Hired, the San Francisco-based employment platform, has produced a short new report about engineering salaries that examines how they stack up in the Bay Area versus the rest of the country after the cost of living is factored in.
San Francisco, an increasingly expensive city in which to live, pays software engineers an average of $132,000 per year. That may seem like a pretty healthy salary to the rest of the country, but using a standardized cost-of-living calculator, Hired reports that an engineer in Austin would need to make $195,000 in San Francisco to maintain the same quality of life.
In fact, it concludes that an engineer’s salary goes further in every city, with the exception of New York.
Here’s what software engineers are being paid yearly (on average) in other parts of the U.S., and what they’d need to make to live as they do in San Francisco.
In Seattle: $125,000.
Would need to make in SF: $164,000.
In L.A.: $122,000.
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Would need to make in SF: $152,000.
In Chicago, $108,000.
Would need to make in SF: $155,000.
In Atlanta: $110,000.
Would need to make in SF: $163,000.
In Washington, D.C.: $115,000.
Would need to make in SF: $136,000.
In New York: $125,000.
Would need to make in SF: $123,000.
Hired also reports that software engineers are typically paid more when they’re relocating from another city — except when they’re already living and working in the Bay Area.
In Washington, D.C., for example, a local is typically offered $110,000, but if he or she is being recruited from elsewhere (possibly the Bay Area), the pay shoots to $122,000. In San Francisco, meanwhile, a transplant is typically offered $124,000, compared with the $134,000 offered to someone who is being recruited from a local company.
Hired’s report is based on information analyzed by its product data science team, who focused on engineers in 11 cities altogether and who says their salary information derives from roughly 80,000 interview requests and job offers facilitated through its service over the last year.
Here’s the bigger snapshot if you’re interested.
