Why Working in an Expensive Tech Hub City Matters for an Explosive Career
It gives you more opportunities
I was talking to my friend the other day about his journey in technology. He was a Staff Engineer at a FAANG and has countless years of experience. However, he started in humble beginnings — in the Midwest.
He told me that the best decision in his tech career was to take a job in Silicon Valley and continue trying different things. He said that it was really hard at first because the cost of living in the Bay Area is drastically higher than in the Midwest, and a six-figure salary in the Bay Area seems like a 50K salary in the Midwest.
However, without moving to the Bay Area, he wouldn’t have been able to advance his career to Staff Engineer at a FAANG, and he wouldn’t even have had the chance of having some successful exits create a huge amount of wealth for him.
You always hear people griping about how costly it is to live in expensive cities and often discourage other engineers from moving to expensive tech hubs. They will starve their wallet and lifestyle by eating ramen noodles and beans. They also say that buying houses in expensive cities is absurd and houses are always in a bubble.
But expensive cities are expensive for a reason.
