I mean, not really? I just hopped onto the A train straight down to NYU; it took me like 40 minutes door to door, and being on the train allowed me to read, so it's much better than driving.

I make substantially more than that now, but have moved to Brooklyn since then; door to door it takes me about 50 minutes, but I wouldn't classify that as "a nightmare".

> a software engineer is a highly trained professional working in an high-demand field.

At the time I was a college dropout whose only professional experience was in startups, 4/5 of which had gone bankrupt, though the university actually paid their actually-qualified people pretty poorly. My coworker had a masters degree in data-science, and was only making $75,000/year.

Depends on your perspective, I suppose. Personally, spending 2 hours every day in commute is definitely not how I want to spend my life. A major reason I would move to a city like NYC is to eliminate such a long commute.

Last few times I took the train to Brooklyn, the train was always delayed by several minutes. Sometimes 15+ minutes. Trains were packed, especially during rush hour, and there was nowhere to sit. Occasionally they'd just stop place for technical reasons for as much as 10-20 minutes. Definitely not a smooth or pleasant experience.

Regarding compensation: $120k is becoming entry-level compensation in the Bay right now.

Here's an ad from someone looking to hire a programmer in Nassau county:

VOIP company looking for a technician to assist with programming back end systems. Should be knowledgeable with various database programs and voice services and applications.

Primary experience: Windows Environment - IIS / ASP.Net, VB.Net, MS-SQL, XML, Json. Primary helpful: PHP, MySQL

Secondary helpful: Google SDK, ffmpeg / sox, SIP Voip , basic CentOS / Debian navigation

Job Type: Full-time

Salary: $35,000.00 to $45,000.00 /year

I guess that will be the next trend in hiring propaganda: selling us on that sweet homeless life.

Like a lot of ads, they mix ridiculously specific qualifications with ridiculously generic ones.

For example, one important skill is: - "robust practices" such as "loops"!

and another is: - "knowledge of City University of New York Institutional Research Data"

Here's the list of skills wanted from another NYC junior programmer want ad that says $35-40K/yr:

Programming Skills Desired:

Transact SQL

Database Design & Theory

HTML

XML

CSS

JavaScript

VB Script

Auto Hot Key (AHK)

PHP

C#

All of these (except for AHK which I've never heard of) look trivial, but I'd expect the interview would be impossible, because the interviewer is going to be primed to expect people with no skills and therefore assume the worst of anyone who doesn't have 110% current experience in each.

VB Script and PHP and T-SQL and C# along with the rest?

I'd expect a college student not to be actively taught any of these (T-SQL maybe if they took a database class), and they're not exactly the new hotness for languages to learn.

I'm saying this as a dev that works for a company that uses a Microsoft stack right now too (I almost never see anyone talk about C# on this site or in the Who's Hiring threads.).

This seems like a laundry list of that employer's specific tech stack hoping they can get some sucker that has their exact stack because they happened to experiment with all of those languages in their free time, which is unlikely. Anyone who does have this stack can probably get a much better salary almost anywhere else.

It does say "desired" at least, and not "required", so they might not expect applicants to match this completely, but I bet some of the interviewers haven't gotten that memo (which seems to be what you're saying in the last paragraph also).

Also you mention you haven't heard of AHK, and it can be pretty useful. It's basically a macro program for doing things in Windows and assigning a hotkey combination to it. I've scripted some things in it before, although I'm not currently using it. It's not that hard to learn, and I can't imagine that any programmer couldn't pick up the basics after a few hours on the job, so I don't know why anyone would include that in a list of technology, thereby adding one extra thing for an applicant to think they need to have experience in to apply and not apply to their company.

I have no desire to live north of 59th st, but lets be real here.

Anyway, NYC software engineers do not need to compromise on their living situation. Google alone has bought two billion dollar blocks of Manhattan pays just as much as in the bay area.