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

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

#151

Post by tlow » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:30 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #117

pkaye wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Generalize your argument and reply please. Many things require skill, maybe initial capital and upfront investment is the OPs point. OP claims to pay "2k/mo" to get people to quit their jobs and focus on learning X, where X is programming.

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

#152

Post by AWS_IAM_AMA » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

kokokokoko wrote: post #149

CydeWeys wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't make up fake stats. I live in Manhattan and the idea that a full third of the real estate here is empty is laughable. Have you ever visited?? As my sibling comment points out, the real rate (as determined by actual data) is less than 5%.

I think you might be confusing rental property that is unrented vs property that is not in the market but not physically occupied. "about 30 percent of the more than 5,000 apartments are routinely vacant for more than 10 months a year" [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/nyregion/more-apartments-...

I'm sure the parent commenter meant to use "please" in that manner, as the stats are being used in a deliberately misleading manner.

Even your source shows it... that's 30 percent of a small (presumably affluent) section of the city, not of the whole city. There are some 2.5 million apartments in the city, and this is talking about just 5k.

There are other sources that cite the actual percentage as 11% [1]. That's still high, unfair to residents, and worth discussing, but you can't win arguments by putting up fake stats.

[1] https://www.6sqft.com/nearly-250000-nyc-rental-apartments-si...

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

#153

Post by gpm » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

davidgay wrote: post #144

gpm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefighters - fire retardant buildings, sprinklers? Anecdotally I've heard that we need a lot less fire fighting these days because fires don't spread the same way anymore. I would be interested in seeing real data though. Caretakers - all those robotic vacuums that are starting to become ubiquitous. Certainly not a total replacement but it lowers demand for humans. But you don't need to automate a job to depress it…

> Anecdotally I've heard that we need a lot less fire fighting these days because fires don't spread the same way anymore. Hmm. In California? No. [Ok, the bit about "spread[ing] the same way" may be relevant, but not in the implied direction. And yes, the need for large numbers of firefighters in an emergency undoubtably makes planning/costs tricky.]

I assume you are referencing the forest fires? As I understand it city fire fighters are a rather different profession.

(But no, no one involved in that discussion was from California)

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

#154

Post by draw_down » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:34 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #28

Isn’t it ironic that the rates of poverty are increasing in possibly the wealthiest region in the world?

[dead]

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

#155

Post by pm90 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:41 AM UTC

dublidu wrote: post #93

CydeWeys wrote: post #46

I have when the news writes an entire article around a single report, but then fails to link to that report. You had one job ... Anyway, here's the report in question: http://www.everettprogram.org/main/wp-content/uploads/TIGHTR... Reading the fine details of the report, you see that the top-line metric is real income, adjusted for inflation and local cost of living. And the #1 factor that's proved ruinous to local c…

If only we could aloe property assessments to increase with a local cost of living index, we would at least have enough property tax revenue to pay teachers.

I think we should be careful with this. Currently, because of the frozen property tax law, many houses worth millions pay very little in property taxes; if they did have to pay taxes on the millions of dollars their property is worth, they would have had to sell their houses ages ago. This would have likely created a downward pressure on the prices; making it unlikely that the home prices would reach the levels they are now.

All of which to say that assessing the property tax on the current market value of all those properties isn't an accurate number; there is no way there are so many people making that much money living in California.

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

#156

Post by root_axis » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

jldugger wrote: post #139

kokokokoko wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a study which I cannot locate right now which discussed that one of the substantial impacts of a Walmart moving into a town was that all the "community leadership" type jobs left. Things like accountants and office admins and other business professionals. This was because the small businesses Walmart replaced were the ones that used these services locally. Walmart did these things at it's corporate office f…

It's not wrong, a LOT of tech companies have opened up support offices in Texas. The inexplicable thing is why engineering stays in SV.

That's like asking why banking stays on Wallstreet. It's because that's where the biggest and most influential firms are headquartered.

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

#157

Post by cutler » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

This is the real truth about the tech boom - how it impacts society as a whole and who benefits. A nation's progress is measured by the standard of living of the average citizen, not the elite. By that yardstick the so-called advanced nations such as the UK and USA, with their spiralling housing costs, are moving backwards not forwards.

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

#158

Post by cutler » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:54 AM UTC

space_fountain wrote: post #58

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…

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…

Exactly. Programming is not for everyone. Probably not for even half of the population so if we fail to diversify our economies and pour all our resources into tech it's going to be a very sad world where the other half of the population are good for nothing. A world fuelled by tech at the expense of everything else is not a world I want to live in.

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

#159

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:00 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #146

tropdrop wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> However, San Francisco is currently experiencing a teacher shortage of several years [1], so that vice versa I mentioned above is simply not true. SF only has a shortage of teachers at the currently offered pay levels . If tech jobs paid the same as teaching, there'd be a "shortage" of tech workers too.

Experienced teachers in some districts make 6 figures in the Bay Area.

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

#160

Post by cutler » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:01 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…

All the legislation and public spending won't make a jot of difference to the state of the housing market whilst one assumption goes unchallenged - that it's ok for one class to "make money" out of speculative property investments whilst the rest of society has to spend most of it's meagre income on extortionate rents. Serious regulation of the housing market is the only way forward.