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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."
especially if you're going to up and move to a 'flyover' state you've never been to. Plus living in a big city isn't just about the amenities, it's about having ready access to work when you're job goes away (which they seem to do a lot these days). Buddy of mine moved to a small city for a nice job, worked it for a few years, bought a house, put down roots and then the whole thing got shipped overseas. He got trapped. He couldn't make enough money to get out, nobody would buy his home (thanks, housing bubble burst) and he ended up in a succession of dead end jobs.
I lost track of him when I did the opposite and moved to a bigger city for the more stable working conditions. If I hadn't I couldn't afford my kid's college expenses. I'd prefer to go back to the small city I came from but there's no work there to speak of. At the end of the day workers go where the jobs are. And one or two employers isn't enough.
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I'm not necessarily Midwest but I just got a 200k double-family house (separate in-law living space).
Sure it needs some work and I don't make CA-level money but my commute is either 0 (from home) or less than 30 minutes to just about any amenity.
I gave up the 120k+ contracting/high pressure IT life for a low(er) level managerial gig. Sure I don't touch everything I do anymore, and I sometimes miss the soldering iron in one hand and "Learning Python/ObjC and NodeJS for 8Mhz Microprocessors" books in the other but then I catch myself laughing at myself.
The most stress I got is yelling at people up the chain to do their jobs and the town building inspector for the renovations I'm doing on the weekend. At least I'm not on a plane on Saturday or trying to catch a cab in Belize at 8pm at night.
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Not really a big deal unless the only reason you need a " six figure salary " is for bragging rights.
Lemme break it down..
You need to make $160k in San Francisco to enjoy the same purchasing power as you would have in Houston, TX at only ~$80k
( Pick any Salary Calculator online to see the results for yourself )
Here are a few reasons why:
Groceries 31% less
Housing 71% less
Utilities 4% less
Transportation 28% less
Health Care 27% less
If someone is truly concerned about raising a family, why would they choose to live in one of THE most expensive places in the US ? :| )
( We can't have a child darling ! We pay $5k a month in rent !
Basically, one needs to choose between their ego and their family.
The fact this article even exists tells me all I need to know about what choice they've made.
Protip - You can't have your cake and eat it too. With the exception of the extremely wealthy, most folks will need to choose one or the other.
Having just left the Bay area I can confirm there is a huge difference in hiring outside the Bay. The speed you get hired in the Bay is usually 1 week or less. A full day interview session after the initial phone screen and typically before I get home ( thanks bay area traffic ) I would have an offer.
Outside the bay area people ask so many questions before the phone screen. Take 3 weeks to decide to interview you. Then another couple weeks to move forward.
I found a remote gig for a bay area company faster than any outside the Bay area company finished interviewing.