Is that really the salary structure in the bay area these days? It used to be that a senior developer's salary was easily 2x a junior developer's salary, but I thought senior and lead developer salaries were in the $130-$150k range in the bay area, at least for java developers.
Jeeze, I wonder why we don't see more start-ups appearing in other areas - I mean, there are lots of college towns pumping out brilliant engineers and coders that cost a lot less to live in. Your users don't care if you're located in Cambridge or Waterloo or the Bay area.
There is a field called economic geography that works to explain your question. It's too complex to summarize, but the short version is that SV has lots of startups, lots of investors, and lots of hackers in a small space, so people who want to do those things move there, creating a cycle.
Yes, but that's why I'm mentioning college towns. Lots of hackers in any town with a top-rate software/engineering department. And a start-up is just a hacker with a bit of extra ambition.
Investors and start-up culture sound like the missing ingredient more than any shortage of technical know-how.
Well, we don't get 8 weeks of guaranteed paternity leave if that's what you mean. But Texas has some nice protections for employees. Non-compete agreements, for example, are almost unenforceable in Texas, which is nice.
Talent is a commodity and is pretty fungible. But you can't replicate the pre-existing ecosystem of companies, nor the funding apparatuses that are present in major tech hubs.
What? I thought this was covered years ago. Extra people incur communication costs. Two people at half productivity will never be as effective as one at full productivity.
The senior:junior salary ratio is higher, I think, elsewhere.
In New York, for example, junior developers tend be around $75-95k while senior (5-10 years) are $140-200k (wide range). In the Valley, I'd guess that those numbers are $90-110k and $130-150k. The low end is higher and the high end is lower, in the Valley.
One thing New York has that the Valley doesn't (unless you're a nationally-known entity, like Jeff Dean) is people making $250k+ just writing code. That does mean you're probably in finance, but it's better than having to go into management if that's not what you want to do.
There are plenty of people (beyond Jeff Dean), who make $200k+ writing code in the bay area. I'm not really sure where you are getting your data from, but $150k is actually a bit low for a senior developer.
I am always a little bit flabbergasted by the developer salary numbers that get thrown around on HN but I think that the cost of living in NY & SF may skew the numbers higher than they are in the rest of the world.
edit: I am Canadian for reference and just Googling around a bit suggests anecdotaly that salaries are in the $50k-$100k range for most developers.
If you want to actually be able to save decent money in the US, you should aim for the second-tier (e.g. Boston, Seattle) or emerging (e.g. Austin, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Portland, Durham) tech hubs where salaries are 80-90% of NYC/SV but cost of living is a lot lower.
NY and SV are good places to build your career, but most people who are intent on being lifelong programmers (as opposed to being managers or founders by 40) get out after a decade or so. The cost of living is annoying but bearable; the culture it creates, however, sucks because everyone is competing to be a manager or founder before being judged "too old". The cultural effects of high rent (much less purchase prices at 30-50 years) are even more of a travesty than those high rents are standing alone.
