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Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

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11–20 of 424 posts

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#11
Christy Lake, chief people officer at Twilio:

> “It’s probably not great business practice to pay Bay Area comps in Michigan,” Lake says. And when it comes time to promote, would those employees have the same opportunity to advance as everybody else? “We need to think proactively,” she says.

So, in case anyone is applying to Twilio, heads up, I guess.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#12

I'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 duri…

I asked this casually with /polly in slack the other day and was surprised that our engineering department was split 50/50. 50% thinking we should go fully remote and 50% being very adamant that they needed an office to work in the majority of the time.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#13

I'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 duri…

> young, no kids, etc

There is your major reason for that survey result. Companies with median-older workforces will see more enthusiasm for remote work.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#14
People won't continue making their current SF salary by working out of Farmville, Ohio. I think this point is missed by many

I fully expect Twitter, for example, to come out with salary adjustment policies for people who want to work from home from an entirely different city and state

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#15

An 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…

Not sure what the scam is. Sounds like normal supply and demand.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#16

I'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 duri…

> 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.

I'm not sure that follows. It seems to me that people with spouses and especially children would be more interested in working from home, not less.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#17

I'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 duri…

It's a damn shame, really, the slavish devotion to one's car and spending hours a day sitting in traffic apparently is apparently preferred over actually getting time back in your everyday life. It's like people have adapted to having no life outside of work, and now they're just so bored they'd rather lose that time than just find a new hobby or learn something. I don't think I've ever thought about anything more depressing than a group of people who want less free time in their day.

I wonder how their opinions will change once they're immediately thrust back into an office environment 5 days a week, have less time back in their schedule per day, and start paying for gas and auto repairs again. The grass always seems greener, doesn't it.

Editing this because good lord if there were private messages here I'm sure I'd have death threats by now:

I don't care if you like the office, or how cool your city is and how great your commute is - go to the damn office if you like the office! My point is that when people opt for FORCED office presence, rather than a FLEXIBLE work from home policy (AGAIN, FLEXIBLE MEANS YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT), it makes more sense than locking everyone into a situation that may or may not involve sitting in a car every day, like 90% of Americans still do every day. (source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/10/28/nine...)

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#18
One thing this doesn't mention is the pay cuts that happen if you do decide to relocate to cheaper areas. Both me and my Wife's company have pay bands based on geographical region(most employees know nothing about this and most companies employ these salary COL changes for relocation) and certain regions you can take a big pay cut. Say your salary in the bay area is 100k for example, move to the South, say Florida and it typically drops 30%(typically as low as they chop your salary) so your new salary is 70k, Denver area is 15% paycut etc. These numbers change somewhat from company to company but they do exist for most companies and should be factored in.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#19

I'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 (m…

The Bay Area arguably doesn't lend itself as well to a part-time WFH situation as other cities do. Given that it's not just the core city that's expensive but the whole peninsula where most of the jobs are located and even most of the surrounding areas. You can get out of it with a long enough occasional commute--though then you're probably also too far out to regularly take advantage of urban culture, etc.

By contrast, somewhere like Boston assuming the jobs are even in the city (many aren't), a drive that's 60-90 minutes depending on time of day puts you into pretty reasonably priced exurbs.

Re: Tech workers consider escaping Silicon Valley’s sky-high rents

#20

I'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 duri…

I asked this casually with /polly in slack the other day and was surprised that our engineering department was split 50/50. 50% thinking we should go fully remote and 50% being very adamant that they needed an office to work in the majority of the time.

One factor that might bias these results are the type of setup that one has in the office compared to the home, primarily available space (i.e. spare bedrom) and office equipment (i.e. ergonomic chairs home/office & large/multiple computer monitors).
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