"I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area"

[NorCal]

He figured out the hard way what us locals figured out a while back.  If you want to have a family in the Bay Area these days, you either need to have dual high-incomes, inherited real estate, or a 2 hour commute.  Those are your choices.  This applies to mustachians and non-mustachians.  If you area mustachian, the math just doesn't work without the second income.  If you're not, you have higher minimum standards for housing, lifestyle, or whatever that a single income here won't provide.

That being said, there are some amazing opportunities for generating savings and income growth here if you have the second income and you stick it out long enough to get promoted.  Also important is keeping housing modest. 

[AlanStache]

I went to university in the Bay Area and mostly grew up not to far away.  I would love to live there again but the COL is a big barrier even when you work in tech.

I was talking with a friend form college who works in Bay area government and he says that all the local towns know there is a housing problem but none of them want to zone higher density housing as then they have to build schools/parks/etc much easier to have FB offices and collect taxes from that than to deal with citizens. 

A friend from high school is a skilled contractor in SF, he drives 70+ miles each way.  His rent is still probably more than my mortgage.

A different guy I know looked into buying a house really far away then getting a privet plane and FLYING himself to work each day.  The math said the monthly costs would be about even vs buying locally but money spent on av-gas is gone where equity has a good shot of being recovered upon sale. 

[ender]

He figured out the hard way what us locals figured out a while back.  If you want to have a family in the Bay Area these days, you either need to have dual high-incomes, inherited real estate, or a 2 hour commute.  Those are your choices.  This applies to mustachians and non-mustachians.  If you area mustachian, the math just doesn't work without the second income.  If you're not, you have higher minimum standards for housing, lifestyle, or whatever that a single income here won't provide.

That being said, there are some amazing opportunities for generating savings and income growth here if you have the second income and you stick it out long enough to get promoted.  Also important is keeping housing modest.

Yeah.... our house would cost us probably 10x in the SF area what it does in the midwest :-)

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Now here's a question... what about the cleaners of the Facebook offices? How much do they get paid and how do they afford to live in Silicon Valley?

That's a question you're not allowed to ask, because the answers - we don't pay the cleaners enough and/or we spend too much - are uncomfortable for the people who should be asking them.

To answer your question, the cleaners of the Facebook offices probably aren't Facebook employees, but contractors of some third party company. And they likely live further away and commute, or live in a lower cost, less desirable neighborhood in the area that the person writing this article probably thought below him.

This article might be worth reading

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/30/what-we-know-about-the-people-who-clean-the-floors-in-silicon-valley/

Not worth reading even a little bit.  The bias is so evident it practically reads like one of the political ads you see this season.

There's definitely a race-baiting angle to it, but that's not what sent my bullshit-o-meter off the rails.

What pissed me off about the article is that it's yet one more academic circle-jerk in which a bunch of White Collared Professionals get together and discuss the problem of The Poors, without actually bothering to talk to anyone from the class whose problems they say they're trying to solve. It's the sort of thing that gives academics and journalists a bad name, even though the person who wrote this article, and the people who were interviewed, probably believe they're doing something that helps to solve the problem.

This journalist appears to have read an article, and then interviewed two academics, an administrator for a lobbying charity, a union leader, and a member of upper management at a headhunting firm. But the article is about janitors and bus drivers. She didn't bother to track down even one and ask for his or her take on the issue. Instead she bitched about how the Chamber of Commerce wasn't available for comment. I get that she writes for a newspaper out of Washington, DC, but the way she went about researching this article made her come across as though she couldn't get her head any further up her ass if she used a crowbar.

Were there truly no janitors available to interview? Or were they busy WORKING unlike all the other stuffed shirts who had time to be quoted?

What I'd have really liked would have been if she'd used social media or an online classified ad to talk to some of those hardcore badasses who can survive and raise a family in a HCOL area while pushing a broom. I bet they're frugal as fuck and we could all learn from someone who really walks the walk.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

I live in the bay area... which parts of it are filthy? Must be the parts I don't go to. East san jose, palo alto, oakland area... okay, admittedly, SF is filthy as fuck, but that's SF, where they're cool with hobos shitting in the street.

I was in Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, and Pleasanton. The farther east I went, the fewer homeless people there were and the better the private homes were kept, but the more trash was in the street and the fewer public transit options existed. For me, the biggest gross-outs happened to be in Oakland where I made the mistake of going into a restaurant to get food, and of trying to pump gas at a gas station.

Pleasanton had more trash than Oakland???

In parking lots, yes. The residential areas were pretty much OK, possibly because there's still residential trash pickup. But anywhere there was a business with a trash can and a parking lot, the contents of the trash can were in the parking lot.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

Right, I was expecting to actually learn the name of one of these workers and what their monthly expenses look like, not just how much they need to be unionized.

[gimp]

Right, I was expecting to actually learn the name of one of these workers and what their monthly expenses look like, not just how much they need to be unionized.

Problem is, a name in the paper will likely get the guy fired...

[Us2bCool]

I live in the bay area... which parts of it are filthy? Must be the parts I don't go to. East san jose, palo alto, oakland area... okay, admittedly, SF is filthy as fuck, but that's SF, where they're cool with hobos shitting in the street.

I was in Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, and Pleasanton. The farther east I went, the fewer homeless people there were and the better the private homes were kept, but the more trash was in the street and the fewer public transit options existed. For me, the biggest gross-outs happened to be in Oakland where I made the mistake of going into a restaurant to get food, and of trying to pump gas at a gas station.

Pleasanton had more trash than Oakland???

In parking lots, yes. The residential areas were pretty much OK, possibly because there's still residential trash pickup. But anywhere there was a business with a trash can and a parking lot, the contents of the trash can were in the parking lot.

I live in Pleasanton, and I'm pretty sure trash is illegal here.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

Right, I was expecting to actually learn the name of one of these workers and what their monthly expenses look like, not just how much they need to be unionized.

Problem is, a name in the paper will likely get the guy fired...

Fine, a fake name.

[dragoncar]

Here's a decent article about the mega commuters.  Janitor probably takes a long bus or train ride to get into the Bay Area and then maybe Bart or carpool

http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/30/bay-area-commuting-nightmares-jobs-in-city-affordable-homes-in-exurbia/

[ender]

Here's a decent article about the mega commuters.  Janitor probably takes a long bus or train ride to get into the Bay Area and then maybe Bart or carpool

http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/30/bay-area-commuting-nightmares-jobs-in-city-affordable-homes-in-exurbia/

Solution: move. MOVE MOVE MOVE ahhhh how insane are people!

There are many jobs outside the SF area.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

I live in the bay area... which parts of it are filthy? Must be the parts I don't go to. East san jose, palo alto, oakland area... okay, admittedly, SF is filthy as fuck, but that's SF, where they're cool with hobos shitting in the street.

I was in Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, and Pleasanton. The farther east I went, the fewer homeless people there were and the better the private homes were kept, but the more trash was in the street and the fewer public transit options existed. For me, the biggest gross-outs happened to be in Oakland where I made the mistake of going into a restaurant to get food, and of trying to pump gas at a gas station.

Pleasanton had more trash than Oakland???

In parking lots, yes. The residential areas were pretty much OK, possibly because there's still residential trash pickup. But anywhere there was a business with a trash can and a parking lot, the contents of the trash can were in the parking lot.

I live in Pleasanton, and I'm pretty sure trash is illegal here.

There was a lot of litter along the highway. Maybe a spill of some kind? It also seemed to me that trash was piling up at gas stations and elsewhere.

That being said, I was only passing through and acknowledge that it could have been an anomaly. One day is a pretty small sample.

[dragoncar]

Here's a decent article about the mega commuters.  Janitor probably takes a long bus or train ride to get into the Bay Area and then maybe Bart or carpool

http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/30/bay-area-commuting-nightmares-jobs-in-city-affordable-homes-in-exurbia/

Solution: move. MOVE MOVE MOVE ahhhh how insane are people!

There are many jobs outside the SF area.

They did move.  The problem was they kept their old job.

[NorCal]

He figured out the hard way what us locals figured out a while back.  If you want to have a family in the Bay Area these days, you either need to have dual high-incomes, inherited real estate, or a 2 hour commute.  Those are your choices.  This applies to mustachians and non-mustachians.  If you area mustachian, the math just doesn't work without the second income.  If you're not, you have higher minimum standards for housing, lifestyle, or whatever that a single income here won't provide.

That being said, there are some amazing opportunities for generating savings and income growth here if you have the second income and you stick it out long enough to get promoted.  Also important is keeping housing modest.

Yeah.... our house would cost us probably 10x in the SF area what it does in the midwest :-)

That's probably pretty close to right.  Houses are around $1,100/sqft in my neck of the woods.  That's why I rent for "only" $3,200/mo.

On the bright side, the downpayment we initially saved for a house around here will allow us to buy a home outright in a LCOL area.

The Bay Area can be an excellent place to build savings, but only as long as you're willing to work your ass off in a high income job while living in what would be considered substandard housing in the rest of the country.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

Here's a decent article about the mega commuters.  Janitor probably takes a long bus or train ride to get into the Bay Area and then maybe Bart or carpool

http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/30/bay-area-commuting-nightmares-jobs-in-city-affordable-homes-in-exurbia/

That article is about white-collar workers, mostly, though, who take on clown commutes to afford fancy houses. Still unclear to me where the janitors live, unless the answer is just "the ghetto".

[OurTown]

If you move to Mobile, you can afford the bay area.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Here's a decent article about the mega commuters.  Janitor probably takes a long bus or train ride to get into the Bay Area and then maybe Bart or carpool

http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/30/bay-area-commuting-nightmares-jobs-in-city-affordable-homes-in-exurbia/

That article is about white-collar workers, mostly, though, who take on clown commutes to afford fancy houses. Still unclear to me where the janitors live, unless the answer is just "the ghetto".

I did see some trailer parks here and there tucked in between the light industrial sections of the city and the low-end retail. They appeared to be well cared for and maintained but the buildings showed signs of wear.

[dragoncar]

Here's a decent article about the mega commuters.  Janitor probably takes a long bus or train ride to get into the Bay Area and then maybe Bart or carpool

http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/30/bay-area-commuting-nightmares-jobs-in-city-affordable-homes-in-exurbia/

That article is about white-collar workers, mostly, though, who take on clown commutes to afford fancy houses. Still unclear to me where the janitors live, unless the answer is just "the ghetto".

Well yeah. They live in Tracy too just the crappier houses. 

[infogoon]

If you move to Mobile, you can afford the bay area.

Or Newark.

[tonysemail]

That article is about white-collar workers, mostly, though, who take on clown commutes to afford fancy houses. Still unclear to me where the janitors live, unless the answer is just "the ghetto".

I did see some trailer parks here and there tucked in between the light industrial sections of the city and the low-end retail. They appeared to be well cared for and maintained but the buildings showed signs of wear.

yes, i think that's a big part of the answer. 
there are fourplexes sprinkled throughout the bay area which are generally run down.
it's fair to say that very few middle class families choose to rent them.
but the price range is $2-3k/month and compares very favorably to buying a home with a mega commute.
the minimum wage is also getting hiked by various cities which helps with affordability.

[CanuckExpat]

That article is about white-collar workers, mostly, though, who take on clown commutes to afford fancy houses. Still unclear to me where the janitors live, unless the answer is just "the ghetto".

I did see some trailer parks here and there tucked in between the light industrial sections of the city and the low-end retail. They appeared to be well cared for and maintained but the buildings showed signs of wear.

yes, i think that's a big part of the answer. 
there are fourplexes sprinkled throughout the bay area which are generally run down.
it's fair to say that very few middle class families choose to rent them.
but the price range is $2-3k/month and compares very favorably to buying a home with a mega commute.
the minimum wage is also getting hiked by various cities which helps with affordability.

I live in one of the more "affordable" neighborhoods in San Jose. My neighbors included a retired cleaning person and someone who drives a school bus though as rents and other costs slowly go up, they think about moving. My neighbors are quite nice, I probably enjoy living next to them more than people who would choose to live in McMansions :)

Essentially what was said above was right. There are pockets of "affordability" scattered throughout, but usually overlooked by more affluent people. It seems pretty tightly correlated to school district as well.

Sometimes people call it a sketchy area, but the "sketchy" areas of San Jose are less scary then the good parts of a lot of cities (I've lived in Baltimore). You know what they say:

"Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft."