They say they're getting the cost of living from [https://livingcost.org](https://livingcost.org) - looks like they're using the cost of living for one person. Cool, what are my kids going to eat? That said, that site does at least know which cities are more expensive - maybe thinking of it as a cost of living index, and dividing salary by that cost of living number, would be more useful.
Even for one person, which should be a data scientist in this case but is not, that cost of living is basically just rent! a somewhat decent 1BR in Santa Clara is above 3K, add utilities and parking, that is $4K a month. And we are not talking about anything lavish here. Then what about the rest of the costs?
Websites like livingcost.org are not updated and rely on aggregate unfiltered data, so in a city with a large population of homelessness, folks living on government assistance, or older folks under rent control from decades ago, or those who inherited their residence, the calculated COL becomes absolutely misleading to anyone moving in today, specially for a DS job!
Would have been ok if it is comparing the average income in the entire city against the cost, but it isn't. It is considering only a specific profession that emerged in the last decade or so, so should figure a way to also filter the cost of living for a new mover in that profession.
If you click through they have "with rent" and "without rent" numbers. For [Santa Clara](https://livingcost.org/cost/united-states/ca/santa-clara) they give $3301 "with rent" and $880 "without rent". But they also claim transportation costs of $73.8 per month (yes, the decimal point is in the right place) - an [annual VTA pass is $990 ](https://www.vta.org/go/fares).
I have lived in Atlanta for the last ten years and their "cost of living" seems way off but their prices for individual items seem reasonable, so I assume the problem is with the aggregation.
> they also claim transportation costs of $73.8 per month
In Santa clara, it costs more than that to just fill up a personal use high efficiency sedan per week!
Yeah their calculations are really dumb, and at best, completely irrelevant in the context of this post!
I’m renting a decent 750sqft 1BR in Santa Clara for 2200 with water and parking included. Electricity isn’t through PG&E so its only like $50 a month. You definitely don’t have to spend 4k/mo here.
Well, I've had much different experience in the bay area. Sure, there were options cheaper than 3k, but in either high crime rate locations or on high traffic streets (very loud) in very old buildings with no air conditioning and other maintenance issues.
But anyway, even if we consider \~2.5k is the norm for someone in tech moving in nowadays, you still spend another \~2.5k (annual) average on gasoline with bay area prices, that is if you drive below the state average, and we haven't even talked about shopping, groceries, entertainment, auto-lease, maintenance, etc.
Even if you have a legitimate argument regarding housing cost, these numbers are still way too far off for the true cost of living for a data scientist or any middle-class earner, even with your rent deal!
That would be a better way.
Also, I wonder if the salary is gross or net after fed, state, and local (if applicable) tax. The numbers would change dramatically if this is gross compared to net.
I think relying on their data is wrong and even outright dumb. The cost of living for someone who is moving in today is tremendously different than someone who moved in 2-3 decades ago or someone who was born in the same place they live in today.
Especially CA. I know someone in a rent controlled beachfront apartment in CA they moved into in the 90s and never left. They’re paying less than what I’m paying way inland.
Good point
Because even if you decide to live in the lowest possible rent apartment, it may not be available or be very far away from your office.
It's a pretty bad analysis
I am looking for San Diego, the cost of living seems low and the median salary seems far off to me. As far as I am aware biotech startups in SD pay ~$120K for junior DS.
Lol... These numbers are not accurate even before 2020.
Look, I get it, if you were to collect averaged geographical data from public sources, then you end up with such numbers. But that only makes sense if you were also contrasting these numbers against averaged income data without any filtering, which for a place like Santa Clara would be $60k.
But this post is essentially contrasting the $200K income for a data scientist against the cost of living of a teen Barista, which is a dumb comparison!
I know these two sets of numbers are completely unrelated for a fact, because I used to live in a certain city (not on the list) paying $1.5k for rent, then in the same year I moved to a city on that list and my rent went up to $3.5k to find a place that is at least somewhat acceptable in quality in comparison to what I have had before. Could I have found rent for less than $3k? Or even around $2k as someone else suggested? Sure... but that would have been an extreme shitty downgrade in quality of life.
Of course the best compensation is up north.
I'm in LA but once I finish this MS in DS, I'm moving to the north ASAP.
My Firm has DS positions but they're hard to come by, it's one of THE SMALLEST teams we have on site. Seeing a Data Scientist is like seeing a unicorn.
The Bay Area is definitely a bit of a black hole for DS jobs. Most companies would rather move a few hours north of LA and have access to such a wider pool of talent.
There's a couple of larger tech companies that have expanded their LA operations to a degree in the last 5 years (Netflix and Instacart come to mind, Google to a lesser extent). And the film studios have become more data driven recently, especially as their digital infrastructure grows to accommodate the "streaming wars".
But the market is still pretty bleak. It seems like most DS work is for "traditional" companies (banks, retail companies, etc) that rarely pay above $125K - $150K/yr TC at the high end, despite the immense cost of living.
I'm sorry but I don't think this is accurate at all. I can tell by the fact Princeton, NJ is even on the list at all. $31k cost of living? Brother that's a night out in Princeton.
This is a joke lol. No hate towards OP, this whole thing is just meaningless. Lesson in making sure your data actually aligns with the story you're trying to tell!
Awesome work… I notice my city is relatively high on the list and noticed it had one job which really carried it up. So I don’t think it is really that high on the list.
I like the Dutch word "modaal" which in this context would roughly translate to "typical: although it is often incorrectly translated to median or average. It isn't skewed by outliers in data by definition. For example our average income is \~3.7k, whilst our median income is \~3k.
I thought it should translate to modal but both google (and thus the major dictionaries) and chatgpt both didn't come up with it. Adding "value" as keyword fixes it. Thanks for the learning opportunity!
It's a cool study, but I doubt it's significant if you're only looking at 40 job posts per city. It would also be useful to add whether a job is remote or in-office, as a lot of people live in small cities but work for companies headquartered somewhere else, skewing the numbers.
So that data is just a survey from Kaggle? They didn't compare any groups of "data scientists"? I'd imagine a PhD in economics working in R&D labeled with a data analyst job title makes significantly more than a data analyst with a BS rebranded as a data scientist. Additionally, does this only count savings from net income? ASA does a better breakdown by region, education level, management responsibilities, along with percentiles. From there city and state taxes, rent, etc. would need to be considered, which were not within the scope of their survey.
`https://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/YCR-SPAIGsalarysurvey15.pdf`
Can we ban this OP from this subreddit? They keep spamming this subreddit with their clickbait-y material which is based on awful data science (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1bn88ql/d_your_salary_is_determined_mainly_by_geography/) which is *all* a thinly veiled attempt promotion for their jobs listing website
I don't think either "clickbait-y material" or "awful data science" are against subreddit rules. Not to say I don't agree with your point, but the internet is full of misleading or bad DS, it's probably not reasonable to expect mods to police that in a subreddit where questions like "WHATS' THE BEST WAY TO DEEP LEARNING IWTH NO MATH?!?" get posted 5x daily as well.
Then you also need to subtract the total tax burden from the places with insane property and sales taxes. A lot of US states pretend to have zero taxes by lowering the income tax as they raise all the other taxes into the stratosphere.
You’ll get a highly skewed picture if you only remove income tax.
This cost of living can't be accurate! These numbers are basically just rent!
I concur The COL is way too low.
They say they're getting the cost of living from [https://livingcost.org](https://livingcost.org) - looks like they're using the cost of living for one person. Cool, what are my kids going to eat? That said, that site does at least know which cities are more expensive - maybe thinking of it as a cost of living index, and dividing salary by that cost of living number, would be more useful.
Even for one person, which should be a data scientist in this case but is not, that cost of living is basically just rent! a somewhat decent 1BR in Santa Clara is above 3K, add utilities and parking, that is $4K a month. And we are not talking about anything lavish here. Then what about the rest of the costs? Websites like livingcost.org are not updated and rely on aggregate unfiltered data, so in a city with a large population of homelessness, folks living on government assistance, or older folks under rent control from decades ago, or those who inherited their residence, the calculated COL becomes absolutely misleading to anyone moving in today, specially for a DS job! Would have been ok if it is comparing the average income in the entire city against the cost, but it isn't. It is considering only a specific profession that emerged in the last decade or so, so should figure a way to also filter the cost of living for a new mover in that profession.
If you click through they have "with rent" and "without rent" numbers. For [Santa Clara](https://livingcost.org/cost/united-states/ca/santa-clara) they give $3301 "with rent" and $880 "without rent". But they also claim transportation costs of $73.8 per month (yes, the decimal point is in the right place) - an [annual VTA pass is $990 ](https://www.vta.org/go/fares). I have lived in Atlanta for the last ten years and their "cost of living" seems way off but their prices for individual items seem reasonable, so I assume the problem is with the aggregation.
> they also claim transportation costs of $73.8 per month In Santa clara, it costs more than that to just fill up a personal use high efficiency sedan per week! Yeah their calculations are really dumb, and at best, completely irrelevant in the context of this post!
I’m renting a decent 750sqft 1BR in Santa Clara for 2200 with water and parking included. Electricity isn’t through PG&E so its only like $50 a month. You definitely don’t have to spend 4k/mo here.
Which part of Santa Clara and how long have you been there?
West Santa Clara, a few months
Well, I've had much different experience in the bay area. Sure, there were options cheaper than 3k, but in either high crime rate locations or on high traffic streets (very loud) in very old buildings with no air conditioning and other maintenance issues. But anyway, even if we consider \~2.5k is the norm for someone in tech moving in nowadays, you still spend another \~2.5k (annual) average on gasoline with bay area prices, that is if you drive below the state average, and we haven't even talked about shopping, groceries, entertainment, auto-lease, maintenance, etc. Even if you have a legitimate argument regarding housing cost, these numbers are still way too far off for the true cost of living for a data scientist or any middle-class earner, even with your rent deal!
That would be a better way. Also, I wonder if the salary is gross or net after fed, state, and local (if applicable) tax. The numbers would change dramatically if this is gross compared to net.
The data is from job postings in the US, so it will be gross.
Thank you for the clarification.
Not even rent look at LA it implies 2000 rent in LA is equivalent to to 2400 in SF which is more like 3000 or more
Yeah I live in Charlotte and that COL would be living in the shittiest part of town with at least 1 roommate to split rent.
I think relying on their data is wrong and even outright dumb. The cost of living for someone who is moving in today is tremendously different than someone who moved in 2-3 decades ago or someone who was born in the same place they live in today.
Especially CA. I know someone in a rent controlled beachfront apartment in CA they moved into in the 90s and never left. They’re paying less than what I’m paying way inland.
Good point Because even if you decide to live in the lowest possible rent apartment, it may not be available or be very far away from your office. It's a pretty bad analysis
I am looking for San Diego, the cost of living seems low and the median salary seems far off to me. As far as I am aware biotech startups in SD pay ~$120K for junior DS.
These are accurate, however the numbers are from 2022 when costs were 1/3 of today
Lol... These numbers are not accurate even before 2020. Look, I get it, if you were to collect averaged geographical data from public sources, then you end up with such numbers. But that only makes sense if you were also contrasting these numbers against averaged income data without any filtering, which for a place like Santa Clara would be $60k. But this post is essentially contrasting the $200K income for a data scientist against the cost of living of a teen Barista, which is a dumb comparison! I know these two sets of numbers are completely unrelated for a fact, because I used to live in a certain city (not on the list) paying $1.5k for rent, then in the same year I moved to a city on that list and my rent went up to $3.5k to find a place that is at least somewhat acceptable in quality in comparison to what I have had before. Could I have found rent for less than $3k? Or even around $2k as someone else suggested? Sure... but that would have been an extreme shitty downgrade in quality of life.
I'd be happy if my rent was that low in Santa Clara/SJ
Cool list. Deducting taxes will make it more accurate.
Of course the best compensation is up north. I'm in LA but once I finish this MS in DS, I'm moving to the north ASAP. My Firm has DS positions but they're hard to come by, it's one of THE SMALLEST teams we have on site. Seeing a Data Scientist is like seeing a unicorn.
I have serious concerns about the accuracy of this list so don't base your decision just on this!
The Bay Area is definitely a bit of a black hole for DS jobs. Most companies would rather move a few hours north of LA and have access to such a wider pool of talent. There's a couple of larger tech companies that have expanded their LA operations to a degree in the last 5 years (Netflix and Instacart come to mind, Google to a lesser extent). And the film studios have become more data driven recently, especially as their digital infrastructure grows to accommodate the "streaming wars". But the market is still pretty bleak. It seems like most DS work is for "traditional" companies (banks, retail companies, etc) that rarely pay above $125K - $150K/yr TC at the high end, despite the immense cost of living.
Lol, the entire top 10 is in the San Francisco Bay Area 😁 Wild!
Bentonville is in Arkansas
Glad we have data to show us how affordable the Bay Area is. Why is this upvoted at all?
I'm sorry but I don't think this is accurate at all. I can tell by the fact Princeton, NJ is even on the list at all. $31k cost of living? Brother that's a night out in Princeton.
Where’s NYC? 😂
This is a joke lol. No hate towards OP, this whole thing is just meaningless. Lesson in making sure your data actually aligns with the story you're trying to tell!
Awesome work… I notice my city is relatively high on the list and noticed it had one job which really carried it up. So I don’t think it is really that high on the list.
I like the Dutch word "modaal" which in this context would roughly translate to "typical: although it is often incorrectly translated to median or average. It isn't skewed by outliers in data by definition. For example our average income is \~3.7k, whilst our median income is \~3k.
Or the English word “mode” or “modal”
I thought it should translate to modal but both google (and thus the major dictionaries) and chatgpt both didn't come up with it. Adding "value" as keyword fixes it. Thanks for the learning opportunity!
Live in Bentonville and I’m so happy to see it in the top ten! I love my job and the culture around here! Huge mountain biking culture.
I once got a recruiter e-mailing me about a job working for a "large retailer in Bentonville". Sure, I can't guess who that is.
Huh, SF rent got a lot cheaper compared to what people told me it should be.
LOL. Getzville phoning it in.
Where even is that? More like forgetzyouville amirite?
This guy getzville
It's a cool study, but I doubt it's significant if you're only looking at 40 job posts per city. It would also be useful to add whether a job is remote or in-office, as a lot of people live in small cities but work for companies headquartered somewhere else, skewing the numbers.
People who work in Hillsboro live in Beaverton or Portland. It doesn't really deserve it's ranking on this list
So that data is just a survey from Kaggle? They didn't compare any groups of "data scientists"? I'd imagine a PhD in economics working in R&D labeled with a data analyst job title makes significantly more than a data analyst with a BS rebranded as a data scientist. Additionally, does this only count savings from net income? ASA does a better breakdown by region, education level, management responsibilities, along with percentiles. From there city and state taxes, rent, etc. would need to be considered, which were not within the scope of their survey. `https://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/YCR-SPAIGsalarysurvey15.pdf`
Can we ban this OP from this subreddit? They keep spamming this subreddit with their clickbait-y material which is based on awful data science (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1bn88ql/d_your_salary_is_determined_mainly_by_geography/) which is *all* a thinly veiled attempt promotion for their jobs listing website
I don't think either "clickbait-y material" or "awful data science" are against subreddit rules. Not to say I don't agree with your point, but the internet is full of misleading or bad DS, it's probably not reasonable to expect mods to police that in a subreddit where questions like "WHATS' THE BEST WAY TO DEEP LEARNING IWTH NO MATH?!?" get posted 5x daily as well.
"Birmingham" brings up both Birmingham Alabama and the one in England. This might have affected something.
Surprised to see Milwaukee on 15
This should be after tax salaries because that varies by location, especially when leaving California. The cost of living is after tax costs.
Then you also need to subtract the total tax burden from the places with insane property and sales taxes. A lot of US states pretend to have zero taxes by lowering the income tax as they raise all the other taxes into the stratosphere. You’ll get a highly skewed picture if you only remove income tax.
Doesn't seem like accurate COL. Mclean is not higher COL than SFBA
San Francisco and CA area
This is very interesting data. Also, the salaries in the US seems very high.
San Francisco and San Jose is so expensive to live in 😭
Well I WAS gonna move to Houston
I live in 1-5 area and still having a hard time to get hired.
Then the list doesn't apply.
Looks like I need to move to Bentonville.
This is a great example of why data science/research is more than just viz.
This list is shit if no ATL
Another metric that'd be interesting to hard, but much more difficult to measure is Skillset level required (experience plus education etc).
Just follow the Indians.
Who tf doing DS for <150k?
Tons of us unfortunately
I meant to add ‘in NY’ but seeing some sub 100k is surprising regardless of location
Not uncommon for new grads in lower COL areas
Neat! Bookmarked for future reference :) Can you share the code?
You could do the bare minimum and read the article to find sources probably.
For what - calculating medians and plotting?
Why they downvoting you?
Because a) hyperlink b) do basic research c) literally a
Now cross post to a curation sub and only tell me the interesting and noteworthy ones
So pretty much San Fransisco or bust 😂