Seattle has certainly established itself as a prime location for technology companies looking to establish engineering centers outside of the Bay Area. But how does the Emerald City stack up against San Francisco when the data is crunched on salaries and job-hopping?
Seattle-based career matchmaking site Anthology has taken a look at two of the most active regional user bases of its service. The company used data from an equal sampling of 10,000 users across the Seattle and San Francisco markets.
A look at the median salary cap for tech workers across different job functions, in both cities, found that engineering jobs led the way with a median max salary of $162,000. Marketing ($110,000) and sales ($100,000) followed. A closer look at the engineering salaries found that workers in SF are doing better than those in Seattle — $175,000 compared to $150,000.
Anthology notes that San Francisco’s perception of being a better-paying region proves true. Contrary to the popular notion that the Bay Area is more prone to job-hopping tech workers, Anthology’s data says that both regions’ workers are similar in whether they would want to change jobs ASAP or in six months.
But big companies setting up shop in Seattle, such as Facebook, could perhaps find some comfort in another revealing Anthology data point. San Francisco engineers say that they are more willing than their Seattle peers to bail on a job to go to work for an early stage startup — 55 percent compared to 42 percent.
After all that, it’s worth remembering that a report from Anthology in December found that Seattle trailed only San Francisco when it came to cities where techies would want to live.
Read more about the findings on the Anthology Blog.
