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Comment by systematical | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions DC and I'd just like vent about how miserable a place this is to live in. I see some people spend 10 hours a week and often more just commuting to work. It's overpriced. And when you look at the state of IT in the federal government you realize why this government fails so badly at non-tech things.

I'll be running away from the major cities as fast as possible as soon as possible.

Yuck. You actually lose money working in DC, the salaries aren't even worth.

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> You actually lose money working in DC, the salaries aren't even worth.

People around DC have such low salaries that they are among the richest counties in the country...

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/censu...

That just proves that there's a certain class of rich people (diplomats? lawyers?) that have plenty of work in the D.C. area and they've carved some neighborhoods out for themselves. It doesn't prove anything about what life for a DBA in D.C. would be like.

Glassdoor shows the pay for DBAs in the DC area are above the national average.

For software developers, the median salaries are below those in SF and Seattle, but if you are a FAANG level engineer, Amazon’s pay scale in NOVA is identical to Seattle and Facebook pays similarly.

> carved some neighborhoods out for themselves

This is an effort to imply that the suburbs of DC with high median salaries are small enclaves. This could not be further from the truth. Fairfax County, which has the third highest median household income in the US, is over a million in population and the largest county in VA. Montgomery County is the largest county in Maryland, also over a million people. So these counties are not separated from the rest of the metro area, but instead have over 2 million people in an MSA of 6 million.

COL eats it away, the extra salary is not worth it. I'm sure its the same for SF, NYC, and other similar cities.

Outside of subsistence salaries, which are not sustainable long term through illness, emergency, and retirement, rate of growth of net worth is a better metric.

Point being, putting 2X thousand dollars a year in long term savings in NYC is a better financial choice than saving X thousand a year in Townsville but having a nicer neighborhood or something.

Not that the dichotomy works exactly that way, but adjusting gross salary of a senior software engineer by cost of living makes little sense since only part of her pay goes to cost of living.

I didn't say I had a low salary. As a single guy living by himself, my salary is above or near most of the median HOUSEHOLD incomes listed in that article. However, the cost of living here eats it away. Compare a city like Philly to DC for instance. Last I checked, COL is 27% cheaper in Philly and salaries are only 3% below DC.

Which goes back to my original point: "Yuck. You actually lose money working in DC, the salaries aren't even worth."

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