Pretty normal dude, in the same boat 8 weeks in. It slowly gets better

If I'm making San Francisco dev money, is it pretty likely that I'm taking a pay cut to move elsewhere? I kinda feel like I've hacked the system a little since I've had rent control on my place for 7 years, so while the cost of living (and competitive salaries along with it) have skyrocketed in the area, my own CoL really hasn't gone up much in that time.

I'm going on a trip to Europe soon and was idly thinking about contacting a couple companies while there for ****s and giggles to see if living abroad for a little might be feasible (e.g. a video game company I like, Paradox Interactive, is in Stockholm and obviously Spotify is there too) - but I'm also a little worried that they'd be like "uh yeah we aren't like you crazy Americans in Silicon Valley, maybe we'll pay you 2/3 as much" or something.

Rent control for 7 years? I'm afraid to ask how much you pay rent. It's probably dirt cheap.

I think the biggest mistake with my housing is that it's built in 2002 so there is no rent control. But we are planning to move anyways after a year.

Even if they pay you 2/3rd, that's going to be a lot of money. You might get something like 50k euros and that would be top of the line. I think the best thing to do is go work for Google and then transfer to a European office.

My rent isn't too obscenely cheap, it's like 1700 for a 1 bedroom w/ parking in a fairly nice neighborhood, probably like ~40% under market. idk if it's that devastating to move into a place w/ no rent control now since I think (and this random link I googled supports) that rent prices have flattened out recently.

There's an older guy in my building who's been here for decades that I think is still paying 3 digit rent, lol.

I can't imagine what 1700 would get apt wise in Portland, although with parking it's probably closer to 1500 which isn't in my range.

Goofy should really be paying 3k at minimal. 1700 is just insane cheap ( by sf standards of course). I'm in a 2 bed bath 2 bed for 3800 in a crap neighborhood.

Jesus. I live in the suburbs of austin. We have a 2800 sq ft house, our mortgage is less than 1700. I wonder how our salaries compare.

Austin is getting outrageous.

Even the 0 BR apartments in the projects around Oltorf & Pleasant Valley are going for over $1100 / mth these days. An old coworker was thrilled because she and her husband found a 1br in Sunset Valley for $1400. Yeah...

Well, yes and no. Really close to downtown is pretty expensive. But just a few miles out, not so much. I can drive to downtown in 20 minutes. I have no desire to live there.

But yeah, I have a friend who lives in the shoal creek area, his house costs 3x what mine does.

Google maps shows Sunset Valley about 15 minutes away from downtown. Even Bluff Springs is getting in the $2k to $3k range, which is just wtf, no.

I know that down further, around Slaughter, is a bit cheaper. I do hear that North Austin is a bit lower in price, but wouldn't be sure.

When I left LA, you could still get a 1br in Korea Town for under $1k. The difference is basically the rental deposits. The move-in costs is always 3x the rent there, so win some, lose some, depending on many factors.

I'm guessing home ownership is still reasonable in Austin, but apartment hunting is a total nightmare.

Saw on Hacker Newsletter today that MS announced the Surface Laptop, and I read that it ships with Windows 10 S, which is...a version of Windows 10 that only runs apps from Microsoft's Windows Store?????

Jesus, what a trainwreck. Who would want to get a Windows system and be restricted like that??

I know nothing about Windows these days, but is that equivalent to what Apple does?

You can easily (and for the rest of this year, for free) upgrade to normal windows 10.

This is for people who want the equivalent of like a chromebook for their mom. I got one of those for my MIL a few years ago and it's been great. Before that she was regularly screwing up her computers.

I can download .dmg files from random websites or whatever and run them on my Mac at work, so I think that's a no? (I don't know a ton about this stuff either, and I also am not 100% sure I'm being fair to MS, but if you look at their own comparison it seems not good...)

10S is also meant for locked down environments like schools, etc.

Okay, that's good.

Looking at the price range ($1000-$2200), seems like it's designed more to compete with Macbooks ($1300-$2400) than a Chromebook ($200?), which is why I'd expect it to try harder to appeal to the developer crowd.

Chromebook Pixel was over $1000+ when it came out and there's Surface Book for developers. This is purely for use cases where manageability triumphs flexibility and it's one flagship model - as with chromebooks, there will be cheaper ones with Windows 10S from other vendors.

$1500+ for a decent 1 bdrm + parking is what you're looking at in downtown Portland, but you can get quite a bit cheaper only a few miles away.

The problem with Portland for developers is that compared to Seattle, salaries are lower and taxes are almost 10% on income. I really did like the city though. It was great for poker too, but Oregon recently passed some more rules about that so it could be getting worse.

No sales tax, though! (which I know is a much smaller effect)

What about living in Vancouver, WA?

Duh of the day but it is unbelievable how much better flexbox is than floats etc.

Found someone renting their basement out in the hills above the Rose Garden, 2 miles from downtown with a great deck for 1250, very happy with it.

I think those Surface laptops are for places where they don't want to installing any software on the machine other than the corporate image. Not a bad looking laptop, although I wonder how that flocking looks after a couple of months of usage.

Ah, sorry. I misread your post as a new tablet and not as a laptop.

Vancouver is a pretty good option. For it's size there are a decent number of tech jobs there. They probably pay about the same as Portland, no income tax.

Portland and Seattle are similar cities, climate and culture. If you like the NW but don't want to live in a city as large as Seattle, Vancouver, WA could be a good fit.

Linus Torvalds actually lives in the Portland area.

Learning is going so well. I can't believe I didn't get into this stuff sooner.

Handlebars.js is my favorite tool so far. It makes parsing JSON into the dom so much fun.