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The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

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Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#71

Post by willholloway »

jphillipsio wrote: post #48

I live in Michigan and work for a company in SV. I love it in general but feel like it's pretty unlikely that I'd be able to find similar situation if I were to lose my job. It's not the best position to be in.

I live in a small coastal village in Southeastern Connecticut and work remotely. What I did was purchase a three family house that provides a good bit of revenue on it's own. This makes me much less dependent on coding for money and smooths out the ups and downs of contracting.

I'm also looking into diversifying income streams with some seasonal side business in an effort to capture some of the tourist dollars that flow through the town.

My new goal is to buy up as much of the town as I can, I now see contracting as an income source to park in more rental property, and thanks to the magic of leverage and anticipated low interest rates, this should be a viable exit strategy in relatively little time.

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#72

Post by mhotchen »

whack wrote: post #67
mhotchen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up an offshore team of four in India some years back. Two of the developers ended up being lackluster and let go, but two of them continued on as they were fairly decent. Even so the cultural difference was significant and it was difficult to manage them. I don't think it was their fault, they just had a very different views on what they considered was a completed task, how they went about asking for further re…

I'm guessing that none of the workers you're referring to are IIT graduates. I agree that American developers face little competition from the middle/lower end of developers in India. But the top developers in India (eg, the IIT grads and Google-India devs), in terms of raw talent and job performance, would easily out-compete the average American developer, while still being happy with a lower salary. This is where t…

Yeah these definitely weren't top tier developers. Even so I was happy with the quality of the code on the two we retained, it was everything that goes around it that I struggled with. For example they wouldn't ask questions or admit that they're struggling with something. I saw a lot of this in the interviews as well, you would ask a question like "do you know what X is" and they would say yes, but then sit in silence. So you probe "well what is it?" and they would go "I'm not completely sure" or just try to make something up.

I definitely agree with you though. We interviewed one person that was exceptionally good: very experienced, good comms, ticked all the boxes. His salary expectation was around a junior dev salary in the UK, which unfortunately was too high for management who had set a budget per developer, rather than thinking it was worth hiring him and one other instead of four lukewarm devs.

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#73

Post by amyjess »

The main reason I'd consider remote is that it's possible circumstances would force me to move out of Texas next year. If that happens, I'll be in a situation where I'd need to find both housing and a job in another city ASAP. I simply don't have the vacation time to waste travelling across the country to interview, and I have serious issues with flying anyway. It'd be much easier if I could get a job working remotely (without having to travel to interview) and then move to the town of my choice (which will almost certainly be a suburb of either LA or Chicago).

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#74

Post by dsfyu404ed »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #15
toomanythings4 wrote: post #10

In 1992, a friend got a job in the valley and I visited him when I was out there visiting the HQ for my company. He asked me to go with him to check out a condo he was thinking of buying. Remember that these are 1992 prices. The two-bedroom place we looked at was just like one of my first apartments. When the agent said it was $250K, I almost fell on the floor. My wife and I had just bought our first house, which was…

And the difference is you're stuck living in a "nice middle class neighborhood" with a ton of space you probably don't need. For many people moving to cities the value of the area is worth many times the value of the space. I wouldn't trade my nyc studio for a McMansion back in bumfuck SC no matter how much you offered me; and I think there must be a large population that shares that sentiment.

Good, it keeps the prices down for those of us who want to live very far away from you.

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#75

Post by vonmoltke »

hyperpape wrote: post #25
ghaff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes you like cities. I don't dislike cities in general but I also like my rural property. I honestly don't see a particular advantage to small towns. What I like about cities is things like theater, good restaurants, and related culture which typically take significant scale. Not sure what extra hours you're talking about. I have a modest (25 min or so) commute when I go into the (suburban/exurban) office an…

You don't have to go far from some of the mid-sized cities to get a relatively rural experience. I'm 7 miles (15 minutes) from Red Hat's building in Raleigh, and 1 mile from a corn field. My house is definitely suburban, not rural, and with the way growth in my town is going, that corn field will be gone in a few years, but there's plenty of rural land just a little further out.

Raleigh seems to be a hard market to penetrate, though. I have tried to get a job there but every application seems to go into a black hole.

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#76

Post by willholloway »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #15
toomanythings4 wrote: post #10

In 1992, a friend got a job in the valley and I visited him when I was out there visiting the HQ for my company. He asked me to go with him to check out a condo he was thinking of buying. Remember that these are 1992 prices. The two-bedroom place we looked at was just like one of my first apartments. When the agent said it was $250K, I almost fell on the floor. My wife and I had just bought our first house, which was…

And the difference is you're stuck living in a "nice middle class neighborhood" with a ton of space you probably don't need. For many people moving to cities the value of the area is worth many times the value of the space. I wouldn't trade my nyc studio for a McMansion back in bumfuck SC no matter how much you offered me; and I think there must be a large population that shares that sentiment.

There's a good chance that in x number of years the accumulated toll of the now near subliminal low grade stress of the city will reach a tipping point.

At the start the excitement and glamour masks the near subliminal, slow, consistent erosion of inner coherence that nyc produces in humans. But in time accumulated erosion will become evident.

Your insides will be knotted up and tightly coiled, and you won't even know it, because humans can get used to almost anything.

Your fellow denizens are experiencing it as well, and many cover and compound the feeling with excessive alcohol consumption, and status seeking.

One day a tipping point will be reached. But you will think to yourself, "but if I leave nyc, where will I go? Where else is there?"

The city is a parasitical mind virus that takes over your decision making, in order to extract rents from you.

But there is still a faint penumbra of humanity inside of you. And it will want out. But you will be scared. FOMO, and a feeling that outside the city you will be socially isolated.

Well I am here to tell you that cool small towns and cities are out there. They have enough smart and interesting people to easily fill up your Dunbar number limit.

You can only really know and relate to 150 humans, we don't need 7 million surrounding us, and online dating apps have changed the social scene in small towns and cities. There are plenty of young women (or men) around you, even in smaller towns with an older median age.

Your range will have to increase, but for that we have cars. In nyc it can easily take an hour and a half to travel five miles via public transit.

tldr; it's not binary between nyc and bumfuck suburbs, and even many small 'boring' towns have a lot more culture, singles, restaurants and bars than you would think, or at least more than I thought.

My feelings on moving back to a small town halfway between NYC and Boston as a still fairly young single are probably best expressed by the Grateful Dead in their song Shakedown Street:

"Don't tell me this town ain't got no heart. You just gotta poke around."

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#77

Post by cponeill »

jeffbush wrote: post #43

I had to chuckle a little that this mentions Grand Rapids. I grew up there and moved to Silicon Valley 18 years ago. I hated it there: brutal long winters (Google "lake effect"), hot humid summers, mosquitos, and a socially conservative monoculture. I definitely understand people's frustration with the real estate situation around here, but there's more to an area than just jobs and houses.

I also grew up in GR and moved to Seattle a little over 16 years ago. Reading the term "lake effect" cracked me up since it has been so long since I last heard it. Have you been back recently at all? Downtown has a bit more going on but wouldn't want to move back at all. Those winters are brutal.

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#78

Post by Bahamut »

amyjess wrote: post #66
Spooky23 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't spent lots of time in SV, but it pretty much felt like a newer, nicer northern NJ with great weather to when I've visited. Big sea of strip malls and suburbia.

Eh, I think that's more SoCal (LA/SD) than NorCal (SV). SoCal feels like a giant sprawling suburb with great weather, and NorCal is just cold, expensive, and full of hipsters. Like, there's a very large chance I'll end up moving to SoCal if I'm ever forced to leave Texas (which might actually happen next year), but I have no desire to live in NorCal even if you paid me seven figures.

Cold? I remember at least one of the past two winters, SV was warmer than Dallas. It rarely dips below freezing.

It does get cold outside of the Bay Area, but the Bay Area is one of those special areas of California for temperature (along with San Diego).

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#79

Post by dang »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #15
toomanythings4 wrote: post #10

In 1992, a friend got a job in the valley and I visited him when I was out there visiting the HQ for my company. He asked me to go with him to check out a condo he was thinking of buying. Remember that these are 1992 prices. The two-bedroom place we looked at was just like one of my first apartments. When the agent said it was $250K, I almost fell on the floor. My wife and I had just bought our first house, which was…

And the difference is you're stuck living in a "nice middle class neighborhood" with a ton of space you probably don't need. For many people moving to cities the value of the area is worth many times the value of the space. I wouldn't trade my nyc studio for a McMansion back in bumfuck SC no matter how much you offered me; and I think there must be a large population that shares that sentiment.

> bumfuck SC

Please don't drop slurs into HN comments. Your comment would be fine without that bit.

Re: The Case for Working in Silicon Valley and Living in the Rust Belt

#80

Post by ryandrake »

orware wrote: post #69
jphillipsio wrote: post #48

I live in Michigan and work for a company in SV. I love it in general but feel like it's pretty unlikely that I'd be able to find similar situation if I were to lose my job. It's not the best position to be in.

Exactly this. I live in Southern California, but not in San Diego or LA where the prevalence of some sort of other tech work might be somewhat possible. Instead I live in Imperial County (bottom right of California). Here, all of the decent paying IT work is in the County, State, Federal jobs available in the area, but this doesn't really represent Programming/Development work very well since those are even fewer amo…

These are great points. I'd move back to small-town Florida in a heart beat. Lower cost of living, no state income tax, 1/10th of my commute time, sun year round, more land/house/space--there is a lot to love! Too much 'opportunity risk', though. If I got a job at the town's single tech company, or even that unicorn remote job, what happens when I lose it? I'll tell you what happens: I have to uproot my family and move again. Too much of a risk. So I bite my lip and continue to live in the Bay Area (and the rat race that comes with it).
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