I was having same conversation with my wife yesterday 
West San Jose, good?
I will never use east San Jose to describe my house in evergreen. Always insist on saying evergreen. If they ask where is evergreen? I say itâs at the foot of the mountains in the east.
My child attends Cupertino Schools or stay in Cupertino School District 
To people who live in Bay area, I say I live in West San Jose only because San Jose is just such a big city. (Just like Evergreen, Almaden etc)
From my house to Almaden is way farther than to Mountain View or Los Altos.
To people who live outside Bay area, I say I live in San Jose.
The bottom line is people in my neighborhood donât have sense of privilege.
We are bunch of engineers who are obsessed with kidsâ education and as a result work 60 hours a week to make ends meet.
Because of this, I donât think the house price here would ever reach remotely close to PA.
Either San Jose or San Francisco, elsewhere they donât know where it is. So I also tell them that I stay in San Jose. Somehow, my sisters always remember as I stay in San Francisco.
I believe most real estate buyers and investors are shrewd with their money. I doubt anyone will spend $x Millions to buy a house just to live next to executives. If they did, then they have enough disposable income that they donât have to care.
PA folks I know really donât stand out from the ordinary. Maybe I am not privileged to mingle with elites. On the other hand, many Cupertino and West SJ parents I know are school snobs. Probably because they bought solely for the school. I say 3 out of 4 Cupertino parents I know have asked me what is the API of my local school; then they tell me API score of their school; and then follow up with their assessment of the schools simply from a 3 digit API number.
Are you only referring to downtown PA? PA density is 2500/sq mi. SJ density is 5200/sq mi. MV density is 6000/sq mi. Cupertino density is 5200/sq mi. Data from wikipedia. I think PA # can be skewed by the land PA owns in the hills, but all these cities have open spaces or reserves (which is what draws many to Bay Area).
PA does have more jobs than residents. So that does add daily commuters to business areas. I think that is a good thing in general, to collect business taxes and residents benefit. As for traffic, crowding, and parking, it is mainly isolated to downtown. For residential areas, rush hour commute is opposite the traffic. In morning, it is easy to get to 101, while traffic jam (from those working in PA) is exiting 101. And similarly for afternoon commute in opposite direction.
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Correct, my buddy who lives there is just an average working stiff joe (sorry, bud!) who benefited partially from parents who bought there many moons ago, so he grew up there and had the financial backing to buy there for himself. His wife is a stay home mom and I imagine he makes a decent living but he ainât no Stanford professor or some techie entrepreneur by any stretch of the imagination.
I suspect that is probably true of many folks in heralded neighborhoods like even Pac Heights or Cow Hollow of SF. They are the heirs to these properties in one way or other and are just fortunate/lucky to be residing there. Prop 13 caps their property taxes so that is not a major issue. If we scrambled the game up and went back to Square 1 for every area and said ok letâs see who qualifies NOW financially to own/buy there I imagine you would have a very different mix of folks.
Well, I used to live in PA (renting) then moved to West San Jose.
The day we moved in (PA rental home), our neighbor came over and introduced himself as âa homeowner of next doorâ when he obviously knew that we were renting the property (my landlord used to live there and they knew each other.).
When my younger one was about to start Kinder, I was invited to a few play dates with bunch of new Kinders and Moms.
There, a lot of people asked me a question like âWhere do you live? Do you own the property or rent it?â.
That was enough culture shock for me to move out of that town.
However, when bunch of Moms started to brag about âweekend trip to Parisâ and âmy husband is EVP of Walmartâ etc, I became so determined to move out of that town.
Well, at least, I feel much more comfortable in West San Jose with bunch of engineers (the most common occupation in Silicon Valley).
I agree that people are obsessed with kidsâ education (both in a positive and negative way) here.
Maybe, they look like school snobs.
However, I guess living in Cupertino is average Silicon Valley engineers can achieve if they really want.
What people are bragging in PA was something I would never even imagine to catch up.
So, if Cupertino residents brag about API scores of their kidsâ school to PA residents, is it a real bragging or just trying to find anything they want to believe to be better at?
I believe there are many nice and humble people in PA.
However, it is also true that many people want to move there to get the privilege that PA provides.
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Just curious, how much does a Walmart EVP make?
Those staying in PA, Cupertino, and WSJ can be very humble, if they are there decades ago.
Iâm referring to new transplants less than 10 years.
What is the likely rank of a person able to afford a $2 million SFH?
My guess is at least a Director, base salary $200k+ p.a. plus bonus (RSUs and Cash).
Bonuses & stocks are high for high level executives & can be higher than salary.
I used to rent earlier in 94089(Bad schools but I didnât care for schools then) in Sunnyvale. Went to a party at someoneâs house right across the new apple campus and I like a stupid guy said âSunnyvale schools are badâ, when in reality I should have said 94089 schools are bad. I could feel some angry looks from Sunnyvale residents from good school districts & Someone became defensive (from the high tone of his voice) & started explaining the whole zipcode deal to me.
Thought in my mind âBoy human beings are complicatedâ.
Now I tiptoe around housing discussions(i.e. run quality tests on each sentence I say on housing) in my offline life.
HilariousâŚfunnyâŚ
$200k base salary doesnât require a Director. A junior manager (or even a star individual contributor) with 10-15 years experience at a reasonable hi-tech company can hit that, although going up from this level the base salary wonât increase as much while equity grants will make most of the difference.
My team is doing a new hire recently. Fresh masterâs graduate, school is so-so, no internship experience, starting base is over $110k (but not much equity grant). Mind you that I work at a âlow-glossâ semiconductor company, and I would imagine the number should be quite a bit higher in internet/SW companies (due to their fatter margins).
I have been amazed at the speed of hi-tech salary increases in the past decade, and these tier-1 companies like google/facebook/apple/linkedin/uber/netflix/amazon have really pushed up the envelope and lifting a lot of boats. It used to be that the cost of sustaining one silicon valley employee roughly translates to 3-4 employees in China/India, then it gradually became 2-3 due to the rising costs in China/India, and now itâs back to 3-4 due to the rise in costs here in silicon valley. I often question whether these âtalentsâ are really worth that much, but itâs still a supply-demand issue that will take some time to work itself out.
To be able to afford a 2-mil house is of course not for everyone, but itâs not all that difficult/uncommon either. For a couple with dual income (at least one in hi-tech) who have been homeowners for 10 years, going to 2 mil is not that stretching. In the silicon valley there are lots and lots of families like that, and they are just regular folks (like me ). I have been living in south Palo Alto (which used to be a blue-collar town) for 10 years. Most of the people Iâve met through school and at other social occasions are normal people holding unglamorous jobs, and donât display any sign of feeling privileged. Maybe north Palo Alto is different.
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AFAIK, his title would be changed to Director. Youâre aware of someone earning more than $200k with a title of a manager? Exclude bonus, cash or RSU, just base salary. If youâve, can you clarify with that person is excluding bonuses. As a landlord, I do know what people earn when they apply for rental⌠my dataset might be too small, ofc.
As Maluka said, tech companies have dual tracks, one for management and one for technical. Yes, I know several folks on technical tracks (who are not managers nor directors) who makes over $200k base salary.
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Maluku claims that Junior Manager earns $200k base salary.
I know that base salary is important from lenderâs perspective but there are companies which compensate their employees with RSU and bonus substantially and there are companies which compensate them with base salaries mostly.
Thus, overall compensation must be considered.
Whenever I changed my job, the new company matched âoverall_compensation + 10-20% raiseâ with various distribution across base, bonus and RSUs.
Keeping that in mind, I do know a few engineers who are non-manager or junior-manager (what is it exactly? I assume the lowest manager in the report chain) with base salary over 200K.
Same here. I do know a few people earning base (exclude Bonus / RSU) over 200K in technical track. They are not even highly technical role, they are like Staff engineer (step up from Senior - but lower than Principal / Architect etc). But only happen with public company as far as I can tell.