I promise that my reply below is not intended to be abrasive, but bear with me here because your question is both a reasonable one to ask and a sobering one to answer.
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200+ utils e.g. water, power, cell, potentially separate internet, all required to live and work considering you'll probably work remote outside office hours as well while you're vesting that sweet, sweet equity.
300+ commuting (yes that's within the city of SF)
- OR AT LEAST double that for even the most basic car/gas/insurance/parking (consider parking at both home and work can cost 200-400 monthly for each)
300+ food (outside FANG you'd be surprised how uncommon free-food-culture actually is)
820+/mo student loans going by the 10% rule on debt payoff, which also assumes a sadly-reasonable debt of 75,000 on a 10 year note by graduation.
We're now at a floor of 1620 dollars/mo gone to expenses which are effectively mandatory. And that's not including invisible costs of living like walmart-tier clothing on the clearance rack or the fact that I budgeted for a single human. Throw a dependent human in the mix and this becomes impossible, and seeking cheaper rents e.g. eastbay adds substantial hidden costs e.g. gas and tolls (6 dollars per day on tolls eastbay to the peninsula, easily 15 dollars extra per day on gas).
Start stressing your engineers out with cost decisions and see how productive they'll actually be. It's one thing to budget. It's another thing to force serious compromises. Not life-threatening, certainly, but as an engineer you'll definitely be doing that Uber hustle on the side if you make only 98k a year, which most assuredly means I'll be getting lower-quality work from them when they show up with <6hrs sleep.
If I'm forced to hire engineers at <100/y in SF, I'm quitting that job as a manager. The cost pressures on engineers hired at these rates will result in a drastic reduction in quality work product.
Just wanted to point out your numbers are pretty realistic except for $200 utilities. My power bill alone is usually over $300. Basic no channels cable + internet around $100. Water around $50. Cell cheapo plan around $50. So we are up to $500 for no frills utilities.
This is for a basic ranch starter home, though, not an apartment.
$2,000 a month livable? I have a small ~$230k mortgage and just the cost of owning the house (power, water, sewer, city taxes, insurance, mortgage payment) comes to over $2,000 a month.
We have a hard time making $4k a month cover expenses when you factor in a home repairs, car, gas, food, health care, internet, cell phone. Shit adds up so fast. Saving for retirement or a vacation is not easy.
Once again, I was replying to a post saying that $2000/month after rent and taxes is not livable. I don't live in SF so I am genuinely curious how two thousand US dollars is not enough after taxes and rent to live comfortably.
In SF you very likely don’t have a car and your health insurance premiums are covered by work. If you’re young you’re also not not a homeowner so you don’t have maintenance costs and taxes. Also many companies in the city pay for lunch, do you may not have food.
100k/2k a month after rent is certainly doable in SF. I know many people that make it work. Also if you’re making 100k you’re likely paying closer to 1500 a month and having roommates and sharing a bathroom.
It's not...he's being quite hyperbolic. I live in SF and my rent+utilities is under $2k/mo with the rest of my expenses coming in at well under $1k/mo. Commuting doesn't cost $300/mo if you take public transportation...it's only that much if you're taking Lyft/Uber. Similarly, he's pricing everything based on living alone which is completely unnecessary if you don't have a family. Living with roommates lowers the cost of everything by a lot, especially if you do communal meals/food.
I can sympathize with people who have families when they talk about how expensive SF is, but when single people do it, it's almost always possible to cut their spending in half and still live comfortably, they just don't want to give up the little luxuries they've accustomed themselves to.
It's certainly possible to live on less (I'm a decent negotiator/dealhunter, so I'm speaking from experience here), but most people don't have this skillset. I can't assume everyone has this capability.
> Living with roommates lowers the cost of everything by a lot, especially if you do communal meals/food.
Wholesale pricing is a good strategy, correct. This isn't viable for everybody, or even for most people. Not everybody can live this way for various reasons, and certainly many engineers that I've interacted with aren't able to or need the alone time to be productive.
I've seen a pretty wide spread of living situations. I wouldn't call anything I said hyperbolic.
