Quote:
Originally Posted by emathias
You want that explained?
Chicago simply won't pay for talent. Period. It may cost more to live on the coasts, but companies actually give meaningful stock grants there. Very few do here. And salary is lower, to add insult to injury.
If Chicago wants to keep tech talent, it needs to pay for it. It's really that simple. But corporate culture here won't allow for it.
Citadel pays Coastal salaries, as does the local Google office. Maybe there are others, but I can't name any.
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Yes, I think this is part of it. The salaries in Chicago on their own are still good at a little bit over $100K average (according to CBRE) but also lagging behind many other places. By lagging though, I mean within $10K per year of most other places outside of the Bay Area and NYC (which are more like $130K for NYC average and $140K for Bay Area average). It definitely costs more to live in these areas and while there's many startups in these places, there's tons of corporations where you aren't getting any equity outside of your ESPP either. However, I think that equity equation is an important one for why people get attracted to the coasts, so I agree on that. While you can do really well in Chicago startup wise, it's easier in the Bay Area as well as NYC now.
I think the salary thing is a bit nuanced. On average those places pay more, but I think it depends on where you're at in your career. If you had 10+ years experience, were considered senior or higher, and knew what you were talking about and could bring results, then there's many places in Chicago (but also elsewhere..I had a few coworkers in Dallas at my last company that I knew of making equivalent money to what many people in NYC were making. I knew people in Chicago like this too in the same division) who will be willing to pay you coastal prices. If you aren't as experienced, then of course due to COL, the coasts will pay you more. The companies that will pay coastal or better prices are ones like Citadel who you mentioned, but also a lot of the HFT or trading firms like DRW, Jump, Tower, etc. If you are good, including bonuses, then you'll make way more at those than you ever would at any Google office located anywhere in the world as a non executive. My friend used to work for a smaller HFT in Chicago and pretty much everybody who worked there went to either Harvard, MIT, Stanford, or Michigan. They almost exclusively recruited people who went to schools like that. If there is one thing in Chicago that it's good with paying just as much if not more than the coasts then it's this. With that being said though...not the easiest places to score a job as a programmer.
On another note, it's kind of funny because I have been interviewing people this year to help build a team in the Bay Area and for some reason, the candidates' expected salaries are put on their resume by the time it hits us (seriously no idea why it's even on there). I was surprised at how many people in the Bay Area for this were basically asking for salaries you could get in Chicago as a senior software engineer. Pretty crazy. And many of these people had been working as senior software engineers at some more traditional well paying tech companies in the Bay Area that people would kill to work for. Same deal in NYC actually, except for a few people who actually probably looked up what the average salary in 2018 is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tjp
All true and definitely worth considering, but also applicable to other cities. I don't think those factors can explain Chicago's underperformance in tech rankings.
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Which is why I mentioned 5 other cities/metro areas in my post you responded to with the same deal as Chicago (many consultants). Not all cities have this though. Los Angeles for example does not have the same level of consultancy that Chicago, Dallas, DC, Atlanta, etc typically has.
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