Even in New York and Boston there are a lot of programmers and other midlevel ICs making making ~$150k. Not everyone is lucky enough to work at Google.
I work in New York at a tech company with more than 200 employees that's a household name among below 50s and considered a hot brand and I only get paid 150.
Last I checked, $150k/year was enough to afford a decent house in a place like Penfield. It's a completely different world. I'm talking about NYC metro. Interestingly it seems like just about all of New England is more expensive than comparable areas in Western NY.
Basically all places in the US with anything resembling urban density and don’t have a reputation for decline have been on this housing cost trajectory for several years now.
Most people seem to, which is a thorn in the side of anyone who has lived outside of NYC in the big beautiful state of NY. It's annoying having to regularly clarify "the state, not the city".
California outside of LA/SD/SF is dramatically different (with the exception of some coastal areas). Even then housing and rental competition can be pretty bad. My brother in law has done 4 hour round trip commutes to the Bay Area for contracting work while managing to find an area with affordable housing.
Yup — they’re out that way and it’s still pricey. It’s unreal — the last time I heard the subject of renting here come up there were only 3-4 houses available in the whole town.
ASIC design is a much more ratified skill set than you'd need for a normal programming job. I always found it sad that salaries in the hardware industry are so comparatively low.
It's even crazier when you consider that readily available knowledge for cutting edge hardware is much more scarce compared to software. There are no massive communities of knowledgeable people all trying to show you what you are doing wrong.
Especially for something like silicon design, there is virtually zero knowledge available outside of institutions.
I think in some ways this actually is better though.
I find that when I want technical info about hardware-specific topics, I do not find the same kind of dumpster-fire articles like I would about say, ReactJS, or something similarly trendy.
Its always some basic html/css website with extremely well written technical information from an old-head that is a master of whatever he is talking about.
I understand what you mean by better but you have to admit the much lower compensation is weird given how much higher the bar is to be an SME and how many fewer the engineers are.
There is nothing "sad" about it. It is simple economics. The return on investment (ROI) is so much higher in software, compared to hardware. Correspondingly, the profits margins are way higher in software, compared to hardware.
Related: When you look at salaries for robotics engineers who work in a factory, the salaries are so much lower than you would expect. Plus, your factory is probably in a rural area due to very cheap land prices.
One more: Anything "embedded" usually pays surprisingly low salaries considering their skill-level (much higher than mine!).
> There is nothing "sad" about it. It is simple economics. The return on investment (ROI) is so much higher in software, compared to hardware. Correspondingly, the profits margins are way higher in software, compared to hardware.
I've seldom seen a more classic example of econ bro arrogance than this comment. Apparently economics doesn't just tell us which neoliberal policies to support, it also tells us when we can be happy and sad too?
There are relatively fewer employers seeking hardware skillsets compared to employers seeking software skillsets. People may say, "there are way more software engineers though! hardware is SO hard!!" as a counter, but they don't realize there is a proportionally crazy amount of software employers out there trying to hire engineers.
Your pay is capped by what you make your employer (the ROI you mention), but actually determined by how hard it is to replace you. Hard being defined as the difference between "# of Positions" and "# of Employable People". You could make your employer 10 million a year but you won't see a dime of that if anyone on earth can replace you within 5 minutes.
The fact that rural areas pay less has more to do with lower bargaining power of the employees than it does the cost of living. If one quits, the literal million dollar question is where are they going to go work instead? Is there another major manufacturer out here in the middle of nowhere? "Shut up, take what you get." Many build out in these areas for precisely this reason.
If the rate hikes cause a mass startup extinction we'd see an equalization of pay.
Housing in the NE isn't amazing, but it's dramatically better than the bay area. You need to make 225+ (300 realistically) in the bay area to be a home owner, and even then you're living in a marginal area with a lot of compromises
I don’t think 225 or even 300 would be enough. Especially if you have kids. I don’t think people truly realize how home ownership has become completely out of reach for most, even for tech workers.
My wife and I live in a suburb of the Sacramento, CA area and have a combined household income of $400k and we have 20% saved for a $700k house (avg price in this area). But the mortgage costs would still be insane. We could either pay $2500/to rent a nice house (3-4bed 2b 2000sqft,we have no kids) or $4000-5000/mo for pretty much the same.
At this point in the housing market, buying makes no sense. I wish people would stop pushing the "American dream" of NEEDING to own a home. Homeownership is not a necessity, it is a luxury.
This American dream philosophy has caused very unfair policies where people who make $60k qualify for housing assistance and can buy houses for 0 down because the govt pays for some of their down payment[0].
If I can't enjoy the luxury of owning a home, why do my tax dollars pay for that luxury for those who earn less? I'm not anti socialism at all, either. I'm just stating that home ownership is a luxury in this day and age. Pay for people to live somewhere, yes. Provide them with mental health care, yes. I don't mind my tax dollars being used for those necessities. Helping with home ownership? In a market that already has fierce competition and low inventory? It's ridiculous.
I have often seen people on HN with mind boggling (to me) incomes to whom houses that seem relatively very inexpensive are inaccessible. Why is that? Naively I would think you could rent for 30k/y and save enough in just a few years to buy a house without a mortgage
At the same time people start earning those incomes, they are also paying $20k to $30k per year per kid for daycare. Couple that with $50k+ retirement savings (max 401k and HSA) and 2 $50k cars, and it can seem tight.
Also, the higher the pay, the rarer the source of income, and so lower probability of replacing your income if you lose your job. That means you might want to put down more than 20% to ensure your monthly mortgage payment is still possible even if your income drops by 30% to 50%. Such as if the wife has pregnancy complications and cannot work, etc.
People always crap on tech for being useless while ignoring that 95% of fintech companies exist solely and completely as a vehicle to generate money for a very small group of people.
