Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#111

Post by village-idiot » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

throwawaythekey wrote: post #71

grandmczeb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the article points out, the huge influx of capital in the area is being returned only to the tech sector, who merrily spend it and drive up the cost of living. Most of the cost of living increase is due to bone-headed housing polices happily voted in by existing residents, the vast majority of which do not work in tech. I personally find it very sad that we've prioritized rewarding a tiny, vocal minority at the…

Are the policies bone headed? I'm not American so may not have this perfectly right but the Detroit of the past seems to be a good analogue to SV. Lots of well paid jobs in a single industry. When the eventual downturn occurs you don't want to be left with a ghost town.

CA voted in an effective freeze to property taxes back in the 1970s, with property tax increases being capped at 1% per year and the rate being transferable to your children. This has created a landed aristocracy in CA cities of those paying well less than the normal rate in taxes, badly distorting the market and local economies (no property tax, no services), resulting in lots of silly policy choices.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#112

Post by humanrebar » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:36 AM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #53

Silicon Valley has a multi-fold problem. 1. Housing is expensive because of the influx of people immigrating to the state from out of state and also out of country. (I'm one of them.) This causes a housing shortage which will naturally drive up price of housing. 2. The housing prices don't come down because California in general has very restrictive zoning laws, especially in the most expensive areas, that prevent bu…

> ...giving a path to legal immigration for illegal immigrants would help things.

I would rather consider paying anyone below minimum wage a form of wage theft and prosecutable as a criminal offense. Dunno why embezzlement is a felony but breaking the law to underpay people is just grounds for a lawsuit.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#113

Post by MaybiusStrip » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

yjhoney wrote: post #94

0xffff2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but isn't it orthogonal to the topic at hand? We need non-tech jobs in Silicon Valley as much as anywhere else. Even if we could get every single person in the bay area a job as a software developer of some kind, we would be left in a barren wasteland of office buildings with no services. The solution clearly has to be to somehow make living here viable regardless of how you're employed.

If there were fewer people interesting in taking up non-tech jobs, then supply/demand would drive up wages for non-tech jobs. So before we get to "barren wasteland of office buildings with no services", there would be a happy medium where service industries would be high paying.

Supply/demand is not the only thing driving the difference between the salaries of a middle-school teacher and a Google software engineer.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#114

Post by jimmy1 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:41 AM UTC

sk5t wrote: post #104

jimmy1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be anecdotal, but hooo weee, if you are a good electrician right now, you can essentially name your price. Companies will pay it because they aren't willing to take the risk of having it done wrong. Family knows a couple career electricians -- company is paying for them to come out of retirement, paying $50-55 an hour, AND letting them keep their retirement benefits.

I would have expected "name your price" electrician work to be more in the $100-120/hr range in a high-CoL area.

You are right -- I live in a low CoL area. 55 dollars an hour is astronomical. I would expect it to be double as well.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#115

Post by praxulus » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:49 AM UTC

throwawaythekey wrote: post #71

grandmczeb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the article points out, the huge influx of capital in the area is being returned only to the tech sector, who merrily spend it and drive up the cost of living. Most of the cost of living increase is due to bone-headed housing polices happily voted in by existing residents, the vast majority of which do not work in tech. I personally find it very sad that we've prioritized rewarding a tiny, vocal minority at the…

Are the policies bone headed? I'm not American so may not have this perfectly right but the Detroit of the past seems to be a good analogue to SV. Lots of well paid jobs in a single industry. When the eventual downturn occurs you don't want to be left with a ghost town.

Detroit enjoyed ~3 generations of prosperity before declining. It would be silly to deny the opportunities provided by the tech industry and the wealth it generates to millions of people just because the area might eventually decline.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#116

Post by yjhoney » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

Scipio_Afri wrote: post #109

space_fountain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thanks for what you're doing. I think it's definitely part of the solution. My worry though is that I don't think everyone is equipped to be a programer. The thing I keep coming back to is my younger brother. He's got mental disabilities which mean he can't read or do math at more than a very basic level (first grade maybe) and for what ever it's worth he also scored pretty low on IQ tests. Despite a bit of a f…

Replying so that the other person pleading for skepticism in this thread, and myself, can be seen near the top. This non-profit is not vetted, has a very basic website, has no proof of the students, this persons account is 24 days old. Please be mindful that while this all sounds like a great idea and I hope it really exists, this also could be a scam as there is no evidence or any 3rd party that this is a real nonpr…

Thanks for reminding people be aware. Fundraising wasn't the point of my original comment, so I took out the donation link. My focus primarily has been to teach students, so I haven't had time to update any of the social media or the landing page.

I lost the pw to my original account on HN, but here's my username: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=songzme

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#117

Post by chrisseaton » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #86

space_fountain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thanks for what you're doing. I think it's definitely part of the solution. My worry though is that I don't think everyone is equipped to be a programer. The thing I keep coming back to is my younger brother. He's got mental disabilities which mean he can't read or do math at more than a very basic level (first grade maybe) and for what ever it's worth he also scored pretty low on IQ tests. Despite a bit of a f…

I think gardening is a pretty lucrative business right now in the bay area. Atleast by the rates that many are asking. And I've seen many of my neighbors asking each other if they know of any reliable services. All one needs to be is reliable, communicate well and do a decent job.

But gardening is a skilled job requiring a couple of years or more apprenticeship to learn - not much easier than going into tech.

Hence being lucrative.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#118

Post by tropdrop » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

yjhoney wrote: post #34

I started a nonprofit 2 years ago (garagescript.org) that hires low income people in San Jose and their full time job is to learn how to code and teach new students. Our nonprofit started off with 20 students, most were making about 25k/year and had no coding experience. I paid each of them 2k / month to quit their jobs and focus on coding full time. From the original 20 students, 6 are left. The other 14 are all ful…

From article -

> low and middle income jobs, such as teachers and firefighters or nannies and cooks, are key to the local economy.

Someone else commented in this thread how all these jobs (meaning every non-tech, middle-class job) will begin to pay more once they're more in demand. The assumption is that programming/tech is highly paid because it's so in demand, and every other job isn't because vice versa.

Let's just take one job that is critical for a local economy - teachers. Some might mention that because of online learning places like Udemy, teachers for middle or high school education could be gotten rid of without too much harm. Even if you think that's true, consider children ages 0-12. Those children, undoubtedly, still need teachers/daycare of some kind. They're simply too young and at this point most adults prefer not to deal with kids, pursuing their careers instead (this is good! More brains in the knowledge economy helps spur innovation).

However, San Francisco is currently experiencing a teacher shortage of several years [1], so that vice versa I mentioned above is simply not true. The city is offering cash bonuses for teachers now, and it introduced some legislature to attempt to incrementally increase their wage, but it's not enough. Fewer people are entering the profession, knowing they need more than a cash bonus but a continually valued job that gets them consistent revenue to be able to afford to buy a house here. Even those that might have been attracted to teaching, they figure - well, I need more money to live than what being a teacher pays. That's simply an unacceptable standard of living for me and my future children.

So yes, those potential teachers can instead come to your non-profit and those individuals will be able to afford to live, fairly comfortably, as full-stack engineers.

But the community as a whole will have an even more drastic lack of teachers. While non-profits like yours help a few individuals, it is certainly not the panacea HN purports it to be.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/SF-offers-rare...

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#119

Post by malandrew » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #81

deanmoriarty wrote: post #74

How about: 1) Introducing a much higher tax rate for rental property income. 2) Making property taxes be reassessed every single year unless your AGI is lower than average and you are a resident. 3) Introducing a much (much!) higher tax for non-residents/foreign investors who buy a house purely for investment, and sometimes they don't even rent it out (I know a few rich folks from FAANG who bought a handful of houses…

I've had a hard time explaining point 3) to people in other parts of the US, but its a huge and very real problem in the Bay area. Someone should do a "lights out" analysis in the Bay, where you count the number of homes that don't turn their lights on at night for 30 days.

Software engineers can trivially solve this.

Re: Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs

#120

Post by yjhoney » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:24 AM UTC

tropdrop wrote: post #118

yjhoney wrote: post #34

I started a nonprofit 2 years ago (garagescript.org) that hires low income people in San Jose and their full time job is to learn how to code and teach new students. Our nonprofit started off with 20 students, most were making about 25k/year and had no coding experience. I paid each of them 2k / month to quit their jobs and focus on coding full time. From the original 20 students, 6 are left. The other 14 are all ful…

From article - > low and middle income jobs, such as teachers and firefighters or nannies and cooks, are key to the local economy. Someone else commented in this thread how all these jobs (meaning every non-tech, middle-class job) will begin to pay more once they're more in demand. The assumption is that programming/tech is highly paid because it's so in demand, and every other job isn't because vice versa. Let's jus…

If teachers makes 100k / year and good ones make 200k / year, there would be alot of people going into teaching. Personally, I don't think that teachers should be making less than an entry level software engineer.

I'm also not advocating everyone learn to become a software engineer. I think its unfair for people to become stuck in their low income jobs because of financial responsibilities. The goal of my nonprofit is really to help unstuck as many of them as I can.