Google Plans Large New York City Expansion • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#171

Post by ghaff » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #124

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's now a small minority of a minority. It's more usual for just one partner to have the especially high powered career. Even more so after starting a family. For those that have both then sure, it's more nuanced and may come down to which of the two has the better future chances, or to make different decisions. Most potential workers will not be in that situation at all.

I don't know about that. The two most common spouse occupations, of people I knew at Google in NYC, were lawyer and some sort of financier. Often (more than a few of those I knew) the spouse made more money and Google was effectively daycare for the other. And in hotbeds like NYC, with the opportunities all over town, there's little career reason to go somewhere else. If Google left NYC, they'd lose most of their eng…

The draw of NYC is also at least somewhat unique. I went to grad school with a lot of NY natives. A lot of them really cannot imagine living anyplace else. What? You can't do X at 3am? Inconceivable.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#172

Post by TarpitCarnivore » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #49

latencyloser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I have the opposite opinion. I took a pay cut to leave Seattle ( I lived in Chicago before that, I've lived in dense metro areas for many, many years now) so I could go live in a smaller town. I can actually afford a house. My dog has a yard to play in. I haven't been mugged since I left! No one uses my doorstep as a bathroom. My neighbors actually come say hi to me and are invested in forming relationshi…

One thing to point out about the NYC metro area is that there is a ton of land surrounding it with reasonably priced homes in safe areas with less than a 45 minute commute by public transit, where in the Bay Area and Seattle, the waterways are far larger, and transportation options more restricted. Within huge portions of nearby suburbs, you can buy a sizable 3+ bedroom house for <400k in a town with a train stop and…

Reasonably priced homes within 45 minutes of NYC, via train, are definitely not a thing. You're also not even counting our absurd taxes in places like Morristown, Montlcair, Fair Lawn, etc.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#173

Post by claydavisss » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

cjhopman wrote: post #68

claydavisss wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will probably be retired for thirty years. Public employees are getting paid for those years, techies aren't. I have a relative who is retired CHP. $200k a year total retirement benefits. Show me a rank and file Googler who has that lined up. Typical techie trajectory will be maximum salary around age forty and then increasing irrelevance As I tell everyone in tech now - imagine 64. It's coming.

Very, very few retired CHP are getting $200k/year. The average CHP pension is The average Googler should be making 300-400k+/yr after 5 years. If that Googler is willing to live on a CHP salary for 30 years, it should be trivial to have saved well over $2.6million. They should, in fact, be able to save well over double that over 30yrs giving you the equivalent of that $200k a year in benefits.

bullshit that the "average" googler is making $400k after just five years, come on, thats just fantasy football.

remember Google employs people like HR and Accounts Receivable and lots of rank-and-file tech

there's really nothing more to do than come back here in twenty years and comment on what will be a flood of stories with titles like:

"Ask HN: was once a staff engineer at Google but since I turned fifty no one will hire me and all new jobs require fluent Mandarin. I'm running out of money, advice?"

The typical HN reader at this point hasn't even experienced a downturn.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#174

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #166

TulliusCicero wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them No they don't. Tax breaks aren't enough. One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. NYC is urbanist in a way that relatively few American cities are (and most of the other cities in this category are al…

You greatly over-estimate how much those things influences people's decisions. People move for jobs. SF is pretty much the poster child for a terrible place to live (transit clusterfuck, aggressive homeless, high rents, no hope of owning property for most, increasing crime) that people keep moving to for the economic opportunity (good jobs).

> SF is pretty much the poster child for a terrible place to live

That depends on what you value.

* SF's transit, while indeed bad, is still superior to all but a handful of other US cities.

* Similarly, SF is top tier for walkability and bikeability.

* SF has more cultural and ethnic diversity than most cities, especially since it's the principal city of a metro with a ton of immigration.

* SF has a LOT of interesting stuff that goes on (partially as a result of the previous point). Concerts and walks and other cultural events.

* Also as a result of the diversity, SF's food scene is really excellent.

* I'm not personally much of a fan, but a lot of people actually like SF's weather.

* SF is very left wing, and a lot of people in tech like that. Not everyone, but a lot of people.

The things you listed as problems largely are real problems of course, but there's a reason so many techies still choose to live in SF even if they work in Mountain View, and that's something your theory here doesn't explain: why not live in the closer, somewhat cheaper, and less crime/homeless-filled South Bay?

Your list of problems just reveals your own preferences: you prefer the advantages of the suburbs to the advantages of the city. Nothing wrong with that, but not everyone shares your preferences.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#175

Post by netheril96 » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

dblock wrote: post #169

New York, especially Manhattan and nice parts of Brooklyn also have a great public school system. It’s very, very big with dozens of schools. This is critical for any parent obviously. My kids go to PS11, which is excellent, just a few blocks from Google HQ (I don’t work at Goog) with some real diversity in the classroom, literally kids of all possible colors from around the world. Interestingly, none of the other pa…

> I wouldn’t mind if that number ... doubled.

Pardon me if I misunderstand, but isn't double "none" still none?

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#176

Post by apohn » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #128

ramraj07 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a tech worker in NYC and none of my firends (except one idiot) pays more than 2500 for their studio apartment within Manhattan. I share a super fancy apartment in a hirise in Brooklyn and pay less than 2K. If you're okay living in Queens you can get a 2BR with less than 1h commute. And this is not even talking about distant Brooklyn, Bronx or jersey (also less tax)

If you count the opportunity cost of the time, stress, and money you spend using NJTransit to commute into Manhattan, and especially if you’re commuting further into other boroughs, the tax savings of NJ turn into losses.

100% Agree. It's very easy to underestimate the additional pain of commuting from NJ (unless you are talking about Jersey City or Hoboken), especially if you own a home and are paying NJ property taxes.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#177

Post by claydavisss » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #140

claydavisss wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you think a firefighter pulls in AFTER retiring? Most public employees with pensions will probably pull in well over a million after they retire and before they die. Tech workers are still young as a group so pension envy is still not a thing....but will be Run the numbers...tech jobs in a tier 1 real estate market isn't that great of a deal. Most likely a nice rental and a slightly underfunded 401k And d…

Quality of life in a tech job and risk of injury is also far better than firefighter or cop.

firefighters work four days on, four days off, their quality of life is much higher than yours

chance of injury in firefighting is very low as structure fires become rare...

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#178

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

bsbechtel wrote: post #168

TulliusCicero wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them No they don't. Tax breaks aren't enough. One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. NYC is urbanist in a way that relatively few American cities are (and most of the other cities in this category are al…

Define economic winner....you mean top line income and area GDP? These places are the most expensive places in the country to live, and quality of living is considerably lower. Incomes may be lower in many areas of the country, but when you consider you can pay $2k/mo on a 5,000 sq ft mortgage instead of renting a 900 sq ft apartment, I don't view these places as economically successful as many perceive them to be.

Yes, I mean by having lots of high-paying jobs. Speaking in the abstract, that means economic success. You're not wrong that high cost of living can often cancel much of that out at the individual level though.

> quality of living is considerably lower.

See my other nearby comment for why this is a "it depends" thing. A lot of people would consider living in Kansas City to have lower "quality of life" than NYC even if it's less crowded and it's much easier to afford a house.

Your comment itself illustrates the disconnect here: we have one side arguing that the other side is wrong in what they want, ala

"Why don't more techies want to come here?? This is ridiculous!"

"Well, because they want to live in places with X Y Z even if they're expensive and crowded."

"Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)."

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#179

Post by ghaff » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

abalos wrote: post #157

TulliusCicero wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is one of the few companies with the resources to try to drastically improve the technology and fix this problem, but they instead decided just to double down on consolidating their staff in big offices. Obviously works for them but it’s a shame. I'm a googler, and this is completely wrong. Google absolutely wants to fix the remote work issue. Nearly every meeting room in the company is equipped with videoco…

Agreed. There's something fundamentally different about contacting someone via a video conference versus the organic nature of a quick chat about something. This puts remote workers behind quite a ways. My old team was partially located in NYC and partially located in the Bay Area. There was a major difference in inter and intra location interactions and it affected the team in some negative ways.

As a mostly remote worker, that's fair. Just yesterday, I happened to be in the office and bumped into someone and had a quick conversation about something that would otherwise have involved setting up meetings, etc.

Re: Google Plans Large New York City Expansion

#180

Post by apohn » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #49

latencyloser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I have the opposite opinion. I took a pay cut to leave Seattle ( I lived in Chicago before that, I've lived in dense metro areas for many, many years now) so I could go live in a smaller town. I can actually afford a house. My dog has a yard to play in. I haven't been mugged since I left! No one uses my doorstep as a bathroom. My neighbors actually come say hi to me and are invested in forming relationshi…

One thing to point out about the NYC metro area is that there is a ton of land surrounding it with reasonably priced homes in safe areas with less than a 45 minute commute by public transit, where in the Bay Area and Seattle, the waterways are far larger, and transportation options more restricted. Within huge portions of nearby suburbs, you can buy a sizable 3+ bedroom house for <400k in a town with a train stop and…

>Within huge portions of nearby suburbs, you can buy a sizable 3+ bedroom house for Not to be a ass, but where? And please don't just point out a home with no pictures you just found on Zillow, but a place where you've actually been to which has decent property taxes, decent schools, and is safe? And actually a 45 minute commute, not 45 minutes if you ignore the 20+ minutes it takes to drive your car from home to a train station and pay $50+/month to park for a reserved spot.

I ask this because I used to live in a NYC area highrise and always used to think over the about the seemingly fantastic deals in the suburbs. Then I started looking and realized real-estate websites and Google Maps commuting are a far cry from reality.