It’s common knowledge that San Jose, San Francisco and New York City are among the highest paying places for software developers to work. And it’s generally common knowledge that these places are also among the most expensive places to live … Delatores has done some interesting math based on the cost of living and salary data and discovered that four of the top five cities (based on the purchasing power of an average software developer’s salary) are in Texas!

Even more interestingly, San Francisco, San Diego, New York and Oakland are all in the bottom five!

Of course, the problem is that these are statistics… You know what Mark Twain used to say about statistics?

You can’t simply take a salary and multiply it by the cost of living … because you don’t spend your whole salary on the cost of living. In most cost of living calculations nearly 30% of your spending is on housing — that includes investments like buying a home even though you will recover most of that money (or even turn a profit) when you move. You also spend some money on items that are basically fixed cost items: computers, phones and internet access, cars, luxury items … and generally speaking — anything you can buy on the internet . You also save some of it (you do save some of your money, right?) and maybe you give some of it away …

Perhaps a better metric would be to find some common ground for what you have to buy to live: an apartment or a mortgage, food, utilities, transportation, health care, and even entertainment … then find the localized cost of that, and subtract it from your average salary numbers. But hey, I’m no economist.

2 Responses to “Best places to be a software developer…”