On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 6:36 PM, John Williams <jwilliams4...@gmail.com>wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Dan Minette <danmine...@att.net> wrote: > > > they give the average starting salary for an EE in the US as 59,646, but > in > > the SF area it is about 74,700. So, that is about a 25% premium. At > > simplyhired.com they state that the average EE salary in the SF area is > > $87k/year. That's not bad money, but you can't buy a million dollar > house > > with it. > > > > Housing prices are about 6x higher in the Bay area than in the Austin > area. > > Salaries for engineers are 25% higher. > > It sounds like the SF Bay area is more likely to appeal to single > engineers willing to live in a small apartment and spend all their > time at work. As compared to Austin, which sounds like it may appeal > more to a young married couple just starting a family. I wonder if the > SF tech firms are counting on that. I'm not sure how common those jobs really are around here. I suspect that the vast majority of engineering jobs around here (Silicon Valley), especially these days, are for experienced engineers, with salaries from $90K to $150 or so. In other words, I don't think average starting salary is a good proxy for average salary. Glassdoor.com tells me that salaries for EEs in Santa Clara range from $81K to $130K, so the median would be around $110K. But we have more software engineers around here, I think. Glassdoor actually reports the median - $99K. But most of what is shown is over $90K and many over $100K. The media for software engineers in Austin is $75K. They don't seem to have much data on EEs. So, this data suggests that for software engineers, the premium is about 33 percent. For somebody with a family, it is not easy to get by around here on less than $100K, which is surely one reason there are many, many families where both spouses work. And the reason is simple - housing costs, as Dan pointed out. That has eased for people buying now, but some of us are stuck with fat mortgages for houses that are under water, which is very, very frustrating. I could tell the horror story of our efforts at loan modification, but I'll just say that it is one of the stories submitted to the Justice Department by the House California Caucus. Nick
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