Also because there are fewer choices in NYC than engineers have in the SF Bay Area.

Citation needed for this. The New York metro area has more than 2x the population of the Bay Area and an extremely diverse economic base. That makes claims about availability of choice being limited in NYC in comparison to SF pretty hard to believe.

The population of the metro area has nothing to do with it, it's about concentration of the industry. Acting is similar. There are more acting jobs in Hollywood than NYC.

I've seen many studies of tech hiring/jobs across the country. I'm sure you can find any research you're looking for.

The OES does not agree (neither does dice.com's numbers fwiw):

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_35620.htm#15-0000

You're missing 1/2. You have to also add San Jose-Sunnyvale-Cupertino, etc.

Edit: Also, counting the total headcount of ppl writing code in the area is not a measure of how many choices you have in the job market.

For completeness: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000

Still doesn't get you into more choice than NYC.

If you don't want to use head count (and I agree there is nuance), what do you want to use? Thus my citation needed request.

It's certainly a hard thing to measure. I'm approaching this both anecdotally and, I believe, logically.

The vast majority of software developers work in IT departments writing line-of-business applications in Java, .Net, etc. Certainly NYC has a vast number of these jobs. But these roles are all very similar. You're working as a cost-center, in a supporting role, for people who ultimately don't care about software. This is true whether you're a developer for Pfizer or Jet Blue or NBC Universal or any of the other companies based in

I really find the hollywood analogy apt. Yes, you can certainly find work as an actor in NYC. But the epicenter of the industry is in Hollywood.

Anyway, happy new year!

My guess is high frequency trading jobs in California pay more than startup jobs in California

also if engineers had fewer choices, wages would be lower, wouldn't they ?

Of course, pay isn't the only motivation behind a career choice. Many engineers take jobs in less lucrative verticals like game development because the work interests them.

That said, if you're an experienced engineer and you told me you wanted to make $200k next year, if you're in NYC I would say "go into finance" which is far more limited than the advice I would give in SFBA which is "go work for just about any publicly traded tech company, or slightly more risky go work for a tech company that seems to have an imminent IPO, or more risky still go work for a well-funded private marquee tech company (many of these companies would overlap with the 2nd group). In the end, it's a much bigger pond.

Look, I'm not saying NYC is void of these types of opportunities. I've got friends who work in the city for Tumblr and Spotify among others. I'm just saying, it's about density. You could take the skyline of SF and put it in a few blocks of lower manhattan. And you could take the tech population of NYC and put it in a "few blocks" of SF.

All that said, the relation to wages is more complicated than you suggest. Less variety doesn't speak to the balance between labor talent and demand.

Less variety should put downward pressure on wages, all things being equal, not upward pressure

All I am saying is, software development wages are too low, especially relative to the demands of the job - that's why there is a perceived shortage. Raise the wages and smart people from other fields will teach themselves to code and join the fray