I don't know why I'm getting downvoted! Don't you want to hear WHY people paying those rents or you want to believe everybody paying those rents are just plain stupid?!
You shouldn't be getting downvoted because it's interesting to hear from someone paying relatively high rent. I'm in a similar situation in that I live somewhere where buying a place is out of reach, but I have too much attachment to the area to go live somewhere cheaper.
Up-voted, Are average SF rents that high? Boston is probably less than half that cost, with salaries comparable to the west coast and similar cultural events and excellent public and private schools. Weather is not that great though. Genuinely asking - So what makes SF so worth it, that it justifies its high cost of living? in comparison to other top class states, is it just the weather?
jobs. You can be a half-assed engineer here and be employed; if you're good, you have dozens of choices of place to work. Whenever I ponder leaving (and I'm a data scientist, so more specialized) I look around at cities like Salt Lake or Denver or other places close to good skiing and see like 3 employers. Total. What happens if I don't like my job / my boss changes / whatever? I'd probably have to move. It's just a ton of risk for the employee.
And not just jobs, but other people who do the same thing that you can learn from. And full stack: from the people building javascript libs to new programming languages (swift, rust) to chips (Apple, Intel, hardware startups), etc.
Proximity to the outdoors. If you want great surfing, hiking, skiing (well, ex the drought years), climbing, camping, etc -- it's here. And the state is dry, so no mosquitos or flies. ie it's much more enjoyable to be outside than in the midwest. It's fun to be outside 340+ days/year.
Non-competes are invalid by state law. And this isn't a theoretical problem; I had a job offer withdrawn in NY because the new employer's counsel determined they were covered by then-current employers non-compete contract and they didn't want the hassle.
People who view quitting their jobs and starting companies as merely modestly crazy/risky, instead of something only a lunatic would do.
Oh, and as for your average rents: yes. You can get cheaper rents, but at the price of shitty public transport, a terrible commute, and a lack of local services where you live. Which is particularly punishing if you don't own a car. sf as a city is run by worthless idiots who decided to play city, so big pieces of it have terrible (unreliable, slow, unsafe, etc) public transport (yet it manages to be some of the most expensive transit in the nation as the cherry on top). Plus there are 3 public transport systems that essentially were built independently and operate without any coordination, two of which only serve pieces of the city (muni, bart, caltrain). And until the age of uber a taxi system that specialized in shitting on their customers. Because where, besides sf, would a taxi that actually comes be worth paying a 50% premium ala uber when it debuted? So yeah, wildly incompetent city government.
thanks but I find none of those unique to SF, you can get the same in other top cities. I don't know about Denver but in Boston/NY you have tons of good job opportunities, excellent engineering and scientific community with top firms/startups and excellent eng, business, and med schools. Close proximity to outdoors (New Hamshire, Maine).
No doubt there are more startups/jobs in SF but at the same time it seems that its very exaggerated.
I don't know about Boston, but Maine is not in any sense close to nyc. I think the difference is distance. In sf, world class skiing is 3 hours away; the beach is 20 minutes in much of the city; great hiking is across the bridge in Marin or south along 1, well under an hour away. It's not a trip; enjoying the outdoors takes an afternoon. I have an acquaintance who works near the presidio and surfs over lunch. When I lived in Manhattan, you could definitely get to the outdoors, but it wasn't anything like this close.
As for jobs in general, if you're a good js or rails engineer with a reasonable network of friends / former coworkers, starting now at 6pm Tuesday night you could have interviews on Friday, maybe even on Thursday. And start a new job next week. I believe there's a qualitative difference.
You should check out Boston. Tons of tech jobs and way closer to skiing. When I studied in Cambridge we were only 2 hours away from skiing at Waterville, door to door even on weekends with "thick" traffic. There's a reason so many skiers are "Massholes." That quick jaunt up I-93 is fantastic.
3 - sf has a huge set of entrenched laws that would have to be overthrown, plus relatively dysfunctional state government (see, eg, proposition system)
4 - some of this genuinely isn't sf's fault, but rather the entire peninsula dumping their housing problems on sf and san jose. See eg mountain view approving 2-3 million ft2 of new office space and maybe potentially possibly pondering allowing a couple thousand new homes. They're gonna study it. And then there's environmental review. Ground will not be broken before 2025 is my guess. Meanwhile, where the hell are all those employees gonna live? Not in mv.
5 - sf is a spendthrift city, and it needs techies. Besides all the jobs supported indirectly, sf has a 1.4% payroll tax (well, it's complicated, but 1.1 - 1.4%).
I think you greatly exaggerate the health of the SF tech job market, but no matter how good or bad it is, I agree that it's consistently 3-5X better than the rest of the country. That's essentially why I increased my cost of living by about 4X moving here from Florida. Here, if you lose your job, at least you have a chance of finding something else. In most of the USA, if you lose your job, you're moving your family to another state or at least another town.
Tech companies in downtown, cambridge pay pretty well. If your talking about metro west then I'm not sure. Twice would be too much, I highly doubt bay area pays 200k base on average.
Well, all I can really say is that among my friends who I've spoken with about this, those of us out in the bay area are making (including stock and bonuses) about 40% more than those who work in tech in metro Boston. It's more than enough to compensate for the higher cost of living.
Markets are smart!