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Comment by earl | Hacker News Reader

Not in sf or nyc.

a low end (not dumpy, but definitely not high end with a doorman) 2 bed apartment is going to run you $650k in the decent bits of sf and more in nyc.

In sf, you end up paying approx $1100 per month per million dollars of value in property taxes. So $715 in taxes, $300 or so in insurance, a $2500 mortgage, and you can easily be spending $3500-$4k/mo (after taxes) on housing. Using the rough rule of thumb that your salary should be 40 times your monthly housing payment, that's $160K already.

It isn't hard if you're an adult, with a family, or housing obligations, or kids, etc. If you wish to restrict the universe of ceos to relatively recent college grads with no life obligations who are content to pay $1500 to share a crappy apartment, then maybe Thiel is being reasonable.

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>> Most people with kids and mortgages get by on less than 150k.

> Not in sf or nyc.

It's still trivially true that most people in SF and NYC, including married adults with families, get by on way less than $150k. Even Upper-East-Side Manhattan, one of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., has average incomes "only" in the high 5 figures. Maybe there is a small section of Nob Hill where $150k incomes are normal, but even in most nice parts of SF that's not a typical family's income.

Part of the reason is that in areas where housing is the major cost, the 40x-your-housing-cost rule of thumb is too conservative, and would lead to a conclusion that almost nobody can actually live in the city, whereas clearly many people do. And anyway I believe the usual mortgage-company rules of thumb are 30% of your gross income on the mortgage payment itself, but up to 40% on mortgage+insurance+etc. So that'd lead to $120k in your hypothetical.

NYC is a bad example, the real estate costs really sky rocketed over the past 25 years or so...so it's very possible that someone could have gotten one of those buildings on a $40K/yr teacher's salary.

Good luck doing that in this day and age

As a matter of fact I dated such a person (UES of NYC). Her salary was, IIRC, actually about $80's. She was divorced with one child. They had a 1 bedroom and shared the same bed. And she wouldn't have been able to afford that without family help.

"Even Upper-East-Side Manhattan, one of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., has average incomes "only" in the high 5 figures."

I'm not sure that you can look at simply average income without knowing whether the people are single, cohabitating and if they have children and how many. Also average income I would imagine doesn't take into account healthcare costs which can run thousands. One person may be covered, another not covered, another on medicare etc. Some may have child support to pay.

Saying that someone can get by on "less than 150k" is like saying that someone can build an ecommerce website for $X.

Even Upper-East-Side Manhattan, one of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., has average incomes "only" in the high 5 figures.

East of Lexington, the UES is upper-middle-income yuppies. Apartments are affordable but very small: like 400 SF for $2,000 per month. Not an option if you have kids.

Also, if UES is defined from 59th to 110th street, that includes areas in the north that are low-income and more like Harlem than UES. The change is quite stark.

It is possible to live with a baby in 1br apartment, a lot of people do it in Manhattan. The real problems start later, with preschools, kindergartens etc.

That preschool shit does sound terrifying.

My question is: why? Are NYC public schools really that bad? (I have no idea, but I thought there were some good districts.) Or is the insanity just a product of it being hard to get them into top colleges coming from New York and not being prep? Because there's a solution, which is to have them move to Montana during their senior year.

There are no public preschools in New York for middle class. The private ones are very expensive and competitive to get into.

AFAIK, there are good public elementary schools. Middle and high schools are much worse if you don't get into a Gifted & Talented program.

Then I guess you'll just need to live outside the city and commute like millions of people do every day.

So you want the CEO of a company to commute rather than focused on adding value for shareholders?

What world do you come from where CEOs are these brittle, frail creatures who must be pampered and kept in protective isolation so that their companies don't collapse? You've made several comments throughout these comments referring to such a CEO. I wouldn't want to work for a guy who's this much of a prima donna. The person you're describing sounds like a wimp, to be perfectly honest with you.

Yeah, reading my comments does paint a picture, but it was unintended.

The main point I want to make is that keeping a CEO from making $150k, or $120k because they should be suffering for some unknown reason is being Penny wise, and Pound foolish.

I'm not advocating $200k or $300k in salary or more, I'm just saying that he should make enough where his personal income isn't the thing on his/her mind. Ideally the whole team should be making good enough money where they are not worried about these things. I also wouldn't advocate a system where the CEO was making twice what a CFO or CTO makes or some other crazy hierarchical system.

The world assumes there is a strong correlation with people's hunger and their success. In my experience I routinely see the opposite and I believe giving people more helps them perform better. Ultimately if someone is making an investment in a company they want that company to succeed and they should want that CEO to be focused on growing the business.

--This entire view point for me has changed over the past 5 years and maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see a good argument for paying a CEO $50,000 a year other than that someone thinks that is a lot of money for some reason.--

Only about 10% of the households in San Francisco have household income over $150k

If you are right, then 90% of the households in San Francisco are living in below low end housing. I have a hard time believing that.

Since when is a doorman a necessity?

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