Moving to NYC from CT?

I live in Stratford, CT which is about 85 minutes from Grand Central by train. Rents out here for a comfortable two bedroom apartment are typically around $1000-$1500. I have acertained that living in The City is at least 100-150% more expensive, at least for rent. My question is, are NYC salaries for windows software engineers with about five years experience accordingly higher?

Assuming http://salary.com 's data is accurate for a Software Engineer III, then the answer is "no". In fact, it is roughly the same as Fairfield County, Connecticut.

What gives?

dmooney
Friday, August 29, 2003

NYC is 100% to 150% better than Fairfield academy. People live here because they love the city.

Jeremy

Jeremy Wallace
Tuesday, September 2, 2003

You can probably manage without a car in NYC. The cost of the car payments plus insurance may be enough to pay for the extra rent you have to pay to live here :)

By the way my experience has been that salaries ARE usually higher in the city.

Joel Spolsky
Tuesday, September 2, 2003

I saw the smiley so you may have been kidding about the car, but it is a valid point.

My 17 year old car costs roughly $2000/yr to operate.
Car Taxes: $75/yr
Gas: $500
Insurance: $1000/yr
Car Payments: $0
Repairs: $500

However, my wife's late 90's car is much more expensive to insure and repair and she drives a lot more than I do because she is a Realtor. So I'm guessing it might cost $4-5k/yr for her car. So that is $500-600 more/month. I wonder how much I would end up spending on intra-city commuting.

However it is good to hear that salary.com is a bit low. :)

dmooney
Thursday, September 4, 2003

I would say from my perspective that salary.com for NYC looks right on. Remember they are not listing the top salaries, but rather the middle range percentiles. I'd be interested for more Manhattanites to weigh in on this.

John Perkins
Friday, September 5, 2003

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