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New York Falls and Seattle Rises on 'America's Top Tech Cities' List (geekwire.com)
CRBE has released their annual list of the top tech cities in the U.S., analyzing 13 metrics (including salaries and housing costs) to "gauge the competitive advantage of markets and their ability to attract, grow and retain tech-talent pools." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes an article from Geekwire:
Seattle is the third best tech market in North America, trailing only the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington D.C.... Seattle passed New York for third this year on the back of a growing, well-paid and well-educated class of tech employees and a strong roster of big companies...with New York and Austin rounding out the top five.
The report shows a big divide in Seattle between a prosperous tech community and everyone else. Tech workers in Seattle make $110,999 on average, and their wages have increased close to 20 percent since 2010... The 177,380 people who work in other professional fields like finance, sales and marketing make an average of $57,603 per year and their wages have only increased 6.3 percent since 2010. During that same time period, apartment rents increased 39 percent to an average of $1,619 a month.
San Francisco had the highest annual salary for tech workers -- $123,921 -- followed by Seattle, which also had the highest percentage of workers with at least a bachelor's degree -- 59%. And there's also an interesting second list of the top small tech markets, which is led by Columbus, Ohio followed by Charlotte, North Carolina, and Portland, Oregon.
The report shows a big divide in Seattle between a prosperous tech community and everyone else. Tech workers in Seattle make $110,999 on average, and their wages have increased close to 20 percent since 2010... The 177,380 people who work in other professional fields like finance, sales and marketing make an average of $57,603 per year and their wages have only increased 6.3 percent since 2010. During that same time period, apartment rents increased 39 percent to an average of $1,619 a month.
San Francisco had the highest annual salary for tech workers -- $123,921 -- followed by Seattle, which also had the highest percentage of workers with at least a bachelor's degree -- 59%. And there's also an interesting second list of the top small tech markets, which is led by Columbus, Ohio followed by Charlotte, North Carolina, and Portland, Oregon.
Manhattan is about $4,000/mo for a decent 1bdrm. $3,200/mo if you're willing to forgo some amenities. At $124,000 salary, take-home pay will only amount to $70,000, and you'll easily give another $35,000/year at least on rent. So your take home will be 28% of your salary, or about $35,000/yr, which will be further spent on food and entertainment. So you're really down to $20,000/yr in savings. And you're not buying an apartment any time soon because at $1.5 million and 20% down, it will take you 10 years to save up just the downpayment and then you'd still have a mortgage of $96,000/yr on top of that. And AMT will start biting you because you won't be able to deduct that large mortgage.
"Anyone who has lived and worked in the Bay Area knows: "San Francisco" and "Silicon Valley" (Mountain View/Sunnyvale) and "San Jose" and "East Bay" are very different, very distinct markets. Heck, we're talking about an area the size of Rhode Island..."
...which is to say the average size of a county anywhere else. It is nothing to live one county over. San Francisco and the Silicon Valley are the exact same place just as Rhode Island and Boston are the exact same thing. Come on out to so-called "flyover country" and a two hour dive means exactly jack fucking squat. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine....you're not states. You're counties. Coughing whilst driving and you're two "states" over.
Seattle misery: HUGE problems with traffic. New construction makes the traffic worse. Amazon and Microsoft abusing employees. Shockingly slow internet connections.
... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."
Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)
Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)
Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)
Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle