Originally Posted by PimTac
PandaBear,
A big reason Amazon has been expanding elsewhere is that Seattle has pushed for a head tax on employees. Amazon is actually moving a lot of people out of Seattle and into Bellevue across the lake.
There is a 50-60 story building going up downtown Seattle that Amazon was going to occupy the vast majority of. They have since pulled out of that deal. Those people will go to Bellevue.
It's a story most people outside of Amazon and Seattle might not know of.
Yes, I remember that part about Amazon freezing development suddenly when the Seattle tax might be a real thing and then all of a sudden Jeff pulled out of the development deal. Another reason is they ran out of people willing to move to Seattle at the current cost of living. Their quota for putting people in performance improvement plan (warning: you will be fired, we are doing this because we don't want you to have any ground on fighting a lawsuit) means they need to have a constant pool of employees coming in and going out, and if you don't have fresh meat you need to go to another metro to cycle through other companies' employees. This is why they favor other large tech hubs despite high cost of living: they don't want to be the only employer in a cheap town, they want to be one employer that can snatch the cheapest 10% out of the top 20% workforce in the metro, and they need to have other companies to snatch from and dispose to.
Originally Posted by JHZR2
There can be lots of folks making sky high bucks to offset the group making or showing zero.
Thing I don't understand is just how much the average person in tech makes. Because these million dollar deals seemingly would make them house rich and entirely poor real quick without a decent income. Case study: How much does a mid level tech person make? $350k/yr?
Then take something like 50% away from all taxes (federal, state, ss/medicare, sales), and then you've got maybe $14k/yr.
A $1.5M home, 30% down, 30 years at 3.8% results in something like $7600/month, assuming $24k/yr property tax.
So someone with what I'd say is a good paying job, $350k/yr, is paying out half of their take home on a mortgage, granted they still would have $7k/month for other things. Adjust calculations from there. That's a lot of free cash.
This. The amount people pay for housing among tech hub is never the 28%, and a lot of them aren't doing 30% down. Regarding to pay, it can go all over the place depends on the company, the stock market, the guy's bargaining power, and luck. Example: one of my new grad coworker joined an "old tech" company that I'm currently in, and got paid like 100k out of school, he was not happy because his friends were all making 120-140k and then after a year he started interviewing around, got 2 offers, and used them to bid on each other, and finally landed in a company that pays him 200k. He then ask me when will he make 300k and then I have to tell him it is hard to say, because sadly after 20 years in old tech I'm still not making that much, so all I can offer to tell him is to keep interview skill sharp and stay in new tech instead of old tech.
Even among tech not everyone can afford to buy, a lot of the people in unicorn got lucky and exited (IPO, company sold, so their paper money RSU are now worth cash despite a discount), and they finally has a big chunk of money for down payment. So you have a bunch of techies that make 200k (I think that's likely the average mid level) and the 20% of them that got startup exit, pay tax (sucks because it is not capital gain and you have to pay all that in one year instead of spreading among 4), and your income discounted for the loan because RSU cash out is a one time event, then you can finally started to buy something. Yes it sucks, that's why the new trend is to stay away from startup because this is no longer the 90s, IPO won't get you a paid off house, and your exit may only break even compare to working for FANG in a stable job for the same amount on average after all that risky maneuver.
Yes, the tech scene is a bit messed up right now, and maybe a bubble, and definitely the SF Bay Area is overpriced, but the market is the market and companies aren't moving because it is hard to move a whole tech hub. You can expand but it is not a guarantee you can move your project around and not fail (let alone be a success).