Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
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Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#2An evergreen headline...
In the 90s I remember hearing this too. Use the high salary and property value increases to build a nestegg, but keep an eye out for other geographic opportunities because the locals are determined to keep you out, as a class, even if they are friendly one to one.
These days, the property value scam has been going so long that new high wage workers are often locked out for many years, to the benefit of all prior arrivals. But same story otherwise.
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#3An evergreen headline... In the 90s I remember hearing this too. Use the high salary and property value increases to build a nestegg, but keep an eye out for other geographic opportunities because the locals are determined to keep you out, as a class, even if they are friendly one to one. These days, the property value scam has been going so long that new high wage workers are often locked out for many years, to the…
One minor difference in the story: a global pandemic
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#4And I'm considering to become a billionaire this year. So what?
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#5An evergreen headline... In the 90s I remember hearing this too. Use the high salary and property value increases to build a nestegg, but keep an eye out for other geographic opportunities because the locals are determined to keep you out, as a class, even if they are friendly one to one. These days, the property value scam has been going so long that new high wage workers are often locked out for many years, to the…
In the 90s I remember hearing this too.
What, that due to the fact that we're all working from home because of a global pandemic, and my employer says I can WFH long-term, I'm thinking about moving out of SV?
You must run with a different crowd than I do, because I don't recall a single person saying that in the 90s.
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#6“I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead.” —Altavista founder, 1993
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.folklore.comp...
(Note: Google Groups links don’t work on mobile unless you Request Desktop Site in Chrome)
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#7I'm certainly daydreaming about this, as someone living in SF right now. But IMO things are still too uncertain to pull the trigger on making a huge move. And I wonder if the likeliest scenario, is that everyone strongly considers doing this, but then we all slowly get used to the "new normal" and by the time it's clear one way or the other what the future is starting to look like, we're past the peak of the virus (maybe it's early 2021 and there's a vaccine starting to roll out) and everyone just kind of settles back into mostly the same life they previously had due to inertia.
And anecdotally I've heard very few people say they now want to stay fully remote forever. What I've heard instead is people talking about how they hope that 2-3 days a week in the office might become the new normal. That might open up your options a bit, maybe that makes you willing to commute 1 - 1.5hrs instead of 30 min - 1 hr. But that wouldn't allow anyone to leave the metro area. In fact, maybe this scenario actually increases cost of living because now you need to both be close enough to downtown to commute a few days a week, and have enough space for a dedicated home office so you can work from home productively the other few days a week.
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#8I'm pretty bearish on the pandemic actually leading to massive change in the number of people permanently working from home. My boss put out a survey a week or two ago among my org (30 or so people), and 70% said that they want to work from the office, full time, 20% said some time or most of the time, and 10% said fully remote. And this is a group of people that would be largely well suited to working from home during the pandemic (young, no kids, etc). I just don't think that this will change much.
There is just too much detrimental effect one one's career from not being seen at the office. For a company that's not fully remote (i.e. gitlab), people who are fully remote are going to fall behind in promotions, etc. There's just not enough benefit for people who don't hate the bay area.
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#9This could finally help solve the housing crisis in many of America's large cities. Every employee who moves out frees up one apartment for everyone else. 30,000 employees leaving is equivalent to building 30,000 apartments.
Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents
#10When I read these I feel its way to early to start making determinations on whether "Working for Home" is here to stay.
It's going to work for some and not for others, but a few exceptional months with no clear forecasts on what happens next makes long term decisions terribly difficult. I'll be fascinated to see how this workout for Google and Microsoft coming into Q1 of 2021 compared to how things worked out for Yahoo! when they banned working from home a few years ago.
I may be more of a bear on this than most on here but I don't think working from home is going to be quite as successful as many think.