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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

#181

Post by roguecoder »

dyim wrote: post #129
aaron-lebo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a dev working for the summer who got a job at an SF startup this past week. He's making $2k a week, but his rent for his apartment costs $3k and he's got roommates. As someone who has lived off of $40k and rented a $1.4k a month loft that was absolutely palatial, in the middle of the city with great views, this sounds like insanity. My coworker who is from the Boston area was similarly aghast at the difference…

FYI, you don't need to pay $3k - I lived in the Mission / Potrero Hill area (with roommates, mind you) for a few years, and my rent had always been between $1000-1850/mo. Centrally located, safe(-ish), and beautiful. You can run through Bernal Heights Park, get ice cream at Humphrey Slocombe, and bike to the 24 Hour Fitness on 16th and Potrero. If you're in tech, you can definitely live well in SF :)

My rent in Boston was $600 a month with roommates in an amazing renovated 2,600 sq ft apartment. A cheap vegetarian lunch was $5 instead of $10. My groceries were cheaper, there weren't homeless folks everywhere and salaries are about the same. In Boston I was rich; here, I watch what I spend and clean my own house. Too bad the jobs there were brutally boring.

The inability of this area to build sufficient housing has a significant, material impact on our quality of life.

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

#182

Post by vonmoltke »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #101
WalterSear wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And interview, how? And find it, how? Who will recommend them? You're asking why they don't just eat cake. These things aren't impossible, just so much harder that my friends (One in Idaho, one in Kansas) haven't been able to manage it, and not for lack of trying. It has been hard to watch them floundering and begging for help I don't have to give.

> And interview, how? And find it, how? Who will recommend them? I got a job in New York, while living in Dallas. Interview: by flying in on an airplane, staying in a cheap hotel, and lining up a few interviews a day for a few days. Finding it: There's not a shortage of job sites, or recruiters breaking down your inbox. Recommendations: your former coworkers and friends won't assume you get lead poisoning in the rust…

I just recently moved from Dallas to New York, and it was only after years of frustration and being ignored by almost everyone outside of Texas not named Amazon (and most companies in Texas that weren't in Dallas). I didn't have recruiters breaking down my inbox. My submissions on job sites seemed to be going in to black holes. If I got multiple interviews in a month I considered myself lucky. I didn't have any former co-workers outside of DFW to call on, and very few inside it.

I'm willing to accept that I'm unusual, but people in this thread are making it sound like I'm a unicorn. I think this industry has serious geographic myopia, and that it is one of the reasons the "talent shortage" is more severe than it needs to be.

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

#183

Post by danans »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #67
jpao79 wrote: post #42

He (and Sam Altman for all YC companies) should have the startup(s) all de-locate to the same town that's within driving distance of the Silicon Valley. I bet you could convince a lot of tech people to move to Santa Cruz or Monterey. You could also recruit from UC Santa Cruz and Cal Poly. Both downtown Santa Cruz and downtown Monterey feel pretty small town urban-y. Plus the Silicon Valley VC's can play golf at Pebbl…

I lived in Menlo Park for 8 years with my family. When I moved there the startup I went to work for was a 5 minute walk from my house. My current startup is also in Menlo. A year ago my wife and wanted a larger place. We looked in Menlo and PA. $3M for a teardown / needs tons of work. After thinking about it we started to look outside of the area. School district was a key factor of course. We ending up going as far…

> I agree there is something unique about being able to have everyone around you in the same line of business (tech) and it is great for making contacts, etc. However the cost are really starting to outweigh the benefits.

There is also a cost to having everyone around you in the same line of business, both in terms of correlated economic risk, and also in terms of loss of perspective.

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

#184

Post by sidlls »

chrissnell wrote: post #143

As someone who works remotely and who posts remote-friendly openings for his team in the Who's Hiring HN thread, it's kind of amazing to me that more people aren't actively looking to get out. I live and work in a small midwestern town because my wife's military job has us here. If I was single, however, I would make the most of my remoteness and try working from a variety of towns. Here's some places that I would tr…

If you paid Bay Area wages and offered something more than at-will style job security you'd probably see more people wanting to get out.

For me I've yet to see a remote position that wasn't fraught with the same risk as any other company, or that pays anything like a reasonable salary.

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

#185

Post by jpao79 »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #161
jpao79 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been meaning to checkout Morgan Hill. I hear downtown Morgan Hill is pretty happening these days. I also noticed that there is a self-driving car company down there: http://velodynelidar.com Are there any other interesting tech companies down there? Nice thing is that if you live near downtown you could take the Caltrain up to downtown MTV or PA.

Morgan Hill / Gilroy area is fantastic - small town feel, slower pace of life, diverse population, significant rural element, growing dining/entertainment options. Housing is certainly less expensive than the peninsula but by no means cheap compared to the rest of the state/country. I would still plan on spending $1 million plus but you will get a big new single family home instead of a 50 year old 1200 sf beater. Th…

Downtown San Jose's re-development would be pretty big for Morgan Hill.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/14/real-estate-a-develope...

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Googles-Property-Buying...

Looks to be about 35 minutes to downtown San Jose via Caltrain. That's do-able. The younger employees could live downtown in San Jose and the employees with kids could live in Morgan Hill.

If YCombinator (and Zapier) were to move from Mountain View to Downtown San Jose that'd be a huge symbolic move for San Jose.

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

#186

Post by danans »

svachalek wrote: post #110
jtmarmon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Large salaries lead to higher savings rates not in san fransisco https://www.mytrove.com/ca/san-francisco/cheddar/software-ap...

Commute a little: https://www.mytrove.com/ca/santa-clara-county/cheddar/softwa...

And if you are simultaneously looking to maximize hipness:

https://www.mytrove.com/ca/oakland/cheddar/software-applicat...

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

#188

Post by pilom »

dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #139
MadManE wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing competitive about the wages in Denver when you're comparing to CA. Cost of living is lower than SV, but still one of the highest in the country.

Have any numbers you'd care to furnish? Cost of living may be one of the highest, but you can easily get a 2 bedroom or a house in the burbs for $1500. It's quite easy to allocated less than a third of your take home to rent, unlike SV, Seattle, NYC, Boston, etc.

I agree with you, here are some numbers to back up Denver is great COL vs salary wise. I work remotely as a mid-level DevOps guy for about $115k and no equity. I bought a 3 br house with a yard next to a light rail station 10 min drive 20 min train ride to downtown. I bought during the recession for ~220k ($350k ish now) but rent in our neighborhood for a similar house would be $1800 total. If I were moving here today and renting, we'd rent a 1 br apartment nearby for about $1100.

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

#189

Post by ryanwaggoner »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #147
ringaroundthetx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on how that specific fraud and corruption would work? Many states and some entire countries simply don't fund themselves by stealing from people's paycheck, but usually passively tax other kinds of transactions. There are lots of opportunities using combinations of the 50 states, territories and non-US jurisdictions.

Tax isn't stealing, that is a rather silly argument.

They aren't necessarily, but they certainly can be.

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

#190

Post by chrissnell »

sidlls wrote: post #184
chrissnell wrote: post #143

As someone who works remotely and who posts remote-friendly openings for his team in the Who's Hiring HN thread, it's kind of amazing to me that more people aren't actively looking to get out. I live and work in a small midwestern town because my wife's military job has us here. If I was single, however, I would make the most of my remoteness and try working from a variety of towns. Here's some places that I would tr…

If you paid Bay Area wages and offered something more than at-will style job security you'd probably see more people wanting to get out. For me I've yet to see a remote position that wasn't fraught with the same risk as any other company, or that pays anything like a reasonable salary.

I can't speak for other companies but we make salary offers based on the candidate's experience and role, not their location.

However, the job security is an interesting point. I suspect that Zapier gains huge leverage over it's relocated employees because they're now dependent on their Zapier job, another hard-to-find remote gig elsewhere, or funding their own move back to a tech hub. I don't know what Zapier's pay bands are like but I'll bet their employee churn is lower than industry average.

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