Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
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A year back, we moved from Santa Clara, CA to Bellevue, WA in the US. A year is enough time to get some perspective on how the places compare and what makes one better than the other.

The notes and areas of interest are from a point of view of an Indian immigrant working in the IT (Software) industry and with a family.

1. Housing. Advantage: Seattle

The Housing situation is slightly better in Seattle when compares to the bay area and the Seattle market is traiing the bay area market by a year or so, that meant 15% price increases in the last year while a almost flat market in the bay area. If considering single family house. one can buy a decent livable house in Greater Seattle area for U$500k (A new one in Snoqualmie or a older one needing renovation in some Bellevue zips: 98008)

Our preferred criteria is to avoid too much commute (<= 20 minutes each way) from current and future work (Bellevue, Redmond, Seattle, Kirkland) and good feature set in the house.

Seattle market: Areas worth considering to stay: Bellevue, parts of Redmond (much lesser commute). Areas within 30 minutes commute any time of the day are Snoqualmie, Kirkland, Woodinville and Redmond Ridge. The lowest house prices are around 500k (30+ year old small (1500 sq ft.) 3BR, 2BA rambler in good living places, average school district in Bellevue or a new larger house (2500 sq ft.) with good features(hardwood floor, island, etc) in Snoqualmie. Next level of houses are in the U$ 700k-850k range, these are newer (<10 years), good school district (Eastgate, etc), basically these are snoqualmie or better houses with lesser distance from work, shops, etc. Rents in Eastside for Houses is typically from 1400 to 1800, 1600 to 2000
Bay area market: Areas worth considering to stay and affordable: Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and parts of Mountain View. Areas within 30 minutes commute are San Jose (Evergreen, etc) and Fremont. The lowest house prices are around 800k (30+ year old (2000 sq ft.) 3BR, 2BA house in Evergreen.) Typically prices are U$ 900k-$1 million in and around Sunnyvale and highend comparable houses are in the US$ 1.3-1.5 million range (v/s 800k.) Rents for Houses is from 1800 to 2200, 2000 to 2400
Summary: Even with a house market slowdown, bay area requires both couples working and a singular focus on making more money. In the Greater Seattle area, buying one of the good houses creates the same requirement and the 30% or so lower salaries partially offset the 40% or so less higher end house prices. The key difference in Seattle: Lower cost homes are available(yes, 500k is lower these days) if you want take lower quality or larger commute and dream houses which would be US$2-3 million in Saratoga are available for US$1 million in Woodinville.

2. Tech Job openings and salaries. Advantage: Bay area

In Seattle, the total number of tech job openings are much less than bay area, I would expect them to be 1/3 or 1/4 of bay area.

Bay area has job openings for much wider area of expertise. Another key point, if you (as I have) worked in non-Microsoft technologies, these jobs are very few in the Seattle area. When I was looking last year, there were maybe 6 companies that were looking for Software developers for Unix\Linux\Kernel skillset. Skillsets Seattle are Windows (C#, dot-net), gaming and internet.
In Seattle, the typical software engineer salaries for mid level experience C++ engineer are in the 75-100k range. In Bay area, the typical software engineer salaries for mid level experience C++ engineer are in the 90-130k range. This is a large advantage even after the CA state income tax of around 9%.
Disclaimer: In both places, if you stay in one company for > 5 years and perform well, you can and will get into higher range and develop depth in the company\group’s area of expertise.

The other article in this series:

• Comparing living in Seattle (Eastside) or Silicon Valley (SF Bay Area): Part 2 (Weather)
• Comparing living in Seattle (Eastside) or Silicon Valley (SF Bay Area): Part 3 (Traffic and Miscellaneous)

Articles by others:

• Andrew Chen writes on the Entrepreneur culture in Silicon Valley as compared to Seattle: Meeting people in Silicon Valley
• Dustin on Rain City Guide: 10 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Seattle

Last Updated: Feb 15 2007

Chapter 29: Say No ‘or’(my alternative title) Say No to unrealistic schedules or deliverables

from My Job Went to India And All I Got Was This Lousy Book: 52 Ways to Save Your Job by Chad Fowler.

Excerpts from the chapter

• The quickest path to missing your commitments is to make commitments that you know you can’t meet. Saying “yes” is an addictive and destructive habit. There’s a big difference between a cando attitude and the misrepresentation of one’s capabilities.
• If I have a team member who has the strength to say “no” when that’s the truth, then I know that when they say “yes,” they really mean it.
• “I don’t know” is also a great thing to say when it’s appropriate. You might be responding to whether you can meet a date and need time to research the task before committing.
• Act on it: Keep a list of deliverables and dates promised and see how many did you meet. Do this for each project

My notes and comments

• Very useful advice. It is important to give realistic deadlines and meet them.
• My own guidelines for schedules:

1. Start with a range instead of a date and put a note and reminder saying when you will convert to specific date, this could be post design or in first week of development.

2. It is difficult to be accurate if the task is not broken down into small items, each being less than 4 days.

3. The chances of hitting the deadline increases if you have worked on the technology and area before.

4. Keep in mind other work\deliverables which are planned or might come up.

5. Sometimes one has to work to a schedule that they do not agree too, mention that to those in charge including probable delay and do your best.

6. Whenever possible, always do a complete reevaluation on a deadline miss and give it a new well thought of deadline instead of the tomorrow or monday morning deadline

Final verdict: Agree

Rest of Entries and Main Post: My Job Went to India, 52 Ways to Save Your Job: TOC, Notes and Comments

I read the post on Paul’s Tips: How to work out if you’re better off renting or buying a place to live and found a problem with this quick back on the envelope calculations.

What the cost of renting a house is compared to buying it

House number one
Price: $1,000,000
Rent: $31,285 per annum ($600 per week)
Current interest rate: 7%
Interest on $1,000,000 loan for one year: $70,000

In this example, buying the house costs over double what renting it does for a single year. A lot of factors would have to change before buying could be considered more financially attractive.

This is incorrect as the comparison should be to the real impact of interest, which is total minus income tax deduction+property tax. My modified version would be:

If rent >= 60% of interest or 55% of total payment+1% of payment, it is better to buy on a pure cost basis as interest is tax deductible(25-33% off) if you do not hit the AMT limit.
For a 500K house, it has to be >= 2025 per month
For a 600K house, it has to be >= 2375 per month
For a 700K house, it has to be >= 2900 per month
For a 900K house, it has to be >= 3750 per month
For a 1.15M house, it has to be >= 5000 per month

The market should not be about to fall though and this does not cover property taxes, closing costs, insurance (House as well as Mortgage).
Now back to my usual topics.

Update: The deduction of interest rate from your federal income tax is a US law.

Chapter 28: Learn How to Fail ‘or’ (my alternative title) Handle errors in code and work life

from My Job Went to India And All I Got Was This Lousy Book: 52 Ways to Save Your Job by Chad Fowler.

Summary: Fairly standard advise on handling errors in code(asserts, unit test) and in work life(accept, fix, improve)

Final verdict: Agree

Rest of Entries and Main Post: My Job Went to India, 52 Ways to Save Your Job: TOC, Notes and Comments