I am biased but I liked Chicago. You can get a good house for a decent price. If you want to raise a family though, inside the city schools suck - you have to play a lottery or try to test into a good school or pay for private.
That said you won't find startup jobs like SF, a lot of the top paying jobs like NYC are in finance.
Grew up and lived in Chicago most of my life. Moved to the Bay Area in 2013.
Key things to note about Chicago:
- The weather is all extremes (extreme cold, extreme hot, extreme humidity) barring a few nice weeks during spring and fall
- The government is beyond horrible (just check this stat on the conviction/jail rate for our mayors[1])
- From what friends who still live there tell me, the crime has only been getting worse, even in nicer neighborhoods
- Traffic is miserable and while there is decent public transit, it all goes to hell during a sports game (try taking the Red Line home during a Cubs game...I'd have to let five trains pass before I could squish myself into a car that was literally packed to the door)
- House prices may be a bit cheaper than the Bay Area, but pay sucks in general. Wages seem to have not climbed much at all in recent years
- Fully agree about the schools. I was fortunate enough to go to Latin, but the lottery is really scary in terms of what you could end up with school-wise
While I have lots of family and friends there, and will always have a place in my heart for Chicago, I didn't realize how much it drained me emotionally and physically to live there until I moved to the Peninsula. Now I'm not constantly watching over my shoulder when I walk around my neighborhood, and I can be outside for most of the year. That last part was huge as I realized that sun is really critical for me to be happy and I wasn't getting enough in Chicago. While my overall Cost of Living is much MUCH higher out here, I'm ultimately happier, and that is what matters. Plus, if I ever were to move back somewhere cheaper, having a high salary is a great point to start negotiating from even if you need to go down a little.
>- From what friends who still live there tell me, the crime has only been getting worse, even in nicer neighborhoods
>- Traffic is miserable and while there is decent public transit, it all goes to hell during a sports game (try taking the Red Line home during a Cubs game...I'd have to let five trains pass before I could squish myself into a car that was literally packed to the door)
Solution don't live along the redline.
The services offered by some of the CPS schools far exceed what you'd get elsewhere.
That's an easy statement to make that conveniently ignores the fact that the Redline is one of the major transit lines in the city because it goes to where there are a ton of jobs. I was fortunate in that I could also take the Brown line at some points when I lived there, and there are plentiful bus options, but the reality is that when there's a Cubs game, good luck commuting home if you live on the North Side, regardless of where you work.
Hmm, meh, I feel like you can say a lot of pretty similar things about San Francisco and the Bay Area too. Let me defend Chicago with some counterpoints!
- Weather: Sure, SF Bay Area wins here in terms of what you might think of as regularly experienced weather, but it is not without its extremes. Let's recall that most of California, including surrounding SF Bay Area, has been in an extreme drought for the past several years [1], threatening local agriculture and water supply. Also, SF is famous for extremely devastating earthquakes that happen every so often [2] (though, you may not categorize seismic activity as weather, but still a natural occurrence sort of thing).
- Government: SF has its fair share of recent government corruption [3, 4] as well as historical seediness/lawlessness [5], not unlike some of Chicago's history.
- Traffic: Personally, I think the Bay Area has worse traffic than Chicago. The data in this report [6] seems to agree, ranking SF/Oakland as #3 worst in the country and San Jose as #5, whereas Chicago is #8 on the list. And, really, waiting on a few trains to pass for a sports game or special event is not unique to Chicago. Try taking the BART across the bay for a Giants game, Super Bowl 50, Bay to Breakers, Pride Parade, etc. I mean, every city's transportation system hits its limit with big events/gatherings. So what? It's part of living in a city that you learn to accept.
- Wages: Can't debate it. Chicago software engineers, making average of $76k/yr [9], do get paid less than SF, at $110k/yr [10]. But, also consider that income tax in Illinois is a flat 3.75% [11], whereas California's income tax for that bracket is 9.3% [12]. 5.5% more tax in CA is not small. (Federal income tax will also be lower in Chicago with the lower salary, but I haven't looked up those numbers.) And, let's consider cost of living more in general. This handy website [13] says that "A salary of $76,000 in Chicago, Illinois should increase to $178,313 in San Francisco, California", which is mainly due to housing being 428% more expensive in SF than in Chicago. That says a lot! You might interpret that as the $110k/yr average salary in SF actually gets you less quality of living than the $76k/yr in Chicago (according to this website). Or something like that. Don't know, but my housing quality in SF is twice as much for half the space as compared to what I had in Chicago. (What am I doing here?!)
- Crime: According to this (presumably reputable) data [7, 8] Chicago has been steadily improving in terms of crime over the past more than a decade. SF has been kind of steady, and, according to that data, is actually worse per capita than Chicago. I didn't expect that at first. Chicago is a much bigger city and than SF, so that kind of helps to dilute crime among the population, I suppose. Anyway, my anecdotal evidence from friends tell me that it is improving. We must have different kinds of Chicago friends. Or maybe we should trust data instead?
- Schools: SF public schools have a lottery system too [14]. I will grant, though, that CPS does have a lot of ongoing battles with the city and state for funding, like recent closings and strikes. That stuff sucks because it's usually the poorest schools that suffer the most. Ultimately, this is a bigger societal problem than us engineers debating about where the best place for us to live is on a web forum. (Probability of existential crisis increasing...)
Okay. Got that off my chest. I love Chicago. I hope you and others do too still. I may move back soon. Writing this stuff down has, well, made me think twice about wtf I'm doing out here on the West Coast...
Worth clarifying is that I live in the Peninsula, and there's a ton of factors for why my circumstances might differ from yours. Crime out here is way lower than in SF for example. Ultimately there's pros and cons a plenty to both places, and ones priorities ultimately dictate the weighting of them.
For me, weather and culture was huge, as was the crime. The crime piece likely could have been solved if I moved to a nicer suburb, but ultimately that was lower on the list.
Like I said--Chicago will always have a place in my heart, but I've found that I'm ultimately much happier living in the Bay Area, despite the higher cost of living. I just wish I'd realized it sooner so I could have moved out here and bought five years ago.
Pricing for housing is definitely cheaper in Chicago but the pay sucks. It's not uncommon for lead-engineers to make < 6-figures. Tech is definitely not a priority in that city which may or may not be a bad thing.
Definitely agree here. I moved back to Chicago from SF to be near family now that I have a little one.
I was lucky enough to keep my job working remotely for an awesome company in SF, but I can tell even from the LinkedIn spam how different the job market is here.
There is a vibrant startup culture in NYC. Finance jobs may pay more but probably not worth it due to culture and longer hours, more issues/rules around security, etc.
I mean Chicago has tons and tons of startups, and a "startup culture". For example http://www.1871.com/. But finding startups that money similar to normal companies? Not super easy.
NYC startups even if they paid more, COL is 3x what Chicago is and not that far from SF... so seems a bad place to go if your goal is to "buy a house"
Well in my personal experience the salary of senior devs in very early-stage startups i've been involved with in NYC get around get about 150K + options (text processing, machine learning, AI-stuff). With 2 incomes and some savings put aside, certainly its affordable, much more so than SF from what i've seen. The dev salary here may be higher because they need to complete with wall street firms, and there are overall less very senior devs in NYC compared to SF.
Maybe if you live in Manhattan. If you live out in Bayridge, you can get a 750+ sqft 1-bedroom apartment for $1450/mo. It takes me roughly 35 minutes getting to Soho on the R/N train from 86th st [which is near the end of the R train]
That said you won't find startup jobs like SF, a lot of the top paying jobs like NYC are in finance.