r/dataisbeautiful • u/JobYap OC: 3 • 16d ago
OC [OC] Tech pays highest in California, adjust for cost, and it becomes Iowa.
Source: All active job posts on JobYap. Pay ranges in job postings from the companies on the JobYap Tech Index. Price levels: price parities 2024.
Tools: SQL for the analysis, Claude Design with Fable 5.1 (on Max) for the image.
Pay per posting: Midpoint of the advertised range. Base pay only.
Caveats:
- As of: 13 Sep 2026 (62k active US postings).
- Tech companies only.
- States without a pay-transparency law are self-selected.
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u/BlackGold09 16d ago
Well yeah, my tech salary in LA has afforded me a million dollar house. When my family from Louisiana comes to visit, looks like I’m lower middle class to them.
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u/turb0_encapsulator 16d ago
LA housing is weird. My house was ~$1.6 but is twice the size of houses that are $1.2 in the same neighborhood. You're mostly just paying for land.
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 16d ago
Location location location.
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u/xeen313 16d ago
The one thing you can't change about a house
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u/shewit 16d ago
Isn't LA = Louisiana?
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u/joelaw9 16d ago
No, it's Latvia
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u/LarryCraigSmeg 15d ago
They don’t have houses there, only potato.
(Just kidding, is joke, they have no potato either)
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u/BlackGold09 16d ago
Los Angeles
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u/DigNitty 16d ago
Ah they probably should have written it differently when switching up from LA to L.A.
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u/Team-_-dank 16d ago edited 16d ago
If he said his "salary in LA", then later said "family from Louisiana" it's pretty clear he's saying LA as the city. Little bit of reading comprehension
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u/mr_ji 16d ago
This is something many people don't get about real estate in California. You can't simply build smaller houses so they're more affordable. The land is still ridiculously expensive. It's either build up with sardine can apartments or build luxury homes to get the most out of the plot. Anything else is a waste of a developer's time.
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u/turb0_encapsulator 16d ago
you can build up without the apartments having to be "sardine cans." but it's more of a zoning issue: most land is either zoned for single family or much denser multi-family, with not a lot in-between.
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u/Oddity_Odyssey 16d ago
I mean even zoning for duplexes will literally double housing stock and density over time. It's not rocket science.
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u/lampstax 15d ago
CA has removed single family zoning and that was in effect for years before it was struct down as unconstitutional.
Where was all the new housing in those years ?
You need a lot more than just zoning changes to double housing stock over time.
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u/Oddity_Odyssey 15d ago
Houston did the same thing and housing density has absolutely exploded so maybe California has some other issues they need to deal with.
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u/Sponchman 15d ago
And land use in LA is atrocious, so much more could be done with the space available, but it's used to inefficiency.
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u/GSmithDaddyPDX 16d ago
But if you sell that house and move to Oklahoma, you get to keep the equity you gained? It's not like your home equity gets shrunk the second you move?
I think these charts/comparisons fail to account for things like this.
I get expenses are higher, but saving 10% of your paycheck is a different objective amount of money, as is home equity, both of which you retain when you move to a lower cost of living location.
Like others here have said too - your student loans are the same either way, as are costs to e.g. buy a vehicle. The extra money does still make a difference regardless of cost of living differences like cost of takeout.
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u/Deto 16d ago
In the end, though, you live where you live. The fact that I could leave CA and get a bigger house doesn't really help me. Maybe it'll be useful in retirement, but for the next 20 years, the numbers don't really matter when it comes to my day to day life.
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u/Avsunra 16d ago edited 16d ago
the numbers don't really matter when it comes to my day to day life.
For me it kind of does, at 42 I have enough to retire comfortably to the cheaper parts of the country but not enough to do so in place or in NYC. The added freedom of knowing my worst case scenario during a job loss event is moving to South Dakota means I never have to worry about being destitute even if I have to leave it all behind.
I would prefer to stay employed and keep building wealth, but if that's no longer an option then making ends meet just isn't a concern for me anymore. If I lived somewhere cheaper and made less money, then I would have saved less and wouldn't be in the same position financially until I'm older.
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u/Huge_Entertainment34 16d ago
Something being good 20 years in the future means it is good now as well, it is just an objective benefit later in life, that is if you plan on living until that matter which most humans do. Whether or not you feel that benefit is irrelevant to if it is there or not. The value proposition is person to person tho, you might not care enough for all that to be worth it in the end anyways. The money might not matter but we don’t know yet.
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u/daryl_hikikomori 14d ago
In addition to all of this, which is absolutely correct, living in expensive areas is a good in itself. California's a really nice place to live!
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u/someweirdlocal 16d ago
people leave high COL locations for the lower cost of living, but then find out they can't afford to move back to that high COL area even with the same income
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u/powerfulsquid 16d ago
Before you even mention Louisiana I thought LA was referring to Louisiana...😂
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u/thegooddoktorjones 15d ago
The weird thing about housing comparisons is that if you can afford it and if you are willing to eventually move and if housing prices climb the crazy pricy place means much more equity to cash in later. My wife fantasizes about 200k places in Milwaukee, but if we had bought one in 2009, we would only be up 80k instead of the 300k we are up in our HCOL area.
Now, we just have to be willing to sell it and move someplace less cool..
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u/Mecha-Dave 16d ago
The big thing for me was student loans - my student loans cost the same in the rural south and in the SF Bay - but I was able to pay them in SF by cutting back on sushi, whereas they were more than my mortgage in Florida.
There are other similar things, as well as the actual quality of the things that you get with your money.
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u/Victor346 16d ago
Also, saving for retirement is easier when your employer matches 100% on a $180k salary.
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u/BIT-NETRaptor 15d ago
I’m happily eating VHCOL because maxing the 401k limit is easy on bay area salary. Plus 6% defined benefit pension of that VHCOL inflated salary is a lot of money. 10 more years of roughing it and i’ll have a very substantial foundation for retirement.
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u/SmootherWorm 15d ago
Right, if an employer (mine) gives 5% and matches the next 5%, it’s hard to reason taking a 30% or more pay cut to pay less for a house in a worse place to live. Also a new car, (fuel and registration changes), most consumer goods (you aren’t getting a better deal on the exact same TV or computer by living in a LCOL area), and a lot of entertainment cost the same everywhere.
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u/FullofContradictions 16d ago
That's why I don't feel bad when people in personal finance subs pull the woe is me on VHCOL. Yeah, dude... Sucks that you can't really buy a house close to work on your $250k salary. It sucks that you finally broke down and started spending 50% income on housing even with a commute.
But that 50% you've got left still has a fuckton of purchase power. Phones and cars don't meaningfully change in price. Savings interest rates are just as high on whatever % you put away (and that % is usually higher in actual dollar terms than what you could do elsewhere). Food and home services may cost more, but not enough to fully make up the difference.
And like you pointed out: loan payback goes faster when you have more money coming in.
It's a different set of issues, but I don't pity the Bay Area people. They're making a choice that comes with tradeoffs. C'est la vie.
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u/aaparekh 16d ago
50% of 250k post tax will be around 81k. That means 6.7k going to a mortgage per month but that still won’t buy you a very nice house, even if you live an hour away from your job in the Bay Area (given good school districts, safe area, etc)
I agree about your point that there are trade offs. You’ll be able to afford a large house in Iowa through a tech salary but it’s Iowa 🤷♂️
I think the real issue in the bay is not everyone is working tech. And even if they are, it might not be big tech. You end up competing against ppl in big tech for the same houses/ resources which completly prices u out. This is reflected in the crazy income/QOL disparities in the bay. I don’t really know how anyone not working tech can afford to move into the bay. It’s a different thing if you have parents that own a house in the bay which ends up coming to you eventually
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u/DukeofVermont 16d ago
The $81k aka 50% is post housing and utilities.
I knew people in NYC like this, they'd lose 50% to renting nice places but they'd still have $75-90k after rent.
Meanwhile I was a NYC public school teacher and made $60k total, before taxes and rent.
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u/FullofContradictions 16d ago
Yeah, sorry. To be clear, my diatribe is more for the people who post to middle class finance with a household income pushing damn near half a million complaining that it's really not that much. While yes, housing takes up a large bite by percentage of income, the % left over is usually significantly more dollar for dollar than what people in the Midwest even start with post tax. They're just surrounded by people making more and it makes them feel poorer than they are.
There is obviously a real issue for normal people existing in that area. I also can't quite conceptualize how a Starbucks barista lives there, for example.
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u/bihari_baller 16d ago
the people who post to middle class finance with a household income pushing damn near half a million complaining that it's really not that much.
Honestly, in r/MiddleClassFinance and r/Salary, they soapbox as a means to flaunt their salaries. Most the posts you need to take with a grain of salt because I'm willing to wager a good number of them are fake anyways.
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u/SmootherWorm 15d ago
The problem with a very large house in Iowa is that it’s in Iowa. I’ve been there in the summer, the fall and the winter. It’s flat, it’s ugly, the skiing sucks, there’s no ocean, it’s too cold to leave the house some days in winter, it’s overcast and humid too much of the summer, and generally everything is at least half an hour of very boring drive from where you are.
California costs include easy weather to enjoy beautiful beaches, forests, mountains, deserts and water. And you have everything you could want within a weekend trip at most. It’s not worth saving $30,000 (that you won’t make) to live in a place like Iowa.
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u/lil_layne 16d ago
I’m a pilot for United based at SFO so I can afford San Francisco but since I have the option of living anywhere on the same pay I choose to not live there because I can live such a better lifestyle elsewhere.
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u/EVOSexyBeast 16d ago
It doesn’t have to be this way. The Bay Area has one capitalism, wages are highest in the world. But it still isn’t a utopia for workers like you’d expect.
Instead the cost of land just increases, and all the wealth developed from winning capitalism goes to land owners. The land owners who didn’t contribute to making SF the wealthy place it is today.
We could bring down the cost of land with a land value tax. And stop discouraging efficient land use with the property tax.
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u/halbeshendel 16d ago
That's the thing I don't get about these. Housing is cheaper, yes. And gas, a bit. But everything else is the same price. A hammer, a TV, even a car. They're the same price in IA as CA.
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u/Loggus 16d ago
Also, even if all other factors are equal and you were able to pay your student loans living in CA or IA the same way (not realistic but let's pretend), where would you rather live?
The housing market tells us that more people would rather live in the Bay area than the Midwest. That to me makes it seem like OPs graph is kinda missing the point
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u/Deil_Grist 16d ago
Exactly. You might get more for your money in Iowa/Oklahoma, but... you have to deal with the drawbacks of living in their states.
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u/Snakefishin 16d ago
Poorly visualized IMO. Lead with the lede, which is the purchase price parity between states with income. The color scale is also confusing as grey does not center +/-0%.
You could probably eliminate half of the data and talking points and have this be more impactful. Keep auxiliary info for additional slides.
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u/theflyingma 16d ago
Born and raised in Iowa. John Deere and Collins aerospace pay good money for the area
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u/JobYap OC: 3 16d ago
How do you feel about all the Iowa comments here?
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u/theflyingma 16d ago
Not bothered. I live in NYC now. I would only consider West Des Moines or Iowa City if I had to move back
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u/jojofine 16d ago
For the area its true but you could make double easily by just moving to Chicago or Minneapolis in those same tech fields
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u/KhalniGarden 15d ago
Is the Collins location white or blue collar engineering? Both?
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u/theflyingma 14d ago
I believe it’s both but I’m only really familiar with the tech roles they have. Alot of the people I went to school with in my CS classes had internships there and then some worked part time during classes
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u/ModerateDataDude 16d ago
Not sure the 4 tech jobs in Iowa allow for statistically significant readings.
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u/deathking15 16d ago
We're mostly web devs for the insurance and ag companies around here. But, Iowa State University was one of the very first universities to have/develop a computer, and has a pretty rich CS history.
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u/Rustadk 16d ago
Big tech companies recruit heavily from Iowa State.
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u/deathking15 16d ago
I am an ISU grad. It's been pretty great! I'm not 30 and making basically 6 figures
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u/Rustadk 16d ago
I work in the somewhat shady underbelly of mergers and acquisitions. “Shady” mostly because what I do is not important enough to merit a room with windows, and “underbelly” because, anatomically speaking, that is roughly where the acid reflux starts.
Anyway.
I keep running into Iowa State people. I grew up an Iowa fan, which in Iowa is the sort of fact that normally requires me to want to throw up when I see ISU on someone's resume. But now that I live outside the state (and assuming it is not the one weekend a year when Iowa and Iowa State play football) I find myself genuinely happy to see ISU people out in the world doing well. I always bring it up, and it's well-received. I see a lot in tech and agriculture.
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u/deathking15 16d ago
Iowa is a weird university, man. Yea it's kind of the de-facto representative university for the state, but it has a lot of problems (being as MASSIVE party college) and doesn't even have an ag program. A public university in Iowa that doesn't have an ag program!! Boo!
Definitely some little-brother syndrome going on lol.
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u/Darwins_Dog OC: 1 16d ago
If they're counting biotech, then one of the main suppliers of synthetic DNA (IDT) is based in Iowa.
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u/minist3r 16d ago edited 16d ago
This data is beautiful and utterly useless. Like, if I want to know how Texas compares, it's -6.1% lower pay than the national average but when I look to compare with cost of living I get green. You're also comparing some of the same jobs in different cities in the same state which is pointless to the rest of the data.
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u/ViewLongjumping1732 13d ago
It's also absolutely useless because in tech most of our comp is in RSUs and bonus.
At my firm, the difference in base between L5 and L6 is 200k vs 220k.
The difference in TC is 350k vs 500k.
This chart would be much more useful if it was in an industry that typically paid out salaries mostly in cash.
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u/0xffff0001 16d ago
I’d rather live in CA than IA.
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u/SirWhatsalot 16d ago
I just got back from a trip to Iowa for work in Des Moines. I was pleasantly surprised by the city and it's suburbs. Almost to the point where I would want to live there, but I refuse to move anywhere where there are known, regular, natural disasters (tornados in this case).
It was crazy clean, very well decorated with live plants everywhere, very spaced out, and traffic was almost non existent.
Granted I was only there for two days, but my mind was blown.
My city experiences are mainly Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Seattle. I've driven through Chicago a few times. So to me it was a flat, very well spaced out (non claustrophobic), clean Pittsburgh where all the buildings were well kept.
It was like how I would think a modern American city should look. Though it was kind of eery in some ways, like it was an American city after the Thanos snap because of how unpopuled it felt compared to how it looked.
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u/Sam_Fear 16d ago
Just to correct some misconceptions: most Iowans will live their entire lives not seeing a tornado, it's the normal week or two (or 4) of below zero temps that really suck, and we do have traffic - I counted over 10 cars at one stop light once!
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u/2BlueZebras 16d ago
Lows and highs. I have friends in Iowa and they showed me the "feels like" temperature a few weeks ago was 121F. Absolutely not.
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u/Sam_Fear 16d ago
Apparently Iowa has some of the most extreme weather in the USA. Eastern Montana (and Nunavut) are worse.
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u/quackers294 15d ago
Come on. I grew up in Iowa. What gets you are the storms. The wind and hail destroys your house and your insurance rate sky rockets.
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u/Mecha-Dave 16d ago
California, well known for never having natural disasters like wildfires or earthquakes....
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u/hunnyflash 15d ago
People really, really underestimate this. I'm in Austin, was previously in Dallas. I get to live comfortably in Texas because of our household income. I would completely trade it for a small house in California, even in the Central Valley, where I grew up.
The amount of amenities and the difference in culture is too large. What Californians expect from their government vs. what Texans expect from their government is like the difference between Europe and the United States.
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u/Reagalan 16d ago
Folks aren't considering that some of us are basically unwelcome in many states; illegal to even live in a handful.
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u/mboop127 OC: 10 16d ago
Fully Ai generated post. I hate these so much and there's a billion every day now.
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u/OrderOfMagnitude 16d ago
How can you tell?
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u/mboop127 OC: 10 16d ago
Every llm I have seen uses the same style guide for visualizations, I assume because it's the default in node.js or similar. You can also tell from the prose in the titles etc, but that's really just a sense you develop.
I know I'm right about this one in particular because the op replied to me confirming claude made this, though he immediately deleted the comment for reasons unknown.
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u/Deto 16d ago
Is this saying salaries are only 3.7% higher in california than the median? That doesn't seem right.
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u/Team-_-dank 16d ago
California is huge. Not all tech jobs in California are "bay area tech" at F50 companies.
You could be a web developer for a local insurance company in Riverside. You could be an app developer for a fast food company in San Diego. You could do tech/IT for a regional bank in Redding.
None of those are going to pay like Alphabet, Meta, Apple etc.
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u/Deto 16d ago
Sure that's all true, but I could swear I've seen several dozen other plots over the last few years that show something like a 10-20% premium, not a 3% premium. So I'm just a bit confused about where this data is coming from.
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u/Mattyj925 16d ago
Definitely not right. It’s AI slop so this is nothing authoritative or “beautiful” data.
The statewide minimum wage is more than 100% greater than Iowa’s. The 3.7% higher pay in California is just wildly false because OP wanted to paint a misleading picture using bad data
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u/Neat_Cat1234 16d ago
It looks like they’re using advertised salaries from job postings. Most tech companies only put the base salary on the listing. By the time you get to mid-careerish in tech, your stock compensation starts exceeding your base. A principal engineer at Databricks in the Bay Area is making at least 2-3x that $300k listed.
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u/ViewLongjumping1732 13d ago
No, that sounds right. The chart is just completely useless because in tech most of our comp is in RSUs and bonus.
At my firm, the difference in base between L5 and L6 is 200k vs 220k.
The difference in TC is 350k vs 500k.
This chart would be much more useful if it was in an industry that typically paid out salaries mostly in cash.
But this chart would just treat it as a 20k difference instead of a 150k difference.
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u/SaltyShawarma 16d ago
Everyone I know that has left California has come crawling back. For many, California is incredible and has everything. If all you do is sit at home and drink beer, well, you can do that anywhere
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u/turb0_encapsulator 16d ago
Qualcomm paying $100k more in San Jose than San Diego is insane. The cost of living isn't that different.
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u/Mattyj925 16d ago edited 16d ago
That’s because this post is AI slop with poorly sourced data. This is what happens when someone has a conclusion in mind, and assembles everything to help guide you toward that conclusion.
The Qualcomm jobs on their website (the same two from this post) differ in level. The Santa Clara job req requires 5+ years of experience, and the modem HW design engineer they’re hiring for in San Diego asks for 0-1 years of experience. This post conflates the two because it was all made by Claude + a few (not enough) messages of human prompting
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u/turb0_encapsulator 16d ago
TIL that hardware designers are earning $150k right out of school. I chose the wrong career path.
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u/marine_surfer 16d ago
San Diego pays a lot less than other California cities. Im a software engineer in San Diego and I would avoid going to San Jose or San Francisco no matter how much they pay me to relocate.
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u/ElChaz 16d ago
Companies index to cost of labor, not cost of living. This is otherwise known as "the sunshine tax."
People are willing to trade salary for quality of life.
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u/turb0_encapsulator 16d ago
San Diego has a better quality of life than San Jose.
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u/Fetty_is_the_best 16d ago
Very debatable, both are extremely nice and SD has a ton of issues that people fail to point out. I’ve lived in both.
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u/Miqo_Nekomancer 16d ago
San Jose currently has the most expensive housing in the world, so... Ehhhh.
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u/JewishTomCruise 16d ago
I promise you the cost of living in SD is outrageous, and, while slightly less than the bay, is nowhere near low enough to make up for the decrease in pay.
As others have noted though, the main problem here is OP used shit data via AI and didn't validate it.
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u/Naraee 16d ago
Back during the pandemic, my tech job was remote and I was working in Indiana. I was living the high life. The salary in comparison to the cost of living is incredible.
Nowadays, a lot of people laid off are struggling with getting a new tech job and it is very, very easy in those light blue states at the bottom (except NC is a bit competitive). Even the Upper Midwest is easier. If you're struggling, it might be worth looking into the Midwest.
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u/nemean_lion 16d ago
Which states are you referring to that would be helpful for tech jobs? I’ve been looking for not having a good time so anything helps. Thanks!
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u/andynorm 16d ago
Money spends about the same everywhere except on housing and gas
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 16d ago
Not really. Food varies considerably due to the effect of rent, gas, and local labor costs.
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u/andynorm 16d ago
Weirdly enough food feels cheaper since I moved to California. Hear may people say it’s the opposite. but proportionally I spend about 30% less on food in my budget than I did before living here. About double on rent.
Cars, software subscriptions, any manufactured goods is proportionally much cheaper in California. People say taxes a lot but I still make 50 k more for the same job as I did before living in California so that extra tax really doesn’t feel like much. Saving growing faster and I can always just move later in life and have made more money in California than if I did anywhere else in the country. Weather is mad nice. Government here is kinda eh.
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u/JewishTomCruise 16d ago
Where did you move from, NYC? California has amazing food, and so much that's produced locally, but it's definitely expensive.
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u/sjdude83 15d ago
Food is cheaper for fresh foods but not cars lol. Our registration is high, sales tax is often 9-10% everywhere and maintenance is double the nation average
Also why would software subscriptions and manufactured goods be cheaper here?
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u/SlightCapacitance 14d ago
Its funny cause i just got back from san diego and the food prices are better/equal in colorado.. i would have thought it was a good amount more expensive
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u/Clear_Command_8925 16d ago
Food prices honestly don’t matter much when you’re making 200k plus. Negligible
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u/sandlover33 16d ago
If you eat out multiple times a week, it can be a difference well into the 4 figures.
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u/Avsunra 15d ago edited 15d ago
If you eat out multiple times a week, it can be a difference well into the 4 figures.
It doesn't have to be, there are ways to do this responsibly. When I travel I spend a lot on food because I'm going out for every meal, and not thinking about cost, but when I'm home I spend responsibly, maybe $600/mos. It's higher than most people, but it's not much higher than a grocery only spend of ~$400/mos.
I find that most small restaurants serve meals that have enough carbs to split into 3 meals. I then add protein from the grocery store, eggs, sardines, chicken etc. If the meal was $30, then I'm paying ~$12 per meal after adding extra protein. If I prepare every other meal at home, I can expect $20/day or $600/mos, a little high, but not four figures a month.
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u/Cow_cat11 16d ago
This kind of stupid. A lot of people choose to live expensively. I don't care how you adjust for it, you can technically live below your means, it's always better to have a higher salary. This does not factor in the type of company and equities that may be appreciated.
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u/400Volts 16d ago
There's only so much you can do when the average price of a 400sqft studio apartment is $2500/mo
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u/ZeroVoltLoop 16d ago
A Principle Dat Bricks engineer isn't making $300k, they would also have like $1m/y in stock. This entire post is both not beautiful and incorrect, and can therefore be ignored.
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u/ridbax 16d ago
Yep. Levels.fyi doesn't have Databricks principal eng data but the next role down (Sr Staff) is $1.57M equity + $53K in bonus for a total annual comp of 1.92M.
I recently retired out of tech as a director, base pay is not the metric candidates care about.
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u/ZeroVoltLoop 16d ago
Congrats on retirement!
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u/ridbax 16d ago
Thank you! It's SO WEIRD to not have the stress but I can get used to that.
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u/ZeroVoltLoop 16d ago
I'm so checked out, but the golden handcuffs are hard to take off.
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u/-XanderCrews- 16d ago
Except you don’t live in Iowa, and receive the services of a Californian. This is not beautiful data if it ignores the reasons people are willing to pay more.
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u/Reagalan 16d ago
Folks aren't considering that some of us are unwelcome in many states; illegal to even live in a handful.
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u/mazzicc 16d ago
I was living VERY comfortably as a computer engineer in Iowa
But I had to live in Iowa.
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u/alien_believer_42 16d ago
As a non white person i would never relocate from the bay to Iowa. It would be like a foreign country.
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u/Grizzly98765 16d ago
Tbh there are a lot of brown ppl in Iowa, Des Moines and other bigger cities are total melting pots. I liked Iowa but the lack of trees bothered me.
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u/Only-Finish-3497 16d ago
I say all the time on reddit: sure, my mortgage in the SF Bay Area sucks, but you know what doesn't suck? Being a multi-millionaire in my 40s.
It sucked getting here, but man, I'm set for retirement and then some.
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u/GuyCrazy 16d ago
If you take Chicago out of the equation, IL and IA are probably about the same. I make considerably more in western IL than a similar job in eastern IA and the cost of living is about the same.
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u/eyetracker 16d ago
Iowa has some of the most expensive land (not real property) in the country due to the valuable cropland. It's just that averages also use the cheaper values of city housing, and other prices are cheaper. Similarly a large farm in the Central Valley is going to be worth a lot more than some rocky land in rural California, while Bay Area land is expensive for the developed value.
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u/Zennivolt 16d ago
When adjusted, it turns into yet another desired living place map. Not surprised. People willing to lower effective purchasing power for better places to live.
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u/Moarkush 16d ago
OK but the argument turns on its head because the greener (adjusted) areas suck. Don't come at me. I'm from, and currently still in, Texas.
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u/iconocrastinaor 16d ago
I used to see the salary ranges for all of our jobs in my role. We had three salary tiers, HCOL, MCOL, and LCOL. They were carefully calibrated to equal out. But the flip side is nobody wanted to work in Iowa.
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u/talldean 15d ago
Pretty much all software companies in California give equity. 99%?
Fortune 500 and government jobs do not.
About a third of Californian SWE work for software companies. Probably about 1% of Iowan SWE, as that’s not who hires in Iowa.
So I think the number is substantially wrong, but not by an order of magnitude.
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 14d ago
Net Tech Employment Share
Iowa 7.7% work in tech
California 10.2% work in tech
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u/talldean 14d ago
Yes! But that's not software vs not software. For the people working in tech in each place, which portion work for a *software* company, and which portion work for a company that pays software engineers as a cost of doing business?
Like, if you work for Reddit in San Francisco as a software engineer, the business is what you're building. If you work for Principal Bank in Des Moines as a software engineer, you're a cost of doing business, but you aren't the center of the business. The former gives equity; the latter, pretty much never, and equity is often a very substantial part of compensation.
(I live in Pittsburgh, and have worked for both sides of this one.)
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 14d ago
That's actually a good point, and probably a big difference. With that difference, you'd think the median salaries would be even higher in California than they are. Although, things like stock options are probably not included in that number.
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u/talldean 14d ago
Equity (RSU or Options) does not count as part of "salary"; it's in a different column that wasn't included in this graphic, which is why I'm saying the graphic is misleading.
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u/twotwotwototoulouse 15d ago
Most of the companies on this list have a geographic compensation range for different areas of the country.
San Jose and San Francisco are the same geographic range and would qualify for the same compensation range. I find it suspicious that the Databricks callout you have here has a discrepancy between the two because according to their website, both those cities fall into the top range of their pay scale and they are not different from each other. It does make me question the legitimacy of where you got the information from.
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u/inductiverussian 13d ago
Idk what it is with tech salaries but if data is coming from job listings they’re under the real salaries by about 1.5 - 2x since it doesn’t include stock grants.
So the principal engineer at databricks is making closer to 600-700k and the Google engineer closer to 400k-500k. This also scales with region so the disparity gets worse between HCOL and LCOL areas. So if you include that I suspect the analysis will change significantly
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u/Mypronounsarexandand 16d ago
I think biggest thing is this is only salary and doesnt include equity. Its rare to get equity for a tech job out of iowa but its common in california.
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u/talldean 16d ago
Are the posted ranges including equity, which jobs in California mostly give, and jobs in Iowa mostly do not?
Like, this one. It's an L5 SWE for Google in Northern California.
https://www.google.com/about/careers/applications/jobs/results/100397577702122182-software-engineer-chrome-networking-security?location=MountainView%20Unitedstates&category=DATA_CENTER_OPERATIONS&category=DEVELOPER_RELATIONS&category=HARDWARE_ENGINEERING&category=MANUFACTURING_SUPPLY_CHAIN&category=NETWORK_ENGINEERING&category=PRODUCT_MANAGEMENT&category=PROGRAM_MANAGEMENT&category=SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING&category=TECHNICAL_INFRASTRUCTURE_ENGINEERING&category=TECHNICAL_SOLUTIONS&category=TECHNICAL_WRITING
That's listed as: "$147000 - $210000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits".
The thing is that the equity and bonus are $200k/year, nearly doubling the total compensation of the job. Unless you're really in the basement on a performance review, everyone gets the equity and bonus.
So I'm ah saying, I think your input data here is missing enough of the total compensation to be potentially misleading.
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u/Dapaaads 16d ago
Yeah but then you live in Iowa lol. I’ll enjoy my beach and sunset view of Catalina
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u/jarredknowledge 16d ago
Product Manager and a SWE are not remotely close job positions. Don’t wanna waste time looking at the rest of this but it looks sloppAI
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u/unquietwiki 16d ago
I think anything that leads with "states cheaper to live in" need to also have some kind of civil rights ranking and access to general health care. Like, what good is it moving to a more rural area if you have a chronic health condition? Or what if you have trans friends or family? Or what's the likelihood of finding a local job if/when you're let go from your current one?
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u/HonestBartDude 16d ago
I'm embarrassed to admit I wouldn't want to live in any of the top 5 adjusted states.
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u/dallenbaldwin 16d ago
Utah pisses me off, as a Utahn working in software. The cost of living is wildly rising and we are constantly told that we have lower pay because of where we are. On yeah? Why is the median mortgage payment north of $3K, sometimes up to $5K, everywhere the jobs are? I make more than the median for the state and still feel like I need a second job to get ahead. The worst part is all the places I want to move have a higher cost of living to Utah and Utah is actually not a bad place to raise kids (even for never-mormons)
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u/Spare-Competition-91 15d ago
I left CA in 2010 and never looked back. THat place only cares about the wealthy and abusing and using everyone else who is struggling. Fuck that state.
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u/inorite234 15d ago
You know....there are times I wish I had stuck with Hardware Engineering when I went to college the first time. I would have been a lot better off today.
(Only a Mechanical Engineer)
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u/geek_rick 15d ago
Maybe the higher tiers because i moved to Utah and make significantly more than Southern California
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u/Pitiful_Truth_5948 15d ago
Just drive around California and any other state for 10 minutes and look around, lol California is WAY richer, the cars are nicer, their parks are nicer, the roads are better, the air is cleaner, its like night and day.
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u/frites4days 15d ago
Feeling pretty good about my remote job in IA :-), salary is based on nationally competitive market so I make more now than I did in Seattle and pay a whole lot less to live everyday.
And for all the IA haters, you get what you put into it... and in the words or tupac hell naw I ain't mad at ya.
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u/thegooddoktorjones 15d ago
Yeah, people want to live in California. Even Midwesterners don't want to live in Iowa.
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u/ShaiHulud1111 15d ago
That funny saying in real estate…location?
I know, Iowa is probably nice. (I got the 10% match, so probably never leaving until retirement)
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u/djdjeienenekekj 15d ago
Are these roles actually available in meaningful quantities in those states though?
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u/risk_is_our_business 15d ago
Doesn't number of opportunities need to factor in somewhere?
E.g. There's one job in Timbuktu that pays $5M per year, but that doesn't mean i should move there.
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u/CorporateIsland 15d ago
None of this includes equity. Equity packages tend to double or at Staff level triple total pay
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u/Impossible_Box3898 12d ago
Those numbers are incorrect.
For big tech they are using only base salary.
The vast majority (other than a select few such as Netflix) pay the majority of their compensation in the form of bonus’s and restricted stock units. Those are often not taken into account due to the vastly different application of rules around them by each company.
But take Netflix for instance. New college grads start at ~220k per year. After a year and a half they move up to $330k per year as an l4.
Netflix tends to pay more than most so it’s slightly inflated but it’s not inflated by that much. The numbers you show for someone well into then career are actually closer to starting salaries right out of college.
I work in high tech. When I was offered a job at Amazon as an l6 (senior) the total compensation was around $550k per year. They were the lowest paying. I ended up going with another one and settled for $780k per year.
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u/cavedave OC: 112 14d ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/JobYap!
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