[quote=mixxalot]Correct, I work for a bay area company and based as telecommute employee. Fortunately, I get a bay area salary and have lower living costs here in San Diego than the bay area. I have San Diego tech firms all the time trying to lowball me for jobs. Pay here sucks compared to what bay area firms pay. And the commute would be hell.
I wonder how engineers afford to buy a home here? A 100k salary does not compute into even a tiny 2-3 condo down payment and mortgage payment.[/quote]
Actually, for me, there’s not that much of a pay difference between my employer in SD and in the Bay Area. it’s only off by about 7%-10%.. But the cost of living is considerably less than up there. I’m wondering how people who don’t hit the stock option jackpot up there can afford to buy a home up there. Milipitas starts around $900k. Santa Clara starts around $1.3million for a 1700sqft SFH. Cupertino, which probably would be equivalent to CarmelV starts around $2million. Plus, once you hit a higher AGI, your tax rate is much more, and a lot of things start to get phased out wrto itemized deductions. Between LA, SF, SD, with the exception of stock grants, I don’t see significant difference with salary, especially after taxes take a bite out of both.
QC engineers are pretty well compensated here. Once upon a time there were layoffs, but I’m told that they have an attrition issue, and so for some, there’s something called retention bonuses.
I guess it depends specifically on what skills/focus area your career is in. The biggest problem I see for tech workers in any other areas outside of Bay Area is lack of stock grants, which really is the only thing that can propel you to a financial level that is significantly different from simply a salaried employee.
Once upon of time, that was QC, that was Intuit, that was Broadcom, that was Illumina. But while stock grants is still a significant part of one’s compensation in the Bay Area, other parts outside of Bay Area seemed to have slimed down on that, especially for newer employees that are just starting out. Older employees get grandfathered in and with lateral moves, usually there is some matching grant just to fish you over. In part of my negotiations with prospect employers, I have been in situations in which they offered me a comparable salary close enough to the bay area. But when it came to equity, it was different. And then even when I tried to negotiate less salary more equity, there was a limit on how much that was possible. At least that was the case for me. In fairness, I’m not really good at these negotiations. I just do it to the level that I try not to get screwed.
There are a couple of other tidbit difference between working remotely and working from a local office, because I’ve done similar things in the past. Working remotely, one’s compensation typical starts higher, but over time, it about evens out. Working remotely, I was the last to get promoted, and there was very limited opportunity for leadership and career growth. When i switched over to a local office for the same company, promotions came faster and so did increased responsibilities. Also, from a safety net perspective, layoffs typically happened first to those that worked remotely versus those that were based out of a home office, unless you just happen to be that much better. So in all, over the long period of time, I found that it pretty much evens out. I was paid more initially when I worked remotely for a bay area group, but then when I switched over to the group down here in the same company, i moved up much faster, and so comp ended up about the same..
