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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."
Well that is dumb ... if everyone delayed having kids till they had better financial situation then we would have a near zero birthrate.... real reason can't find a willing partner
If tech companies cared about families, they would locate more jobs outside Silicon Valley.
Maybe the silly con valley lot will die out on its own. We might have nice things again.
Anywhere else in the country, we'd be successful people who owned a home and didn't worry about anything,
The solution is obvious: move somewhere else.
There are plenty of tech all across the "flyover states." Garmin is in Oklahoma, Boeing is in Kansas (along with a number of other aviation companies), Motorola and T.I. are in Austin, NASA is in Houston, 3M and Target are in Minnesota, etc.
You will probably earn a little bit less, but the cost of living will be much lower and the quality of life will almost certainly be much higher. Especially if less commuting and less traffic are appealing and if you want to be able to afford to have one parent work only part time or even not even be employed in order to parent full-time.
... besides the extremely high cost of living. And they also cause health issues in the long run. In general, a decent advice is that what looks too good never actually is. Ten years ago the same issues were told about those working for investment banks, now it's Silicon Valley. The only ways of being rich and actually enjoying the money at the same time is to inherit a lot of it, or winning a lottery, or becoming something like an NBA star.
The average base salary for a software engineer at Apple is $121,083 a year, the article notes, ...
You would need $400,000 per year to have the same lifestyle in that area as you would living in most other areas of the country making $100,000.
And to work on what? Consumer electronics and advertising software?
Go to Greenville, work on bleeding edge shit, get paid 6 figures and live like a king!
Who want their kid to grow up in the middle of a race war? (Yeah, I am Swedish) Maybe in fifteen years when the dust settles.
Cry me a river. There are decent tech jobs elsewhere.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Since older people having kids results in a greater chance of developmental problems, have we found the reason for all the tards out there?
My word is poontang
SV is worth all the so called trouble
That's totally the case for New York. Have kids? What do you think I am a millionaire?
Look at the stock market, went from 5k to 26k
Time for salaries to follow the same growth pattern.
I started working in Bay Area tech in the 70's. Most tech workers, myself and my ex-wife included delayed having kids until we had a house and established career, which was in our early-to-mid 30's.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Meanwhile the Muslim immigrant has one every 10 months. What do you suppose happens then?
"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."
BS. Anywhere else in the country you'd make 25-40% less - you have to go to SF to get your 6 figure salary, that salary doesn't follow you to MS when you change jobs and move to MS.
Ken
Don't you guys have laws that limits the rent increase to a percentage of the current rent?
Unless the limit is around 10% and they're paying $5000 per month for a freakin' apartment... are they?
#DeleteFacebook
https://www.bestcities.org/rankings/worlds-best-cities/ - Aww, Tampa and Bakersfield didn't make the cut? Awwwww. Poor jealous dust bowl faggots in their coal mine slaver jobs, that's sad.
Techworks, in general make more money than most people.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
That's right, you wanted to work underground in a hole and that's exactly what you boring faggots are good for. Get underground ASAP, stay there and fuck your daughters like a true red state backwater hick, KKK faggots.
Well, then move. It's a free country.
And maybe if Apple values you enough, you can even continue working for them.
There are plenty of places in the country that would likely be very nice to live where the cost of living is reasonable. The company could pay employees less giving the employee more income after expenses. The company could actually make more money as a result.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
And yet they don't. Why? Uneducated red states are full of unemployable deplorable morons. Face it, they're not useful for anything except nuclear testing grounds and dumping fracking fluid and mine tailings into their aquifers.
Move to San Diego. $300k gets you a nice 2-bedroom or 2.5 bedroom condo. Not a palace, but enough to raise a family comfortably. Low energy (HVAC) costs due to favorable climate. Good cultural diversity, nice beaches, well-paying biotech, tech, and engineering jobs. And it's amazing that you can be in another country in an hour or two, depending where in SD Co you live.
It's time to end the 115 year annexation pissing matching between San Francisco and the rest of the cities in the bay area. Having twice as many jobs in a city than residents is just wrong and causes all sorts of social problems, not just this.
There are plenty of good paying tech jobs outside of SV.
GOP backwoods faggots deserve their coal mine lifestyle, I agree - GET BACK UNDERGROUND BLACKLUNG INBRED RED STATE FAGGOTS, where your daughter-fucking hick shit BELONGS. Dumbass red state faggots lol.
Drown in your swamp, TRUMPTARDS! You deserve what you get! :D CA will be here to bail your punk ass broke red state ass out when God stops punishing you for being inbred faggots.
Third option: become a miser in things that you don't enjoy, and splurge on things you do. e.g. 10 year old car, modest home in a working-class area, laptop bought off of EBay ... but ... enough money saved to take a nice backpacking trip somewhere interesting every year.
Is there no regulations over there on rents? That kind of increase would never pass here, especially if no work was done on the house by the landlord and at most they'd get maybe a $20 increase.
The islamic version of the movie idiocracy?
#DeleteFacebook
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I can understand why people wouldn't want to have kids. There are far too many people having kids that should never have been parents as it is. You have to have a certain type of patience to properly care for kids; you need to be there for them and not sit them in front of a TV or let your relatives take care of them. Myself, I pretty much always knew I wanted kids and my life would be very empty if I had not had them.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Have them while you still live in a crappy apartment. If you wait until you can afford that 2 million dollar home with nice furniture they're just going to ruin it anyway. Kids are messy and break things.
Who want their kid to grow up in the middle of a race war? (Yeah, I am Swedish) Maybe in fifteen years when the dust settles.
If you are Swedish you are on the winning side of any race wars I know of. Unless perhaps you are a Laplander, but considering you are worried about an Islamic takeover I doubt that is what you were referring to.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Typical flawed reasoning of someone who doesn't have kids. Delaying having children is a major fuck up. The last thing you want to be doing at 50 is dealing with serious family issues. If you are going to have kids just kick em out and get it started. Dragging ass because of the world shows the flawed reasoning of someone who feels they can control the world and thier child's fate. Lmao. Nurture can be good but nature always wins. Your kids are going to be who they are going to be regardless of anything you do. Keep them alive and set a good example...the only thing that works.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Typical Nu-shit company calls itself "Blind" ? no problem. But Master/Slave shouldn't be used.
It doesn't matter that blind people are still around today. Still suffering from the effects of blindness.
The priorities of the government there are inverted and irrational. They care more about bait fish and frogs than the fact that they have a water reservoir system that is adequate for 20 million people, when they now have 40 million. California is a desert state, and 80% of its people live where it almost never rains. San Francisco - A gorgeous city in times past - gets its water from far in the North, keeping it from farmers living in the interior whose wells are having to be sunk deeper and deeper every year that it doesn't rain.
Energy prices in California are some of the highest in the nation, and they are controlled by people who live on the coast where the temperature is always moderate, and never need air-conditioning to stay alive. Again, California is a desert state. People who live further away from the coast experience 100+ degree summers, but can't afford to cool their houses during the day.
California is run by arrogant, oblivious, rich, elite snobs who never have to consider the consequences of their stupid, selfish, insane decisions. At least Republicans know how to create prosperity, but they haven't been in power for years, and are fleeing this dumpster fire as quickly as they can get out. At this rate, the only people that will be left will be illegals squatting in abandoned homes, raving, drug addled street people, and the uber-wealthy tech lords living in walled and guard encircled communities, still completely ignorant and isolated from the ruin they have created.
California is Progress and Leftism drawn out to its logical conclusion.
Guruevi is known to be a lying faggot from Haifa Israel, but anyway...
The information stated is no surprise at all. We all know the cost of living out on the west coast has gotten insane. Tech companies desperately want to hold onto that clout of having an HQ in the heart of Silicon Valley, but it's only doable as long as young, singles want to work there so badly, they'll take what amounts to these massive pay cuts due to high housing costs and more.
Even on the other side of the country, you deal with the same struggle to some extent in the DC metro area and anyplace around NYC.
These may be places where you can find employment with high profile companies -- but they're poor choices for raising families. You have to figure out what you want and live in a sensible area to suit you.
I was born and raised in the midwest, in St. Louis, Missouri -- and although I left for a DC area tech job, that was only doable for us because we found a small town with much more "down to earth" housing prices. It means I have an hour or so commute to and from work, but it's also a job where I can work from home some days. As the job has evolved with time, they opened a couple of additional offices in this area and another one changed location in DC a couple of times. So trying to strategically rent or buy property "close to work" would have been a mistake anyway. I do know that St. Louis has recently made some real effort towards creating new tech jobs -- so that might be a really good place for someone to consider, if they want to work in tech but raise a family too. It's very much a family-friendly city, with so many things to do that have no admission cost (a world class zoo and many great museums, for example).
The people who are going to be responsible parents look at their lives, their jobs, their finances and they thoughtfully consider whether or not they can afford to have children, and whether or not they can provide that child a good life.
On the other hand, all too many people 'accidently' have kids and don't seem to care about the consequences because they know that the social services safety net is there for them. And at the extreme end of the spectrum, you have mothers living in poverty who are literally using additional children as a way to 'earn' more income in the form of welfare payments. Thankfully, those situations are the exception to the rule, but they do happen.
Tech companies are driving unmeetable (for now) demand for new office space. As a result, lease rates are about 56% higher (last time I checked) per sq ft for offices than for Peninsula-area rental housing. You can see why financiers and developers prefer to build offices rather than housing.
It's fashionable in some circles to blame the jobs/housing imbalance on zoning restrictions, but that doesn't seem to be consistent with the ground truth. There are many millions of square feet of new development going on right now, and in many cases these are mixed-use projects with the freedom to build lots more housing, but the mix is overwhelmingly dominated by offices because of the difference in rates of return.
Construction costs are also a factor. Land is expensive and in short supply, of course, but high-rise construction is also expensive. High-rise flats are about 2.8 times as expensive as row houses for equivalent units, and therefore likely to be expensive to lease and not as likely to be profitable for the developers. They're surprisingly candid about this problem; for example, see https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/05/01/construction-costs-could-limit-where-san-jose-homes-are-built-google-adobe-diridon/ "Construction expenses have pressured developers severely enough that new market-rate apartments are profitable in no more than two districts in San Jose... Even worse, downtown San Jose — seen as a cornerstone of the city’s economy — is one of the sections where development of new housing is unlikely to produce profits for developers..."
Transportation is arguably more important than housing, but it's received little attention so far. The road network is saturated now at enough times and places that additional housing wouldn't always be viable in those places. The population distribution makes rail systems unusable in much of the Peninsula.
If the occasional Marxist analysis doesn't bother you, or if you can put it aside temporarily, chapters 5 through 7 of Richard Walker's "Pictures of a Gone City" offer a tremendous amount of useful data on the situation.
Silicon Valley arose in part because of conscious decisions to distribute strategic industries geographically. (See Margaret O'Mara's "Cities of Knowledge" for a good synopsis.) Silicon Valley is hyper-expensive, earthquake-prone, water-poor, transportation-poor, and at risk from sea-level rise. Learning from past experience and distributing some of the growth elsewhere might be a smart move.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Backpacking is not exactly a splurging kind of hobby though. I spent maybe $500 on my last trip, most of it on gas and a nice pair of boots.
The problem with Silicon Valley is its run by socialists who don't understand that inhibiting development via regulations and other barriers reduces housing and increasing demand then results in out of control market pricing. It doesn't help when the companies in the area are super profitable and thus the employers can pay well. The people in silicon valley could be super wealthy- but the reality is they are poor because of socialism. Poor decisions by young people has led to poverty. A six figure salary in most places would make you think you'll be rich. These kids don't have the experience or data to make rational logical decisions and instead learn the hard way- they learn to live with poverty or convert to socialism thinking more of the same will somehow magically fix the problem which is really what caused it. In the real world that six figure salary making you rich is only true if your cost of living isn't through the roof.
They have only themselves to blame. It has become an area where huge amounts of money can be made off those who should be too intelligent to be so easily exploitable.
It was never the gold miners who got rich, but the people selling them goods. Miners made huge amounts of wealth, but had to spend it to survive. It is interesting to see that, even after all these years, some things haven't changed all that much.
I suppose your mom climaxes for a change?
With how overpopulated the earth is becoming, isn't fewer people having children a good thing?
And isn't people waiting until they are more financial stable to have children also a good thing for society?
That's assuming you're in the top quartile that still makes enough to have savings. For most Americans that means loving outside because the rent is too damn high and companies don't cover the cost of doing the work.
Housing is expensive in lots of places. Is there anything in this survey to suggest the effect is worse in Silly Valley than anywhere else?
Rents are higher, sure, but so are paychecks. If anyone feels like it's not to their advantage to live there, they can always, y know, move away.
Either they kill us with numbers or we kill them through superior firepower. Either way it's going to be a carnage. Maybe two.
When you tell yourself 'doing X is hard', it's time to wake the fuck up and STOP LYING TO YOURSELF !!
But of course, if you prefer to lie to yourself with pathetic excuses, hey, it's your life.
Hereâ(TM)s an idea. Live somewhere else where the cost of living is reasonable.
âoeBut then I would make 150k a year!â Hereâ(TM)s some news: In the real world, you can buy a nice house for $150k and have a reasonable mortgage.
Iâ(TM)m fine with these self entitled idiots not having kids.
Do you know what socialism is? High living expenses in a place with lots of rich people isnâ(TM)t socialism. McDonaldâ(TM)s workers in the SV are still getting paid shit wages without benefits.
Seen the film Idiocracy? Thing is, when you're smart you start to look at implications of decisions. By any measure, having kids is not a solid investment and will likely impact your career and life choices considerably... if you're going to do it you may as well wait until career is off the ground and enjoyed some travelling, partying, multiple partners... If you're not smart you have kids in your teens and let someone else pay for it.
First, I am not saying you are wrong in not having kids. If you don't want them, you should definitely not have them. And second, you are right: you probably have a lot more fun than my and my wife. And probably have more sex as well. You probably eat out more, travel more, see movies more, and generally do more of the things typically classified as fun.
But when my youngest daughter brings a pile of her favorite stuffed animals down and snuggles up to me with them, to watch terminator 2 together, or when my oldest daughter comes into my workshop because she wants to forge a firepoker with me (I am a part time smith)... those moments are better than anything I ever did that would be considered classical fun. Those moments are why I love my kids more than anything in the world. That feeling is better than anything I ever experienced as fun before I had kids.
When Silicon Valley got its start, the high developer/engineer salaries it created allowed nerds to mate and marry for the first time. With the bidding up of California housing, the same forces are now preventing them from having children.
Enjoy your future of lawyers and politicians.
I'd like to know how you think socialism can succeed without the rich to fund it... Ahh.. there's the problem.. Socialism only works until you bleed everyone dry.. Venezuela is what happens when you have socialism..
In other older societies (especially hunter/gatherers), raising children is more a responsibility of the extended family, village, and tribe. Expectations for what people need to provide a child also differ. Also, increasingly workers in US society don't get a fair share of their contribution to production (compared to other societies). So, this notion of "cant afford children" is culturally relative.
See also the book "Our Babies, Ourselves" by an anthropologist.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
First world problems, that is. Cry me a river. Adult crybabies probably shouldn't be spawning real babies anyway, they are doing the rest of humanity a favor.
I thought having kids was a sign of getting old, stupid, and lazy.
I'm surprised they weren't fired as soon as they had their first ultra-sound.
Not being able to afford the having and tearing of children is one of the best reasons Not to have children. I wish everyone was as intentional as these yuppies.
So the wealthy elites who control the capital want us to reproduce more, so they can have more cheap labor.
But they don't want to pay us enough to defray the costs (housing, feeding, and especially training and education).
Just another effect of concentrating wealth, and income-inequality.
You want us to have more kids, then as with anything else: PAY US MORE, FUCKERS.
Is this the white collar version of "I work at mcdonalds and demand to make $15.00 and hour?"
How many SV jobs have average workweeks under 45 hours? With commute time is it 60+ hours a week at the office or in commute?
How many have an extra 10 hours at home fending off emails?
Where's the time to have kids and spend the several hours a day needed to get them ready for school, review homework, school projects, family dinner, bed time...?
And why no mention of how a single income family with one spouse doing kid care during the day is unlikely with the high cost of living?
And why not mention of job stability that you can plan for 5 years of a steady income, assuring you can pay for decent housing, so a couple can decide on having kids?
Family friendly policies at work are a 10% solution to the entire picture and are, best polished, a PR tool more than a help to families.
Since between 20 and 30% of people will never have children, that means that only 1-2% of "Silicon Valley Tech Workers" have such high incomes, or such lack of consideration of realities that they don't consider housing costs before disabling their contraception devices.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
well, not the best reason.
anyone claiming to "really care about the environment" should make the largest benefit possible: not producing another human who even at the lowest levels of first world substinence, generates more solid/liquid/and gaseous toxins and waste than the difference between the worst tuned big block Chevy and a new Model S.
I'd like to know how you think socialism can succeed without the rich to fund it... Ahh.. there's the problem.. Socialism only works until you bleed everyone dry.. Venezuela is what happens when you have socialism..
You already live in a socialist society... what do you think the bank bailouts in 2008 were? Or state subsidies are?
Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349
Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. Science on reasoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Manufacturing consent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM