SDR: I agree on the engineering salaries. I’m doing seismic and blast engineering, and, even in this fairly specialized discipline, we don’t have salaries in that range.
Having started this company from scratch, I would make one other observation that might make you feel better about the 9 – 5 job: There are a lot of sleepless nights, and many periods where I was completely uncertain as to whether or not we’ve even make it, and I would have dearly loved a steady salary at that point. As with everything else, it’s a series of tradeoffs.
As far as La Jolla real estate goes: I do a lot of work with UC San Diego’s School of Structural Engineering and know quite a few professors that have owned in LJ for a lot of years. In good times and bad, La Jolla remains La Jolla. I think it will always enjoy a certain cachet, and thus do a better job of retaining value than other communities.
