Average Silicon Valley Tech Salary Passes $100,000

Average annual salaries for Silicon Valley technology workers surpassed the $100,000 mark last year, according to a new survey, pushed higher by the strength of the region’s latest boom.

Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc. said salaries for software and other engineering professionals in California’s Silicon Valley rose 5.2% to an average $104,195 last year, outstripping the average 2% increase, to $81,327, in tech-workers’ salaries nationwide. It was the first time since Dice began the salary survey in 2001 that the wage barometer broke the $100,000 barrier, said Tom Silver, a Dice senior vice president.

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Silicon Valley’s job-market strength has also had a halo effect on bonuses. Silicon Valley tech-worker bonuses jumped 13% last year to an average $12,450, versus an 8% increase to $8,769 nationwide, according to Dice. Meanwhile, hourly contractor rates in Silicon Valley rose 11% last year to an average $74 an hour, compared with $63 an hour nationally, said Dice.

Between this, and the impending Facebook IPO, I think I’m being conservative when I forecast that house prices in the Real Bay Area will go up 49.5% by the end of the year.

This is going to be intense!

And that’s for people who are here already! It’s simply amazing how much money is pouring into the Bay Area. I hear that many bags at SFO’s international baggage claim are overweight because they are stuffed with bales of RMB!

How much has your salary gone up this year so far? Are you getting weekly raises? Or just monthly ones?

Salary check!

Survey: Bay Area workers highest paid in 2009
Data shows workers in nine-county Bay Area earned 20 percent more than national average

Workers in the Bay Area were the highest paid on average in the nation last year, according to data released Friday, July 23, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The data showed workers in the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland metropolitan area earned 20 percent more than the national average in 2009, the agency said.

The survey included the nine-county Bay Area, plus Santa Cruz and San Benito counties, in that category, according to bureau economist Todd Johnson. The data showed above-average wages in all of the employment categories surveyed, but particularly among construction jobs, service jobs, sales, office and administrative jobs, and professionals.

Workers in the Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas, metropolitan area on the U.S.-Mexico border were paid the least, earning 79 cents for every dollar earned by workers nationwide, the agency said. Bay Area workers also were the highest paid in 2008, earning 17 percent more than the national average, according to Johnson.

— Bay City News Service

No wonder everyone’s still dying to move here! And that can mean only one thing: $800 per square foot is here to stay!

Recently someone found this site by searching for “best car to afford with 100k salary.”  Too bad the reader doesn’t live anywhere Special, because in the Real Bay Area (RBA) everyone has a 100k salary.  Heck, my hairdresser’s housekeeper’s dog walker makes 100k.

So, think back to when you only made a hundred thou a year and tell us what the best car for you would have been.  I’m assuming if you’re a fairly recent homebuyer, the car would be a 1988 Honda Civic. For a renter, maybe an Audi R8 is almost good enough to make up for your meaningless transient life as you pile up wads of cash rather than fork it over to a friendly mortgage company.

Today we’re having a two-for-one special.  Another reader found burbed by searching for “$150k income $600k mortgage.”  Are banks letting people borrow only four times their income?  That could lead to the collapse of our whole RBA way of life!

Recently someone found this site by searching for: twenty to thirty year olds making a good salary 

That, my friends, is the definition of the Bay Area. I can’t think of anyone twenty or thirty year old who isn’t making at least $85k. And, that’s a good salary. Sure it almost qualifies you for government assisted housing in Mountain View, but it’s good. Unfortunately, this can happen in other areas as well.

The key is the stock! Cha-CHING! So… the right search should have been “twenty to thirty year olds making millions through stock” – and then the Bay Area would be the definitive winner!

It’s search engine Thursday.

Recently someone visited this site by searching for “stanford starting salary computer science”

Actually there was a thread on this not too long ago: Mountain View Voice : Report: Silicon Valley jobs decline while pay increases

I’m not sure there’s consensus on what the exact number is, but from looking through the thread, it ranges somewhere from $30k to $1 million a year.

For the sake of the Real Bay Area, let’s hope it’s closer to $1 million a year!

It’s Labor Day! That means you should be laboring to ensure your company remains innovative and profitable (as measured by page views, eye balls, friends collected, downloads, etc).

To help celebrate, let’s look at some cost of living comparisons! You know… to see what you’re laboring for.

But first, we need to agree on what salary to choose for comparison. I’m going to pick $100,000 for an easy number to compare (though we know that most make generously more than that!)

Here we go!

Unfortunately, CNN’s calculator doesn’t have Real Bay Area as a destination (yet), so first we’ll have to decide between SF vs SJ:

Alright… we’re going to with SF as the comparison.

So let’s look locally first – what about other parts of this great state – California. Let’s look to Los Angeles:

Wow… it’s kind of a shocker that groceries are so much cheaper in SoCal! What’s up with that? They’re probably eating all junk food, not “Alice Waters approved only” food that everyone here in the Real Bay Area eats. (BTW, San Diego was even cheaper, so I decided to leave it out.)

Ok, let’s look at our arch nemesis – New York City! But wait, there’s a few possibilities, so we’ll look at all of them, including its Cupertino-wannabe-suburbs:

Alright! A pretty good showing! We haven’t quite licked Manhattan yet, but we’re making progress. And we’re definitely more important now that Wall Street is over and green tech is the new wave of the everyday-millionaire in the future. It’s great to see that we’ve beaten nearly all the places where people who work in Manhattan live (Queens is a draw – and look who lives there… just look at their King!). How can Goldman Sachs employees living in Nassau County possibly compete with the fine fine people that we have in San Jose? If we looked at the San Francisco, this would be a total home run except for Manhattan. Great work everyone!

Ok, now let’s look at some fake Silicon Valley contenders:

Now, you might be tempted to move to one of these pretenders, lured by their incredibly cheap cost of living.

Don’t fall for it!

Did you know that in most of these cities, brilliant engineers, the true saviors of the world, are paid only minimum wage? And that no only do they not get Aeron chairs, Dual Quad Proc machines with 30″ LCDs, but instead they have to use folding chairs and Commodore 64′s with tape drive and acoustic coupler modems. Seriously. As for sushi? Let’s just say you’d better get used to eating Chicken of the Sea. Santana Row? Fry’s? Nope. Better get used to doing all your shopping at Walmart Outlet, and Radio Shack Factory Store. Don’t even get me started on the weather – people die there because of the weather. Have you ever heard of people dying here in the Real Bay Area due to natural events (excluding earthquakes which never happen)? Why else do you think it is so cheap in these places? There’s no such thing as a free lunch!

I hope you enjoyed and appreciated this thorough analysis of what it is like to live in other places. Enjoy your labor day!

Report: Midwage jobs vanish in Silicon Valley
For the first time, this report documents an alarming fact: The middle fell out of the region’s payroll between 2002 and 2006.

Federal and state jobs data show that 62,050 midwage jobs – defined as having salaries between $30,000 and $80,000 – vanished during that four-year period, according to the report.

During the same four years, employers added 66,200 jobs that paid less than $30,000. And despite bullish times for the likes of Google and Apple, Silicon Valley employers added just 16,790 jobs during that period that paid more than $80,000.

“We have indeed documented a squeeze on the middle. Now we have to figure out what it means and what to do about it,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, the public-private partnership group that has been issuing such reports since 1995.

I’m sure some losers will bemoan this situation. Boo hoo – middle class jobs are disappearing.

But actually, this is a good thing – for homeowners. As more middle class jobs disappear, that means the population mix will include more people earning good $100k salaries – and that means they can afford to pay more for houses.

Or more simply: less middle class jobs = more rich people = increased housing prices. Can you say: Manhattan?

And, this works on the bottom end too: less middle class jobs = more low wage people = more renters = more rental income for homeowners.

Either way, this is great news and it’s a great time to buy a home in Silicon Valley.

If we all work together, we can make 2009 the year we beat Manhattan in housing prices. Let’s pull together and make it happen!

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich – New York Times
“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here.

Not every Silicon Valley millionaire, of course, shares that perspective.

Celeste Baranski, a 49-year-old engineer with a net worth of around $5 million who lives with her husband in Menlo Park, no longer frets about tucking enough money away for college for their two children. Long ago she stopped bothering to balance her checkbook. When too many 18-hour days running an engineering department of 1,200 left her feeling burned out and empty, she left and gave herself 12 months off.

Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.

“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades.

[snip]

“I don’t know how people live here on just a normal salary,” said Ms. Baranski.

Ok, time for a poll. To all readers (yes YOU): How many millions do you have (excluding house value)?

Are you a nobody? Do you feel secure?

Post your reply in the comments!