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Austin Has Highest Salaries For Tech Workers, After Factoring In Cost of Living
McGruber writes "Austin ranks number one in the nation when it comes to offering the largest tech salaries that have been adjusted for cost of living expenses, such as housing, groceries, utilities and other necessities. This is according to a study by TriNet, a company I had never heard off, that provides (buzzword alert!) cloud-based human resources services. The seven major tech hubs, ranked by cost of living adjusted average salaries: 1. Austin: $105,000; 2. Atlanta: $103,000; 3. Denver-Boulder: $98,000; 4. Boston: $79,000; 5. Silicon Valley: $78,000; 6. Los Angeles: $70,000; 7. New York: $56,000." It's true that Austin has cheaper real estate than Silicon Valley, or London, but what this kind of analysis can't capture well is the worth for an individual of living in a particular place. Some jobs are easier to do from Texas (or Timbuktu) than others, and opinions vary wildly about the importance of climate, culture, alternative job options, and other factors. New York living is expensive, Yes, but it comes with a free bonus if New York is where you want to be. Some people even like Los Angeles. Is there a place you'd rather be but forgo because of the cost of living, or a place you'd consider simply because it would amplify your salary?
this is not an add for Dice reps at SXSW
really
Wherever You Go, There You Are
These are bigger "tech hubs" than Seattle? Does not sound legit.
There are a lot of tech workers in the DC area, and a relatively high cost of living.
One thing I've noticed, though, is that even if you live in a cheaper area, it may not outweigh the standard cost of geek toys. So, someone in New York may make more, pay more for living expenses, but then buying an iPhone or a laptop may result in less of their salary used.
here. Too much money. Too much excess. Too many women. I wanna go home to the armadillo.
Some people Love LA which was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that link.
When I looked at the difference, Atlanta's cost of living is less than half of Silicon Valley's - but I factored in living close enough to have the same commute and amenities as I have now.
Also, Atlanta being 31st in the best cities to find jobs and being #2 on salaries makes sense.
There have been a lot of layoffs here and employers are very picky - overly picky, I think. But one hiring manager told me that she got over a hundred applicants for one job and most of them more than likely could do the job: she runs a MS .NET shop, fyi.
She's picky to reduce her work load.
So, it's know the tech laundry list AND have industry experience.
And of course, off-shoring is alive and well. Some poor bastard with a kid on the way just got canned and just guess where the company is sending the work.
It seems as though when an application gets into maintenance mode, that's when the companies start looking at their development costs.
For people trying to break into the video game industry, the four areas I hear repeated over and over are Silicon Valley (#5 per the article), Seattle (not ranked in the article), Boston (#4), and Austin (#1). I imagine that Austin's low cost of living gives it an even bigger edge over some of the other areas for people seeking to move from areas that aren't major tech hubs. So how much money should someone save up before relocating to Austin for the first time? Dutch Gun says it was $10,000 a decade and a half ago, but inflation has probably raised that.
It's a good choice to work where you grew up. You know the place, so you know how to live cheaply, and you have friends and family to help you in an emergency.
I have a decent programming job. It could pay double or triple somewhere else but my entire rent and utilities including Internet service comes to a grand total of $425/month.
It's silly to be making $100,000/year and having $60,000 or $70,000 of that amount after taxes going to rent. That's the reality of places like Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York City. Maybe after a few years you'll be making $150 but you're going to be struggling for a while. Every other service is jacked up in price along with rent. The price of groceries, getting your car fixed, tickets to a concert, getting drinks at the bar. As one person pointed out, the only advantage to living in these places is that retail items can be a smaller percentage of your income if that benefit isn't outweighed by the cost of living and nearby services.
So in short I prefer to make less money in a place where it doesn't matter and not have to worry about making more money.
It's expensive, sprawling and little to no culture. Why people choose to live there I have no idea.
I'm one of the lucky few in that I don't suffer from Allergies spring and fall here in Austin from some kind of Allergies. I mean it is so bad we even have a name for one of them "Ceder Feaver" and if you suffer from it man let me say you don't want to be here!
Don't.
I'd love to live in a tropical paradise, but so would lots of other people. That drives up the cost of living and/or leads to overcrowding.
Salary amplification in... states with no income tax:
- Alaska
- Florida
- Nevada
- South Dakota
- Texas
- Washington
- Wyoming
If you have no dividend or interest income, add:
- Tennessee
- New Hampshire
What actually matters here is not where you want to live to work, but where you want to live eventually/retire to, and how long you are willing to work before you can safely retire, which is how much money you are effectively able to sock away each year.
Austin is still something of a deal, since compared to California, you get about 25% of your salary back through not paying income taxes, but the other places in the article are less of a deal, regardless of the cost of living, because what matters is not the cost of where you are, but the cost of where you end up when you and your money eventually move there. And that includes differential real estate pricing.
Washington is not so much of a deal, unless you live near the Oregon border; Washington makes up for its lack of income tax through sales tax, and Oregon makes up for its lack of sales tax with an income tax, so if you can get salaries in Washington, and buy your consumables, furniture, cars, and other items in Oregon, you can get a pretty good deal. A lot of Microsofties take this option, and have no problem with job transfers, which are more of a problem in Austin than Silicon Valley, but less of a problem than if you took a job at some data center in Iowa.
Trinet is a competitor to ADP (outsourced HR functions).
Austin, L.A., Silicon Valley and I'm guessing Denver and Atlanta are places where you pretty much need to own a car; whereas NYC, and San Francisco proper and Boston are places where I'd never bother with one and usually used my time on the train to study. It sounds like they didn't adjust for that at all.
... then nobody's mentioned it to me.
Not that there might not be (would make sense, since it's a big tech gathering), but, Eh, not that I'm aware of. The link also goes to a company that is (at least in some respect) competitive w/ Dice. Mostly caught my eye because I'm *in* Austin, though working this weekend. Sort of grey and cold this weekend, anyhow -- not an ideal walking-around-downtown kind of day.
The truth is just boring, in this case.
Cheers,
timothy (anon, because of a stupid bug, or maybe because of a conspiracy ;))
Seattle (and/or Portland, since they've lumped together "Silicon Valley") is an obvious omission, as is the D.C. area generally (from Baltimore to NoVa, huge and robust tax-dollar-sink gov't tech stuff ...), and doubtless quite a few others. (Salt Lake City is another I'd put on a list of U.S. tech hot spots.)
timothy
Austin is still something of a deal, since compared to California, you get about 25% of your salary back through not paying income taxes
This article states that like New Hampshire, Texas makes up for its lack of an individual income tax with higher property tax, which the landlord ends up passing on to the tenant.
Austin, L.A., Silicon Valley and I'm guessing Denver and Atlanta are places where you pretty much need to own a car
Capital Metro operates Austin's public transit service. Unlike the bus service where I live, it even runs on Sunday. What do you claim it lacks?
These would also work if you can do long-range telecommuting
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Retiring_abroad
Sister lives there should I go and try and find work instead of greater boston/providence area
I never quite understand these calculations. It's not like people in New York don't know it's expensive to live in New York. If you told this data to most New Yorkers (or other high CoL areas) they'd say "but then I'd have to live in X."
There needs to be a better way of comparing cities besides just CoL... like what's missing from these cheaper cities that allows them to cost less and what would you have to give up to live there.
You could write similar headlines saying "after factoring in cost of operation and ability to get you from point A to point B a Chevy Malabu is better than a Corvette." It's not like Corvette owners don't know there are cheaper car options.
I'm a welder, and I moved to Pittsburgh last summer. I had a lot of friends here from when I used to live here so being here was important to me. It was a large struggle to move. I spent the first two months living out of my car, and then up until recently I wasn't able to find a welding job. I worked shitty jobs, didn't get enough hours and struggled to survive. The whole time I knew, that I could be in North Carolina living near my Grandparents and making 16 bucks an hour welding. Happy ending, I now have a welding job in Pittsburgh where I make 14/hour. I'm currently saving up to buy a house here.
If you're asking Slashdot to make major life decisions for you, you have bigger issues. That said, why the hell not.
There are a lot technology jobs in the MD/DC/VA area. A low six figure salary for a good Software Engineer is pretty common, and if you can get a clearance then you'll earn more.
One thing nobody seems to mention when they compare cost of living is that most of the difference between locations will be housing. Sure, the price of gas and milk and medicine varies from place to place, but the big ticket item is your dwelling. The cost of housing where I live is much higher than the national average, but my salary compensates for that. As long as you aren't renting, that extra money is going into something that YOU own! When I'm ready to retire I'll sell my house, pocket the money, and move somewhere that's more affordable.
Water. Lack thereof. Drier in Austin than the current viewership of Austin City Limits. I recommend Boston. Stay at the Holiday Inn. You'll love it.
It might have been better to phrase it such that you're asking Slashdot for help on gathering information that you plan to use to make decisions for yourself.
It takes a long time to get anywhere. :(
Austin is *not* ready to be a big city. Its infrastructure wasn't designed for it. Its traffic jams are some of the worst in the country, its aquifers are in serious trouble owing both to desertification and fracking around the Colorado River's headwaters, and much of its distinctive nature is being destroyed by new development. This is why you see signs reading, "Welcome to Austin! Don't move here."
If you're male and reading /. you won't be seeking an abortion for a significant other because you're single.
Thus, since you are addressing a /. audience, your logic can be simplified to :
Texas legislature is no problem as long as you are male or not seeking an abortion.
But 2/5 for effort.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
How exactly is the GOP keeping salaries down?
It's where I am an cost of living is fairly high, just not quite as high as the bigger cities like New York. Boston has a nice mix of Biotech, Finance, Defense, etc.
Big surprise, huh:
http://www.trinet.com/document... [trinet.com]
Quality of Life is not factored in, but is ranked separately. The rankings are almost inversely correlated With Adjusted Salary 1st place winner Austin in 2nd to last place, and 2nd place for Adjusted Salary Atlanta in dead last place for quality of life.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Not much about methodology, but they show more rankings and pretty visualizations
http://www.trinet.com/document... [trinet.com]
Quality of Life is not factored into to Adjusted salary rankings, but is ranked separately. The rankings are almost inversely correlated with Austin in 2nd to last place and Atlanta in last place for Quality of Life.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
I don't know. Is she hot?
How can a list of "the seven major tech hubs" not include Seattle, which is home to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, but include cities like Atlanta? That is a strangely biased list so I wonder what the criteria was for "tech hub".
If you are a top notch engineer, Silicon Valley is the only place to be. If you can deal with a smaller space to live, you will have a much higher quality of life. Salaries start out in the 130k range from College to up to 300k for experienced good engineers at top companies, generally double everywhere but New York. You will top out a lot lower in Austin. You live a little different from Austin, but there is so much to do here and if you don't like your job, you can have 10 in a week if you are good.
How about working in Canada, eh?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I'll put it this way. I would pay money not to live in or visit NYC. I have been there and consider it the lowest of all ways of life. Dirty, smelly, crimne ridden, social horror story and abomination against God and nature pretty much sum up my feelings about NYC. What may have been a decent piece of land before the Europeans took over has become a nightmare of rotting concrete and human misery.
All of California, Washington, Texas, Colorado, Nevada have better Salaries and low cost of living compared to the over-hyped and overpriced NYC. NYC is a complete shit hole. Even the other NYC boroughs(like Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx) rent cost is reaching Manhattan levels while Tech salaries remain low and stagnant.
Los Angeles is a great city. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The weather alone is awesome, the other stuff is a bonus.
I worked for Apple in the early 90's, when they were opening their first sites in Austin. Our group was eventually moved there (and I'm still there, in a suburb) from Campbell, CA. Anyway, at the time there was a lot of internal marketing around "why you would want to move to Austin."
With perfect timing, the local San Jose newspaper ran a political cartoon captioned "There Are Problems Everywhere" or something like that. It had a drawing of the entire United States, with descriptions of the local problems. California was titled with "Earthquakes" and a little arrow. Florida had "Hurricanes."
The state of Texas was decorated with the word "Texans" right in the center, with little arrows pointing all around.
This is still very true today. I wish I had saved that cartoon.
Having moved here from Seattle 7 years ago expecting to take advantage of a lower cost of livng I can say definitively that the cost of living here is not as low as everyone is led to believe. If you want to buy a house, you can expect to pay substantially more in property taxes than most of the rest of the country. Aggregate real estate taxes are .5/$100 in valuation. This results in my paying a much larger percentage of my income in taxes. And getting part of that back from the IRS doesn't make up the difference.
Good luck finding a place to rent. University of Texas students soak up the available rental space and drive the rental costs to absurd levels.
Food, housing, entertainment, taxes (sales and property), are all higher here than you would expect. The traffic is ridiculous. The stratification of income levels is becoming an increasing problem.
All in all, not a rosy as TFA would have you believe.
I'd rather live in Brazil. They still respect traditional gender roles. That trumps everything in my book.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
What, geeks can't knock up a girl?
The question was, "Is there a place you'd rather be but forgo because of the cost of living, or a place you'd consider simply because it would amplify your salary? ". It's not fair that I continue to get bad karma because some assholes don't read or comprehend the questions.
They may look like sugar ants, but they are from a different, crueler planet. Fire ants are amazing little things, but choicer words spring to mind when they're actually doing their evil. They are the devil's own. That are like the IRS in more concentrated and honest form.
Crazy ants are taking over from fire ants: when both want the same thing, the crazy ants win 94% of the time http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rise-of-the-crazy-ants/
If fire ants are the IRS in concentrated form, then get ready for an invasion of concentrated TSA.
It's raining in Austin right now :)
It makes a lot more sense to work in a high salary high priced location for the first ten years of your career.
During that time, max out your 401k/IRA. Then move to Austin, using your last salary to get a higher than average salary in Austin. Meanwhile your larger than average retirement plan earns you great returns.
Net result, you will have a much greater quality of life from the time you to move to Austin to the day you die.
I just wish San Diego wasn't in California.
I think that in terms of freelancing rates + beauty of life, Paris is the best place for the tech right now :)
Hi there!
re "editing my post" -- Nope; wish that were so easy! Post editing is actually a feature that some sites have and have done a decent job of, but we just don't have it. Editing stories? Yes; whenever you see a typo silently fixed, or an updated appended with a note, etc, that means we've edited the story. Comments are a different matter; that warning about previewing before submitting applies to editors as well as to anyone. Trying to one-off edit comments would be a nightmare -- that would take hassling a coder, and they probably wouldn't like that on Saturday, even if it were germane / kosher / etc. Facebook's interface for editing comments isn't bad, nor is the approach many other sites have taken. (Editing is possible but is indicated, so at least no one can say "X," then "not X," and deny having made *some* change to the comment -- makes certain types of trolling harder to pull off.)
Nah, forget that -- you've well-described described the situation, actually: Yep, I knew that earlier anon. comment (like this one) would go in anonymously, and I knew that the other, later one, would not. If you want to spend life energy disbelieving it, well, I can't stop you. But ... why? :) Here's the bug: there's a peculiarity of the beta site which means that admin accounts (like mine -- admin in the slashdot admin sense; I don't have root, praise be, on the boxes that *host* the site) have trouble staying logged in to the beta, while staying logged in fine to the admin interface, and to the classic site. One of those glitches that make the beta a beta. So I'm reading this, and posting this (again) anon., from a different window than I generally view and edit the site with, and reading the beta site. A work in progress. If I cared to and time was infinite, I could promise a timed update, logged in, from yet another window. But I could also tell everyone to run to the next phone booth or the hostage gets it, unless I learn the combination to the secret container of kryptonite ... that would be an exciting kind of life, I guess, but it's not mine.
And though it's not a rabbit hole to dive down (sorry), if it sets your mind somewhat at ease: Delete *ability* (via checkbox, that is) has been there for I think more than 2 years; and not a secret, as far as I know. It's an interface, rather than a new ability per se. (Comments live in a database; databases are read/write, etc.) But deleting comments has lots of bad repercussions. If you know of it being used to disappear comments in kafka-esque fashion, well, let us know, because that would be news (and a bug). Someone below pointed out that there are some exceptional circumstances that have led to comment deletion; pretty much the opposite of a secret. It was none of my doing, but I like the way both the Scientology and Microsoft demands for removal were handled. (The way DMCA works means that Scientology in particular probably wasn't happy with the response generated ;))
Hmm. Maybe I could have chosen to move to Austin in 2012 specifically because I knew this day would come, and the sleeper cell would awaken ... ARISE YE PEASANTS ARISE! EH?! Eh? Eh ... (Which, speaking of Austin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et-s_GnUNBw)
And it's a generally nice town; it's a tough trade-off between here and Seattle; Seattle costs more (housing wise), but I prefer the weather and scenery there. OTOH, Austin's no slouch for sunsets, bats, hiking, and mild winters -- most years. Places generally have their tradeoffs, but luckily tastes and prices both vary in ways that reflect that. If you're in town and wanted to do so over coffee, we could pleasantly talk about the interface and its tricks and travails.
timothy (if that *is* my real name* ...)
* Which it is**
** If that *is* my real name!***
*** (etc.)
p.s. I kid you not, my captcha to post this = "contrary."
Quality of Life is pretty subjective, though. Having traveled/lived/worked extensively in all the relevant places, I find Texas QoL to be vastly superior to California. I'd take downtown Austin over downtown SF any day of the week, and I'd definitely take a retirement ranch in the Texas Hill Country over the same in prime California wine country. But that's me, I expect everyone values various QoL factors differently.
And really, Austin isn't the best measure of the immense Cost of Living differences between CA and TX. A good example: A friend of mine lives in a ~2K sq ft home w/ 3-car garage on a beautiful 5 acre property in rural TX (1 hr drive to an international airport / major metro area). He gets 35mbps internet service out there and reliable power and water service - he nets six figures working remote for silicon valley. His mortgage, mortgage insurance, home insurance, and utility/internet bills total out to ~$1500/month...
But the problem with Austin is that it is surrounded by Texas. Traveling in any direction the moment you leave Austin you are waist deep in loud, ignorant, obnoxious assholes. I used to work for a company in Sunnyvale, CA. that announced that it was moving to Austin. They kept going on and on about how cheap housing was and how big a house you could get for the money you were paying in the Bay Area. Even with all that more than half the company quit rather than move to G*D forsaken Texas. The company did move and was out of business within a year.
You could double my salary and I would still never move to Texas.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
It's too small a city to be widely diversified in terms of tech providers, so whenever a bubble or recession hits, the city takes a dive. There's nothing else within commuting distance with similar tech options (Dallas and Houston are too far, and San Antonio is mostly medical).
I grew up in Austin in the 80s and 90s and watched things first-hand: first there was the mid 80s (1985-86) semiconductor bust (component makers were out-competed by Japan). Fifteen years later there was the Dot Com crash (gutted Dell, as well as dozens of smaller web startups headquartered in the city). Every time the market bust, it was 2+ years before jobs reappeared, making it a dangerous place to call home.
If you want to live there, go on ahead - just make a nestegg your first priority (and take the cost of that into account when you are pricing out the city).
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I make less than half of what I could be making. But I'm also making four times what I need to pay the bills, which means early retirement, hello! And if I ever found myself unable to work in the tech industry, I could still pay the bills working in a grocery store.
So for everyone else who has more than one person to support, which is probably at least half the people on this site, costs will be higher.
I was pricing it out recently, it would cost me around $7,000/month (mortgage payment) for a 1,500 sqft townhouse in Palo Alto.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Figured I'd jump in since no one really addressed this head on.
Where you live and choose to spend a significant portion of your life is a huge deal, really. Over time it can completely impact and mold your entire life, since, to a large degree we are products of our environment.
I've done the whole "research the heck out of where to move and work" and pick the one with the best pros and cons, typically best income.
Trust me, it just doesn't work.
You have to live where you want to live, it makes all the difference. Waking up happy every morning; there is no amount of money in the world that could make up for that, overall.
I have a close friend that has lived in at least 7 countries and whenever I ask him which was best or where he made the most money he always responds that it all tends to even out.
I totally agree and I think you should live where you want to. Making $50,000 or $100,000 extra by living somewhere with a better Cost of Living, but you'd rather be elsewhere makes no sense. How much is your life worth? Even a year of your life.
I have an Asian Engineer friend that moved to Dubai for 4 years to make a ton of money. When he came back it was like he was broken or something, he didn't enjoy living there at all.
There are WAY too many factors involved to ever decide something like this with calculations or statistics or finances alone.
Maybe you move somewhere with a better CoL but your son ends up learning horrible morals from crazy kids at school and ends up turning your basement into a math lab and shooting up a mall, and your gut feeling said not to move there in the first place.
Move where your heart calls to you and leave the pro and con lists to picking a new TV, not choosing freaking years off your life.
I live in rural South Carolina and work for a major multinational. I earn more than the Austin "average" salary in an area where land is $5k/acre and a 2000 square foot home on 10 acres costs around $125K, or about $150K if you build it new.
I promise you I live more comfortably than any engineer in any urban area.
Warm year round in the southwestern US or cold most of the year anywhere in Canada... More job opportunities almost anywhere in the US and limited job opportunities almost everywhere in Canada. I fail to get the point of your question.
Please Don't Move Here.
Thank you.
I both live and work off Loop 360 (just north of the bridge in the photo) but fortunately only have to drive about a mile on the highway. Even that's bad enough to make me appreciate working from 7am to 3:30 or 4pm, at which time traffic is very reasonable -- I simply won't go back out between 5 and 6 to join the slow crawl. You'd think a city as tech as Austin could at least figure out how to synchronize traffic signals.
Ok, we get it: you hate and don't like republicans. Could you now comment something related to the article?
I would love to move to Austin or Atlanta. My sticking point is that these places do not have public transportation. A car is another expense. I guess you can tell that I'm from New York. The furthest I've lived from work is about 45 minutes on New York City train.
....except your in Texas
I believe Austin is ground-zero for worsening water shortages year to year, so if you dont mind having water restrictions and the possibility of water-armageddon, then Austin sounds like a great place to live
Being able to avoid California's brand of crazy and New York's brand of crazy is a bonus to living in Austin, not a problem. Granted, we have our own issues, but they pale in comparison to the aforementioned places. If we didn't have so many Californians fleeing here and pushing up costs it would be even better- after all, most of the issues we do have are related to outgrowing our infrastructure.
Houston has a lower cost of living than Austin. Houston's a much larger city, too. They are close enough that employers match offers. Heck, employers in Dallas and Houston match one another, too. I'm not sure, then, how Austin works out as a better deal financially than Houston.
...in Texas.
People who make stupid indefensible comments about what they hate.
And no, I'm not a Republican but maybe I should be.
So much hate I feel from you. Reevaluate your life and go do something for someone else.
I would think that Boulder or Missoula would be a better choice but maybe neither of those places were big enough to be considered. Missoula especially.
Why is that a "but" instead of an "and"? It should be "and 35% of the population is Mexican", since that in no way contradicts "it's a safe city".
Far worse: Climb the foothills near Boulder, and look at Denver.
People suffer effects of breathing carbon monoxide after driving through Denver on I25.
Spent one year in Socorro NM, where NRAO operates the VLA and VLBA. Renting a whole house was astonishingly cheap. Why, I'm not sure. Salary was a bit lackluster compared to industry, but not bad. I piled up so much $$$, bought a car, got some rolled-up prints framed, even bought the fancy coffee. Donated to projects on Kickstarter. Life was good.
As long as there's a good coffee shop in town, cutting-edge astrophysics lectures, and income much greater than outgo, I'm happy. I'd stay there forever if not for water scarcity throughout the southwest.
For anyone who likes explosions, the dynamite research done by NM Tech would be a bonus.
... has mountains, trees, and cows. My commute is 13 minutes through rural country. I cross country ski out my back door. Housing costs a quarter of what it is in Seattle. As for fresh water, I have 8 inches of it on my driveway right now, you can have all you want, just have to melt it first before drinking.
"TriNet said it conducted research on more than 8,900 of its clients and about 230,000 of their employees." It only researched TriNet clients.
The Seattle metropolitan area has one of the hottest markets for tech and as of the end of 2013 with the second highest average base salary in the country at $103k. The average rent for the Seattle metro is slightly above the national average.