansion or improvements that are going to solve that problem. The fact that it can take 90 minutes to drive from one side of San Jose to the other and that is still more convienent than taking the train is pretty sad.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
An other effect is that higher rents will make more people share apartments
One thing that's happened in San Francisco is that not only have the rents been going way up, the lease conditions have been greatly tightened. Six years ago, I lived in a place with between 3 and 6 other roommates (varying), a dog, with only a verbal lease between the landlord and one of the roommates, and only a $500 deposit.
Nowdays, it's virtually universal that all residents have to be on the lease, the deposits are very high (up to 2x a months rent), there are credit checks up the wazoo, and of course no pets.
So, there's lots of ancedotal evidence that the population density has actually decreased in the last couple years. I can count several roommate houses that have been replaced by a nice professional couple or a couple well-off young computer guys.
As far as "supply and demand", rent control does not except the housing market. It only postpones or accelerates the supply and demand mechinisms. Where the average rent of a 1-bedroom in SF might be $800, when one opens up, the landlord feels he has to charge $1500, because he might not be able to raise the rent again for many years. Meanwhile, others are paying $300 for the same apartment.
People adjust to how the market works (in SF, that means don't move if you can help it). When these mechinisms get changed, the 'supply & demand' equalibrium gets thrown into a turmoil. Obviously, when the listing prices for housing is going up 30% a year, people with apartments are holding on to Rent Control as the only way they can stay in they place they want to.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Sure, housing is overinflated here, but it's not all that bad. I just recently moved here, and although my housing costs are being taken care of for a while(most people need help to move to the bay area and get started), i've seen the costs of housing and other things, and it's all definitely doable. Where I live food is normally priced, most things seem to be - what's expensive is: taxes, and by extension alcohol, tobacco, gasoline, property, etc. That's what nails most people. Hovever, even though things are expensive, it's completely worth it to live here. I live pretty close to Santa Cruz right now, off in the forests to the northeast, and I have to say that it's wonderful out here. The weather and scenery are absolutely wonderful, there's lots to do, there's good jobs for people who know their shit, and a lot of very cool people. I'd rather live here in a normal house than a mansion in indiana.
-lx
May 28 Sunday NY Times Magazine had an / 20000528mag-immigrant.html> article </A> (free; registration required) by a guy who returned to his boyhood in Cupertino. He found an investor had converted it into a nine-room boarding house by subdividing the larger rooms. All were 20-something Mandarin speaking H-1B'ers; some engineers, some venture capitalist wanabees. Sounds like MicroSerfs on steroids.
"Big" and "Small" are relative to the area in which you live.
Here in suburban Virginia, 1500 sq ft would be considered tiny. Of course land is cheap and so is the cost of building a house. My custom-built 4br colonial is 3400 sq ft. If I finished the full basement (which I plan to do someday) it would be about 5000 sq. ft. I'm on a densely wooded acre of land. And this is a typical house in my neighborhood. Not to mention probably under the cost of a tiny entry-level fixer-upper in the Valley.
I'm originally from the Valley (most of my family is still there) but I'll never go back!
bp
You guys are scaring me. I'm set to move to Charlotte (unfashionable end of the state). We got a nice, even though I haven't seen it with my eyes, I've been told, 2 bedroom house with a good sized yard for $128k. I've seen nothing but good opportunities in the area also, although the boom is definitely on. There seems to be more "obvious" money there (lambourghinis/$5M houses) than there are up here in Southern NH/Sili-Alley. At least it's a NICE state, like NH, not like a taco bell across the street and 3Com plant on the next block.
I like music
1) It really is a nice place to live. Awsome weather. Lots to do. Reasonably intelegent society. (yes, there are boneheads here but the density is much lower than other places I've lived) It won't suit everybody but a lot of people really do like it here.
2) A hot job market means the next job is right next door to the last job. If your startup company bites the dust, it's not a catastrophy. The next one is well within commute range. If you lose your job in Podunk, what are you going to do? And where do you think companies located in Podunk go recruting? SV.
Well, they're not gasping actually. They're just not terribly impressed. In fact, for the Osaka area, where I live, SV IS relatively expensive (although houses and apartments and yards are smaller here, the cost for typical accommodation is about the same, or lower).
...really big high tech centres such as Toronto and Ottawa in Ontario, Canada.
Perhaps I am in the minority here, but as a recently transplanted Canadian (a reluctant member of the 'Brain Drain') I'd just like to point out that the motivation can be something other than money.
I love Canada. I hope I can return to Canada at some point. Unfortunately, when I looked for jobs in the area I wished to work (bioinformatics), there just weren't many jobs! (I found *one* advertised bioinformatics job in several months of searching Canadian job listings.) In the US, however, I found pages and pages of jobs. I'm not sure if this is similar in other high-tech fields, but I'd guess that in general there would be more choice in the US.
It was a very difficult decision, but I am hoping that in time I will have more valuable experience in this area, and there may be more opportunities in Canada.
Of course, had I been looking at a job in Silicon Valley, salary *would* have been an issue, given the outrageous cost of living there. That wasn't the case, and a big salary was not high on my list of priorities.
Y.S.
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Yeah, a lady at my son's daycare said she moved to Cary in 1990 (the same year I started at NCSU). When she moved there, the population was around 17k. Last I heard, it was between 80-90k. That's in 10 years.
Scary thing is that Apex is currently around 15k... wonder if the same thing will happen there this decade? I hope not. I have my eyes on a couple of nice houses out in that area!
BTW, what do you think of that new stop light that Cisco paid to have installed on Davis? I stopped driving that way because of it...
Eric
Um, Rockville, MD is already overcrowded. I used to live around there. In 1991, you could pretty quickly zip up Rockville Pike from the Beltway to White Flint Mall (maybe 3 miles, total). The last time I was in the area (six months ago), it took at least 10 minutes. The pike was jam-packed.
The same is true for virtually everything near the DC Beltway. Housing prices are about as bad as they are in Sonoma County (about 50 miles north of San Francisco). Traffic is just as bad. Unlike Northern California, bad weather (snow and ice in the winter, torrential rains in the summer) make driving conditions worse. The cost of living is virtually the same. Rockville is NOT an improvement on the Valley.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
hehe... Yeah, we have the same problem in Portland, OR... Every time I see a car with California plates, and an Oregon temp tag, I make sure to cut them off, flip them off, or do something otherwise nasty to them... I figure if they think the locals are rude, they'll move away!
To quote former Oregon governor Tom McCall, "Thank you for visiting Oregon. Now leave."
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
a) If you want to be perceived as a hot mover and shaker, you have to live in California
(Note: Real movers and shakers can live anywhere they want
The real movers and shakers in California are the earthquakes. Or maybe I'm just jealous since I live in New Jersey
David
Salaries are similarly inflated compared with the rest of the country, skills shortages are rampant as are places to live. Rent for a 2/3-bed house will run to about 600-700UKP per month, plus bills. A nice 1/2-bed apartment is about the same and a nice house will cost you 1000UKP plus. House prices are have risen about 30% in the 3 years I've been living here and a reasonable 2/3-bed house in a nice part of town will set you back 130000UKP+.
Now I've a achieved a reasonably competitive Silicon Corridor salary, I'm tempted to move back to my hometown where house prices are about 50% of what they are here; but the jobs aren't as interesting and besides, all my friends are /here/ now...
I recently read that to qualify for the loan on a simple one bedroom bungalow in San Francisco, you had to make a minimum of $160,000 per annum.
:-)
Must be the rent control.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
Also, although the housing market in the East Bay isn't as bad as in Silicon Valley, it is getting increasingly expensive. For reference, the rent for my fairly nice one bedroom apt. in El Cerrito was $650/mo when I moved in three years ago. That was a little below market value at the time. Now my rent is going up to $990/mo, which is right about current market value. And if you want to live in Berkeley, places are even harder to find and more expensive. If you're looking to buy, you're going to be in the same boat. The couple that lives next door to me have been looking to buy for at least a year now and haven't found anything that is decent and cheap enough for them. They both have good paying jobs, so it's not like they are scraping to get by either.
I'm hoping that the downturn in home sales that Bruce referred to elsewhere will cool off the market a little bit. If it doesn't, I wouldn't be surprised to see the housing market here rivaling the one in Silicon Valley in a few years.
yeah, on the major interstate i travel on daily i average about 30-40 MPH, but when i get off onto the back roads (super-secret shortcut) I can get well over the 45mph speed limit, usually cruising around 60mph...
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
no need to worry. if Charlotte is anything like RTP, there are tons and tons of suburbs around to sprawl out into. the growing congestion and over-development here is ugly and annoying, but it's still very livable.
my commute is 35 minutes (22 miles) and i have a decent house in a nice neighborhood on the far side of Raleigh (from RTP). i could have moved closer, if i wanted to spend $50K more in Cary.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
If it is true the gov't is helping to pay for the expensive housing due their high cost, then the gov't is part of the problem! If noone can afford to move to SV, the value of the houses will come down. However, if the gov't continues to assist lower income (and 50$ is by no means lower income in my books!) then the people who are selling homes shall continue to reap great rewards at tax payers expense.
quack
there's a statute like that here in Northern Colorado. You can't build buildings over three stories. The only one I've seen built taller than that since I've been here is the courthouse across the street...right between us and the mountains. :(
--
+&x
Just taking a stab here, but consider farms. That's a very large amount of land for a very few amount of people.
And if you think about it, this is How Levi's came to be. Levi Straus figured out that the way to make real money wasn't to pan for gold, but to sell goods to the guys panning for gold
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I'm lucky.
I'm a free-lance tech writer living in Oregon. My primary contracts are with a major publishing house in Michigan, so I don't have to do meetings except over the telephone and am able to work out of my home office.
OTOH, if it weren't for the wife and her medical benefits, I'd be SOL.
Yup - When I graduated from college, I took a job in Rochester, MN for about the same salary as jobs in/around NYC were offering me (no desire to be on the left coast at all). Less than a year after graduation, I own a 4 bedroom, ~1800sq ft home. Very happy - nice easy payments. In fact, it was about the same price per month as my apartment... not bad...
Now I can live well, and eat well. Mmmm... steak...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I'll pile on with another "me too" about Cleveland. It's cheap to live here and the perks are pretty good.
I wrote an article about it a few weeks ago.
It's the property taxes that will kill you.
What you paid for the land and the house hasen't changed but the value has. The more value the land has the higher the tax.
-- This space intentionally left blank.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
I recently saw a Linux job offer for Estonia.
While working in the East Bay is great, living in the East Bay isn't a bad idea either. The rent is a lot cheaper. The weather is hotter (this might be a bad thing depending on how you look at it). The freeways are wider and more numerous than the conjested, small Peninsula freeways. I really don't understand why more companies don't move to the East Bay. It's silly to start you're business in a place that cost's 2x as much and is impossible to get to like San Jose.
;)
This is the best expaination of Phoenix land use I have ever seen. I dont think that fact that there is no centralized down town helps the mass-transit proposals out one bit either. too bad though, it would be nice.
Products like Meeting Maker make scheduling meetings where I work wonderfully easy. Of course after a while there is no casual office drop bys, you just have 4 to 5 weekly meetings every day. Nothing is accomplished at the meetings except to say that a meeting was held (meetings count as work dont they :) Oh well, hopefully as consumers become more empowered more business will fail because they suck instead of just passing the cost of ineffiency.
Thats me... I work in San Jose but lives 110 miles north in Sonoma County. Takes me just under 2 hours to get to work and about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours going home... This works for a short time but doing it for almost a year takes its toll.
I live down in SV for a while although I hated it. People are rude.. the drivers really suck.. to go out you have to constantly "fight" people. Next position I take will most likely be somewhere outside this area.
> How many thousands of acres of top quality land in the Valley is tied up in freeways and roads?
One answer is "not nearly enough".
Don't confuse SV with LA. The powers here don't like automobiles, and won't build roads (or in SF, even parking). Instead they spend zillions on light rail etc that nobody ever uses.
Now, you are also right in a fashion.
The real and only traffic solution is to start charging for using the roads. That is, charging money for each time you drive on a road.
Right now it is completely free to drive on roads, a limited resource. As we know very well from all other areas in life, anything that is given away for free is overconsumed. Price is the only mechanism that can make supply and demand meet. As long as it is not used, traffic problems will continue.
I know that we pay for roads through several taxes. That is not the point. These taxes hit everybody driving on any road at any time and any place. For these taxes to clear up rush our, they would have to pretty much close down traffic in the rest of California. I'm talking about things like having one price at 9am and a much lower at 4am. It might cost $10 to cross the Bay Bridge at rush hour, but most rural roads would do fine with a few cents a day.
It's just normal capitalism. Why not give it a chance?
Regarding the other major SV problem, all I have to say is LEGALIZE HOUSING!!!
My comments...
1. I think you're right to some extent, but it's a problem that can be dealt with. It's not any worse than other fee-for-service operations run by governments. Ideally, the roads would be privately owned.
I would be happy to pay more if I could drive at full speed.
2. There is technology already in operation that allows metering a car in traffic without even having it slow down. Each car needs to install a gizmo for that to work.
3. Ideally all roads would be tolled.
> Landlords will demand whatever they can get.
Yes.
> Removing rent control won't build more apartments,
Here the argument falls apart. Of course higher rents will make building (or otherwise make availabe) apartments more profitable. Since we seem to agree that landlords are driven by profit, this should not be controversial.
An other effect is that higher rents will make more people share apartments, thus housing more people even if not a single new apartment is built.
The rest of the argument rests on this faulty premise, and can thus be dismissed.
You critizise people who just assert that supply and demand mechanisms apply. And that's a valid point. But just asserting that they don't work is no better. I'd even say it's worse, since those basic economic laws do apply quite well in most situations. So the burden of proof would seem to be on those claiming that housing is an exception.
I just moved to San Francisco (okay, not the valley, but all the same cost-of-living issues) from Orlando, FL.
Now, Florida is supposed to have one of the lowest costs of living, no state income tax, and all the nice things that draws old people. Well, there's a certian mythology to the low Florida COL as well... just wait till you get your first July power bill, whwn you've been running your AC all month.
That said, in the two months I've lived in SF, I've noticed only two things that are appreciably more expensive than in Florida: Housing and Gas.
I'll start with gas. It's much less of an issue than you'd think. Fact is, for all the bad rep it gets, MUNI (SF public transit busses/subways) is quite reliable and timely. Only on the weekends have I ever had to wait an excessive (IMO) amount of time. The Van Ness/Mission/SOMA/Haight corridors that get the the majority of the techie commute are all served by multiple lines of both busses and, except for Van Ness, LRVs. Sure, if you decide to live in the scummy areas like hunters point, MUNI is gonna suck. But if you live anywhere liveable, MUNI or BART will get you there. And you can buy a monthly pass for MUNI for only $35. Sure, gas is expensive. But since my arrival, I've only had to drive when I've left the city on a weekend. I've used only a tiny fraction of the gas I would've used in this time, were I still in Orlando (whose public transit sucks to the point where it may as well be nonexistant).
Housing... That's the tricky bit. Yes it's a lot more expensive here. I'm paying more for a smaller place than I was in Fl. But, from what I gather, $900 for a one bedroom flat in Bernal Heights with all utilities except DSL included is pretty good. And ya know how that happened? (buzzword bingo time) NETWORKING!!! (the social kind, not the data kind) Yes, if you take the first apartment you see in the classifieds or on the net, you're gonna get fleeced. But if you talk to people, talk to your co-workers, get in on shared rentals or TICs, you can find a good place for a good price. It can be done, you just gotta do it, and bw willing to break out of your internet/classifieds shell and TALK TO PEOPLE!
Net result?
Even with these "horribly" high costs of living, a salary only 25% (gross) higher than what I was making in Orlando, is leaving me with TWICE as much disposable income (after rent/car/student loans/etc) as before. Oh, and that's also AFTER taking into account the highet taxes as well.
john
Imagine all the people...
>your neighbors want (maybe) the service without
>1) paying for it in taxes
California, and the bay area in particular, is ALREADY one of the most heavily taxed areas in the country, with perhaps only NYC and Boston being more heavily taxed.
The problem is not that we're not paying enough taxes... we're paying too much as it is. The problem is that the tax dollars we pay are wasted on useless crap that doesn't benefit us, or are, in some cases, even diverted out of the local community!
>and 2) living near the lines.
Well, they could do it like BART, and build the majority undergound. An underground BART line is no bother to live near, and, if placed properly, wouldn't even require a unsightly parking lot. Witness the downtown Berkeley BART station for example.
john
Imagine all the people...
The Berkeley area (Albany/Berkeley/Oakland) has a ton of different neighborhoods, so we can't tell you exactly where to live.
It sounds like Bruce lives in the Berkeley Hills, which is a little too fancy and isolated for my tastes. The hills are not near Bart, and the houses up there are much more expensive then in many more neighborhoods (I'm looking to buy now, and I can't find a nice house in the Berkeley Hills for under $500K. The foothills are getting pretty expensive too).
I much more prefer the foothills or the flatlands of Albany/Berkeley/Oakland. The nicer shopping districts (Downtown, Solano Avenue, 4th Street, Shattuck, and numerous others) are all in the foothills or the flatlands.
If you are new to the East Bay area, you should rent for a few months and get to know the neighborhoods before you try to buy a house.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
In the US more than 95% of the privately held land is owned by only 3% of the population.
This sounds like bullshit to me. Where do you get that statistic.
I got it from http://www.henrygeorge.org. I was rather surprised and a little sceptical when I first saw it but as I read and learn more it does seem to be (frightenly) true. I'd be interested in any information that anyone has that counters this.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
This is bullshit. Santa Clara county already wasted money on the boondoggle of light rail, to no avail.
Face it; people want private vehicles because they are more practical than mass transit.
But the fascists keep pushing it anyhow. Ugh.
If the life style I experienced in Phoenix, Arizona and LA, California are what you are refering to by "more practical than mass transit" then you can have it. I don't love my auto so much that I want to spend multiple hours a day admiring my dash board whilst burning gasoline (that will steadily get more expensive as the middle east production passes its peak) and traveling at an average of 10 miles an hour.
So I found a high tech job paying similar to what I'd get in Silicon Valley where I have a $180k house on 14 acres with a 15 minute comute and no stop lights. Sailing, hiking, yada, yada, yada - lots to do for the outdoorsy types. Nice city within 20 minutes with all the cultural amentities. Won't catch me back in Phoenix.
When in Oregon and Arizona I remember hearing the term "Californication" - where Californians where moving in and pushing prices up and lowering quality of life. Good word.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
Most of the posts on this thread so far are very valid. I can understand most peoples' sentiment about living in other areas to come out ahead in the long run, but I as a Canadian have a different reason why I wouldn't work in SV.
It's a little thing called 'Brain Drain.' Unfortunately too many Canadians already head south in search of the (admittedly) bigger money. I'm not anti-American or anything, but I also believe in supporting my own country. That's why I'm willing to work for less money. I want to help make Canada an even better place to live.
Maybe this is part of the reason that I enjoy OSS as well...I put my principles ahead of my bank account!
Just my thoughts...
-Ben
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
VLSI CAD software
So I'm doing the only thing I can - last week I quit - today I'm filing incorporation papers on my very own baby linux-based startup - hey you only live once :-)
http://www.mo vingcenter.com/mc.dll?page=salarycalculator&partne r=apts
You can also get to the site by going to apartments.com and clicking on the "salary calculator" link on the left hand menu bar.
Jesus christ, that's just DIRT-CHEAP.
I live in Warsaw, Poland. The average sallary here is aprox. $550-600US/month. Rent (many people own) for a 2 bedroom apt. on the outskirts of the city is about $300/month. A bit closer to the city center you get prices ~$450-550. This is for a 2 room, 50sq m. apt. I managed to find a 'cheap' apt. for $400 (I make about 3x the national avg) in the city center but I ran out of there 4 months later after I decided I couldn't handle the *rats* anymore.
And you're going to be renting a HOUSE for $400?
Jay
-- polish ccs mirror
Pointy Haired Bosses
Manhattan is a tiny part of the greater NYC metro area.
There are pockets of Silicon Valley - like Palo Alto or Atherton - that are probably quite a bit more expensive than Manhattan. Half a million is the average home price *for the whole region*.
And renting individual rooms sound pretty good after you hear about the cases of 2 or 3 families - upwards of 15 or 16 people - sharing one 2 bedroom apartment in Silicon Valley.
Yeah this place is nirvanna - expensive, crowded, polluted, devoid of culture. No wonder I'm leaving.
The cost of housing in high tech centers like Silicon Valley is what is keeping me away. I talk to some companies who sound like they are offering a pile of money and benefits, but if you look at the actual cost of living even though I am making more, I end up with less.
What places like that need is some planning. A spot like Boston where I can live a very short commute away (15-20 minutes) but live for a reasonable cost is somewhere that more Hi-Tech companies should be looking at.
If the cost of living out there doesn't get better we'll just get more places like Silicon Alley popping up. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
forgey
I used to live there and left, in large part because of the housing prices. The Valley has a lot going for it, which some might argue justifies the housing prices, but don't try to deny that they're high.
Joe Ganley
Joe Ganley
Christ...I'd almost kill for $1.36 a gallon ;) I live in illinois and the lowest I've found in the Chicago area for regular is $1.89. Chicago itself has the highest gas price in the lower 48.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
Damn! How did you find a 5000 sqft house for $225,000? Is it new, old, in bad shape, etc? Here in Columbus, Ohio, a 5000 sqft house in decent shape in a decent neighboorhood with a yard would run you around 380-500. Please, do tell
Er, you don't live in California, do you? Since 1978, property valuations generallygo up when one of two things occur:
1) the house is sold or title is transferred.
In this case it goes to market value.
2) yearly, it will be reassesed, but there's a limit of 1% it can go up in value. This isn't a make or break item for most people.
Pete
I don't see how a job change could get you from being comfortable at $65K to poor at $110 a year if you live in the same house (assuming no refinancing.) Last I looked, housing was *the* major cost of living issue here. What else changed?
Ok, I bought my house 14 years ago for $170,000. I live alone during the week, while my SO comes over on the weekends, so the house is on a one-person income. Since my mortgage is slightly variable, it will go up with interest rates, but it's still about 4 points below it's 1987 peak.
My taste in transportation is quirky, with commute vehicles being a '73 beetle and an '86 pickup, so aside from the gas prices (we're now running $1.75 to $1.85 for the majors, depending on station location), my transport costs are cheap.
Still, though my house could bring in 3X what I paid for it, I don't notice a huge change in standard of living. Yes, traffic is horrible, but I don't need a Lexus to make it bearable.
BTW, if one wonders why housing is so expensive, take a look at the various no-growth initiatives and the hillside building bans. I feel they do help the quality of life, some, but limit a supply and increase demand, and guess what happens to the price....
Boy, am I sure glad I left The Valley when I did! We purchased our house here in Albuquerque (1800 sq feet, 3 debrooms, two full baths, 1/4 acre, view of the entire valley below us, all wood doors, etc.) for $154,000. There is no way we could have ever purchased a home in Mountain View, much less anywhere else in The Valley.
Many of us have decided we wanted a house without a a two hour (one-way) commute and just LEFT the area! We have friends who also gave up, and have moved to North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and New York. This must be a common thing now...
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
maybe we'll finally see some companies experiment with allowing coders to telecommute.
I don't think so -- it's worse now than two years ago. This whole over-hyped bubble economy means that making good product no longer counts for anything, nor does the fact that it's now _easier_ to telecommute than to travel.
In eCommerce especially, it's all face-to-face bravado and Wall Street egomania. Have you seen the business card scene in American Psycho ?.... If you're not at this week's trendy location, you're clearly not a serious player, no matter whether the product works or not.
boo.com were the worst culprits here -- "We're hip and trendy, so we'll need a Carnaby Street office" is fair enough, but why did they need to put the call centre there too ? That's just piling the money up and lighting it.
Personally I'll switch to making furniture and living on no money, before I'd move to London.
This is a stupid topic. What are people going to say except recount their tales of how much they make and how life is hard because of this or that. Go tell it on a mountain. I check slashdot roughly everyday (or 4 times a week), and haven't had any complains about the topics until now. This is not merely flamebait, I really think this topic is worthless. If anyone has a solution that doesn't involve a Machine Enchaned Utopia or major reconstruction of our government, then maybe I'll change my opinion of this topic. It's bad.
I'd have to argue about your "everything from real estate to gasoline" being more expensive comment. Those are the two major things that are more expensive out here, and only real estate is truly overinflated. As a recently transplanted midwesterner, I was indeed shocked at the housing costs, but I was also amazed at the reasonable prices of about everything else. Food, which is most likely the second single biggest expense for residents, is right in line with the rest of the country. Power is cheap, and you don't need much of it due to the mild winters and coolish summers. Phone service is controlled by a hungry monopoly, but where isn't it?
I just wanted to dispute this claim, as I was worried about the same thing when I moved here and was pleasantly suprised to find I was wrong.
Josh Woodward
www.fruhead.com
Josh Woodward
I completly agree with you. I have lived in the bay area all my life and currently live in Newark. I constantly hear people complaining about housing prices. But these people drive Porsche's and BMW's. So many people around here just spend their money instead of saving it so someday they can buy a house. It's come to the point where many people's spending habits here could easily pay a monthly mortage on a decent house around here.
Housing prices are outrageous here. Relator's come to my door all the time making offers on your house, which is not for sale. I just got offered $720,000 for my house and I personally think my house sucks. You just don't get much for your money around here. Plus, over the past year housing prices have skyrocketed. My buddy purchased a new house last June for $850,000 and last month his neighbor, who has a home of similar size, sold his house for 2.5 million!!!! The market insanity around here scares me.
One reason for which telecommuting is not widely adopted is that it would make most suits obsolete.
Ciao
----
FB
Manchester, NH is a good choice.
If design is not Bauhaus, it is Baroque.
In Silicon Valley housing isn't affordable, because it seems that even the most economic apartments available include a swimming pool and WEB TV in the cost. One cannot easily find older residences, which come without these "frills".
You're absolutely right about tollbooths.
When I visited Italy, where tollbooths are used on almost every highway, they cause massive congestion and slow things down for everybody. Traffic is worsened, not improved, by tollbooths: people still need to drive, to get wherever they're going, and this is just another roadblock on their way.
The backroads are also jammed, for the reason you mentioned, causing safety hazards for nearby residents.
To fund the roads, I'd be willing to increase the gas tax... but only as long as I could guarantee that ALL of the money raised in this way would go to road maintenance, and not be siphoned off as it is now!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Not exactly true about land rights: many of my relatives own houses and have wells on their property, giving them water rights. (and sewer rights, via leachlines)
They can't use unlimited quantities of water, though: if enough water is drained, the well goes dry, and you must wait for it to refill. There are also limits beyond that, to avoid draining your neighbor's well. The system works fine, and has for many years.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Just for a UK perspective on this, I've just accepted a job offer in the Bristol Area of the UK. It's a silicon design post paying £48k plus a nice pension. Just in case you think that's peanuts I live in a c16th farmhouse and get to ride my horse on the beach before work.
What kind of car are you driving? one that costs $100k or one that breaks down all the time. In Canadian prices, my car including capital cost and repairs runs me 0.05/km, gas costs me 0.05/km and insurance is about 0.04/km. $0.14/km. That is around US$0.15/mile. Granted I'm driving a Honda but still. The corporate mileage cost is around 0.30/mi and I know I can turn a huge profit on that.
Umm, it is fairly common in Canada (I'm here) too. PHB is Pointy Haired Boss, the character in Dilbert. PHB is the personnification of all that is stupid and evil in management.
It only takes a minute of perusal to see why housing is so expensive: it's the fault of the homeowner's.
Imagine you are a homeowner. You obviously want to see your investment grow as much as possible. The basic laws of supply and demand state that the way to do this is increase demand or decrease supply. Well, you can't do either. But you can advocate for no new housing, and thus limit any growth of supply. The result: housing becomes scarce, people become homeless, and the homeowners get rich (on paper). If you look at the actions of homeowner's, that exactly how they behave at city council meetings - always complaining "this development is too dense - it'll ruin our suburban character. etc, etc..."
If you ask me, the property tax loophole (property tax can only rise some percentage a year, regardless of how much your property value rises) is killing Silicon Valley. That tax is the only disincentive for rising property values for the homeowner. If it reflected the true cost of housing, the homeowners would probably act differently.
Any tips on finding IT jobs in Las Vegas? Dice shows a few, but not a whole lot...
I suppose that accounts for the claims that the internet will make jobs location-independant...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
$28,000 Car + Financing (T-bird Turbo) :(
$ 7,200 Insurance (12 years)
$ 8,000 Gas (120Kmi @ 18mpg @ $1.20 avg)
$ 6,000 Maint, repairs (goodyear eagles are not cheap)
$ 1,200 Registration
$ 1,800 Tickets, Parking, and Legal
-------
$52,200 / 120,000 = 44c/mile
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
So, 240 miles/day would cost you about $30K/yr.
(and your sanity)
Me? I live in Iowa, make $75K+/yr, get 6 weeks vacation, have a 15 minute commute (on foot), and bought my house for $104K ('95).
Sure, it's not the most exciting place on earth, but about the only crime is the drunken college idiots.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
Produce is great in CA; you can get it straight from farms. Food prices are a bit high, but I'd estimate that they are balanced by the temperate weather. In the Bay Area you don't need much heating or AC, so you save quite a bit on energy costs and appliances. Since there's no snow and no road salt, cars tend to last longer. Overall it's housing that makes a large majority of the difference in costs of living in CA.
Uh..ok. But you have to live in SACRAMENTO! Augh! :)
I can certainly see how living in the middle of nowhere with 100 degree heat every summer can be appealing if you are a family type. But if you're young and non-family and apartment-dwelling, it doesn't make much sense to go out there.
That's mainly only true for people who buy a home. For renters, the cost of living is a bit lower. Additionally, if you make twice as much in an area that costs twice as much, you usually come out ahead since there are many fixed costs which aren't twice as high, and you don't spend all of your income on cost-of-living expenses.
Car related expenses are also sky high in the Bay area... Gas is more expensive -- I can buy the 90 octane mid grade here for $1.49 a gallon.
Gas is about 30% more expensive in CA. That comes out to about $150 more per year for me. Not a big deal.
Insurance is double or triple that in the midwest.
It's still cheaper than on the East Coast, typically.
Cars themselves are more expensive because they have to have 'California Emissions'. Getting your car smogged all the time is not only expensive, it is a pain in the ass.
Smog checks are done once every two years for older cars (once they get beyond four? years old). That's a whole $40 every two years. In return we get cleaner air, and get older smoking vehicles fixed or off the road.
There are fixed costs which don't vary much depending on region, then there are costs like housing which vary greatly on region. There are substitution effects; if it costs $1 million to get the same house in Palo Alto that you had in BFE for $100k, you're probably not going to go for it; you'll probably get some smaller house, and with the money you save you can spend less time at home and more vacationing or outdoors. You'll find some cheaper way to increase your quality of life.
Naturally, all this depends on strongly personal preferences; if you want a big house with an acre lot, Silicon Valley is a bad place to be. Clearly, many people have decided that the increased opportunity is worth the higher cost of living.
(but leave now, so i can find an apartment!)
Gas price has a strong psychological effect for several reasons. First, it's very visible--It's the only price that's visible when you just walk or drive down the road. This makes it stick in people's memories. It's more variable in price than typical consumer commodities. It's something people buy often, once or twice a week. It's heavily reported by the media.
(None of this explains any rationality behind the American obsession with gas price, of course)
I live in Temecula, commute to San Diego-( 53 miles each way) I usually stroll in around 9:15am, so I can leave the house after rush hour-- figure 50 mins.drive time average.. In '97, our 2 story house (brand new) cost 149k, 2261sqf, 3b/3ba, formal LR/DR, California room (eg: family room about 12x25 with Fireplace ) a loft, 3 car garage.. back yard is big enough for a patio and deck, coupla trees, a (future) pool and still enough room for a swing set and sandbox for the kidlets. Around $1230 /mo, before taxes, add another $3200 a year.
... uh.. terrible. Crowded. Crime out of control... you don't want to live here... this is not the community you are looking for..you can go about your business.. move along....
My wife works weekends at one of the wineries.. about enough money to cover my gas bill each month...but really just an excuse to get out of the house. We *don't* do day-care, we have one truck that's 6 years old, 130k miles and we never do the big vacation things... struggling to get out from under the CC's and there are some weeks we make it to payday on rice, ramen and imagination...when the CC's are paid off, we will have quiet a tidy sum left over each month. I pull in about $50k a year as a sysadmin.
People laughed at us when we bought in Temecula, but we knew...4 minutes from the wineries, stunning microclimate, zero smog, and Hey! We got a mall now! Some traffic problems and house prices are shooting up fast...same model as ours sold up the street for 199k this past January... but it's clean, new, breezy and only a matter of time before I find work up here...
So I guess we are pretty lucky.. we do without a lot of stuff ( like furniture, movies, dining out, fancy wardrobes, a 2nd car and vacations.. ) but my wife is home all day with our toddler, another one on the way, we are in a great area, building equity and we smile a lot.
ermm.. did I say beautiful here? I meant,
3C
I was job hunting recently and I heard the same story from everyone I interviewed with:
'Company X from (NYC || California || Japan || Korea) has hired us in a million dollar contract to do Project Foo and we need 10 new employees in this next month.'
I get the benefit of really high pay and cheap living. Don't move to the opportunities, let them come to you.
Good though, but nonsense. :)
:)
:)
I own a 2400 sq ft 3 bedroom home. And it could use to have one of the bedrooms knocked out to make the dining room bigger.
Now, this number does not include my basement. If this fellow is including his basement, our houses are about the same size. Even if it isn't, it makes perfect sense to me.
What do we have? We have 3 large bedrooms, a dining room, a utility closet (can not be called a laundry room, not big enough), a large kitchen, a sun room (decent sized), a living room, a mud room, and an "entertainment" room. The latter is easily the largest room in the house, coming in at 1200 square feet by itself (the size of some small houses). If it was up to me, we would have another room about half the size of the entertainment room as a library.
Anyway, my point is, I could easily add another thousand square feet to the house in larger rooms and additional rooms that I woud like to have. And, from experience, I have learned that I should never underestimate other people's ability to take what I would like a couple steps farther.
Oh, and a little more on topic - in addition to that already listed, I have a real yard and an extra-deep two stall garrage. A year and a half ago I paid $92K for this monster. How? By living out in the middle of nowhere, a full half hour from Peoria, the small little "city" I work at. Yet, small as it is, I currently make just under 60K, and just received an offer that looks worth around 75K all together. In Peoria.
Personally, I'll take 75K in Peoria over 150K in the Valley - I'll live better. Out here, my half hour long drive is considered rediculously long.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
As a CM CS grad myself, I'm sorry you've been brainwashed by the Pittsburgh High Technology Council -- who acts indignant every time a list of "The Best High Tech Cities in the U.S." fails to mention Pittsburgh.
Yes, there are some great technology success stories in Pittsburgh. Yes, there's a load of startup activity in the area now. But Pittsburgh doesn't hold a candle to the Valley, Austin, Boston, New York, or Seattle.
Pittsburgh has no urban nightlife to attract young talent to the area
Pittsburgh's main source of technical talent is Carnegie Mellon grads. But less than 20% of those grads stay in Pittsburgh! (At least, that was the statistic from the CM career center when I discussed it with them last spring) With an average graduating CS class of 140, that's less than 30 people a year.
Pittsburgh has no venture capital infrastructure. Venture is a huge influence in making a good company into a success. The last I heard, the largest first round funding in the Pittsburgh for a tech startup was under 10 million dollars. Talk to Stanford MBAs, and they will tell you, "If you want to raise 10 million dollars, hold a cocktail party. Don't talk to VCs until you need at least 30 million."
Please name a major technology company based in the Pittsburgh area. And before you yell about FORE -- no, they don't count, they're now part of a European-based company (and most of their Pittsburgh engineering talent has fled the sinking ship). FreeMarkets? I'll wait until they settle their class action lawsuit about defrauding investors.
Open your eyes. Read a few issues of the Industry Standard. The tech industry in Pittsburgh is O.K, but it's microscopic compared to lots of other cities.
-JTB
Unfortunately, some departments of even very large, successful tech companies (with well-defined telecommuting policies) frown on it. Hrm.
>>In my opinion, the solution isn't to pack people together tightly like cattle in a feedlot (that leads to other problems, like increased crime) I don't think this is true. It's a perception of numbers problem: if you increase population density by a factor of a hundred, miracle of miracles, the crime rate goes up about 100 times as well. This misperception has caused urban areas no small amount of tax erosion. Feedback loop, anyone? Perception causes tax shrinkage causes perception causes shrinkage... The last half century has created an tech culture that grew up in burbs, wants burbs, and can't understand any other lifestyle. As for the rural congenstion caused by urban drivers: uh-uh. Most people in the US are suburbanites. Those people SUV-ing around the countryside are burbies! And they are probably scoping out the next concentric ring of burb building. The spreading can't go on forever. In less than a century, the U.S. could be a solid blanket of minimalls and aluminum siding connected by 6-laners. I agree, though: telecommuting is a must for tech companies. Silicon Valley exists more for the look of it rather than the need of it.
WTF happened to my formatting??
I did the work/lunch for 9 hours, drive for four-five for almost ten years. Factor in showering and preparing for work, and you basically have no life. No, it's no fun. I'd seriously think of junking the career if I had to do it again. What good is money when you won't have a life until you are 65?
Even without no-growth initiatives, the land would be covered with single-family houses in a couple of decades. And people would still be screaming for more. Without densely-packed housing, like apartment buildings, home prices are going to explode. This is the simply the most obvious result of the population bomb. You can't have constant growth forever. Only cancers try that, and they don't fare too well after the initial success.
Exactly right. As long as we keep growing our numbers, the situation will keep getting worse. If a cheap area becomes known, people will flood to it. Traffic will snarl. Prices will rise. People will blame liberals or taxes or minorities for the problems and bail, bringing with them to some less crowded area the same factors that ruined the place they came from in the first place: demand for single house contruction. Lots of yard. Winding roads. No public trans, to keep out the poor people. Bigger highways, forgetting that the transfer points are the bottlenecks. Pumping their school tax money from their old, crowded home district into the new one's, thus crippling the older locale's educational system. This will continue 'til the land runs out. Then what?
I'd stay in one. Just try to get a hotel room in this place on 4 hours notice. It wont happen on Monday Tuesday or Wednesday nights.
Paul Bryson
-pB
I just got a job in Cupertino with HP. I moved here from Minnesota two weeks ago. I get paid about $7000 a month for doing device driver integration and validation. Rent is $2000 for an 800 square foot apartment with utilities included, far less than the article's claimed "$75 a square foot" It's also got 3 pools, hot tub, covered parking, tennis courts, etc. The place even has a web page.
I live 3 miles from work, an hour from Santa Cruz, and an hour from San Francisco.
Everyday the weather is beautiful, and the locals are incredibly friendly (even for someone who grew up with "Minnesota Nice").
Sure cheese is $8 a brick, gas is a buck-eighty nine a gallon, but what do you expect the inflation rate to be like when guys like me who have not even graduated college are pulling down starting salaries of $80,000 a year?
There's no solution to the housing troubles in Silicon Valley. None. It's a valley, remember? There's hills all around it and most of them are wildlife preserves. If you've ever been in the Los Gatos hills you'll know that there's NFW the tree huggers around here would let them be developed. Fine with me, I like them too.
Everyone around here knows that eventually we are all going to work ourselves out of a job, but we're all going to become millionaires and retire at 40 and become college professors, so it really doesn't matter.
sludg-o
Every day I thank my lucky stars that I found a job in sunny Colorado, rather than resigning myself to the rat-race that is Silicon Valley.
"I shoulda never sent a penguin out to do a daemon's work."
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
To be honest I am not a big fan of miami for some of the reasons you mentioned. You could very well justify saying that living in Miami is like living in a big city without the benefits of living in a big city (ie you get the crime, traffic, rudeness etc without the 24hr conveniences and mass transit). ...it's still an area where employers dictate inflexible policies. Why? Because they can get away with it, knowing that there aren't many options down there... If you worked here in the tech industry as long as you say you did and weren't making money I would have to say that its your own fault. Employers can't get away with that type of inflexibility here because there is a huge shortage of qualified tech workers. The very fact that the classified ads for employment here are consistantly filled with several pages of positions open should indicate to you that the market for employment here is hurting and when you interview for positions in south florida companies you are in a position to dictate the terms.I have worked here since 1988 and I am doing very well. I know many people who were relocated here by big companies like motorola and ryder and are making considerable more income than when they were working and living in new york city (not to mention SV). Everything is negotiable, if a company needs you and you have the skills you can get jobs here with nice perks like stock options, disney passes, sporting event tickets, etc. but you have to take the time to negotiate for this stuff. Straight up : always negotiate with your prospective employer regardless of where you are! Housing you are wrong about though. You maybe should look at the fact that this area has experienced explosive growth in housing since the early eighties. Most of the housing here is relatively new, very affordable and in the post-Andrew construction era very durable. What you can buy here for $100,000 is a much nicer home with some property than you will ever see in your lifetime for a frigerator box type studio apt in the valley. As for the strip mall paved tricounty corridor yes you are right, but, you can say that about pretty much any major metropolitan area anywhere in the US.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Hey there follks, I never ever thought I would say this but... maybe these 'poor' techie workers should move here to Miami. We have many of the computing industry big players like Lucent and Hewlet Packard here. Housing here is reasonable you can rent a 3 br apt. from $575 to the several thousands on the ultra trendy south beach area and the utilities are reasonable as well.A quick glance at the newspaper will present you with anywhere from 1 to 3 pages of jobs in the computing sector. Dot.Com mania has hit us here and I think it would be a safe guess that miami is quickly becoming the techie headquarters for Central and South America. There are industrial sections of miami (like the beacon station area) that are full of hardware and software companies designing and building thier products for export to the carribean and the americas. The weather here is pretty consistantly in the low to mid eighties with an afternoon shower(usually around 5:30pm) and the only natural disasters we face regularly are hurricanes (which btw we as a city are totally prepared for) that statistically we shouldn't get nailed with for the next hundred years (read: nailed by a big one like andrew). Finally, we could use every english speaking person we can get so please move here and bring America with you.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Hmm... The technology you propose could pose a serious security risk, either by giving away your credit card or SS number (how else they gonna recieve payment?) or by the fact that this would enable the government to track wherever you go (are there no areas you would not like to be known to be in?)
In addition, the charges could easily get away from you if you didn't pay attention, and since there is no way to 'abort' payment (can't turn around on an interstate) there would be no way to stop a private road from charging exorbitantly using the same device (what? You mean they *didn't* know the road was 20$ a trip? But they drove on it....) and unless the device made you pretty damn aware of the charges (which it wouldn't likely do) you could easily build up a huge bill.
Regarding your opinion on pay-per-use roads, the problem with that is threefold -
1. It gives the government an opportunity to raise taxes without repurcussion (you really think you'll pay less with tolls? Get real. Since it is very difficult to compare tolls and taxes, they will raise it dramatically since no one would notice. Meanwhile they will brag about how much they lowered taxes.)
2. It drastically increases commute time with all those damn annoying tollbooths. Add about 10 minutes per booth per day. Go through 3 a trip (which is reasonable under your system) and you've just increased your commute time one hour, per day. Not counting all the times you don't have change or one of the 5+ people ahead of you doesn't... ugh.
3. Since tollbooths are unpleasant, people will evade them, causing massive traffic on non-tolled roads (not counting bridges and such, there are always alternate routes across a city.)
It kinda cheapens the hardships of actual poverty level existence to say that because your neighbors average 100k, you're at the poverty level. You know darn well you can get in your car, and commute out away from wherever it is you're working . . conneticut? An impoverished person would be unlikely to get the training and the degree and the experience to get your (probably) high tech job, and furthermore would not likely have a car to drive out to the suburbs, even if it does take an hour and a half one way.
Bite the bullet. Buy a house.
Well, at least this is a fringe benefit of living in a technologically challenged state (my state just made 47 in the top 50 states ranked by application of new technology).
Housing is cheap; cost of living is low. On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to find a good $30K job in the tech sector, much less anything more. My current job description is "*" for a small ISP/system integrator/etc; system administrator for $20K a year?
As some of the locals might say, "That dog don't hunt."
I think I could handle myself just fine. I'll just look for a house on eBay, shop for groceries on priceline.com and get a job at a company within walking distance.
I live in the western part of Massachusetts. It's not exactly a technological area, but there are plenty of jobs out there if you look for them. Out here you can live a comfortable life in your own home for $30,000-40,000/yr. I know people that, just out of high school, are making 40+ thousand a year. It's not really tough to get a good job out here.
You can take Silicon Valley. I'm perfectly making less and paying less to live. It's not all about how much money you're making, it's how you manage that money and how you spend it. Silicon Valley just doesn't add up to a good deal in the end.
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Uh oh. Now you've done it. Now everyone is going to rush into your area. You let the cat out of the bag. Now they know where they can get a nice house for 225k and a good job. Hopefully you won't get driven away again.
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Wouldn't there be a way to say, pull in $50 Gs and live way outside SV? Say 120 miles (2 hour drive) and just get a kick ass car with the extra money you don't spend on high housing costs. Sure the drive to/from work would suck, but that is what portable mp3 players are for.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Silicon Valley is the worst place in the world to live, please nobody else come here, and everyone who is complaining, please leave!
;-) to be worth having to tolerate months of sub-freezing temperatures and snowstorms. Life is too short to spend 6 months each year locked inside because it is too cold out (or too hot, like TX or AZ, or too humid).
But really, aside the headline hype stories, life in SV is about as good as it can get. Weather is a BIG factor. Unless its raining (winter only), every single day (during daytime) is warm enough to hang outside and have a BBQ or play sports. That is worth a lot!
After living in various places in PA, NJ, NYC-area and now here in CA I can say that there is not enough money in the world (or cheap enough housing
Aside from the weather, the financial security of being able to find a new job within days, anytime, is great. Try that in Harrisburg, PA! This also allows taking a few more risks, doing work you WANT to do, and not worry about the mortgage if things dont work out; just get another job in a day or two. It also means never companies treat you with respect, since they know the only thing keeping you there is being happy with your work. Companies need you more than you need any specific job.
Sure housing is expensive, but not that bad. My mortgage may be double what it was in NJ, but so is my salary. And I get to live amidst beautiful redwood forests, 10min from the beach.
I work in Santa Clara, live in the Santa Cruz mountains. My commute is less than 30min (LESS than it was in NJ or PA). Traffic is a problem only during rush hour. I work 11am-8pm and except for occasional construction work, I never see any traffic.
Just like the Bay Area is made up of many micro-climates, the "stability" of the land varies tremendously over a small area. If by Silicon Valley you mean the greater San Jose area and up the Peninsula to, say, Redwood City, you have a bunch of re-claimed wetlands next to the bay, floodplains, and other drainages that will Not Be Good Places To Be if a major earthquake occurs. Not to mention that Silicon Valley is between two major faults--the San Andreas to the west and the Hayward (which is due for a major quake, according to some geologists) to the north-east.
The Loma Prieta earthquake of ten years ago had its hypocenter over 50 miles south of San Francisco, but liquefaction destroyed many structures in SF. Liquefaction occurs when moderately saturated ground is shaken, as in an earthquake, and loses cohesion. Next time you are at the beach pick up some moist sand and shake it vigorously. It'll soon have the consistency of jelly.
This was most striking in Santa Cruz, where I currently live. The downtown area, a floodplain, was destroyed, but the UC Santa Cruz campus had little damage, as it was on limestone bedrock.
It would take one hell of a mudslide to send a house in Boulder Creek (inland by at least five miles, through mountainous terrain) into the Pacific. The Santa Cruz mountains have a lot of mudslides due to good moisture orthographics (Boulder Creek averages over 60 inches of rain a year, while San Jose, 20 miles away, gets less than 15). 90% of all precipitation in California falls between November and April, and most of that comes in January and February.
It's somewhat amusing to watch essentially the same people every winter being interviewed by local reporters in front of their river-front homes that flooded (again). Sometimes the reporters use adjectives to describe them like "plucky" and "brave" for enduring this. I guess I'd be plucky and brave too if I repeatedly hit myself in the head with a mallet and never learned to stop....
As an ex-Northeaster (Peabody, MA), I can tell you that I moved for several cost of living reasons.
I sold a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath, no garage house w/1600 sq ft for 240K. I moved to Greenville, SC and bought a 5 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage house w/2400 sq ft for 150K.
Now my wife can easily stay home w/our kids, which is what she wanted to do up North but couldn't. Not only did I get the cost of living benefits, but signing bonuses, a 15% salary increase, etc. The move was sweet.
Granted we do miss friends and family, but the money-related stress is gone.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
interesting. your house payment wouldn't have gone up. so that expense stays the same. Now you went from 65,000 to 100,000 that means milk, movies, books, electricity gas would almost have to double. or
$110,000 a year les approx $1900.00 a month for haouse payment = $22,800. leaving $87,000
$70,000 a year less approx $2250.00 a month house payment = $26,700, leaving $43,300
so for you to break even everything where you now live has to cost half as much. if this is true, cool. But based on a quick internet search, that did not seem to be the case.
as far a quality of life issues, well it is hard to put a price on that.
My step-mom just bought a house on Orange County, 1/3 acre 3 bed room, good neighborhood, $170,000 older, but defianatly room to grow.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm still here (post-military) and have my own tech company. Not rich, but I don't need to be -- I'm building a 5500+ foot house in Calvert County Maryland on 15 beautiful acres. I'm 1.9 miles from the Chesapeake Bay beaches (not quite Cali, but oh well).
How much? Land: $117K, house: $315K.
Downside: Prices are climbing here, traffic is second worst in nation (behind LA).
Upside:We're now the Internet capital of the world (sorry SV, you lose)...life is good for us out here.
California would kill me.
Northern VA is a very nice place. I moved here 2 years ago for a tech job, and I love it. Sure, DC is very crowded, but most of the good tech jobs aren't there anyway. I am getting about $40K a year (ok, so the stock options help), and I don't have much trouble making ends meet.
:o) Just my $0.02.
Apartments are pretty expensive (at least compared to where I moved from) at around $1000/month for a 1 bedroom. However, I rent the master bed/bath in a townhouse for about $450, and it's only about 15 mins from work. There are *tons* of tech jobs in this area, and you can usually find good housing outside the area for a good price. Now, all you California Girls, you just call me when you get here, and we can work something out
Segfault
segfault@bellatlantic.net
The easy solution to this is: Locker rooms. That's right, shower and change at work. A suit is a uniform just like anything else.
"When you gotta shoot, SHOOT! Don't talk." Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
An income of $50,000 with a family of four qualifies for government assisted housing. Ties somewhat into the earlier Slashdot thread 'Too Old To Code?': What interesting times we live in. "
It ties in very neatly with 'Too Old to Code'. There was a documentary on TV in the UK about 'down and outs' in the Valley. At one point, it showed the soup kitchen where they were fed. Most of these people were coders who had burnt out or got 'too old', or people who had lost their shirts in start-ups. These were the casualties of the 'dot com' gold rush. The scary bit was that there was a hell of a lot of intelligence and talent sat in that kitchen.
Surprisingly, this was screened about four months ago in the UK. Obviously the 'body-count meter' must have triggered in someone's office somewhere to make this a newsworthy item once again.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
Actually, as you can see by this link, California gets 7% less in federal money than it pays in federal taxes, so your outrage is misdirected.
Information wants to be free -- but informants want to be paid.
o all you americans, please stop complaining about the cost of living, We canucks have it bad here. Our dollar sucks, our gas is high and are taxes are rediculous. Ottawa is concidered the Silicon Valley of the north, its an attractive city and rent and the cost of living is quite reasonable and the cultural and entertainment events are astounding
Is it me, or did those two sentences contradict each other? Your taxes are ridiculous because you have strong social programs; do you know how much we're expected to spend on medicine, even when we have insurance? Your gas prices may be high, but you have good transportation systems. I spent some time in Toronto last month; if you factor in prices and how much the canadian dollar is worse, the prices are about the same as you'd pay in Manhattan. A meal in a good restaurant was actually a little cheaper.
I live in Charlotte. $128k is about in line for a decent 1500 sq. ft. home with about 1/3 acre of land. I wouldn't call Charlotte the unfashionable end of state. I live here and my brother is in RTP. RTP has more tech, and Charlotte has more banks (we bought San Francisco's) and culture. I think you'll see more Rolls Royces, Bentley's, and Corvettes here but more Ferrari's and Lambo's in RTP. Porsches are fairly popular in both places.
What company are you going to be working for?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I live in West Newton now (at least until the end of the month), and I'm convinced it's the best-kept secret in Boston! 10 minutes from the places you want to go (Back Bay, Fenway, etc.) and not cheap, but well worth the quality of most of the apartments and the conveniences (Moody Street in Waltham is a short WALK away, and there are upwards of 20 restaurants there).
Thanks Goodness for Guinness;-)
Oh, and as a further addendum to my own post (I hate it when I find things after I submit ;-). The Ottawa Citizen ran an article on April 10 about the same issues.
--My opinions belong only to me, until you realize I'm right
Actually,there will be a TV segment on this at 4 eastren/1 pacific time.This is a good idea for those of us with crappy internet connections.
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Thus Spake ComradePenguin
The Metra is also the best form of transportation for anyone in the Chicago suburbs (and even Indiana) to get into the City. Chicago is a good example of how transit into (and within) a major business hub can work and work efficiently. Unfortunately, the Western and Northwestern suburbs have the same problem that the Valley has: an urban suburbia where public transportation is not cost- or time-effective, traffic is hell and you basically need a car to get around. Add snow and other bad weather into the mix and even the 85/101 merge looks good in comparison.
Corrections:
"yeah, and you can ride your bike like what, 2 months out of the year in Chicago? (I'm talking June and September - the rest of the year it's either too hot or too cold or too rainy)."
I ride April-June and Sept-Oct. Rest of the time it is the El for me. If you are a wuss about weather, live elsewhere.
"Now, I'm not talking recreational riding. Sure, get on your slicks, and hop some mud in the rain."
As often as I can.
"But try biking to work in a suit and tie in August when it's 100 degrees, 99% humidity -it's just not a realistic option for most people. "
Agree. Ride the El or the Metra instead.
"Maybe you don't have to wear a tie to your Baskin-Robbins job, "
Why the insult? Tech sales and program manager for very large telco education provider. But we are jeans/casual attire.
"(I don't to mycomputer job), "
trade insults...what you make ethernet cables for your IT dept?
"but a lot of people, most people, still do."
Many do not wears suits anymore. It is all dockers and polo shirts...even for CEOs. Sorry if you do. I do when I am on the road, and hate it much.
Thanks,
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Hmmm. Actually, No.
I live in Chicago, near North side. To go from door-of-home to door-of office takes me about 40 min by train. Walk 4 blks, ride the El, walk 2 blks.
To do so by car would take me at least an hour...and then I would have to find parking, pay for it (it is 2x the price of a El ticket).
Actually the most efficient form of transport in heavily urbanized areas is....THE BIKE.
Chicago has a 18 mile long bike trail going from well into Evanston in the North to well South of the loop.
Cars are the least efficient form of urban transport. Problem is yuppie pinheads are either...
1-scared of the el.
or
2-get an ego-boost from their k-rad kar.
or
3-too scared to live in the city, so they live in the burbs and face a 2 hr commute.
silly yuppies.
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Agreed, for your area. Been there. Lousy mass trans. But for areas more urbanized (Chicago, New York) it is the only sane option. Getting from burb - to - center can always be a pain. Know people who chose to live in godforsaken, bumfsck and middleofnowhere IL and they face the same problem you do. Drive to light rail, ride in. But in Chicago, this beats driving all the way in to the loop.
Also, I would hazzard a guess...your neighbors want (maybe) the service without 1) paying for it in taxes and 2) living near the lines.
That is the price ya pay. I pay lotsa $$$ for an apt close to the el station, but far enough away so I do not hear the trains at night.
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Wow, you guys must be the 10,000th person to break this story. Congratulations! The prices in the Bay Area are high, they are high in other cities too. Highschool economics explains supply and demand. Deal with it or move.
I wasn't complaining...just giving an example...I am well above both the poverty level and the median income, and I already own a house here...I had to rent before to save money for the ridiculously-high down payment :-)
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
...my last rental (2 years ago) was a tiny little house with three tiny bedrooms and 1 and 1/2 baths for $2100 a month including absolutely nothing...you even have to pay for water and garbage pick-up as well as mandatory renter's insurance...you do the math...that means you need close to $40,000 a year just to pay housing and utilities costs and there ain't no public trans to get to work...
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
The 5th Amendment to the Constitution states that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property
Well, since no one can acquire property anymore, it kinda puts a damper on the 5th amendment, eh? See property seizures by SUSPECTED drug dealers to see the result of seemingly subtle changes in land ownership.
The first draft of the US DOI had it right, that there is an inalienable RIGHT to "life, liberty, and property". But with this, land could never ba taken from people, even for non-payment of taxes.
It's not about the right to dig for gold or drill for oil on your land, it's about an inalianable human right to land.
Also, it should allow comparisons of jobs around the globe, not just in the USA.
Hmmm obviously you have never work the front lines of the Canadian Health care system. As a Registered nurse since 1993, i have over 7 years experience working in both private and public health care. I am now burn't out. The health care system here in Canada is failing, due to budget cuts...yeah they give us chunks of money once in while...but most of the time the hospitals and the social support agencies, never see the money very quickly. Our Doctors are leaving, the nurses are still leaving. Out of the four floors that i work out of (it pays the bills while i am in school) about 70 percent of patients represent chronic care, or long term care which is so stacked and full at the moment. You know it took over an hour for a doctor to come up to the floor i was working on, and we had an emergency!!! the patient possibly had a heart attack!!! With private health care you would get care much quicker. Let see you wipe up somones butt for 20.00/hour... There is a common "insight" to this whole topic of where is better... STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM SILICON VALLEY...
He is a SHE!!!!
Next year i graduate from computer programming school, and to start out fresh,i am making the move from Toronto to Ottawa. I have Lived In Toronto all of my life. I have a buch of friends up in Ottawa, so the transistion will be smooth. To all you americans, please stop complaining about the cost of living, We canucks have it bad here. Our dollar sucks, our gas is high and are taxes are rediculous. Ottawa is concidered the Silicon Valley of the north, its an attractive city and rent and the cost of living is quite reasonable and the cultural and entertainment events are astounding.
The biggest difference is that Toronto traffic is still directional. I worked with a lot of clients in the Scarbourgh area (northern suburb), and have occasionally stayed in downtown Toronto hotels. There is almost no traffic in the reverese direction (20 minutes vs. 60 minutes for 15 miles). The SV area has not had traffic patternes like that since the 70's.
Even worse, occasionally the SV traffic is worse than LA area traffic. The 680 corridor (filled with commuters from the cheaper central valley) has become the worse freeway in the area. The problem is that it is pretty much the only way to get into the valley from that direction.
Even when demand exceeds supply, a merchant can't price themselves out of the market where they will have no buyers. There is a breaking point, that is, what the market will bear. The reason real estate is so expensive is not that there are many people bidding for few properties, its that there are many rich people bidding for few properties, which has the effect of pricing everyone else out of the market. Lose. Lose.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Having just gone through a recent job search, I found that the salary requirement in the valley was just too rediculous to persue. I mean, I would have to bring down $200K to break even with what I do now, and most of that would go to taxes and housing - the gub'ment would cash in big time and I would be left with little. Not worth the trip.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
On the property values note, these persons who drive up their own property values with zoning and stiffled competition are also driving up the values of their neighbors, who could be (and often are) retired persons who have lived there for 40 years suddenly finding their $30K town home valuated at $1.5M, and having to pay taxes on that with social security.
Again, I say, lose lose.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
On that note, I recently heard an NPR story on the high cost of valley living, people with lower incomes are being pushed inland, with multi-hour commutes. They stated that "affordable" housing was 100 miles inland - but not for long as the valley cancers its way across the countryside.
On my soapbox, this is just plain wrong. This is where capitalism fails - where the market will bear mentality breaks down by causing innocent people real grief. It is evil to charge $1.5M for a single family dwelling just because you can get it. Things have a "rational" cost and that is what should be charged. Case and point, some software/hardware is grossly overpriced (300%-1000%) just because Corporate doesn't know what things are worth.
Being Republican with a Liberatarian bent, I think this is one place where unca sam should step in to arrest this down-slide before people get hurt.
Another problem - if you roll back housing prices, how do you compensate the mortgage holders for all the money they've already invested?
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
It's like that in all the major high-tech industry areas, at least in the united states, prolly the world eh? It only comes to reason that if a lot of people are being moved to an area, and that area is not one big slum, that housing prices will go up. Look at areas of Durham and Raliegh and Chapel Hill in North Carolina. The Research Triangle Park (in which I sit right now) has caused housing prices to go up 3x (so our older neighbours tell us). Actually the businesess have spread to residential areas right now. *waves to the ericsson build across the street* and I'm at home!
Here in Toronto, Highway 401 across the top of the town is the second busiest freeway in the world, after only the Santa Monica Freeway.
It's brutal. I work in Mississauga and live in Scarborough. Less than 20 miles apart, but depending on what times I travel, the trip can take an hour and a half each way.
Three hours a day wasted to commuting just is not the way to live. Look at it this way:
50 working weeks a year.
5 working days per working week.
therefore, 250 work days a year.
therefore, 750 hours a year wasted to commuting.
750 hours / 24 (hours in a day) = 31.25 days.
Yup. Every year, for the past three years, I've spent a month behind the wheel of my vehicle.
If not for the Howard Stern Show on Q107, I would have gone crazy.
Public transit would force me to actually sit beside other people. I've experimented with it, but I really don't like having children dropping soft drinks on my suits. Not only that, but it takes almost twice as long. One day when I was waiting for a part for my truck, some little booger-nose spilled a milkshake on me, destroying a brand new silk tie. I'll leave public transit to the commoners.
What to drive in the concrete jungle? I prefer big, old and ugly. At the moment, I'm driving a 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID (6.6L) big block V8. It's a gas pig, but I see the extra fuel as a form of insurance payment.
You see, being a commuter and driving a really large, really ugly, really unnecessary vehicle gives you that kind of insurance that State Farm just doesn't sell:
If someone driving some silly little Honda or a Subaru Outcast or even an "SUV" like a Toyota Rectal Assault Vehicle (as my friends call RAV-4s) happens to cut me off, I'm guaranteed to do far more damage to them than they do to me.
(For the sake of reference, the 1974-1992 Dodge full-size pickup trucks were rated by Consumer Reports as being the "Most Agressively Crash-safe Vehicle" currently on the road. This is not an award, but a warning - you want to be *in* the Ram, not hit *by* the Ram.)
My friends have nicknamed my truck "The Detroit Ironer", since it's great for putting new creases into Japanese sheetmetal.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Well, despite the original poster's obvious lack of any literacy, he does raise some good points.
As a disenfranchised Canadian who has lived in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, I feel well qualified to say that Canada doesn't really offer me much.
The cost of living in Canada versus the US can be similar, but it depends on the person. Sure, a loaf of bread is 89c here, and 89c in $US.
But more fundamentally, taxes make up the difference. Increased buying power on an international level make up the difference.
And, most importantly to my morale, my taxes are actually *used* for something relevant. At least you have some measure of federal and state services to show for your taxes. There's a military that protects you. The INS service doesn't let known terrorists into the country and then give them welfare for five years.
Taxation differences as mentioned in related articles on this subject quoted only income taxes. Sure, California residents in the upper bracket will see 48.x% of their income taxed directly away. And in Ontario's highest tax bracket, about 50% of your income is whisked away. 2% more expensive here, and all provinces provide health care, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong.
What's the US federal sales tax? 0%, you say? In Canada, it's 7%.
What's the state sales tax in California? 5%-6%? In Ontario, it's 8%.
You make income principally to buy stuff. Everything you buy in Canada is about 10% more heavily taxed.
In Ontario, gasoline is far more heavily taxed, significantly exceeding the cost of even expensive, chemically-altered California gasoline. Once upon a time, that money went to road construction and maintence, giving Ontario the best highway system in the world (1966-1975). However, a string of socialist governments decided that because cars aren't environmentally friendly, we'll stop funding the construction of new roads. Instead, they funnelled the money into pet projects like huge welfare programs that only now are being scaled back to reasonable levels.
Health care is a farce. Since all the hospitals are public, you sit in a little waiting room somewhere and wait for service. I got strepped throat and went to a hospital in downtown Toronto. Sitting beside me was a homeless person who had broken a needle off in his arm when he had been shooting up heroin. I felt my life was in peril for the three hours I had to sit beside this individual. Every 5 minutes or so, he would ask me how it looked, waving the bleeding arm in front of my face. When I got into the doctor's office and went a through three minute exam for a prescription (which I still have to pay for, despite universal health care), enough of the homeless dude's odor had spread onto me that the doctor looked disgusted by me.
I'd love private health care. I'd like to think that I wouldn't have to share my hospital experience with, or have my service delayed by, such obvious effluence as homeless heroin addicts.
Imported items are nasty too, because Canada, being a paranoid nation, is very badly afraid of the specter of its manufacturers having to compete with American counterparts. Massive duties are leveraged against everything from car parts that I buy for restoring my vintage car to electronic items and other things that should pass through duty-free under NAFTA. Of course, the customs guy forces you to pay duty, and it's up to you to prove to the feds that the item was supposed to be duty-free under NAFTA.
As a sidenote, I'd suggest that with the lower Canadian dollar protecting Canadian manufacturers, wide-open borders would only *help* Canadian manufacturers, since it would give them more ready access to a wider variety of tools, equipment and materials that simply are not available through Canadian suppliers.
Besides, being a market leader in Canada is like being a market leader in Kansas. Big fish. Small pond. Not a great way to grow a company.
Finally, I *believe* in the United States much more than I believe in Canada. I believe in the American spirit, the risk taker, where you are the master of your own success. The Canadian attitude is that we must, at all costs, help the weak or the poor or the addicted, no matter how little they may do to help themselves.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yup. But there's more to it than that.
First off, I'm in Canada; therefore, I don't have the same complement of insurance companies with which to compare prices.
Secondly, since my truck is so cheap (less than $1,000 CDN), I didn't bother with fire, theft or collision insurance. All I have is liability insurance. I wouldn't be able to do that if the vehicle cost more, since I wouldn't be able to eat the cost of replacing it. In an urban area, that affects your rates greatly.
Third, the Dodge Ram pickup truck didn't change much from 1974 to 1992. Theoretically, the front fender off a '92 Ram will bolt right onto a '74. Bumpers are the same the entire series. That makes parts easier to locate, and cheaper. Insurance companies like that.
Finally, I have other advantages from driving a truck that simply aren't present with a smaller vehicle. Advantages that more than outweigh the gas costs. Carrying stuff, intimidation of Jeep Cherokee owners (let alone making Nissan Micra owners wet themselves), being unorthodox... (I love sitting in traffic in downtown Toronto, with a shirt and tie on, driving a 24 year old pickup truck!)
Now all I need is a gun rack, a bale of hay and a Confederate flag. Then I can have some real hick fun with the Porsches and stuff that surround me daily.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yeah, I seem to have gotten off on a tangent. Genius is seldom tidy. But, actually, if you're breaking down the cost of a car as an investment rather than a per mile expense, my discourse does make sense.
Out of interest, I just hit my insurance company's website. To insure a 1997 Accord for me (26 year old single male, 0 accidents, 0 convictions, 0 DUI) would cost $2,556 annually. That's $213/mo, or more than the car payment.
Ironically, insuring a pickup truck which literally has an engine 4 x bigger, weighs twice as much and is nowhere near as capable of swerving to avoid an accident costs only $37/mo to insure.
I guess that makes a pretty good statement about the motoring ability of the average Honda driver, and therefore reaffirms my rationale for driving something capable of flattening any Honda product ever built.
Besides, when I'm gentle with the accelerator, the insurance costs make up the gas mileage difference.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yeah, automotive AC systems tend to be unreliable crap. And I agree, they're wholly essential to the enjoyment or even simply the usefulness of a vehicle.
My old (yet paradoxically newer) 1983 Dodge Ram was from California and had Chrysler AirTemp AC in it. Of course, it hadn't worked for years when I got the truck. And it liked R-12 freon, which is scarce and/or very expensive.
I pressurized the system with my air compressor and found the leak that had cost it all its R-12 freon. I replaced a defective hose, then took the truck to an AC shop and told them to fill up the AC system with modern R-134A, which is mostly compatible with R-12 freon.
(Sidenote: lots of people use propane (right out of a BBQ tank) in their AC systems. I don't like it, because it's not lubricated, and is therefore hard on the vehicle's AC compressor. The fire risk, actually, is very slight, because there's so little propane involved. But you can test your system with it.)
The truck's AC worked. Not as efficiently as it did when it was new, granted, but enough that when it gets to be 100+ degrees with 90% humidity here in Toronto (which does happen, believe it or not), the truck's cab was able to maintain a balmy 70 degrees.
My '76 Ram didn't have AC when I got it. So, I pulled the whole AC setup from a 1986 Ford Crown Victoria station wagon that I was scrapping, and have since retrofitted it into the truck. It promises to be effective, since it has a huge evaporator (meant to cool a wagon). It, too, is filled with R-134A - before I pulled it out of the car, I had an AC tech come by and vacuum out the R-12. Got a few bucks for the old freon, which paid for the new freon and a case of beer which I drank while I was drilling holes for new hoses in my truck. I'm just waiting for the first really hot day to see how well it works!
If you can swap a motherboard into a new case or do anything like that, you can do your own AC and automotive work. Domestics are easier to fix/modify/hack than imports, just like a generic clone is easier to upgrade than a Compaq or Dell. I mean, it's just bolted together. And what's a bolt? A bigger version of the little screws that hold your cards into their slots.
Just read the books, buy the right tools (Sears Craftsman, Mac and Snap-On are the best) and treat it like you would with a computer.
Not that I've ever found a static-sensitive starter motor...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Which is a dangerous experiment in self-delusion. Sadly, erroneous science is the favorite tool of tree-huggers, who operate on emotion rather than fact.
Most cars wear out before their emissions controls are technologically obsolete. Which means that with each generation of cars, there's an incremental upgrade.
Old cars (20+ years old) generally account for a very small percentage of the vehicles on the road. And if the car is still on the road, it's either been very well maintained (ie. not worn out) or hasn't seen much use (ie. not worn out).
Therefore, next time you see a 1971 Plymouth Valiant driving down the road, you should consider that despite its age, it's probably in no worse shape mechanically than the median commuter automobile. In fact, it's probably in better shape.
Now, what about those old emissions controls?
An electronic fuel injection system is basically a carburetor with feedback. It adjusts the fuel/air ratio for best mileage and emissions on its own. But a carburetor, properly maintained and calibrated is precise enough that it's not an issue.
A charcoal canister vapor recovery system, as fitted on virtually every car since 1975 (and two of them on most CA-emissions models) is a wonderful way of trapping unburned gasoline vapors. But next time you fill your gasoline-powered lawn trimmer, you've just released the same amount of gas vapors that would be trapped by the car's EVAP system over its lifetime. (Keep in mind, too, the EVAP system does nothing for your car when you're parked at the gas pump.)
Catalytic converters are the scourge of emissions controls. Tree-huggers lobbied the EPA until they were forced onto cars. Interesting sidenote about cataclysmic converters... they turn fairly unpleasant but non-lethal unburnt hydrocarbons into water and CO2. That's okay.But what they also do is turn the sulphur compounds in all gasoline into sulphur dioxide. Which hits the atmosphere, combines with water and produces sulphuric acid - acid rain. The pH of rainfall dropped alarmingly from 1975 to 1985 as the percentage of the vehicle fleet equipped with catalytic converters increased.
Our efforts, as a society, are far better served to look at newer cars. On a daily basis, I end up sitting in traffic behind a Hyundai Excel, Toyota Tercel or some other crowning achievement in hatchback design, breathing the blue smoke this nearly end-of-life vehicle is belching at me. The tailgate of said vehicles often have black stains all around their tailpipes, as evidence of a lingering problem in either fuel or oil control, and of long-term owner neglect. Let's look at enforcement of the issue more than every two years (registration): Get that off the road. The owner is clearly negligent and should be held criminally responsible.
By contrast, my 1983 Dodge Ram (which needed an emission test, but my '76 didn't, due to its age) blew a 24 PPM on unburnt HC its last emissions check. 0.2% CO at idle. 11 PPM NOx. Which means, either by fluke or by good maintenance, my 1983 Dodge Ram blew a cleaner sniffer test than Ontario's DriveClean program requires of a 1997 model compact sedan.
Finally, if you wonder why some people drive old cars, and in fact highly resent all attempts to regulate or inconvenience the owners of old cars in the interests of ill-founded environmental issues, think of your favorite vintage computer.
Now, if you had to license your Apple II or original Pac Man arcade machine, and then pay a tax on it because it wasn't "very efficient" - total MIPS for watt of electricity consumed - you'd be pretty mad, too, right?
Welcome to my world.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
As the cost of living spirals upward, more companies will choose spots like Reston VA, Rockville MD or Ottawa ON. Woo Hoo!!! Yes, more companies should move to Reston, VA, so the value of my home skyrockets. I love living in a town that I could change software engineering jobs every month and never run out of companies to work for or have to drive more than 10 minutes to work. Myakishnock
"People should get beat up for stating their beliefs" - TMBG
Someone posted about taxing the hwys (using gas tax) b/c they use up so much space. I just moved here (to valley, last week) and was amazed by the vast acres of land that are 'wildlife perserves' or some other open space. If you could build there, housing would be LOTS cheaper - but then traffic would be worse (and it is aweful now). Gas is also aweful: at $1.69/gal to $2.05/gal for REGULAR. C
Obviously you've never commuted in SV. Average traffic flow is not, in my experience, 60 MPH.
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Zoning regulations are a way for people who already live in a place to screw people who want to move there (and incidentally drive up their own property values). "Free enterprise" and "zoning" are inherently incompatible concepts.
_E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
You don't drive a car in Phoenix's 110 degree heat without air conditioning. Unless you work as a day laborer where the stench and crusty salt stains don't matter, or can shower when you get to where you're going :-).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
This would reduce the fuel used by motorists, reduce time wasted in traffic, reduce wear and tear on existing roads, and reduce the need for new roads. Also, it would increase the amount of time people spend in their neighborhoods, and would help rebuild a sense of community in places where commuter neighbors hardly even know their next-door neighbor, resulting, in all likelihood, in a decrease in crime.
Particularly in the tech industries, there is just no valid reason to have people going into an office every day. People should be telecommuting 1-3 days a week, minimum.
Until we start doing this, there is not going to be any solution to the massive congestion (and other commuting-related woes) we are seeing in our metropolitan areas.
Then, we can move on to the rural congestion that is beginning to occur on weekends when the urban masses decide to hit the road. :-/
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In Canada, you have no other choice; you're stuck in the system. Simple economics predicts the problems Canada's system is seeing. When you set prices below what the market dictates, supply will outstrip demand. This results in shortages, which is exactly what you're seeing.
At least in the U.K., you can opt for the private system.
I can't say that government services appear to me to be at a significantly higher level in Canada. Yet, taxes are considerably higher, as far as I can tell. I don't know about property tax, though. My guess is that is it higher. Here, I pay $2,700/year. Plus, I pay 28% federal income tax (far too high, IMO), 9% state income tax, and no sales tax.
Up in B.C., they pay a much higher income tax (49.5% + a two-tiered surcharge), 7.5% GST, 7.5% provincial sales tax, higher fuel taxes, and a host of other taxes.
I like B.C., and the people there, but, really, I believe you'd have to be pretty much insane to keep living there, as they just continue to punish you for making a living.
Man...I gotta tell you; reading that leftist NDP rubbish on the B.C. govt website is enough to make one physically ill.
And, most U.S. citizens, like their counterparts in Canada, are in fact hard-working. You want to deny that, I believe, because it is the only way you can possibly justify the confiscatory levels of taxation you apparently prefer.
And, despite all the taxes in Canada, there are still more panhandlers in Victoria than I've ever seen in an U.S. city.
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Obviously, I meant to say "demand will outstrip supply."
Dang keyboard! :-)
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Probably, though, there is a certain density above which rates either stablize or drop off.
But you still have to recognize that many people don't want to live in a dense urban environment. IMO, you have to respect their desire to live as they wish. Believe you me, I despise surburbia as much as most people here (I favor rural/small town living), but that doesn't mean we have the right to outlaw it.
As far as the urban masses heading out to the rural areas on the weekends, I should have said "metropolitan area residents" to be more accurate. Clinton is going to add two more national monuments here in Oregon, to "protect" them. In reality, they will be trampled all the more by hikers. The ultimate irony: the more environmentalists lobby for protecting areas from development, the more damage is done by the herds from the cities.
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When I spent three weeks in California last Christmas, I was in shock from the food prices. I'll admit that Fareway (Iowa) has noticably lower prices than even its local competitors, but aside from produce and fish, food prices were 150-200% of what I'm used to. I was in shock. I had trouble putting things in my cart.
Fortunately, I made it back, and was able to return to excellent pork cuts for well under $2/lb . . .
$500/month *per person* is reasonable? Yikes.
I move to Dubois, PA this weekend. Rental houses are hard to find, but I got one. 400/month for a huge four bedroom with an empty lot next door for the kids. There's also a basement and attic.
And I'd thought I was going to be forced to shell out $48-50K to buy a five or six bedroom victorian . . . my wife would have been upset if I took one of the run-down ones at $30k . . .
If your time is very cheap, then that just might work. If I work 12 hours/day and drive 4 hours/day, then that would give me just enough time to go home and get my 8 hours of sleep. Sleep, get up, repeat.
That doesn't sound like much fun to me.
Not to mention the fact that all that driving isn't exactly environment friendly.
Why not just move somewhere where the cost of living isn't so high? I refuse to ever live anywhere NEAR Silicon Valley.
As a Canadian whose lived about half and half on both sides of the border, I welcome you to move here and find out how little of what you think America is like is true. Compare an HMO to Canadian health care. In Canada, you can always get a second opinion and you get the services your doctor demands. In an HMO, you get what the HMO is willing to approve.
You'll have private health care, but will end up paying a big chuck of your bills anyway, and you'll still shell out a big chunk of your taxes to support medical care, only all that money will go to other people, you won't get anything out of it.
Now, all that assumes you can get a decent job and keep it. No unions and no guarantees means in Silicon Valley, if you don't code, you're poor, and even if you do code, the start-up you work for may not pay you squat, except in promissary notes due if and when the company IPO's.
Sales taxes in Santa Clara county, California are 8.5%, and prices over all are much higher than Canada, taxes included, because high rents and high wages have to be factored into every price. Add to that state income tax, and in some places county or city income tax, and the tax situation isn't so much better in the high brackets, and is far worse in the lower ones.
You'll pay twice what it costs to eat in a restaurant in Canada, and any contact you have with the service industry will be nothing but frustration. Anybody smart enough to run a cash register or wait tables can find a better job. Those homeless heroin addicts you don't want to see will be serving your food, and they'll still be there in the emergency room nearest your home. Hospitals in the US are required by law to treat everyone, even if they can't pay.
If you feel that US tax dollars are better spent in the USA, you are a fool. I invite you to take a look at the quality of the schools in California, or try to get your green card renewed at the INS building in San Jose. Whatever greater measure of government services you think you'll see in the US is an illusion. Services are being cut all over, and have been for years.
Canada's duties are small compared with the massive chicanery of importing to the US from Mexico or Chile, or even the far east. Canadian tariffs are lower on most kinds of goods than US ones, and prices for imports are usually lower in Canada. And Canadian customs is a breeze compared to bringing stuff into the US from Mexico.
Oh yeah, and that "American spirit" is mostly a myth invented by Ronald Reagan. Americans don't try to get rich through hard work, the upper middle class has etrade.com and the lower class has the lottery. About the same number of people get rich off of each. Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with the IPO culture.
So please, come to America. I'm going back to Canada and on behalf of my compatriots, we'd be happy to be rid of you. One less lazy bum who expects the government to protect his life and property but expects the government to shaft everyone else so his taxes will be lower - we can do with that.
>...the owner of the house enjoys a tax break that helps defer the interest on the mortgage loan, the renter pays exorbitant rental fees. These fees are in no way tax deductible, and we end up with a class of people who can only rent.
.. what are you going to do about it?
No, we end up with a bunch of individuals that choose to rent, and choose to rent again, and even when presented with the evidence that ownership has advantages over rental they do not change their minds or their behavior and continue to rent.
>Unfair? yes.
No. It's simply the reality of a pseudo-free market and a bunch of lazy whiners.
>So
Why the obvious thing of course. Do what I did:
Bite the bullet. Don't spend your money on new car payments. Don't eat out. Take your lunch to work with you. Don't make any more kids. Don't waste your bucks on dates. Go to school in the evening(since you are not out chasing babes you've got the time). Do your own laundry. Use a secured credit card to buy stuff THAT YOU CAN AFFORD. Make your payments ON TIME. Pay it off. Save some money. Establish a good credit record. Get another credit card. Use it. Pay it off. All while saving up 10% for a downpayment then go buy a place.
IOW, get with the program.
After 2-5 years of honest, focused effort: TaDa! Problem solved. Next question please?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
No, Socal price were always just ridiculously high. It's not as inflated as the valley housing market, but some areas are really close. You can still pay $600,000+ for a 2br, 1ba bungalow in Beverly Hills. Hell, I moved to LA from Atlanta and bought a house that cost twice as much that was half the size, if that tells you anything.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
If this kind of crap keeps up, maybe we'll finally see some companies experiment with allowing coders to telecommute.
Unfortunately in my profession, technical writing, it's a lot harder to get work done via modem or xDSL. The actual writing is usually the easiest part of the job; it's meeting with SMEs, programmers, and bosses that requires "face time" in meatspace.
Out here in the Carolinas, few companies are technologically and (the kicker) psychologically ready for routine conducting meetings via headset-and-Webcam. I keep on praying for the future to arrive so I can work off of a laptop in my living room.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I must disagree with your characterization of rent control. It's a complex issue, but to summarize: after a few years deeply involved in San Francisco housing issues, I don't believe that housing falls under normal "free market" rules. Nor is it responsible for any housing shortage, although heavy advertising by landlord groups would have you believe otherwise.
You said it yourself. Landlords will demand whatever they can get. Removing rent control won't build more apartments, it will just make more available to those with a lot of money, and fewer available to those without. It means that you, as someone highly-paid, will still be putting a large percentage of your income toward rent. It means that those who have lived there for years, who have invested much personal energy in the community, and who may even have caused your prosperity, will be kicked out. This includes teachers, social workers, artists, and all those waiters the high-tech lifestyle requires.
"So," you say, "since I can pay more money I deserve to live there more." However, it's a basic human (even animal) social rule that one's right to stay put outweighs another's right to move anywhere they want. If someone can't find housing where they want to move to, they shouldn't move there. They don't have a right to kick someone else out. To think that rich people should have more rights than poor people is analogous to the moral code of "might makes right", which isn't very sophisticated. Unfortunately, our economy doesn't reflect this, but rent control is one attempt to keep communities from falling apart. It's one thing if we're talking about luxuries, but housing is not a luxury. If you don't have housing, you're screwed.
I don't think rent control should be subject to any "means test". Remember, it's ultimately the residents who improve a neighborhood, not the owners (unless they're also residents). Low crime and booming business is more valuable than fresh paint jobs. So if residents are responsible for the improvements, it's reasonable that they should enjoy them for as long as they live there. The owners will get their profits when they sell.
Here in San Francisco, do you know how the Internet industry took hold? For most of its history, SF has fostered a creative and tolerant culture, which means that new ideas can be explored. In the early 90's, a few tech-savvy artists started working for themselves doing image manipulation services, etc. They set up shop south of Market because that's where cheap warehouse space was. Soon the area had a critical mass of talent and the SOMA multimedia industry took shape. It was in perfect position when the Web exploded. Now, the very artists and other people who fostered the culture and attitudes in the first place are being kicked out, by people prospering from the industry they helped create. So much for gratitude.
I'm speaking as someone who's made a good living in Internet tech for a long time, but who's sad to see much of San Francisco's culture and communities fall apart (I've lived here 10 years), not to mention everyone who's losing their home. I don't blame the individual immigrants; it's more of a collective effect coupled with insufficient rent control. We have rent control, but it has loopholes that have been exploited to illegally evict thousands of residents recently, and the DA won't prosecute. If we had no rent control, the problem would be far worse. A housing market driven purely by free market forces doesn't make a fun or interesting place to live, and you can just forget about real community.
"Simple supply and demand" may be an elegant theoretical system, but it falls apart in many real-life situations. Ignoring those situations and pretending the free market can solve everything has dire consequences. We adopt this economic system because it's supposed to be the best for people, but we need to recognize when it's not. We shouldn't let ourselves be slaves to columns of numbers.
[snip]
I have met people here who are doing significant software and internet work. While I have an advantage in coming here that I already have contacts in the valley, anyone already here can use the same methods as I do to find clients:
All this may be true, but it is besides the point. You are 4.5 hrs from the valley for phone calls, and flights for face to face meetings (especially to the west coast) take a long time. Further, its going to cost you an arm and a leg to ship things out there. Or to get new and improved services (the market is too small). There are good reasons why companies all tend to glob together. They can get more, better, or specialized services in areas of higher business or population density. All this is going to be troublesome in an area that has maybe two hundred thousand people (most of whom are not that tech savey) is 15 hrs by car (ok, so 6 are by ferry) from civilzation (and even then its just Nova Scotia [ducks for cover] you still have to drive for 2 days to get anywhere) and sticks out like a sore thumb into the North Atlantic. It is however a price you are willing to pay (for now).
Personally, given the things you list above about working for valey firms from anywhere, I would have moved somewhere warmer. But then I don't have a fiance who wants to move back to The Rock(no pun intended).
--locust
Dude, you forget that St. John's is an econmically depressed area. When, they had a job openning for a clerk at Aunti Crays (sp?, a local specialty foods store) thousands of resumes poured in... people with fscking Ph.D.s applied. More Newfs (Newfoundlanders) live outside the province than in it, and the largest single employer, admited or not, is the government (this is split between the civil servants, and the unemployment office).
St. John's had its day when being the closest point to europe in North America meant something. If you look at the buildings downtown (that survived the big fire, like the Basilica of St. John the Baptist which rivals in size and grandure any church built anywhere else in North America at the time) you will see that is was once a big city (by the standards of the day). It was probably really fscking expensive too. The point is that you can't compare a place that is considered to be economically viable (anymore) with a place that definately isn't. The valley will be exactly the same.
You have to make the choice about how much you want to give up to be close to the action. People will keep moving to places where they can make money, gain influence, or what ever is of value to them. As long as they feel they're getting the better part of the deal. In St. John's you're far away from the action, so of course its going to be cheap.
Congrats, and good luck.
--locust
Go on - I'm sure you know somewhere reasonably cheap that suits a Linux hacker like myself.
The only remaining houses that are not government owned long ago became museums because of how much taxes were.
:-P (Any idea how much parking is?)
The *average* three bedroom apartment sold last year for $1.3 million. Don't even think about a four bedroom.
$50,000 and government assisted housing? I believe Manhattan had that 20 years ago!
Remember, Manhattan is the place where someone had the bright idea that you could take an already tiny apartment and rent each room separately. People really do live in converted closets.
OTOH life expectancy is better because nobody drives.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Bruce,
I agree, that the East Bay is alot cheaper, and not anywhere near as bad as the snobbish over here on the Peninsula claim it is (I'm in Mountain View). However, there is one HUGE drawback to living in the East Bay:
The Bridges.
If you telecommute all the time, or work over on the eastern side, I'd live over there in a heartbeat. However, the sad fact is that about 80% of all work is located somewhere between San Fran and San Jose, over here on the Peninsula.
I'm not even going to think about driving across the bridges to get to the peninsula. There are EXACTLY TWO BRIDGES (with a total of 5 lanes of traffic between them (each way)) to get from East Bay to the Peninsula. I work in Foster City, and have a view out my window of the San Mateo Bridge. Let me tell you, it moves at about 10 mph for 2 hours each night, and that bridge is at least 5 miles long.
Sadly, the East Bay isn't really practical for alot of us who work mid-Peninsula. If you work in San Jose, yes, but not Sunnyvale-Burlingame.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
In many areas, high density housing is blocked by zoning ordinances. It is considered to be bad for property values and attracts lower income residents. My county wants a more "upscale" image and is restricting new construction of apartment complexes.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Not to mention that Pittsburgh is simply a great city to live in. As a Pittsburgh native who moved to State College PA for a job, I really miss it, but at least I'm close :)
Finkployd
yeah, but you have to live in the Midwest
Better to live in the midwest and make a decent living than be poor in the Bay area... At least that's what I decided and why I moved back.
I live in a 2bdr apt with garage in a nice section of MTN View for $1300/mo,
For that you could be making payments on a 2000 sq foot 3br house out here in the midwest. Renting puts money in your landlord's pocket instead of building equity for you.
DSL at home,
No big shakes, even out here in the stix you can get DSL or cable modem.
10 minute drive to work,
Where I live its no more than 30 minutes from opposite ends of town to another even during the worst part of what passes for rush hour around here. You can commute in from one of the rural 'bedroom communities' that are 15 to 20 miles outside of town in 30 minutes.
and I gross $70k/year with 2 years experience.
That isn't much more than people with similar experience are getting out here, maybe 25-30% more at the most.
What is wrong with the Valley lifestyle???
Do you know anything else? Have you lived anywhere else? I'm not saying that SV is all bad, but it has its downside as well.
Am I extremely lucky?
Compared to a lot of people, yes. A lot of people in your area are doing worse.
You are paying a premium to have your entertainment, and that is certainly a valid choice for you. You may find that once you are an old, married geek that your priorities may change a little, especially if you have kids and can't get away 27 days a year to snowboard no matter how close it is. Now, I've personally decided never to have children because I don't want to give up that much freedom (or spend that much money), but that is typical of the kinds of compromises that most people have to make.
Very interesting anecdotes about Canadian healthcare. I've been skeptical that the socialized medicine proposals down here in the US would end up giving us a system as screwed up as what it sounds like you have to put up with. And for all the whining of the 'liberals' around here, we already have county hospitals where the indigent can go for care. Sure, they aren't as nice as the private hospitals, but they are better than most 3rd world (or 2nd world (eastern bloc)) hospitals.
You should come on down here to the midwestern US. Relatively cheap gas (I filled up the other day with 90 octane mid-grade and it was $1.49 a gallon). No emission checks or inspections in the state I live in, registration is done by mail. Chances are your classic Mopar would cost what my '72 Chevelle does to register, under $20 a year. Insurance is fairly cheap too. My Chevelle would never pass CA emissions -- it doesn't even have a PCV valve, let alone any other emissions devices as the carb (Holley 4010 750cfm double pumper) I am running doesn't have vacuum hookups for any of them. Registration is no problem, just send in the money, and they send you plates. You wouldn't have any trouble finding parts for your car down here either...
As for taxes, the top rate for state taxes here is 9% I believe, and federal taxes are deductable (meaning the actual rate is more like 6 to 8%). Federal income tax of course can set you back 35% if you are in the highest bracket -- but most of us out here aren't. I believe I actually bring home around 65% of my gross pay. Sales tax here is either 5 or 6% depending on whether there is a municipal local option tax or not.
consider the Minneapolis area (or across the river in Madison, WI if you want to avoid the MN taxes),
I was just in Wisconsin over the weekend, and one bad thing I noticed when I was there. Gas prices were outrageous. I had to pay about $1.70 a gallon to get mid-grade gas. I pay about $1.49 a gallon where I live, and the twin cities prices tend to be pretty similar (I make it there on a fairly regular basis). Wisconsin is still a fairly high tax state, as is Illinois. South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Misouri are all significantly cheaper on taxes.
Finding techie hires can be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
That's mainly only true for people who buy a home.
Uh, the rent prices are much higher out there than they are here. A studio or 1br in SV costs $1200-$1500 a month, and usually in a not-so great neighborhood. You can get a nice 2br out here in a decent area for $600 or a 3br for $700.
For renters, the cost of living is a bit lower.
That is shortsighted thinking, as renters in the long run do nothing but enrich their landlords. In the long run, homeowners usually get at least get some return on their investment, and home interest is tax deductable. Plus renters get less space, often have bad parking (or pay extra for parking) and have to deal with sharing hallways, walls and possibly ceilings/floors with others.
Additionally, if you make twice as much in an area that costs twice as much, you usually come out ahead since there are many fixed costs which aren't twice as high, and you don't spend all of your income on cost-of-living expenses.
But the problem is most people only make 25-30% more in SV than they would out here in the midwest, and the cost of living, no matter how you look at it is going to be a lot more than that different.
Gas is about 30% more expensive in CA. That comes out to about $150 more per year for me. Not a big deal.
Its just one more thing.
Smog checks are done once every two years for older cars (once they get beyond four? years old). That's a whole $40 every two years.
Plus the time it takes to do it, plus either what it costs to bribe the checker or pay to get your car fixed or 'tuned' to make it pass. Plus what it costs that CA residents usually have to buy new cars more often than out here. Not to mention that the vehicle registration costs themselves are higher in CA. My truck costs me a flat $65 a year. My '72 Chevelle costs me $18.50 (registration costs go down based on age). I think m wife's car (a '99 model) is under $250, and it will go down each year for quite a while.
In return we get cleaner air,
Cleaner than out here? I don't think so. We don't have smog checks for a reason. No need.
and get older smoking vehicles fixed or off the road.
It is basically a myth that getting older cars off the road is a big win for the environment. It is far more damaging to the environment to build a new car than it is to keep an old one running, even if the steel used in the new car is recycled. There is still a lot of energy put into that process as well as the manufacturing process, not to mention all of the non-recyclable parts of cars (glass, fiberglass, plastic, rubber, etc).
Most of the older cars (especially hobby cars like hot-rods and classic cars) are operated a tiny fraction of the number of miles per year that most new cars are.
Your average lawnmower, snowblower or gas weedeater generates more emissions in a couple hours than your typical older car does in a year. Not to mention the amount of emissions that the average bar-b-q grille or fireplace generate in a couple of hours...
Big city hassles without all the big city culture.
I didn't find all that much hassle when I was there, and maybe I'm not very cultured, but what is missing?
yeah, the weather's nice, but not in the Summer.
That is a matter of opinion. I happen to like hot weather... And as far as humidity goes, I've been to central Florida in the summer, and its not much worse than where I live now.
Do you enjoy fire-ants?
Like they don't have bugs everywhere?
Termites?
We've got those aplenty where I live now. Couldn't be much worse.
Do you enjoy alligators?
In Orlando? Outside a petting zoo? Its not like we are talking southern Florida here. They may have a few gators around, but not huge quantities.
Do you enjoy very large cockroaches that hit you up for protection money?
Who does, but there are bugs just about everywhere, especially in warm climates. I saw some pretty huge roaches when I lived in San Francisco (I lived in a bad neighborhood).
Now, in Orlando, you don't have nearly the redneck problem you'd have in Hotlanta. And again, you have a huge gap in property values. Housing is VERY expensive in areas where there are decent schools (for your kids. remember them?),
I've priced housing in the Orlando area, and it is comparable to where I live now. As for schools, I have no kids, and never plan on having any, so that isn't a consideration. If it was, I'd stay where I live now.
and not only are the houses expensive, but you end up more often than not with high association fees for maintenance for the golf course you live on.
I'm not in the market for that kind of upscale housing or a townhouse or condo.
If you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, too bad. And in the areas where housing is affordable, not only do the schools suck, but you're facing rather high-crime, so buying a cheap house and sending your kids to private school isn't a great plan either.
Then again, I could easily get a concealed carry permit in Florida (virtually impossible where I live now unless you are a political crony).
Plus, all the cultural richness that is Disney and disney's parasitic competitors (Universal Studios, etc.).
That stuff isn't a huge draw for me either, but my wife loves that sort of touristy crap.
No thank you.
I'm sure Orlando isn't for everyone, but then again, neither is the Bay area, and for that matter, neither is the midwest... There are ups and downs to everything.
Florida is probably the LASt place on Earth I'd live. Mumbai or Bangladesh is slightly more appealing.
With your uppity attitude, I'm sure they'd welcome you with open arms.
Hurricanes.
In Orlando? Its way inland... Not really any worse than Tornados where I live now or earthquakes in the SF Bay area. If mother nature is going to get you, it doesn't matter where you are.
Fires.
Can anyone say California or New Mexico? I don't think Florida has as much problem with fires as the southwest does.
Strip malls up the ass.
What the heck is wrong with strip malls? Like anything, they have their place. And do you really think that I believe that Florida has more of them than say, southern California? Or for that matter, San Mateo county?
Lots of bimbos with implants and bad American cars.
Uh... Sounding more like a description of southern California to me... And what do you have against American cars? Bimbos in cheezy import tinboxes would be better somehow? Go visit Beverly Hills and you will find lots of bimbos with implants driving BMWs and Lexuses.
LOTS of older people (who shouldn't be on the road, but they are...).
You are thinking of the Miami area now, I think. Not that it is any worse than say, Phoenix or parts of Texas which are also overburdened with an excess of the elderly.
I think the white trash ratio in Florida is higher than anywhere else.
I dunno, I've been a lot of places, and I can't say that, for example, LA or a lot of the more northerly east coast (Georgia, the Carolinas, etc) is much better.
One can only pray for a monstrous tsunami to wipe out that state.
No more likely than a monstrous earthquake will make California slide into the ocean I guess. What a hideously nasty attitude.
So, Bruce, does that mean you would be willing to pay a UNIX/TCP/IP sysadmin $150k/yr? That's what I calculate as the appropriate salary for living and working where you describe, which is still nearly double that of where I live (Dallas, Texas).
I still get calls from employers in SV (none from EB yet) wanting, often desperately (like the one guy last week that didn't understand what "no" meant about 10 times in a row), to bring people in from elsewhere in the country. I guess instead of saying "no" (which doesn't seem to phase them) I need to say "$440k" (my calculated amount required to have a chance at getting a mortgage on a house in SV).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Same thing in Toronto. With an average availablity rate of 0.5%, our Tory premier decided that rent control was a Bad Thing and got rid of it.
Now I live in a one bedroom basement thats C$850, whereas 2 years ago it was $600. All because I'm in Little Italy which is now the hot place to live.
Trying to find a one bedroom above ground downtown is next to impossible, and I'm unwilling to fork over $1200/month rent since I currently make only $40K.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Check your numbers... 5000 sq ft. for a 4-bedroom house is waaaaaaaaay too much. I just bought a 1500 sq ft house with 4 bedrooms, and it's damn big.
5000 sq ft is a grocery store (500 X 100).
Obviously, you shouldn't be counting the basement as living area. If that were the case, my 1500 sq. ft. home == 3000 sq ft, which makes your story evel less credible.
Me, I took the easy route and started doing consulting gigs in the Chicago area. I make great money, I enjoy my work, 30 minute drive to work, and have a first class living situation. you can't beat living in the 'burbs in a house for 450 a month. `8r) and wow, I can concurrently save money, buy lots of toys, and go out all the damn time.
I have no regrets about not following the boom in CA, dispite the urging of all my friends. Besides, I remotely adminster a Linux box out there, isn't it enough to have your web page based there? `8r) (since there were no other midwest people chiming in... I figure i'd put my stake in about the dust bowl.)
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Just to let you know, it's not all of California which is like this. Southern California (the Los Angeles/San Diego area) has not been affected to the same extent. And the area where I grew up (Fresno) has it's cost of living drop through the floor in recent years.
The place to be is not California. The place to be is in the southern San Francisco/San Jose/Silicon Valley area. By living in Los Angeles, I'm considered to be "out of touch". And God knows no-one wants to live in Fresno...
California is a big state. 2 1/2 hours outside of San Francisco is still California...
While I applaud this, there are a few things here that don't make sense.
1) The cost of living in Silicon Valley should be similar to the cost of living in Sacramento for someone who owns a house. That is, the cost of gas, groceries, and entertainment should be similar (movie tickets never really vary from a low of $6 to a high of $10 per person), and utilities should be comprable as well. (The cost difference between Fresno and Los Angeles is greater, yet my utilities is only $100-$150 month more than my parents in Fresno, because I pay for water and they don't.)
The only thing that should vary is property taxes--and with the passage of Prop 13 many years ago, property taxes should only be assessed at the price you paid for your house (plus a couple of percent), and not at the price your house is potentially worth. That is, the cost to stay in your house should not have gone up more than perhaps 10% or so, and not doubled in cost.
2) My parents build houses in the Sacramento area. I know for a fact that the price you quoted for a house (approximately $45/sq ft) is way low--either the price you paid is misquoted or the finished square footage is misquoted. (I suspect the latter.) Now perhaps you are adding in basement square footage--which for an older Sacramento house would make some degree of sense. (That is, for an older Sacramento house, closer to 2500 sq ft of finished footage would make sense given the prices of housing in Sacramento.)
From what I know, house prices in Sacramento vary around $70-$110/, depending on the house, the area, and the condition of the house. Prices in Sacramento are not what they are in Silicon Valley, but they aren't what they are in Fresno, either.
My personal advice to anyone who owns a home in Silicon Valley is to stay put, rather than move. First, because job opportunities permit you to make a lot more than you can elsewhere, and second, because skyrocketing housing costs allow you to bank more equity. That's what I'm doing right now in Los Angeles, which is undergoing a similar (though less pronounced) boom--my house has gone up about $120K in equity in the last four years, and if trends continue, I hope to bank some or all of that when my wife and I retire. House equity is the only relatively secure investment you can purchase on margin, and you get to live there as well. (Meaning in the last four years I've gained about $120K equity on a $70K down payment, with monthly payments comprable after taxes to what my wife and I was paying in rent.)
Location, location, location.
My point was that California != Silicon Valley.
Of course you can pay $600K for a 2br bungalow in Beverly Hills. However, if you are willing to have a zip code that doesn't read "90210", cut that price immediately by about 30%. And some areas cost significantly less than others: in Northridge, you can expect to pay closer to $200K/$250K for the same bungalow. (The LA Times price survey is giving prices from around $100/sqft to around $300/sqft, depending on size, location and condition. The house I'm in right now is going for ~$200/sqft in the Verdugo Hills area of Glendale.)
Compared to the rest of the country, Southern California prices have always been high. (My parents were amazed to see 2000sqft houses in Tennessee listing in the $50/60K range a few years back--being builders, my parents couldn't figure out how you could keep the cost of materials for building a house to code under $60K.) However, compared to Silicon Valley, even Brentwood (which is *the* place right now) is cheap.
Here's a whole big list of cost of living comparators.
California in general has higher prices than most of the nation on everything from real estate to gasoline. I used to think this was strange until I realized that it has always been that way.
Back in the mid 19th century gold rush to California, some people were able to make quite a bit of money taking extra durable items with them to sell when they reached their destination. This was true to some degree of other locations too; if you've ever played a frontier game such as Oregon Trail you find that each more distant output charges more for basic supplies, sometimes 400-500% more.
In a sense, I guess California has always been seen as the land of opportunity (and good weather). This natural attraction, as well as its relative distance from sources of basic supplies has contributed to above average prices. For the present generation the attraction has the added edge of technology, the perceived panacea for all our troubles.
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Same deal in every place where the demand is high. In London £200,000 ($320,000) will get you a two bedroomed flat. In certain desirable places a 4 bed hous will hit 1 million pounds ($1.6million).
It sucks everywhere, people in Hong Kong and Tokyo are gasping at how cheap the Valley is.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Why did your cost of living go up if you already owned your house? Other costs may have increased, but not by as much as housing. Also, feeling poor on $110,000 in the valley is just your perception. At that salary, you can have a quite luxurious life in SV, except for housing. Stve
This is the one I have bookmarked.
According to it, I'd have to go from 50K to 106K to live the same lifestyle.
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I miss the nice weather and the vibrant art and music scene of Santa Cruz (but I don't consider Silicon Valley a nice place to live at all; Santa Cruz is separated from it by a range of mountains).
I have met people here who are doing significant software and internet work. While I have an advantage in coming here that I already have contacts in the valley, anyone already here can use the same methods as I do to find clients:
Market Yourself - Tips for High Tech Consultants
BTW - If you get a phone number from Linx Communications it can be a local number anywhere in the US and ring you at home or the office anywhere in the US or Canada (voice mail and fax store and forward too). My business number is in Santa Cruz but rings my home phone in Saint John's.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I'll tell you what I'm doing about it -- moving. And quiting my job to do it, and unfortunately shafting the understaffed company I work for in the process.
And I consider only $6,000 a year to be too much -- roughly 1/10 my pre-tax dollars. (I live in the Boston area; I've lived outside of town in Woburn, and in Cambridge proper close to MIT, and in Somerville near Inman Sq., but I always found a place I could pack with sometimes annoying housemates.) I'm planning to move in with my brother in Austin, TX, but even there rents are exploding. I think I'll try to find a trailer park that has DSL or cable modem access.
In the long term, I'm afraid I will end up living in Houston. I hate the air there, and by that I mean the humidity and heat even before the pollution is mixed in. But as the largest city in the world with no zoning laws, I think it has more promise as a flexible place where people like me can always move into the slum of the decade. I plan to be starting a company, and I want to be able to rent space very cheaply in some trashed strip mall or deserted industrial park.
It's unfortunate I suppose, but huge, unplanned, car dependent, sprawling type of city just offers more flexibility and opportunity. Places like Boston just fall into this old-world mode of limited resources controlled by older conservative classes, and it is just too constricting, no matter how cool you think the brownstones of the north end or whatever are. The only thing I fear is lack of access to smart people; I think you just have to plan in a lot of extra costs in recruiting trips and etc to keep pulling in the cutting edge from MIT, CMU, etc. I think Austin is close to having the best of both worlds, cheap and large universities, but they are sliding towards the high rent mode. Everytime I hear those shiny-faced "dialog-builders" and "concerned about the community" types talking about how Austin needs to control it's growth, I visualize $2,000 rents and write the place off mentally.
Maybe someone living in Houston can comment on the situation there ? What about other more mid-western places -- Des Moines, Kansas City, etc ? I'd prefer to be more north, even North Dakota, but I'm afraid I would never be able to hire anyone who would move up there.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Is that Brentwood, California, or Brentwood, Tennessee? If Nashville has become *the* place right now, I'd move back in a second without even sending my resumé ahead of me...
---
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Having recently moved back to (Metro)Boston from Sillicon Valley, I can attest to the outrageous housing prices out there. Some teachers of mine claimed that part of the higher expense was related to the more stable land that SV is built on (i.e. less vulnerable to earthquakes). Living outside the city is cheaper, but you pay the price with less solid foundations. Living in Boulder Creek is cheaper, but a mudslide could send you straight into the Pacific Ocean. Plus, it's at least a 45 minute drive into Palo Alto WITHOUT traffic. I knew folks where the closest housing to SV they could afford was in Tracy, 120 miles away.
Being a poor student out there, there were two separate classes that I could see. You either owned a high priced home somewhere in the valley, or you lived in a tiny apartment paying high rent (and your neighbors work at Taco Bell, not 3Com or Novell.
My opinion? Take the currently closed Moffett Field Naval Air Station and turn it into affordable housing!
Jared
You think we have it bad? Try being a teacher, city employee or police officer in these areas.
I have had friends who have taken jobs in SV for large sums of money, only to end up living in a dumpy one bedroom apartment an hour away from work.
Here is the solution: Thanks, but no thanks. There are other high-tech concentrated areas (Boston, Austin, Virginia, etc) with more reasonable living conditions. Tell SV and the rest of Kalifornia to take a flying leap. When the market dries up, they will be forced to change.
I live in the Twin Cities, where we actually have a decent number of high-tech companies out in the western suburbs (jokingly called the "Silicon Prairie), and a lot of financial companies downtown.
I live close to the city (5 miles) in a house that costs about $150k.
My brother lives in one of the finge suburbs, but is still only a half-hour drive from work. He got his 5-bedroom, 3-story, 2-year-old house at the end of a cul-de-sac for about 200 grand.
SV is a pretty area, but a house like mine would cost a fortune there, even if I lived an hour or more from work. That high cost of living translates to a high cost of doing business, so I don't really even consider it the ideal place for a start-up venture.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Better still, if you really want urban entertainment, you can get to Twin Cities in about an hour, and are just a few hours' drive from Chicago.
As long as the Mayo Clinic is there, the med-tech industry alone will keep the economy booming in that area.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Most of the upper midwest is well suited to tech companies. Gateway computers is located out in the sticks in South Dakota, and its a big part of why they are able to keep their labor costs down so far. Lots of small-town folks were willing to work in their warehouse for far less then people in the city would consider, because the live in big houses that cost them about $20k. Fairfield, Iowa is another town that used to be a blank spot on a lot of maps that has boomed because of a couple telecommunication startups.
If you are starting a new venture, and your VC sources don't balk at you being a non-Valley business, then the midwest is a great place to start a company right now. If you are afraid of not being able to recruit new techie hires, consider the Minneapolis area (or across the river in Madison, WI if you want to avoid the MN taxes), there are more geeks up here than you would think.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Of course, the reason they would cause traffic hassles is because there is no mass transit. And the reason there is no mass transit is because the housing density is too low to make it cost effective. Classic catch 22.
Don't get me started about how the rich developers here defeat all proposals to relax zoning ordinances in "blighted" areas to allow manufactured housing. We could demolish all the substandard housing in Phoenix and replace it with brand-new manufactured housing (at $20K apiece), which would be far cheaper than subsidizing rent or building new housing complexes for the poor (since land is still relatively cheap in the Phoenix area), but the developers who run Phoenix don't want that. They're hoping that, once the blighted areas run down far enough, they can pick up the land for cheap, demolish the crumbled remains of the substandard housing, and build luxury apartments and golf course resorts. They've already started doing that in the area just north of South Mountain.
Since the government in the Phoenix area is run by developers, they also make sure that zoning and development ordinances are used to effectively red-line areas that developers wish to redevelop. For example, one area south of the downtown area is being eyed by developers for luxury apartment complexes. The city has red-lined this area by re-zoning it as commercial/industrial, meaning that homeowners can't get permits to expand or remodel their homes and basically can't sell their homes (which are on too small of lots for commercial/industrial use). Thus homeowners end up moving out, and renting their former homes to whoever will pay, and the area becomes more and more blighted. And whenever the developers want, they can re-zone the land for multi-family dwelling (apartment), due to the fact that they own the city councel and thus can over-ride the zoning board any time they wish. The individual homeowners, of course, cannot do so, since they don't have enough money to buy city counsellors. Thus the developers who run Phoenix ensure their profits with the power of government at the expense of homeowners.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Personally, I'm seeing coalescing trends like this also in Canada - in Ottawa, they are predicting that the city could double in size due to high tech growth.
Yes, I'd imagine that a Tim Hortons based Edonut.com could really take off in Ottawa. The truly frightening thing is I just checked that URL, and it is owned by a squatter firm. Somebody is taking my idea seriously!
The problem is more demand than supply. It has to be rationed somehow. If not by price, how? Govt boards? Roll of the dice?
Right. Do you really think money wouldn't talk somehow? I knew of many people in rent controlled cities who paid cash under the table to get "cheap" over the table rents.
--
Infuriate left and right
This is hardly anything new. I lived for a while in the Bay area in the late 80's and ended up moving back to the midwest because I couldn't make a decent living out there. The salaries out there seem to only be about 1/2 again as much as what they are around here, but the cost of living is roughly double. Mostly it is housing costs that are insane out there (you can buy a decent house around here for under $100k, and you can buy a very nice house for $100-$200k), as noted above.
:-)
Car related expenses are also sky high in the Bay area... Gas is more expensive -- I can buy the 90 octane mid grade here for $1.49 a gallon. Insurance is double or triple that in the midwest. Cars themselves are more expensive because they have to have 'California Emissions'. Getting your car smogged all the time is not only expensive, it is a pain in the ass. Out here we never have to do that, or even have cars inspected -- if there is a place to screw a license plate onto it, its street legal. Registration is done entirely by mail.
Food costs are closer to reality in the Bay area, and some things are actually marginally cheaper (seafood and fresh fruits and vegetables often are), but boxed and canned goods , meat and dairy products are generally more expensive.
Taxes out there are also higher. I don't know what the sales tax is in the Bay area these days, but it was over 7% when I lived there 10 years ago. The sales tax here now is either 5 or 6% now depending on the local option tax (and that is too high). Sales taxes disproportionately burden people on the lower end of the economy. The fact that salaries are higher in the Bay area usually means that you pay more in federal income taxes too. Although many midwestern states have higher state income tax and property tax rates than California, the fact that most incomes and houses are lower in the midwest means that the actual amount of taxes paid is lower.
And if you think the midwest is the cheapest, it isn't. I'm thinking about moving to Florida... Like Tampa or Orlando No state income tax, and generally cheaper cost of living -- AND nice weather. In general the southeast is probably about the cheapest place to live, if you can stand all the rednecks...
No way man! We gotta go to Timmies in person to get the hockey scores from the counter girls!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
How many thousands of acres of top quality land in the Valley is tied up in freeways and roads? Stop subsidizing the usage of the automobile - tax the land used up by highways and freeways and pay for it with gasoline and other auto related taxes.
(see http://www.henrygeorge.org for some related ideas on this subject).
Exactly which government is paying the housing subsidy, the feds or the state? If its the feds then as a non-californian US taxpayer I'm outraged to be subsidizing stupid Californian socio-political choices.
Its those unintended consequences again...
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
I paid $1275 a month for a two bedroom one bath house (half a duplex). It wasn't a very nice place, had no back yard and only a tiny front yard. One car garage and tiny kitchen.
I'm getting married to a woman from Newfoundland and am staying here for a few months until our wedding. In St. John's we're renting a three bedroom house with a large kitchen, two and a half bathrooms, front and back yard. There's both a large living room and a family room.
The rent is US$500 with a US$133 deposit (no last months rent down). In Santa Cruz one of the things contributing to the homelessness that is so common there is that it requires several thousand dollars to move into a place, for first, last, plus a deposit.
But what was getting me about Santa Cruz wasn't the expense. It was the crowding. You couldn't drive across town at 5pm.
I thought that by becoming a consultant I'd get away from those insane Valley freeways, and although I didn't have to commute anymore sometimes I'd want to go downtown to the store or a cafe or something and it would really be a drag.
Housing is so tight that UC Santa Cruz houses students at the old Fort Ord Army base and Monterey and transports them in on buses, an hour's ride.
I used to live in LA and hated it there. I stayed in Santa Cruz because of the rural atmosphere and tight-knit community feel. That's not really there anymore.
We'll be heading back to the states after the wedding but for sure we won't go anywhere near Silicon Valley.
I'm very adamant, and have been for a long time that I will only accept work I can do "from my own office" - which means my home office. You can do this too. Screw the cubes at the valley, stop working for the pointy-haired boss. Throw away your flip tie!
Read how I do it at Market Yourself - Tips for High Tech Consultants
You don't have to move to Newfoundland but you'd have the choice to at least not drive on the freeway anymore if you stay in the valley, or at least move somewhere reasonable that you can afford.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
The same thing is true here in Atlanta. You can make $70K-$80K and have a standard of living as if you were making $90K-$100K. Reasons? Well, everyone is already saying them, but:
Lower taxes (this means that the cost of living is lower, too, because businesses don't pass those extra costs to their customers).
Low Prices (due to above): $800-$900 per month rent on a nice apartment (even one in the city!), $10 for an ok restaurant tab, cheap groceries. $1.36 for a gallon of gas (and this is unusually high right now).
Plenty of growth. Atlanta is growing ridiculously fast. There is plenty of room, land is cheap, and everything is brand-new.
None of this is anything that any amateur economist wouldn't notice, but people hear how red-hot California is. Then you hear about enormous salaries and don't think about cost of living. A friend recently worked out the numbers for $100K california vs $80K georgia, and realized that he'd keep more of what he earns down here.
Plus, we have Georgia Tech producing engineers and programmers, Emory producing marketting people, and both giving us managment/money people. And the venture capital is more plentiful and available on better terms.
I used to live in Santa Cruz, a short 30 minute drive across HWY17 through the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains. The cost of living in Santa Cruz is very comparable to that of the communities around Boston, MA. Living in communities such as Millbrae, San Mateo, San Carlos, and others while owning a home is not only possible.. but affordable and attainable.
There will always be exclusive or expensive areas, no matter where you live. Commonwealth Ave, Back Bay in Boston. All of Manhattan is terribly expensive. Lets not even discuss West 57th. Beverly Hills, Sun Valley, Austin TX near One Infinite Loop... you name it.
I think it is a shame that housing in some parts of California has become so expensive for quite another different reason :
THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE RENT NOW
Renters have few rights, and very little in the way of protections. While the owner of the house enjoys a tax break that helps defer the interest on the mortgage loan, the renter pays exorbitant rental fees. These fees are in no way tax deductible, and we end up with a class of people who can only rent.
The money poured into rent in California, and other tech zones, is incredibly high. In the Bay Area, some studio apartments rent for $1500 and up in the NON-exclusive or desirable zones.
$18,000 a year ... wasted. Just thrown away for a roof. Usually power, water, and garbage are -not- thrown in as services. A comparable mortgage for 30 years would allow a person to buy a $300,000 home. Imagine. If you used that rent to buy a car you could pay off that Porche 911 in THREE years. Five years would get you a car worth $90,000 or so, if you qualify for one of those %1.9 financing loans.
Unfair? yes.
So .. what are you going to do about it?
---------------------------------
Reach out, extend to, and embrace the universe.
-Einstien
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Embrace, extend, and engulf the universe.
Reach out, extend to, and embrace the universe.
-Einstien
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Embrace, extend, and engulf the universe
Right now I live in Hayward, CA, and work in San Mateo, CA. Both are on the fringes of Silicon Valley. What makes me laugh is the number of people who say they "can't" afford to buy a home here... but blow money on all sorts of ridiculous stuff and have maxed out their credit cards. My wife and I decided we wanted to buy a house and saved up money so we could do that. Now I have a good job and a nice house. My wife has chosen to not work for a couple of years so she can stay at home with our toddler. A lot of the problem is that individuals need to plan better.
However, I am not taking the blame off of the companies and civic leaders. There is definitely too much of a rush for businesses to be built when the companies and government know there isn't adequate housing or transportation. If you go for a drive in Santa Clasra county you will see countless businesses being built. At the same time, the government is complaining about the lack of space to build housing! Another problem that many areas face is that the people who already live there will always fight AGAINST new housing development. By limiting new houses, they drive their property values through the roof. I have seen this everywhere I have lived... England, Sacramento, North Carolina... it is all the same.
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TheInfoBox.com
Another techie hangout... please visit so I can say I've been slashdotted!
OK, I've been living out here in Silicon Valley for about 20 months now, and I've previously lived over large sections of both Boston MA, Pittsburgh PA, and Washington, DC.
A couple of things people need to realize about the Bay Area: physically, there are six generally distinct regions out here (San Francisio proper, Marin County (north of SF), Oakland/Berkeley, the East Bay, the Peninsula, and San Jose). I'm going to be making general statements that don't completely categorize the entire areas, but are mostly true.
Housing in San Francisco is impossible. 1000sq ft lofts run $400k. Forget anything else. Condos start in the $600k-range.
East Bay still has decent housing prices, depending on where you look. Middle-class housing runs $200-400k.
Marin has a variety of housing, depending on where you live. It can be cheap ($150k) to very expensive ($1.5m) for the same house, depending on which community you live in.
Berkeley is still a college town, and you compete with the students for housing. My advice is: don't. Oakland and San Jose are still industrialized, with suburbs. The suburbs of San Jose generally have housing similar to the Peninsula.
Gas is the most expensive in the US (running $1.70 nowdays), but the rest of the cost of living is about the same as other major cities.
Zoning laws are preventing high-density buildings, and lower-income (ie, those without a tech job) people are starting to flee. Public transportation isn't going to get any better, and there is no more room for roads. Unless something changes drastically, Silicon Valley will choke to death in about 5-10 years.
Fundamentally, the only real reason to live here anymore is that you can hope to cash in on an IPO. Moving out here to work in a regular tech job is not a good decision - you should look elsewhere.
This is not meant to be a compete downer. I love my friends here, and there are major perks. But this is a hard-core Boom Town. Adjust accordingly.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
This is part of the same reason that, when I graduated from college, I decided to stay in the Pittsburgh area. All of my friends were like, "Why? You could have a great job in the valley which pays twice as much!" But the cost of living in Pittsburgh is microscopic in comparison. At $60k a year, I'm sitting pretty. And the tech environment out here is much more astounding then you would expect, with the entire breadth of the industry represented.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
During the 1990's this was made worse by letting people sell off apartments as condos. So, you had a siazable fraction of the apartments cut off from the populace, which inflated the market price considerably. When rent control was (finally) lifted, all the rents went up to meet what market was left (since the condos remained condos). Since all the rent control apartments were already occupied, demand stayed high and supply stayed low.
The vacancy rate is almost zero, and has been that way for several years. Attempts to fix that (i.e., building more housing) have failed because the people who have places to live refuse to allow any large-scale housing to be built (favorite quote: "housing destroys our urban landscape").
I live one town over, which used to be the "unfashionable" (read: affordable) place to live, but I've seen rents double in five years (fortunately, not mine - yet). To rent a 2-bdrm apartment at what's supposed to be the "right" fraction of your income, you'd have to make at least $45-50K.
Because Boston is such a college town, landlords can ask for anything and get it. They'll just squeeze more people into an apartment. It's very common to have every room converted into a bedroom save the kitchen and bathroom (although even that's not a certainty; an ex-BF of my sister slept in a de-commissioned 2nd bathroom!). I have also seen ads around Cambridge asking for (literally) a closet to sleep in for $100/month (the ad gave dimension requirements and everything).
As always, it's simple supply and demand. Unfortunately, there's no clear solution for increasing the supply.
I can see those expensive South Bay towns from the top of the hill I live on. Yet it costs much less to live here. Sure, it's even less expensive as you get away from the bay, but it's possible to find a happy medium.
What burns me is that some people think they can't afford to live where I am, because they confuse it with "Silicon Valley".
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
When I first went to work in the Silicon Valley in the early 90's the cost of living wasn't nearly as bad. I had a $65,000 a year job and lived pretty damned well on that. I owned 3 bedroom house in Mountain View that I'd paid $190,000 for and thought I was on top of the world. Then the 'boom' began and everything changed for the worse. In the period of only a couple years I became the poorest person on my block. I thought I'd hit easy street when a job change catapulted me into a $110,000 a year position coding backend web apps (C) but even at that salary I quickly found myself stetching to make my paychecks last due to the increased cost of living. Couple this with the fact that the serious increase in traffic and increasing time at the office were keeping me away from my home for more than 15 hours a day and you can probably see why I began to get burned out on the whole 'Silicon Valley' mystique.
:) Two years ago however, I decided that enough was enough. I sold my home for $600,000 and moved to Elk Grove. I found a job with a Sacramento based application development company that pays $70,000 a year in TWO DAYS.
Like many people in this business I had always assumed that all of the 'good' jobs were located in the Silicon Valley, and that the rest of the country was a technological waste of time. Doing quick salary comparisons seemed to confirm this when I found that no other area of the US offered competitive salaries to the SV companies for someone with my skills and experience. Also, since I'm a Nothern California native, I wasn't exactly eager to move far
I know all of you Silicon Valley residents are probably saying "$70k? That sucks!", but you cannot forget the lower cost of living and the intangibles that go with living out here. $70k in the Sacramento Valley probably lasts as long as $200k in the Silicon Valley once cost of living adjustments are made (I paid $225,000 for a 5000sq foot 4 bedroom home with a REAL YARD!). When you factor in things like a commute of less than 20 minutes, actual friendly neighbors, lower gas and utility prices, and weekend entertainment that wont break the bank, the move becomes TOTALLY worth it.
The point? All of you Silicon Valley techies that are complaining about the high cost of living over there should MOVE. Contrary to popular belief, there are good jobs elsewhere that you guys could be taking. I realize that I will probably never get rich on stock options from the latest startup, but I'm happy now...and enjoying your life is the only thing that really matters in the end.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
It's an interesting phenomenon, call it 'Gold Rush Fever' or 'capturing the face to face synergy'. Why are prices high? Because everyone wants to live there. Why does everyone want to live there? Lots of reasons I suspect. Reasons like:
;-) .com without a california mailing address. ;-)
a) If you want to be perceived as a hot mover and shaker, you have to live in California
(Note: Real movers and shakers can live anywhere they want
b) The people I want to work for/with are all there
c) I can't be a
d) What I really want to find is a California Girl
e) If I don't have a job, I go to where there are lots of jobs and look there.
Personally, I'm seeing coalescing trends like this also in Canada - in Ottawa, they are predicting that the city could double in size due to high tech growth. I don't think that the popularity of these 'hot spots' means that distributed collaboration doesn't work - just that there are other reasons to be in close proximity.
However, I have to say that I think there will be a self-limiting feedback involved. As the cost of living spirals upward, more companies will choose spots like Reston VA, Rockville MD or Ottawa ON.
Of course, the mob mind may rule, and in the land of illusions (California) perception is King.
--My opinions belong only to me, until you realize I'm right