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Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

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Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#481

Post by jasonjei »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #107
maqr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's all keep believing that. If companies realized that all programmers can actually work decentralized, we might not be able to command a decent salary as it becomes a global race to the bottom...

As a developer, I've specifically pushed to maintain a co-located team, precisely because the type of work my team does works far better when co-located. I do decentralized development regularly, and for some kinds of work it works fine. For other kinds of work, it makes simple tasks take an order of magnitude longer.

As far as I know, kernel.org does most of their work decentralized. Is XNU (Darwin) a significantly better kernel? I have doubts about that claim.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#482

Post by [deleted] »

lostcolony wrote: post #57
mcpherrinm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to work with my team in person. That has nothing to do "making sure they're working". It's just easier, for me, and presumably many others, to be able to collaborate in person. Maybe there's a future where seamless video conferencing, Beam robots, and better text communication could replace in-person conversation, coffee and lunch chats, and other office-place experiences. I've tried, and I don't think we're t…

But that provides a better incentive for remote teams. I agree that teams work better in person, but when you have separate teams, working on only tangentially related things, it makes sense to separate them out. Obviously for small startups this doesn't make sense. But mid to late stage, opening a satellite office for development somewhere else seems like a no brainer. I assume I'm missing something though.

[deleted]

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#483

Post by [deleted] »

mcpherrinm wrote: post #45
jasonjei wrote: post #31

I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. Wouldn't it make sense for people to work anywhere? Haven't Bay Area companies heard of something called the Internet? If you have to have people in the office to make sure they're working, you already have a fundamental hiring problem.

I want to work with my team in person. That has nothing to do "making sure they're working". It's just easier, for me, and presumably many others, to be able to collaborate in person. Maybe there's a future where seamless video conferencing, Beam robots, and better text communication could replace in-person conversation, coffee and lunch chats, and other office-place experiences. I've tried, and I don't think we're t…

[deleted]

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#484

Post by jasonjei »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #35
jasonjei wrote: post #31

I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. Wouldn't it make sense for people to work anywhere? Haven't Bay Area companies heard of something called the Internet? If you have to have people in the office to make sure they're working, you already have a fundamental hiring problem.

> I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. For many types of problems, collaborating in person works far better than collaborating online. Lower friction, easier to have a conversation, easier to sit around a computer and experiment, and generally easier to handle things in a few minutes that would take longer otherwise.

Really? Debugging a kernel is hard yet the people building Linux are located all over the world. You don't really have the option to "screen share" when testing some kernel features, yet Linux is one of the best kernels in the world.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#485

Post by JoshTriplett »

jasonjei wrote: post #481
JoshTriplett wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, I've specifically pushed to maintain a co-located team, precisely because the type of work my team does works far better when co-located. I do decentralized development regularly, and for some kinds of work it works fine. For other kinds of work, it makes simple tasks take an order of magnitude longer.

As far as I know, kernel.org does most of their work decentralized. Is XNU (Darwin) a significantly better kernel? I have doubts about that claim.

The Linux kernel does distributed development quite successfully, and scales extremely well. However, it does so partly by sacrificing some forms of coordination between developers; for instance, kernel maintainers don't consider duplicated effort to solve the same issue a problem, because the overall process still scales even if some individual developers end up wasting their time.

On the other hand, the development of any one individual patch series to implement one feature typically occurs either by one developer, or by a set of co-located developers in one organization, not by geographically distributed developers. And some other kinds of work, such as backporting or rebasing a series of patches, doesn't work well when geographically distributed.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#486

Post by JoshTriplett »

jasonjei wrote: post #484
JoshTriplett wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. For many types of problems, collaborating in person works far better than collaborating online. Lower friction, easier to have a conversation, easier to sit around a computer and experiment, and generally easier to handle things in a few minutes that would take longer otherwise.

Really? Debugging a kernel is hard yet the people building Linux are located all over the world. You don't really have the option to "screen share" when testing some kernel features, yet Linux is one of the best kernels in the world.

See my other reply in this thread on that point.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#487

Post by vram22 »

heneryville wrote: post #370
mooreds wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point! And if you are into oil/gas, Houston. Marijuana, Colorado or Washington. Cars, Detroit (maybe?). Commodities, Chicago. Ag, Kansas City (maybe?). Outdoor experiences, SLC. Building something for Latin America, Miami. Ets, etc. I imagine there are many other cities that dominate in niches that I'm missing.

For the ignorant, what's AG? Google isn't helping.

Someone should tell Google (hey googlers on here) to add that case to the search engine's special cases, as in: "Did you mean agriculture or (the chemical symbol for) silver [1] or ..." :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#488

Post by vram22 »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #226
josh_carterPDX wrote: post #143

As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, but moved to Portland about three years ago, I can tell you there is a stark difference in ecosystems. However, if you are a young up-and-coming programmer coming out of school, it makes complete sense to move to the Bay Area. If you're an Actor you move to L.A. to get your big break. If you're a programmer, you go to the Bay Area to work for a big firm that will help build you…

>go to Bay Area to a big firm to build your reputation Doesn't make sense. The big 4 have campuses across the country. Instead of telling people to move to SV I would recommend making sure to get into the right (big 4 or not) team and role for your career. Just fixing bugs at big SV company will not help much. You want to make sure you have a chance to contribute something to show your skills on an innovative or lead…

>Just fixing bugs at big SV company

They're called "incidents" at some (enterprise software) bigcos, BTW :) - and tend to be called "defects" in software services companies using software engineering standards like ISO 9000 or SEI CMM.

Juniors or freshers tend to get assigned those for a while. Nothing wrong per se, it helps them learn the codebase, and in some bigcos, the codebases can be pretty big. The same practice is followed in some smallcos too.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#489

Post by geoelectric »

chrisper wrote: post #378
minwcnt5 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what exactly you're looking at, because from my perspective "everyone" is an insane exaggeration on your part. I know countless people who run, cycle, ski, mountain bike, play soccer, go backpacking, play board games, travel, partake in live music, and so on and so forth. Sure there are disproportionately more workaholics in the area. There are also disproportionately fewer people who work 9-5 then go ho…

Well, everyone around me pretty much determines what is available to me. No one is going to build a zoo in San Jose if no one is coming. San Jose does not even have something like University Ave in Palo Alto. SJ Downtown is horrible and certainly not a place I'd like to go to have fun. What I am saying is, that compared to other cities such as LA or San Diego, San Jose is dead. Nothing besides working is happening. C…

Santana Row or Lincoln in Willow Glen would be the analog to University Ave. Both are pretty nice to hang out in.

Campbell also has a nice downtown; while it's not San Jose, it's surrounded by San Jose and is basically the same metro and is VTA-accessible. There's also Saratoga and Los Gatos, but those are further out.

Downtown, I'll grant you, though. San Pedro Square can be OK, and the area nearer the University has some quirky stuff, but it has a ways to go. It's gotten somewhat better over the years, though, and I think BART coming to the area may accelerate that a bit since it can actually be a destination.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#490

Post by bradlys »

eitally wrote: post #168
bradlys wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I live here. I have an average salary for my experience. I can barely save $20k/yr. My rent+util is about $2000/month. I live in a very /cheap/ 1-bedroom with creaky carpet floors, no insulation, and near train tracks that's far outside SF. (Belmont) Altogether I spend close to $4000/month if I don't do anything special. /Everything/ is more expensive in this region. Food is expensive for no apparent reason ot…

Cook your own food, shop at cheaper places. Big fan of http://www.imperfectproduce.com/ You don't have to spend $6/lb of butter, but if you buy it at Whole Foods (or similar), you do.

I'm quoting Safeway prices...
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