As we noted recently, most people will associate Silicon Valley, New York and Boston with the booming tech industry, as job growth in this sector is growing particularly strongly in those areas. This might lead you to believe that North Carolina isn't the place to be if you want to land a high-paying job in information technology.
But that couldn't be further from the truth. To understand why, you have to consider not just how much programmers earn in those cities, but also the cost of living.
If there's one thing that unites San Francisco, Manhattan, Los Angeles and Boston — supposedly the "best cities" for tech workers —it's that they are horrendously expensive places to live, even when you're earning a good salary. Someone making $75,000 a year while living in San Francisco would have the same purchasing power as an individual earning about $40,000 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. That's right: The cost of living in San Francisco is 87 percent higher than it is here in Winston-Salem.
But tech workers in San Francisco don't make 87 percent more than their counterparts in North Carolina. According to Business Insider, the average Silicon Valley IT employee makes $108,603, while their Charlotte, North Carolina, colleague makes an average of $90,352. In other words, the Bay Area worker has to cover that 87 percent higher cost of living with a salary that is only 20 percent higher.
By staying in North Carolina, you can learn programming code and then obtain a higher real salary (meaning, when factoring in the cost of living) than you would if you migrated to the Bay Area. With this in mind, we encourage you to check out the coding classes we offer at Coder Foundry, which will help you secure higher earnings in the future and find a job that you love going to every day!