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

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

#221

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #97

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…

My guess is that while your anecdote may infuriate you, the effect of investors who don’t rent out their homes is negligible on housing prices. The real fix is to build enough housing for everyone. Eliminating prop 13 could help with this, since it would cause homeowners to be penalized for high home values, building political will to build more housing and bring down the prices.

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by pm90 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

slededit wrote: post #177

pm90 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Given the scale the only sane way to unwind it is to grandfather all sales before a certain date. Otherwise you’ll have masses of people forced out of their properties and chaos.

I mean, there are many solutions to this which aren't an immediate hike in property taxes which would cause much market disruption. But its important to acknowledge that the California Housing market is indeed a market distortion on an Epic Scale. There is just no way that everyone can get the prices they're asking for. And this is perhaps the major reason why I won't personally invest in the CA housing market even though I love the state otherwise.

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

#223

Post by Johnny555 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 8:39 PM UTC

masonic wrote: post #186

Johnny555 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most communities do have an elected city council that's supposed to represent the will of the voters. In my community any attempt to build new housing results in a lot of current reidents showing up at planning meetings and complaining about how the new development will ruin their quality of life, take away street parking, and cause gridlock. Oddly, I only know of two people in my condo associate that work in tec…

a lot of current residents showing up at planning meetings Do you go to such meetings? Do you watch them on cable access or view the tapes at City Hall? (Heck, into the 1990s, the only available video of San Jose city council or SCC Supervisors meetings were if we taped it ourselves.) In reality, almost all such meetings are lightly attended at best unless a "progressive" interest group transports then in. Almost all…

Not all of them, but I go when I can. The last one I went to was packed full of neighborhood residents overwhelmingly against the development who were worried about traffic and parking. Though the development was right next to a Caltrain station, which is exactly where mid to high density development should be happening.

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

#224

Post by gpm » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

davidgay wrote: post #213

gpm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 firefighters: my understanding is that local fire departments from all over the state send assistance to large fires, see, e.g., https://abc30.com/local-fire-departments-assisting-in-wildfi... I'm confused by "(But no, no one involved in that discussion was from California)" in the context of a discussion about salaries in Silicon Valley... Edit: and from out of state too: https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive…

That's me admitting that my already dubious source was not from California... unfortunately we don't get to choose how high quality and relevant our sources of anecdotes are.

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

#225

Post by yjhoney » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #200

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…

Do you screen the students who want to get into the program?

Sort of. We didn't have an official way to screen it was more of seeing the same people showing up to learn every weekend at the library and then offering them an opportunity to learn full time.

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

#226

Post by yjhoney » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #192

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…

Given the (relatively) massive income your ex students are now receiving, do they donate? Have you looked for sponsorship from the big companies who are ultimately benefiting (the more potential staff they have, the lower the salaries they can pay)

They have donated, yes. Most of the donations came from friends made at previous companies I've worked at (Google and Apple). Apple is the most generous when it came to company matching.

I haven't had time to look for sponsorship yet, our numbers are pretty low and I've been focusing on each student, one by one.

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

#227

Post by yjhoney » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

czechdeveloper wrote: post #190

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…

It's interesting. Where I live, I was thinking about vice versa situation. We have good developers who are paid quite bad salaries. I'd love to make company that can bring good projects and pay good salaries. But I'm not good entrepreneur, so it will likely remain a dream.

Advice: Don't shy away from doing something you want to do because you think you're not good enough / not qualified.

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

#228

Post by m0llusk » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #203

chrisseaton wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gardening is an unskilled job in the main.

Which is why so many people hiring gardeners get poor results. Mow and blow is cheap and easy but also extremely bad at generating healthy landscapes.

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

#229

Post by solidsnack9000 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 11:05 PM UTC

throwawaythekey wrote: post #166

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SV policies aren't about diversification -- they are about preventing housing from being built.

To be more clear; The lack of diversification in employment makes the residents as a whole more vulnerable to the next sector based bust (see dotcom crash). If there is a larger supply of housing then more properties will be put on the market in such an event. This could exacerbate any fall in prices or result in a large number of abandoned properties which can be pretty damaging to a neighborhood. We get a sort of s…

The correct answer is probably to build some new housing supply but definitely not as much as the peak demands.

Why is that? It doesn't change the fact that once the mines are gone, they're gone. The value of existing homeowner's investment has been preserved but nothing's been done to buffer the economy or help people pushed out of rentals. It's just transferring wealth to rentiers.

Diversifying the economy -- having an environment more encouraging to industry, not less -- is the right answer.

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

#230

Post by solidsnack9000 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #182

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the issue with the idea of the market sorting out public servants is that schools, police departments, fire departments and other public agencies can not simply charge what the market will bear to raise revenue for higher salaries. They don't have control over their revenue stream and that is by design, because their incentives can be quite difficult to manage.

Teachers at least can control the revenue stream fairly effectively by going out on strike next time their contract is up for renegotiation. If the schools shut down then local governments will find a way to raise the funds. Unfortunately that hurts the students but the only way to effect real change is to force the issue.

That's not a very direct way to control revenue. What they can't do, is post higher prices.

The kind of teachers who have control over revenue are private school teachers, ballet teachers, music teachers, teachers at cram schools.