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A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#91

Post by Karrot_Kream »

eldavido wrote: post #79
tehlike wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is probably super inflated salaries in bay area due to high cost of living. Lock in has probably less to do with this than pure money aspect.

I think there's a collective realization happening in the Bay Area that the landlords are the real winners and everyone else is just playing their game. Employees hate seeing 3k/month fly out the door in rent just as much as CEOs hate paying it, just as much as investors hate seeing their capital ultimately end up with landlords. Big companies in general are conservative. They've made it and don't want to take unnece…

I never realized it until you wrote it down explicitly, but you're right. Landlords laugh all the way to the bank, while the rest of the economy pays their tax. Amazing.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#92

Post by sidlls »

alexbanks wrote: post #13
s73ver_ wrote: post #11

Ok, so I "delocate". Do I then have to take a pay cut because I'm now somewhere else? Spreading the tech sector out around the country even more is great, and things like this can be a step in the right direction. But a big part of why the Bay Area is what it is has to do with funding. Most VCs are there, and don't seem to be willing to move away. Hell, YC requires you to be there, at least during your time with them…

> And the concentration of tech talent means that it's always easy to find a new job, or even to start your own company. I've never been there, but I see this echoed a lot. Is it actually true? I'm interested in both, but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy".

Easy is relative. I have my linked in profile as private as I can make it, and I still get 1-2 recruiters messaging me every week. When I lived outside the Bay I might have got 10 or so over the course of a year.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#93

Post by ryandrake »

luckydata wrote: post #75
alexbanks wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the concentration of tech talent means that it's always easy to find a new job, or even to start your own company. I've never been there, but I see this echoed a lot. Is it actually true? I'm interested in both, but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy".

yeah, it's very true. If you're not happy somewhere you can walk out without a backup plan and have a job in a couple weeks if you're picky.

Maybe you can get a job in a couple of weeks if you're not picky, but if you actually don't want one of the many "dog" jobs in tech, you're going to be searching for much longer than that. I think this idea that great tech jobs are growing on trees out here is largely a myth.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#94

Post by derping69 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #21
dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denver is even better—competitive wages w/ washington & lower cost of living.

There's a fire-hose of Californians directed at CO. In a decade or two they will have recreated the place they left.

"The place we were at sucked so bad we had to leave, so let's move somewhere nice and make it just like it"

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#95

Post by ryandrake »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #91
eldavido wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a collective realization happening in the Bay Area that the landlords are the real winners and everyone else is just playing their game. Employees hate seeing 3k/month fly out the door in rent just as much as CEOs hate paying it, just as much as investors hate seeing their capital ultimately end up with landlords. Big companies in general are conservative. They've made it and don't want to take unnece…

I never realized it until you wrote it down explicitly, but you're right. Landlords laugh all the way to the bank, while the rest of the economy pays their tax. Amazing.

Silicon Valley can be thought of as a gigantic wealth transfer machine from rich investors to rich landlords.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#96

Post by jtmarmon »

sidlls wrote: post #89
mychael wrote: post #86

Pros/Cons of living in the Bay Area for most tech workers: Pros - Proudly displaying "San Francisco" in your Twitter bio. - An abundance of career opportunities. Cons - Making six figures, but still living with roommates. - Commuting to work in awful public transportation. - Becoming desensitized to poverty and fecal matter on the streets. - Feeling unwelcome by locals. - Not being able to afford to live in a cool pa…

You forgot at least two pros: - Large salaries lead to higher savings rates - Opportunities are just not comparable almost anywhere less expensive: there are tens of thousands of jobs from hundreds of employers here in the Bay Area for technology that pays well, compared with hundreds or maybe a few thousand jobs for maybe a dozen or few tens of employers Also the "monoculture" dig applies to tech specifically: in te…

> - Large salaries lead to higher savings rates

not in san fransisco https://www.mytrove.com/ca/san-francisco/cheddar/software-ap...

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#97

Post by dmode »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #21
dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denver is even better—competitive wages w/ washington & lower cost of living.

There's a fire-hose of Californians directed at CO. In a decade or two they will have recreated the place they left.

Weird thing all those Californians are from somewhere else also

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#98

Post by lochlan »

rifung wrote: post #38
phamilton wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10k is usually the signing bonus I get for just changing companies. Is this in addition to the signing bonus?

Yes it is separate. At Amazon the signing bonus you owe if you leave within one year but the relocation bonus you owe if you leave within two; both are prorated

My understanding is that you no longer have to pay back the signing bonus. Not sure about relocation bonuses.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#99

Post by ProAm »

aphextron wrote: post #88
alexbanks wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the concentration of tech talent means that it's always easy to find a new job, or even to start your own company. I've never been there, but I see this echoed a lot. Is it actually true? I'm interested in both, but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy".

>but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy". It really is. It's why I cant bring myself to leave this place even with all it's warts. Knowing that you can just screw off and do whatever you want for a year then have a dozen interviews lined up for six figure jobs with nothing more than a few emails is really empowering, actually. I can't imagine the anxiety of living somewhere else and being dependent o…

> I can't imagine the anxiety of living somewhere else and being dependent on a single good job no matter what the relocation bonus is.

"if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you"

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#100

Post by robotresearcher »

derping69 wrote: post #94
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fire-hose of Californians directed at CO. In a decade or two they will have recreated the place they left.

"The place we were at sucked so bad we had to leave, so let's move somewhere nice and make it just like it"

The history of the world.
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