I make $250k total compensation in Atlanta, and the mortgage on my 2,000 sqft 2bd/ba condo in the city (and on the Beltline) is $2000/mo. I can run or bike to work, or, if I need to drive, it only takes 15 minutes. I work on exciting tech, and I'm not at all stressed.
Atlanta has great food, amazing music, and is in the middle of a forest. (Google "Atlanta forest"!) There are so many places to hike and swim, it's glorious.
The culture is so diverse here. We're a music capital, the new Hollywood, and major finance hub. We have a lot of really cool non-engineers to hang out with and date. (Nothing wrong with engineers! But there are a lot of different types here to mingle with.)
Also, we have real barbecue. You can't get that outside the Southeast. :P
Move here and help change our electorate. :)
Cons:
- Though we have four full seasons, no one knows how to drive in the snow in the rare event we get any. Our summers are hot and humid (only a problem if you don't like that), and our springs have a ton of pollen - seriously, more than you can imagine (Atlanta is a forest).
- We lack decent public transit. But living within the city makes most commutes negligible. The Beltline (Google it) helps a lot too. The city is ramping up to spend more on transit, though.
250k is exceptional for Atlanta. It's the norm for the Bay Area (for a BigTechCo mid career engineer). An apples-to-apples comparison would probably be more like 400k in the Bay Area vs 250k in Atlanta.
Of course, Atlanta might still win that on cost of living, but it's a more reasonable comparison.
$250K total compensation for Atlanta tech companies is exceedingly rare. They price in all those nice things you mention in attempts to reduce wages. Often that’s why they chose to locate in Atlanta.
Walk into any tech company office in SF right now and ask whether they desperately need to find engineers. 99% of the time you will get a resounding YES. The shortage of engineers is not a myth. Most Satellite engineering offices are meant to find those engineers; not to simply save labor costs.
I think the shortage is a huge myth. Companies want more cheap engineers, because they use the engineers more like they are office furniture to look pretty and serve as fancy headcount for an acquisition or new funding round. Only a few of them are expected to know how to build anything.
What I see in the market right now is wage suppression at almost any cost for the vast majority of jobs, and then a huge jump up in wages for those few specialized roles where actual productivity is required.
I want to say this in the nicest way possible: I absolutely think you are 100% wrong about both the company's desire for new engineers and the competency of the engineers being hired.
It seems like data about salary trends, relative hiring of less experienced or younger quantiles of the candidate population, and company behaviors that could be motivated by wage arbitrage could possibly resolve our disagreement.
Do you agree? If we had data about these things it would shed light on whether employers are motivated to get talent because talent is productive vs. motivated for some other means by which companies are profiting from headcount?
> Do you agree? If we had data about these things it would shed light on whether employers are motivated to get talent because talent is productive vs. motivated for some other means by which companies are profiting from headcount?
Absolutely I would agree if the data indicated that. My opinion is admittedly based on anecdata, even if the people I've spoken with is somewhat large and limited to engineers in Tech companies.
This really is the sweet spot for software engineers right now IMO. I'm doing the same in Colorado and making about the same as you in both salary and equity comp. Quick bike ride to work, housing is expensive but still attainable out here and I can literally walk to the mountains from my apartment.
I grew up in the Bay Area and have zero desire to return.
My question as well. If it’s “I got $50k worth of RSUs last year and now they are worth $150k”, that not earning $250k per year, that $150k plus a good bonus year.
Atlanta has great food, amazing music, and is in the middle of a forest. (Google "Atlanta forest"!) There are so many places to hike and swim, it's glorious.
The culture is so diverse here. We're a music capital, the new Hollywood, and major finance hub. We have a lot of really cool non-engineers to hang out with and date. (Nothing wrong with engineers! But there are a lot of different types here to mingle with.)
Also, we have real barbecue. You can't get that outside the Southeast. :P
Move here and help change our electorate. :)
Cons:
- Though we have four full seasons, no one knows how to drive in the snow in the rare event we get any. Our summers are hot and humid (only a problem if you don't like that), and our springs have a ton of pollen - seriously, more than you can imagine (Atlanta is a forest).
- We lack decent public transit. But living within the city makes most commutes negligible. The Beltline (Google it) helps a lot too. The city is ramping up to spend more on transit, though.