patrick.net

Chindian fortresses:

1st tier: Palo Alto, Cupertino, Saratoga, Mission San Jose, Piedmont
2nd tier: Los Altos (the part that goes to MV schools), Mountain View (MV High school catchment area), Sunnyvale (the part that goes to Cupertino schools), Los Gatos (only the parts within the LG school system), west San Jose, Alamo, Danville

Then there is everything else.

Man, San Jose is desirable?
I don't think so.
Meet me on the coast in the thick fog, bad weather, tell me about your desire to live out here.
There are good places, San Jose ain't one of 'em.

How many hours do techies really work in the BA? Are these paid hours? I was just struck by TOB clim of 80 hour work weeks.

Techies put 80 hours while getting paid for 40 hours. Please go to http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm for salary data.

By the way, I agree that Chindians drastically lowered ethics and living standard in Bay Area. But please note that it is the whites who encouraged them to do so. Basically just understand the skin color of management ranks and you will understand what I mean ....

I interviewed at Intel once, asked Holmes what a typical work week was, he replied, "count on 55, sometimes it will be more, sometimes less". Think about that, 55hrs, that's 11hrs a day if working 5 days, or around 9hrs if working 6. Say you work the 5 day work week, figure in your 1hr commute from your shitbox to the factory, a 1hr lunch, and it's 14hrs a day, that leaves 2hrs to wack off and do your laundry.

I accepted the offer and never showed up, they called me for 3 months. Fuckers.

I interviewed at Applied Materials once, asked Itchy McKnobster what a typical work week was, he replied, "whatever it takes to get the job done". I asked, "well what do you work". Faggot didn't answer. Oh, btw, I was interviewing on Sunday.

Paved with mother fucking gold I tell ya. Everyone is rich, rich rich.

Well - that is an eye opener. It looks like those $120k techie salaries come with a major draw-back after all. 55-80 hours a week!
I am now more perplexed than ever how people raise families, afford homes, and do anything in the BA?!?

Well, as I've said before-- I grew up in the bay area.

As soon as I learned to drive--I drove away.

Nuff said.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080822/aqf003.html?.v=55

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You are all talking about the Bay Area as if every other big American city is just bitchin to live in. Get real. They pretty much all suck.

If you're going to talk shit, at least give a reference point. Man Jose beats the shit out of alot of places, especially other big American cities. And it's not expensive because it's paradise. It's expensive because there are JOBS.

Population-wise, Man Jose is the 10th biggest city. Here's the top 20....

New York, N.Y. 8,143,197 8,008,278 7,322,564 685,714 9.4 1 1 1
Los Angeles, Calif. 3,844,829 3,694,820 3,485,398 209,422 6.0 2 2 2
Chicago, Ill. 2,842,518 2,896,016 2,783,726 112,290 4.0 3 3 3
Houston, Tex. 2,016,582 1,953,631 1,630,553 323,078 19.8 4 4 4
Philadelphia, Pa. 1,463,281 1,517,550 1,585,577 –68,027 –4.3 5 5 5
Phoenix, Ariz. 1,461,575 1,321,045 983,403 337,642 34.3 10 6 6
San Antonio, Tex. 1,256,509 1,144,646 935,933 208,713 22.3 9 9 7
San Diego, Calif. 1,255,540 1,223,400 1,110,549 112,851 10.2 6 7 8
Dallas, Tex. 1,213,825 1,188,580 1,006,877 181,703 18.0 8 8 9
San Jose, Calif. 912,332 894,943 782,248 112,695 14.4 11 11 10
Detroit, Mich. 886,671 951,270 1,027,974 –76,704 –7.5 7 10 11
Indianapolis, Ind. 784,118 781,870 741,952 49,974 6.7 13 12 12
Jacksonville, Fla. 782,623 735,617 635,230 100,387 15.8 15 14 13
San Francisco, Calif. 739,426 776,733 723,959 52,774 7.3 14 13 14
Columbus, Ohio 730,657 711,470 632,910 78,560 12.4 16 15 15
Austin, Tex. 690,252 656,562 465,622 190,940 41.0 25 16 16
Memphis, Tenn. 672,277 650,100 610,337 39,763 6.5 18 18 17
Baltimore, Md. 635,815 651,154 736,014 –84,860 –11.5 12 17 18
Fort Worth, Tex. 624,067 534,694 447,619 87,075 19.5 29 27 19
Charlotte, N.C.

San Diego is the only other city on this list I would consider living in. I mean cumon... Houston? Detroit? Baltimore? You would rather live in these cities?

I actually have never been to a job or seen a job with 80-hour week paying ONLY $120K. I see plenty of 80-hour jobs here paying $320K or more, mainly in finance.

I'd say most $120K jobs here have a working hour that goes with the pay, 50-55 hours. The extra hours could be entirely voluntary, and you won't lose your job if you do not put in extra hours.

In terms of technical job, there is one exception I know, he is a very senior-level engineer at a major company, putting in 80 hours but pulling in close to $260K including bonus. Most $120K worker bees can go home by 7PM for dinner, and they don't usually show up until after 10AM.

Bay Area is attractive not just because it has jobs, but it has high-paying jobs. NYC, LA, Boston aside, You can hardly find that many $150K+ jobs elsewhere, and if you do not force yourself to buy a home, a combined $300K family can live a very comfortable life while socking away quite a bit of savings each year. $300K household income is not a distant goal for most over-educated working families here.

I would say if you get the housing part nailed down, BA offers the best quality of life in terms of access to the best food, medical care, weather, natural attractions among most US cities.

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Known as "seller-funded down payment assistance," builders could pay up to 6 percent of a home's sale price. But from October 1, the law will ban this practice because mortgages secured with assisted down payments have expected foreclosure rates up to three times higher than other loans, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spokesman Lemar Wooley said.

The ban is a near-term negative for the industry, since it will shrink the pool of potential buyers, raise cancellation rates and weigh on already-depressed builders' shares -- their index .DJUSHB sits 75 percent off its lifetime high.

The chief executive of the largest U.S. home builder, D.R. Horton Inc (DHI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), said he "got suicidal" over the ban.

"I'm absolutely shocked by it. And I'm upset by it," Horton CEO Don Tomnitz told analysts on a recent call. "To take 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent of the buyers out of the home buying decision, at a point in the economy that they did, it's absolutely ludicrous."

While the new law contains a $7,500 tax credit for first-time buyers, that will not offset the ban on down payment assistance, which had no such restrictions, National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) CEO Jerry Howard said.

Most $120K worker bees can go home by 7PM for dinner, and they don’t usually show up until after 10AM.

sorry faggot, try again, that's an 8 hr workday, simply not going to happen.

$300K household income is not a distant goal for most over-educated working families here.

Mmm you are a tasty little faggot aren't you? Data fuck-knob, data, check the glass whore site listed above, the facts don't match your masturbation dream. smaka smaka smaka, ahhh RICH, smaka smaka smaka, 300K.

San Jose, go fuck yourself. A city with such a lack of style the faggots there think 22" rims on a hyundai is the way to go.

Think of San jose as california's asshole, I guess SF would be the bacon strip then.

If you are from Dallas, Detroit, St. Louis, Buffalo any fucking place on the planet is better. If you are not a carpetbagger and are a CA native, San Jose is fucking hell on earth.

PermaRenter Says:
Techies put 80 hours while getting paid for 40 hours.

When you say "techies", I assume you exclude those fuckers whose incompetence gets them promoted all the way to a high-falutin job called "Architect". Those ass-clowns have figured out somehow to sink 80 hours of wasted productivity in 40 hours of meetings. No actual work, just verbal diarrhea.

As far as I can tell, these ass-clowns do absolutely nothing - and yet judging from the number of worthless resumes that float in, this area seems to be crawling with these jargon spewing maggots. What happened to all the engineers?

OO said:
I’d say most $120K jobs here have a working hour that goes with the pay, 50-55 hours. The extra hours could be entirely voluntary, and you won’t lose your job if you do not put in extra hours.

Are you counting the time spent dialing up from home?

I agree that most jobs require "only" 50 hours at work, but as Brother Surfer-X pointed out, you also spend at least an hour every day commuting in your shitmobile from the shitbox to the shitcube, along with all the other shitheads on the shitty-brick-road.

A lot of people I know spend a few hours every night - quality time, like 9pm to midnight - either checking email, or on conference calls with other shitheads in China or India or Romania or Israel, because the pinheaded bosses figured it was a great idea to off-shore the work so that they get 24-hour productivity.

I spent a while in Phoenix, Toronto and Dublin in the last year - nobody does this kind of crap over there. And they get paid plenty too.

Long story short, the quality of life in the Bay Area reeks. You don't realize it as long as you are crawling around in this dung-heap with the other dung-beetles. The moment you get on a plane and go (almost) anywhere, you begin to get a whiff of what life is _really_ like.

Well, I have to disagree with surfer-x, because when we talk about quality of life, we don't care about average. When we talk about pay, we don't care about average either, we care about what applies to a specific sector that is pertinent to your particular situation.

As I said before, I think families making less than $100K should just quit and leave the BA, it is not worth it. There are lots of $250K, $300K families out there and if they don't fuck themselves up by buying a $1.5M home in the last few years, they are doing just fine. Why do we care about statistics when it comes to our own quality of life? Most Americans are already living a life better than 90% of population on earth, should we bother ourselves about what an "average" experience of earthly life is? You learn about it, perhaps make a comment of "oh shit", and then move on with your own life.

Work hours follow product development cycles, you have crunch time and you can take some time off after a major release. Christmas and Thanksgiving are very slow around office so 6-hour day is not unusual. If you work on the customer-facing side of things, you may even have to run up travel hours. But most worker bees get their weekends off, unless they are trying to get promoted or something.

Speaking of the 8-hour work day, it is not like you dedicate the 8 hours, every second of it, to your job. You chitchat around water cooler, make a few comments on the group admin's boob job, go take a long lunch, and post a few comments on patrick.net. Compared to the techie counterparts working in India/ China or those who work in high finance before they make MD, most BA worker bees really have little to complain about on their "long hours" except for the commute.

Life elsewhere maybe better on paper, and I assure you I have actively looked internationally and domestically, only that the "good life" either comes with a much reduced pay for the same job (even after adjustment for cost of living) and a less upside potential, or you will have to deal with a much more compromised environment, something like Houston.

I won't retire in BA unless I am at least a double-digit millionaire with today's purchasing power, but BA is not a bad place to work towards a comfortable retirement elsewhere.

Another one bites the dust!

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/columbian.html

OO,

I have to disagree with you on 300K households. To me it is more like 240K if two people are working. Please go to http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm

Posted by Goggle Engineer in glassdoor.com:

You are expected to deliver. This doesn't mean 80-hour work weeks (at least in my end of the company), but you are expected to make goals and hold yourself to them -- and ideally deliver something that beats the rest of the industry while you're at it. Do not come to Google expecting a research environment; there's plenty of research going on, but if it's not in your 20% time you'd better have something to ship. I list this as a con only because I suspect this bit some of the people who rated Google negatively.

The company has grown really fast. This has caused some strain, both in terms of infrastructure and in communication. Many of the nooglers are fresh out of college, and the naivety cuts both ways: they're simultaneously over-eager to re-engineer everything in sight, and bitter when perks change or they don't get promoted fast (nevermind that it's still better than the rest of the industry -- they've never been there). With rapid growth comes a lack of focus, as well, with weird projects with no monetization story. (Caveat: I'm in Ads, where money matters.)

I get the impression that we've got our share of bad managers. My manager (and the two immediately above him) are all great -- technically sharp, caring, and happy to get their hands dirty. But I've heard horror stories from other teams, and you can read plenty of them on this site, I'm sure -- preference for low employee numbers, suckups and yes-men, etc. I suspect most of the thoroughly bitter people have gotten a bad manager and not requested a transfer out from under him/her.

On that note, Google does a bad job of handling underperformers. They try hard to help crappy engineers and managers improve, but at some point you've got to cut your losses -- a bad employee, particularly one with a bad attitude, is poison that eats away at morale. I've seen people go through two or more performance improvement plans before finally getting the much-needed axe.

Google also does a fair-to-middling job of handling *overperformers*. I've gotten a few spot bonuses for successful projects (which, to be fair, were tens of times larger than the bonuses I got at similarly-sized companies in the past), but the motivating effect of the Founder's Awards are gone. No matter how many millions of dollars you make the company, if you're not in LSE's pet segments, no Founder's Award for you -- it'll go to some guys in search or something. Google is done making millionaires -- for those of us who got who got here after the IPO, the only way we'll retire is a 401(k). Again, having worked in industry outside of Google, this makes me wistful but not angry. I don't expect other people to make me a millionare.

SP - Architects are supposed to be extremely hands-on, but I understand that in large companies they dont do jack shit. However, in smaller firms, their role is extremely critical as they are the ones defining the system technically and laying out the building blocks. The most overpaid jobs that I have seen in the bay area are recruiters who do nothing but sift resumes but unfrotunately hold the key to the door, and get this - the
"project managers", specially the ones with PMP certificate. Even they know they are way too much overpaid for setting up meetings and taking down notes. Recently I have seen a huge uptick in the number of PMPs showing up all over the place, and I can bet that is the sweetest job you can ever get - let the worker bees work 80 hr weeks while I fill their oulook calendars with worthless BS meetings and get paid more than them. IT does not need project managers, unless you are dealing with worthless, low-wage labor. Most engineers are smart enough to manage the project themselves. And dont even get me started on how many jobs IT sector is supporting on the myth that "engineers cannot talk to business or users". This is the myth that accounts for more than 90% of BS jobs in the bay area.

I am not saying that BA is a heaven, it is NOT.

But in your most productive years, you care about two things the most: job and pay. The summary of life is, when you are young and productive, you exchange your health and time for money. When you are old and frail, you exchange money for health and life. The abundance of jobs and the level of pay is beyond our control, they are the ways they are, but how much we can save and re-invest with the money flowing into our pocket is up to us.

The saddest thing in life is not to be poor when you are young, but old and poor, even good health and a loving family cannot compensate for poverty at old age. Money is the only savior of old age, which is the inevitable evil we all have to face.

If Dennis didn't work in the BA, but started working in Idaho early in life, I highly doubt he could have walked away with over half a mil and taking it easy in his 50s in Boise. So I may go to Ashland, OR for retirement and live like a king in 20 years, but during the peak of my productive years, I am not going anywhere else that is going to compromise my earning upside even a tiny bit.

OO says:

If Dennis didn’t work in the BA, but started working in Idaho early in life, I highly doubt he could have walked away with over half a mil and taking it easy in his 50s in Boise

If I recall, did not DennisN say that he got the bulk of his money from the appreciation on his primary residence? This would imply thet DennisN's massive Bay Area income was offset by massive Bay Area living costs.

I would say that in the non-Bay Area cities you mentioned, there are as many households making over $120k as there are Bay Area households making over $320k, In those non-Bay Area communities, a household can live well on $80k/yr. If a household earning $120,000 take-home chooses to live on that $80 while banking the difference, they will have $500k saved in less than 13 years.

I do not think having $500k stashed by the time you are 50 is so rare among middle class savers, and is certainly not an exclusive attribute of Bay Area households.

OO:

I can understand where surfer-x is coming from. A local priced or hamstered out by those in pursuit of the Chindian American Dream. (But his remark about Willow Glen clearly shows that he's out of touch with the current situation in the South Bay).

In the overall big picture, Chindians are just another wave of people coming into California for their fortune, lotsa waves of people doing it since the Gold Rush. No different than his haolie ancestors who came to California from somewhere else.

On the other hand the poor guy bought his place in Southern Cal right at the peak, it adds some insult to injury.

OO Says:
> I am not saying that BA is a heaven, it is NOT.

The Bay Area is not heaven, but I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather live…

> The saddest thing in life is not to be poor when you
> are young, but old and poor, even good health and a
> loving family cannot compensate for poverty at old age.

If you are good to your kids you will have nothing to worry about. If my parents sold everything they own and gave all the money to charity tomorrow they would be able to pick between living with me, my sister and my brother who would all be happy to pay for anything they needed…

You can do well living anywhere, but it is a lot easier to make connections and make a lot of money living in the Bay Area…

Then HeadSet Says:

> I would say that in the non-Bay Area cities you mentioned,
> there are as many households making over $120k as there are
> Bay Area households making over $320k, In those non-Bay Area
> communities, a household can live well on $80k/yr. If a household
> earning $120,000 take-home chooses to live on that $80 while
> banking the difference, they will have $500k saved in less than 13 years.

Almost no one that makes $120K lives on $80K and saves the rest…

> I do not think having $500k stashed by the time you are 50 is so rare
> among middle class savers, and is certainly not an exclusive
> attribute of Bay

I have actually “saved” (actually made cash contributions savings and investments of over ½ a million), but other than the small number of people I know that have ended up with high six and low seven figure bonuses over the years I bet that less than one in a million Americans have made “savings/investment” deposits of over ½ a million…

P.S. I was in Sacramento today and was supervising some painters who were working for me at $15/hour (they were a couple white guys and a Latino that was born here and did not speak Spanish) they did great work in the morning and I didn’t let them know that I noticed a slowdown after the three of them came back from lunch stoned… (with the drop off in Sacramento area new construction I have been getting a huge number of highly skilled workers coming to me looking for work who will accept less than $20 an hour (when you pay cash at the end of the day the word gets around fast that you are a good guy to work for)…

FAB, you wrote,

"Almost no one that makes $120K lives on $80K and saves the rest…"

It's probably more households than you think. I'm acquainted with several who I suspect fit that mold. But they mind their own business and stay under the radar, and probably don't need to rent a place so you may not run into them too much...

coretexity Says:
SP - Architects are supposed to be extremely hands-on, but I understand that in large companies they dont do jack shit.

Never mind what they are "supposed" to do - none of them actually seem to deliver a shippable product. All they are capable of doing is spew out jargon that sounds like it came out of a Dilbert cartoon, talk endlessly about "standards", and promise you wonderful things - in about two years time.

In fact, here is an empirical observation - find the most god-awful, over-ambitious, pie-in-the-sky, never-gonna-pencil-out project in your typical large-ish company - and you will find large numbers of "architects" swarming over it, like flies on dog-vomit.

And here is another empirical observation - suggest actual work - e.g. something that involves hands-on coding. The architect will offer to 'supervise' an engineer to make sure it is done right.

However, in smaller firms, their role is extremely critical as they are the ones defining the system technically and laying out the building blocks.

That, my friend, is a good engineer, who doesn't need his title fluffed up. Engineers design and build systems, get them deployed and keep them working. The "good" architect you describe is indistinguishable from a good principal engineer.

Architects love the title precisely because nobody knows what the fuck they do. So they can keep fucking up, and pretend to be worth the value of the methane they produce.

OO Says:
Well, I have to disagree with surfer-x, because when we talk about quality of life, we don’t care about average. When we talk about pay, we don’t care about average either, we care about what applies to a specific sector that is pertinent to your particular situation.

_My_ particular situation is actually just fine. I get paid decent money, got more than my fair share of good-fortune, get to do work that I enjoy, and have a pretty decent employer. My personal quality of life ain't too bad.

But when I say the QoL in the Bay Area stinks, I mean it in general, or 'for the average' as you put it. I see large numbers of people with above-average qualifications who work _very_ hard, make good wages, but are still running full speed to just maintain the status quo. The hard-work is NOT actually making their lives better. In many other places, smart folks who work this hard are able to "bank" a surplus of some kind (either time, money, hobbies, or something else) that goes towards making each year of their life an improvement over the last. Not so much here.

I don't disagree with most of what you said, but there is a palpable qualitative difference between folks I see here vs. the ones I recently observed in other places.

correction:
"there is a palpable qualitative difference between folks I see here vs. the ones I recently observed in other places."

I meant to say "between the _general happiness_ of folks I see here".

Seems I started quite a discussion.

I can add only this. As a long time BA techie I have seen hours steadily rise and pressure steadily rise. The so-called effeciency gains means what was once done by 3-5 people is no eing done by 1. At the same time, reporting to layers of mgmt has greatly inreased. So we have a thicker layer of mgmt bearocracy, an 'effecient' yet stressed techie core that has taken on more reponsibility inluding expanded reporting, and then a new host of highly transient support positions in the greater BA.
I seem to recall the joke during the Clinton years was, "Yes, Mr. Clinton, you HAVE geatly increased jobs in the US. My wife and I have 6 of them."

What would be nice to see is this: 1) less reporting. 2) lower wages to allow for more actual techie people 3) a solution to the cost of living problem so that lower wages and more people is a viable option.

I find it supremely ironic that at a time our media and leadership is touting the need to graduate more math and science people that we are not fully employing the math and science graduates we currently have.

I Said:

> Almost no one that makes $120K lives on
> $80K and saves the rest…”

Then sybrib Says:

> It’s probably more households than you think.
> I’m acquainted with several who I suspect fit that
> mold. But they mind their own business and stay
> under the radar, and probably don’t need to rent
> a place so you may not run into them too much…

I’m sure that sybrib knows plenty of people who make around $120K and save around $40K a year but based on my census research and years working in the financial industry (not just renting homes and apartments) I have learned that well under .01% of the population saves even 10% of their gross pay. I know plenty of people that own private jets and I would not be surprised if the percentage of the population that owns private jets is similar to the percentage of the population that saves 33% or more of their gross income every year…

I fully agree with wshat FormerAptBroker says. It is absurd to expect 120K household to save 40K. On top of that recent housing bubble will be a great destroyer of wealth of American public. Basically what Alan Greenspan did was to transfer wealth from people to Wall street in the form of fees and interests. Now the people will have to deal with foreclosure, negative equity etc etc. Bloomberg News reports that the leading Wall Street investment banks could hand out $38 billion in 2007 year-end bonuses--or, about $201,500 per employee. The bonuses would be spread amid 186,000 workers at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. Amid a banner year for investment banks and other financial firms, Wall Street bonuses are expected to hit a record $23.9 billion in 2006, according to New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

Fed Attention to Wall Street `Dangerous,' Buiter Says
By John Fraher and Scott Lanman

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve pays a ``dangerous'' amount of attention to the concerns of Wall Street, constraining its ability to influence the economy, former Bank of England policy maker Willem Buiter said.

``The Fed listens to Wall Street and believes what it hears,'' Buiter said today in a paper presented to the U.S. central bank's annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. ``This distortion into a partial and often highly distorted perception of reality is unhealthy and dangerous.''

The central bank has drawn criticism from some officials in the U.S. and Europe by trying to end the yearlong credit crisis through an expansion of lending. The steepest interest-rate cuts in two decades risk stoking inflation, while the Fed has been too generous in aiding banks, Buiter said.

In addition to rescuing Bear Stearns Cos. from bankruptcy, the Fed created a program to swap Treasuries for mortgage bonds, opened up lending to Wall Street firms and reduced the premium for direct loans to commercial banks.

Buiter, a founding member of the Bank of England's independent rate-setting board in 1997, said the Fed's behavior over the past year represents an example of ``regulatory capture.'' In such a relationship, policy makers take on ``as if by osmosis, the objectives, interests and perception of reality of the vested interest they are meant to regulate and supervise in the public interest,'' he said.

I work in IT Management and I can assure you that only one person on my team routinely works more than 45 hours/week and that is because that is how she wants to work, not because anyone is telling her to do that. I keep telling her to "not get burnt out" but she just likes to work hard. She does get the raises and promotions, so if you are ambitious you will work harder than your peers (duh).
The person holding the pager works harder than that, but that is only one week out of four and my company has some nice benefits, like four weeks of vacation and two weeks of sick time for new hires.

But I am working at a particularly "family friendly" place, which I picked out on purpose for its reputation, when my daughter was born. In some startups, I have worked as hard as 70 hrs/wk, but that was for stock options + pay worth $350k/yr, so I figured they deserved their money's worth.

I know my wife and I are kind of unusual, but our take home pay is about $170k and we put away (including 401k) about $70k/yr of that, and that is with daycare expenses of $16k/yr. Our overall savings isn't quite growing that fast, because my wife insists on spending about 1/3 of that on home improvements, but that is an investment of a sort. At least we aren't blowing it all on fancy dinners or trips to Hawaii.

I figure I can comfortably retire once we have $2M in the bank and the house paid off. My wife is six years younger than me, so I might retire before her, but she might not go for that. In any case, we should be there by the time I am in my mid-50's, baring some kind of catastrophe. We could obviously live more inexpensively elsewhere, but since we are a mixed-race couple, most cheap places don't look that attractive to us. We like Davis a lot though.

Using 1997 as a baseline is a mistake, imho, since that is pretty much the bottom of the last housing cycle. If you think prices are going to drop as much as they did last time, or even more, that might work, but I think that the Bay Area is worth more than it was back then, since there is more population and more high paying jobs than ever before. If you trying to time the market, just wait until prices start going back up and buy then. That might be a decade or more though.

I remember a year or two ago, when I suggested that a $200k combined income couple was not uncommon here and I was roundly lambasted, even called a troll. How much times have changed! I think 250k is kind of pushing it, but I still think that two mid-career professionals can reach $200k. In SF, that means a nurse and a policeman, or a teacher and a firefighter, or two programmers, or a lawyer and a non-profit activist.

Here in Noe Valley, prices have pretty much been flat for about two years now. I have to admit, that I am as surprised as anyone by this turn of events as I really expected them to come down by now. I am a homeowner, so this is a mixed blessing, but I really would like to buy something bigger, as child #2 is on the way. If they don't come down, we will just squeeze an extra one into our 1200 sq foot flat somehow. I grew up in much more crowded quarters and so did my wife, so I am sure we will manage.

I stopped posting after this blog got taken over by a bunch of shrill libertarian and assorted Right Wing posters and spend most of my time over at Socketsite, a really good blog that reminds me of this one back in the '05 days. It is almost entirely focusing on San Francisco though. Perhaps the libertarian crowd has finally realized that the mess we are in is almost entirely due to excessive deregulation and have learned their lesson, but I kind of doubt it.

Lot of truths in this thread, prompting my first post here.

The Bay Area is a great place for the following people:

1) Alpha achievers in any discipline. The top 10%. They will always command a big premium than the other folks. Like the guy making $260K in a technical capacity.

2) Folks who did well in the DNA lottery. If you have a mini trust fund or a decent inheritance (like a BA home) in the horizon, it takes the pressure off to save and move up. BA is heaven for these folks. It is easy to take a $1M loan to buy that home in Cupertino/Palo Alto, when you have other sources of wealth you can count on.

3)Those who did well in any of the previous bubbles. They are lucky to have a cushion. They gambled well.

4) Singles and Couples w/o kids. This is a lifestyle choice which makes many BA negatives irrelevant to them.

In contrast, If you are not in any of the above the classes, the Bay Area sucks. It is a especially a very bad place for:

1) Families making $125K or less.

2) People looking for upward social mobility. There are a whole lot of people who start life from scratch. Or even very far behind considering college loans etc. The Bay Area can be a miserable place for these folks, even with a $250K dual income.

3) People who need to commit time and/or money towards their extended family. If you have to take care of an elderly parent or help your siblings, living in the Bay Area will add to both your physical and financial stress levels.

4) People who want to raise kids, without subjecting themselves to a third world lifestyle.

For OO:

Getting the "housing part nailed down" is broken after 2003.

The people who forced the issue after 2003, have traded their retirement and quality of life for a mortgage. Ever increasing Housing prices was their only key to retirement.

The people who are waiting it out, have also traded something. It takes a very special couple who make $250K to live in a rental, and not feel any void. Especially when confronted with overwhelming disapproval of their social circle about their lifestyle choice. Either you let them get to you, or you will lose your network. Housing is like religion here.

Most people still chose to live in apartments when having to rent, as they dont want to 'throw' $3k-$4k paying someone else's mortgage. If it takes till 2011-2013 for some sanity to return to housing prices, they will have waited 8-10 years. That is an entire childhood without a backyard or having a dog. Things that folks elsewhere can take for granted.

And finally, those who thought that the Bay Area was heaven, but have left it for other areas. They have instantly lost their social network. While everything make be cheap where they are, it will take a long while before they feel rooted elsewhere.

A lot of irrepairable damage has been done in the last 5 years. When I run into Greenspan in hell, I hope he'll still be burning.

On the other hand the poor guy bought his place in Southern Cal right at the peak, it adds some insult to injury.

Actually cockgobbler, our stucco masterpiece was bought post peak during a distress divorce sale. Not as a fucking investment, this might sound quaint to the titans of industry in the Bay Area, we were only concerned with finding a place we wanted to live in.

Fuck the Bay Area, more importantly fuck most of those that live there, nothing but a bunch of fucking maggots thinking that their 80K job might turn into a 120K job if they work work work work. The fucking place isn't that nice, it's just not that bad. A big difference. And the myth of high wages in the BA simply is not true. for every person making over 100K there are thousands making less than 50K. Used to be folks immigrated here to become Americans, they assimilated, but no more, now you can fucking vote in 40 languages. The Chinese want to stay Chinese, not become American.

Headset,

the problem outside of the first-tier cities is, there is a complete lack of choice for jobs outside of the one that you are recruited for.

I have many ex-colleages who moved up to Seattle because they wanted to buy a home. I myself was once actively recruited to go PNW. Now fast forward to several years later, 4 out of 5 ex-colleagues who went to Seattle came back down, none of them are BA locals. They have no family, no high school friends here, they come down for JOBS (not the Apple CEO). Once they feel they have hit the ceiling in income and career at Microsoft, there are very few other choices - Amazon, Google's Seattle office, and that is pretty much it. All the employers there are fully aware of the lack of WA state income tax, so they make sure they "pass on" that savings to you, on top of cost-of-living adjustment. What about smaller companies? There are not that many that can support their pay level.

Most people who make $120-150K here can only make $80-100K up there and the housing cost is NOT that much cheaper. As a result, their savings rate actually went DOWN, and their career choices suddenly become very limited. There are fewer employer alternatives to choose from.

The reason why we have so many people putting up with the commute, the housing cost, the higher cost of living in general of BA, LA, NYC and DC is because only at these places can you expect a reasonable choice of career path and upward mobility in income. Most of us make a living by working for someone else, so Warren Buffet's strategy of making it on his own in Omaha doesn't apply to us.

Jimbo,

I disagree. There was a 60% runup from 1987 to mid 1990. It was only by 1997 that we had returned to a 'normal' run-up of about 4.25%.

I think 1997 as a basis year is very good.

Of course, people who spent nothing on maintaining their homes should not expect to compete with people who have invested (likely over-invested) in their homes. So, take a basis year with a grain of salt

What perplexes me is why industry does not fan-out. I think mature companies like Cisco would do very well if they moved their operations to Coyote Valley, or even further south. I think the prevailing tech demographic is not DINC, but rather small-family. You can invent pretty good communities on your own if you are: Adobe, Cisco, Goodle, Apple, etc. Put some roots down in San Juan Bautista and you can pay people less to live in new homes as opopsed to salaries designed to support 1950s tract homes selling for 1.5million.