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Let People Move to Jobs

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Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#231

Post by topkai22 »

esotericn wrote: post #165
gurkendoktor wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole idea of remote working to arbitrage cost of living falls apart if you are in any way social. Unless you grew up in the area from which you work remotely, in which case you can be more social because connecting with old friends and family is much easier than making new friends at 30+. > If I earned a London salary in my hometown I'd be ostracising myself completely from those around me [...] I don't see ho…

Yeah, and all of those guys are skint and you're not. It works to an extent. Perhaps you don't see the problem because you're theorizing about it rather than having lived experience. As I think most people do. Imagine that essentially everyone you meet in your age group is far poorer than you are. Not most people but everyone. You need some sort of 'app' to find people to speak to who are on your level. Your specific…

As someone who has actually managed to work remotely in a small city while employed by a major tech firm at normal pay rates, I can definitely say your scenario does not match my lived experience.

1) unless you move to a very small town, there are still plenty of people in your economic demographic. In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k. If you are currently making more then $500k you might be a little more out there, but then you really have no reason to move, do you? (Your techie peers at other companies don’t make that sort of money).

2) “Friends from work” don’t go away when working remotely. We still have “water cooler” conversations and members of my team have occasionally visited each other’s cities outside of work. We also do a ton of socializing when we are physically together for work.

That being said, it does reduce that aspect of social life. What fills it? Other activities- family/children, hobbies, causes, clubs, etc. I’ve lived in major tech hubs before- it did take longer to establish a social network while working remotely in my smaller city, but once established it has been much more fulfilling.

3) I apologize for criticizing, but your concern about not being able to socialize with the middle class sounds bizarre. Some of our dearest friends in this city are solidly middle class- 911 dispatchers, teachers, carpenters, nurses, and sales people. We met through sports, children’s school, and volunteering. We specifically chose to live well below our means (FIREing before the term existed I guess) so our neighbors are a varied lot, and we like them. We can’t invite them to join us vacationing in Europe, but other than that it’s there is little awkwardness.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#232

Post by Merrill »

People do move. Silicon Valley itself is a product of people moving to the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Of the eight founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, only Gordon Moore was from the Bay Area.

Large, successful companies create the conditions for attracting employees to new locations. Both Seattle and Austin are examples of this. Earlier, IBM had a practice of locating in small to medium sized cities like Kingston, NY, Rochester, MN or Sunnyvale, CA. In the '50s and '60s the aerospace industry was highly mobile, with engineers moving from the North and East to the South and West.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#233

Post by [deleted] »

zorak wrote: post #229
esotericn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP's scenario is over the top, but if you had a 150k USD remote job in my hometown you could buy half a street. You would have a very different life to those around you and it would be challenging socially as a result. I fail to see what this has to do with ego - it's not an assertion of superiority, it's just a factual statement. It's nothing to do with technology - working as a lawyer for remote clients would b…

Your hometown street is one data point. There's a huge spectrum to choose from between that and Bay area/London. This feels like a false dichotomy.

[deleted]

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#234

Post by scottLobster »

0x445442 wrote: post #223
scottLobster wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most people who want to work at FAANG don't want to live in Toledo, and it's a lot harder to find competent software developers than factory workers. Not that there aren't competent devs in Toledo, but the supply would be dried up pretty quick, and good luck convincing rich, coastal, Elizabeth-Warren-beat-Hillary-in-my-district Californians to move to an area with lake-effect snow in a state that just passed…

> but FAANG companies would have to fundamentally rethink the kind of person they'd like to hire if they want to move out of affluent Urban cores. And yet Apple seemed to have figured out this type of problem quite nicely during the 80's and 90's when they moved their manufacturing from places like Carleton TX, Elk Grove CA and Fountain CO to places like Singapore and Ireland.

Once again, manufacturing. Not design. You can teach anyone with a high school education (even less, see 3rd world factories) how to solder or how to operate machinery efficiently. VLSI, circuit design, operating system development, FPGAs, even app development requires years of specialized training just to be competent at the fundamentals, usually taking the form of a degree. So if you want to hire designers with minimal costs you go to where the largest relevant talent pool already lives, and it ain't Toledo. It's MIT, Stanford and similar places.

It's the same reason any company prefers to hire local when they can. Much easier to entice someone to drive somewhere else in town in the morning than to entice someone to uproot their life and move 1000 miles.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#235

Post by astura »

titanomachy wrote: post #59
m0zg wrote: post #54

For most of us here, there's no reason to move anywhere at all. Programmers can work from anywhere in the world. We need to let go of the idea that "work" means 2 hours of commute and sitting in an open plan under constant barrage of interruptions for 40 hours a week. We need to let go of _all_ the components of this definition, from "40 hours" to "office" to "commute". There are jobs which have to be done in the off…

Maybe it's because I'm relatively young, but I actually like working in an office. I bike 15 minutes to work rather than commuting 2 hours, because my work pays me enough to live close by. I spend some of my time collaborating closely with smart people who are a lot more experienced than me, which seems to be the fastest way to learn. I spend then rest of the time with headphones on facing the corner of the open offi…

In fairly old and I like going to the office most days. I worked for years as a sole developer on a project. While I worked from an office I didn't collaborate with others in any meaningful way, yet I still liked going into the office. I've certainly never been friends with my coworkers, but it's really nice to have the same people around with the same goals.

I can understand work-from-home like once a week though. I've also never had more than 15 minute commute though.

Nowadays I work in on classified material, so there's no possibility whatsoever of remote work.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#236

Post by golergka »

cheese4242 wrote: post #200
zorak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with a great tech salary, your wealth is NOT noteworthy at the local bank. The amount of ego in this thread is impressive!

Seriously, tech has got to have some of the most inflated egos on the planet. Do people in this thread really think there aren't plenty of other people making 150-200+ outside of the major tech hubs? Do they really think they are going to be Mr. Monopoly Man because they have a 150k remote job in Des Moines?

Remote work is international. I know a couple of great engineers who earn $150-200k remotely while living in the area where $3600 is considered a decent salary. That's $3600 annually, as in $300 monthly.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#237

Post by 6c696e7578 »

balfirevic wrote: post #156
Wildgoose wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communicating across differences in language, culture and just simple local knowledge - in other words, considerable overhead.

True for offshoring to (for example) India, but almost negligible for offshoring to many parts of Europe.

I suppose what I'm arguing for is keeping onshore, but allowing people to telecommute. They all speak the same language and understanding. The company doesn't lose anything, probably saves a great deal in real estate and building insurance.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#238

Post by asaph »

topkai22 wrote: post #231
esotericn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and all of those guys are skint and you're not. It works to an extent. Perhaps you don't see the problem because you're theorizing about it rather than having lived experience. As I think most people do. Imagine that essentially everyone you meet in your age group is far poorer than you are. Not most people but everyone. You need some sort of 'app' to find people to speak to who are on your level. Your specific…

As someone who has actually managed to work remotely in a small city while employed by a major tech firm at normal pay rates, I can definitely say your scenario does not match my lived experience. 1) unless you move to a very small town, there are still plenty of people in your economic demographic. In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k househ…

> In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k.

This assumes uniform distribution of household incomes across cities of different sizes, which I suspect is a shaky assumption. More likely, the high earning households are concentrated in a short list of major population centers.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#239

Post by [deleted] »

topkai22 wrote: post #231
esotericn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and all of those guys are skint and you're not. It works to an extent. Perhaps you don't see the problem because you're theorizing about it rather than having lived experience. As I think most people do. Imagine that essentially everyone you meet in your age group is far poorer than you are. Not most people but everyone. You need some sort of 'app' to find people to speak to who are on your level. Your specific…

As someone who has actually managed to work remotely in a small city while employed by a major tech firm at normal pay rates, I can definitely say your scenario does not match my lived experience. 1) unless you move to a very small town, there are still plenty of people in your economic demographic. In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k househ…

[deleted]

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#240

Post by clktmr »

esotericn wrote: post #153

The whole idea of remote working to arbitrage cost of living falls apart if you are in any way social. I think that a lot of people banging on about remote work just haven't tried it for an extended period. It works for some, and for those - great. To me, it's just another step down the 'technification' of everything in which people don't speak to the people around them (because they've been 'removed' from their live…

So much wrong with this comment:

Remote work doesn't mean home office. You can rent part of a shared office and still have colleagues for lunch.

You don't need to move to a place where you will be 'the rich guy'. It's your choice. Even with your big tech salary you won't be better off than the local business owners in a place with around 20k inhabitants.

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