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58% of Silicon Valley Tech Workers Delayed Having Kids Because of Housing Costs (chicagotribune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Mercury News:
Though some residents blame the area's highly paid tech workers for driving up the cost of housing, data increasingly shows that these days, even tech workers feel squeezed by the Bay Area's scorching prices. Fifty-eight percent of tech workers surveyed recently said they have delayed starting a family due to the rising cost of living, according to a poll that included employees from Apple, Uber, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Lyft, and other Bay Area companies.
The recently released poll, was conducted by Blind, an online social network designed to let people share anonymous opinions about their workplaces. Blind surveyed 8,284 tech workers from all over the world, with a large focus on the Bay Area and Seattle. Blind spokeswoman Curie Kim said the findings were "really surprising. In the Bay Area, tech employees are known to make one of the highest salaries in the nation," she said, "but if these people also feel that they can't afford housing and they can't start a family because of the rising cost of living, who can....?"
The average base salary for a software engineer at Apple is $121,083 a year, the article notes, yet the company also had the largest percentage of surveyed tech employees who said they'd been force to delay starting their families -- 69%.
"Anywhere else in the country, we'd be successful people who owned a home and didn't worry about anything," said one 34-year-old in a two-income family. "But here, that's not the case." While her husband helps Verizon deploy smart devices with IoT technology, they're raising two daughters in a rented Palo Alto apartment, "only to experience a $500 rent increase over two years."
The recently released poll, was conducted by Blind, an online social network designed to let people share anonymous opinions about their workplaces. Blind surveyed 8,284 tech workers from all over the world, with a large focus on the Bay Area and Seattle. Blind spokeswoman Curie Kim said the findings were "really surprising. In the Bay Area, tech employees are known to make one of the highest salaries in the nation," she said, "but if these people also feel that they can't afford housing and they can't start a family because of the rising cost of living, who can....?"
The average base salary for a software engineer at Apple is $121,083 a year, the article notes, yet the company also had the largest percentage of surveyed tech employees who said they'd been force to delay starting their families -- 69%.
"Anywhere else in the country, we'd be successful people who owned a home and didn't worry about anything," said one 34-year-old in a two-income family. "But here, that's not the case." While her husband helps Verizon deploy smart devices with IoT technology, they're raising two daughters in a rented Palo Alto apartment, "only to experience a $500 rent increase over two years."
I would jump at the chance to move back to the midwest and pay $200k for a 5 bedroom, 3000 square ft. house on 2 acres of land. But despite my work being almost entirely remote, my boss has a hardon for daily face to face meetings and won't allow "telecommuting."
So I'm stuck making $150k in CA and paying $40k a year in rent because I can't afford paying $1millon for an entry level home. After taxes I clear about $35k and support a family of 4, so my actual cashflow is about the same as a minimum wage worker because they get housing, day care, and food for free.
Blue states suck ass, they're doing their best to eliminate the middle class.
While that might be true, in extreme cases, I often feel like they're not even trying.
Before I lived in Silicon Valley, I was basically invisible to tech companies. Their recruiters didn't even acknowledge that I existed, and I never felt like I had many job opportunities. It was rare that I'd even get a response to a resume send-out.
The moment I moved to Silicon Valley, updating my address, the barrage began. Recruiters started constantly trying to get in touch with me, and its never let up. The simple fact that I'm already living here makes me 10x more desirable to them.