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How much pay drop you got when moving out of Silicon Valley? As an engineer or scientist. I am not talking about low end jobs like car salesman. Engineer, scientist, finance manager, biologist, surgeon...
There is a drop expected, but some employers in Florida expect to pay 60% less than I'm making now. My friend is going to Austin TX and expecting 25% drop, he just had the interview. One guy interviewing on the east coast was told to accept a 70% drop, he didn't take the job.
The thing with the lowball, is when a company wants to import a known expert and pay him as much as they pay their fresh grad from the local community college. Like expertise is for free. Even the few local experts at those companies are paid more, but they think when an expert is relocating then it is on the expert to give everything up, and no constraints on the company. Basically saying start your career from scratch again. They want to boost their company by few million dollars extra sales due to better products and services, but they don't want to pay any cost of it. Hopefully this does not explain every company.
I am especially asking people who has done this move already, no speculations from other people about how they also want to discount highly skilled people. Please indicate which state you moved to, and how much % the salary drop was.
It was years ago, but about 50% when I moved to Colorado Springs. But that was at a time when you could afford to make that move to the Springs and still come out ahead. Now days there have been so many that moved from California, they've driven Colorado prices up too high.
Who cares if your pay drops. Your cost of living drops BIG TIME. Since Silicon Valley COL is 3x the rest of America, even if you take a 50% pay cut you're way ahead.
How much pay drop (can be expected) when moving out of...
How much of a drop can your ego tolerate? How much is actually affordable?
Start with some objective COL comparisons like the one that BANKRATE offers:
A $150,000 life in SV (San Fran etc) will cost ~$79,000 in the Atlanta area
Even less in Tampa at ~$77,000. Here in the Piedmont ~$80,000.
The DC metro comes in at ~$125,000; the Boston metro at ~$122,000
Manhattan about pegs the meter at ~$195,000.
Of course the single largest variable between locations are the real estate related costs.
The subtext being that the high salary is less about skill level than recognition of that higher home cost.
I have an example but not what you may want or are looking for. I know somebody that left silicon valley to take a position overseas with a company that also operates in California too of course. They felt the 50%+ pay cut was still really good to live and work near the overseas plant and operations since one can live really well on those amounts in other countries.
A few co workers at one job had moved to near Phoenix, AZ for something like a 60% pay of CA, but that was many years ago and just what I remember them saying roughly speaking.
Florida is real low, most companies have pulled out for many reasons. FL was going to be another great engineering area and I had a company there doing engineering services for 20 years, but so many companies moved out. Not the best destination for anything science or engineering. Tourism or travel industry sure, engineering no. The engineering companies all closed there, and I closed my business and retired basically because of that.
No need for a pay drop if you're in the $100k-$150k range. Plenty of IT roles. If you're above that, you'll have to target higher level roles to get comparable salary.
If it's within the same company usually they have COL pay grades. For me between the southeast and northeast or west coast the difference wasn't much - maybe 10% or 15%.
They offered me a job near Boston or Seattle for 15% more I think it was, maybe less. My 2,000 square foot house here cost $150,000. In Boston or Seattle that would be close to a million. Yeah, no I won't move. I have a highly compensated job in one of the lowest COL areas of the country and live like a king (I work remotely).
You almost always come out ahead when going to a low COL part of the country.
You almost always come out ahead when going to a low COL part of the country.
That's the thing, I think some companies want to get all of the COL gain for themselves. The other thing is offering basically mid range title for a very senior candidate to further drop the price, but of course the work expected would be the most senior level within their team.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TestEngr
Florida is real low, most companies have pulled out for many reasons. FL was going to be another great engineering area and I had a company there doing engineering services for 20 years, but so many companies moved out. Not the best destination for anything science or engineering. Tourism or travel industry sure, engineering no. The engineering companies all closed there, and I closed my business and retired basically because of that.
If you have time, could you tell more about this story? What exactly happened?
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