[LUAU] Top 10 Best / Worst Cities For Software Developer Pay

[Ben Timmerman]

At 01:27 am Monday 07 03 19, Jim Thompson wrote:
>On Mar 18, 2007, at 10:38 PM, Julian Yap wrote:
>>Out of interests sake, this is what you get when you sort by the
>>Cost of
>>Living column.
>>
>>Top 10:
>>City            Salary
>>---------------------------------------
>>San Francisco   $92,570  206  $  44,937
>>San Jose        $99,250  192  $  51,693
>>Oakland         $92,570  180  $  51,428
>>San Diego       $85,280  177  $  48,181
>>New York        $89,370  177  $  50,492
>>Honolulu        $67,840  175  $  38,766
>>Los Angeles     $82,540  153  $  53,948
>>Long Beach      $82,540  153  $  53,948
>>Boston          $87,540  145  $  60,372
>>Washington, DC  $82,100  142  $  57,817
>>
>>The figure that sticks out like a sore thumb is that Honolulu pays at
>>least $14,000 LESS than the next lowest raw salary in the top 10.
>
>You're talking about the difference between Honolulu and Miami, right?...
I think Julian is referring to *his* new list sorted in the order of 
the top ten by the 'cost of living index'(COLI), Honolulu ranking 6th 
in the nation among the 10 highest COLI's

If you leave this list in Julian's COLI order and show the ranks by 
base and adj salaries within this top ten, you see that Honolulu has 
the lowest base AND adjusted salaries of these ten........though 'we' 
only loose $29k to the COLI compared to the $41k-$47k the top 3 loose 
to their base pay...

                                 Base Salary     Adj. Salary     Difference
City                    COLI    rank-amount     rank-amount     rank-amount
1-San Francisco 206     2-$92,570       9-$44,937       1-$47,633
2-San Jose              192     1-$99,250       5-$51,693       2-$47,557
3-Oakland               180     2-$92,570       6-$51,428       3-$41,142
4-San Diego             177     6-$85,280       8-$48,181       5-$37,099
5-New York              177     4-$89,370       7-$50,492       4-$38,878
6-Honolulu              175     10-$67,840      10-$38,766      6-$29,074
7-Los Angeles   153     7-$82,540       3-$53,948       7-$28,592
8-Long Beach            153     7-$82,540       3-$53,948       7-$28,592
9-Boston                145     5-$87,540       1-$60,372       9-$27,168
10-Washington, D.C.     142     9-$82,100       2-$57,817       10-$24,283

Mr. Thompson continues...
>I still say Hawaii is *dead last*.......Its going to be difficult to 
>attract real "talent" in large numbers  without addressing this.....
Point taken.

I'll pose the following being too lazy/not knowing where to begin the 
research to find the answers/gotta pay my rent:

If *market* forces are at work here, could it be that the inventory 
of software engineers here trying to ply their trade is such that 
those that are working as software engineers(instead of as taxi 
drivers) are willing to work for these reduced wages?........instead 
of as a taxi driver?

I guess what I'm looking for are the numbers and the analysis that 
shows how many software engineers are working in the industry, how 
many are unemployed in the industry.......all within these various 
geographic locations.....and then comparing these numbers against 
some kind of standard that would represent the amount of 'product' 
the industry is producing in these various geographic 
locations........and how much of this 'product' being 'consumed' in 
the country is being produced in Bangladesh.......but perhaps I digress.

-Ben
The Hack