Nissan is moving to Tennessee

[JES]

Sony has big operation off of I15, and defense contractors like NG and ViaSat have expanded. On Nokia – I have it on good authority that they are at least looking to keep some of their operations here, but for GSM/WCDMA. At least they are looking to possibly purchase equipment for that type of testing.

[lindismith]

Governments cap salaries too, right?

(oh, wait, actually you can just pay yourself a huge never-ending pension right?…..)

I’m still really bothered by that list. Which companies are the ones paying the 25-50% increases in salaries?

[CardiffBaseball]

Obviously you can count SAIC as commercial and not govt. yet most of their revenue comes from the DOD, and Homeland Security.

[barnaby33]

Another way of looking at it though is that those jobs that are anchored here determine the floor of pricing. Since these jobs are pretty well garunteed to stay here you can get an idea of what medium to upper level white collar folks will set the baseline for home purchases in a depressed market.

Josh

[(former)FormerSanDiegan]

As a former federal employee as an engineer my income increased from 50K as a new hire in 1996 to 72K in 2000, when I left to work for a company. 44% salary increase over 5 years.

Fed gov’t workers at my former employer increase at COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) e.g. 3% per year, plus locality adjustment of ~1% per year (SD has risen higher than other areas), plus merit pay increases of 1-2% per year. This averaged out to about 5-6 % per year for most people. Over 5 years this puts those in the 25% range.

City/County employees might be another story.

[no_such_reality]

Not government, but hey, retiring with 100% pay and benies at 55 is a dang good deal. I love the retirement time bombs all the government unions are negotiating. LA Times article link

For the 25-50% pay increses that people claim, those are individual gains and not same job gains. Essentially, they’re talking about people 1-3 years in the job market compare to people 5-7 years in market. They’ll likely see a 50% increase if they job hop in key categories such as software engineering, etc.

[(former)FormerSanDiegan]

Individual job gains

NSR is correct, the 25-50% gains in 5 years are for particular people moving up the salary scale. While overall wages would roughly increase by inflation, e.g. 15-20% over 5 years.

But for the person whose ARM re-sets in 3-5 years, she/he only cares about the individual job gains, not what someone in their former position is making.

I’d still like to see detailed demographics on ARMS, option ARMS, I/O’s and 100% financing, so that one could gauge the impact effectively. What are the odds that lenders or Fannie Mae release that info ???

[lindismith]

I’d still like to see detailed demographics on ARMS, option ARMS, I/O’s and 100% financing, so that one could gauge the impact effectively. What are the odds that lenders or Fannie Mae release that info ???

Yes, I’d like to know this too.

I studied that list of top 80 employers in SD last night, and they (the companies listed) just don’t pay that well.

Maybe it’s all these mid-sized employers that pay so well? It’s like people say, attorneys and software developers working for start-ups? But how many of those people exist compared to just regular folks, trying to live the American Dream? And wouldn’t they (the attorneys and software developers) have more ability to see past the predatory loan sharks, and not actually take out the suicide loans?

I’ve lived here along time. The salaries have never been high. I wish we had some recruiters/hr people who could tell us what people really earn.

I’ve heard so many stories about those stated income loans where a grocery clerk and a truck driver say they earn $200K/year, and those are the ones that are going to lose it all.

I just think it’s going to really get ugly very soon….

[bob007]

i agree the entry level software engineer making 50k is going to make 80k in 5 years.

how many entry level software engineers have been hired in san diego in the past 5 years ?

[JES]

Would be interesting to see a breakdown of all of these stats. EG: In the past 3 years, what has been the net gain/loss of say, software engineers, or hardware engineers, or mortgage brokers etc.

[lindismith]

the entry level software engineer making 50k is going to make 80k in 5 years.

Can this guy really afford a median-priced home in SD?

Assuming he purchased during his second year of work, knowing he’s going to get an increase in pay, but thinking “that’s ok, I’ll be getting an increase in pay so when my loan increases in 3 years, I’ll be covered.”

JES, who has the breakdown of that info?

[JES]

Inflation comes in to play as well. Groceries cost more, gas costs more, cable TV, utilities etc. Count on say 3% inflation per year (I think it averages around that, more or less). That 23 YO software engineer may also get married and have some kids – assuming he can pull himself away from the laptop long enough to meet a mate, and actually ‘mate’. That raise quickly evaporates as you can see. I might be off, but I would say that a software engineer in San Diego with 5 years solid experience may be worth 90+ a year. And would probably start at 55+. Anyone know if I am off on that?

Not sure who has the breakdown on job stats…you would think they would be published eh?

[rankandfile]

I don’t have any hard data to refute your figures, but I’d guess that the $90K/year figure might be either too high, or few and far between…ie, not too many people are able to earn that. I think that a lot of those high salary positions came and went during the dot com era. Those high rates are also a big reason why companies are leaving California and the US in general. There are MANY highly-skilled programmers in India, China, and Eastern Europe that will produce a similar product for a fraction of the cost.

[JES]

Just looked on Monster and Cricket Comm in San Diego has an opening for a software engineer, 5 yrs minimum experience, listed at 80-90k / year. AMN Healthcare has one with 5-7 yrs experience, 75-95k.

[PerryChase]

I agree with you rankandfile. My friend worked for Infineon in the Bay Area. They moved to China and will eventually hire 3000 engineers.

I’ve spent some time in China and I can tell you that it’s not the totalitarian, backward, low-cost country that we think it is. The cities of China are modern with all the capabilities that we have here. Remember Korea or Taiwan 20 years ago? China is 10 times bigger than those two.

I don’t know about India or Eastern Europe because I’ve not been there.

If we want to compete in the long run, our politicians better concentrate on important issues such as education, infrastructure, science and technology (rather than prayer in school, abortion, flag burning, immigrant bashing, and war).

We are attracting foreign capital now (which helps lift our standard of living) but there’s no guarantee of that in the future.

[Author]

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