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

bloomberg.com

101–110 of 424 posts

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

#101
The pairing of working in an office with a hellish commute is a bit odd.

Maybe SF really is a parallel universe. Here in the UK, basically anyone earning a tech salary can afford to live within 10-20 mins cycle of work, even if they want children.

You won't have a home with a garden and all the rest of the knick knacks, sure, but that's a different discussion.

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it the other way. Only people who are young with no distractions at home, favor working at home. People who usually have family members at home, get too distracted compared to a office environment, to prefer working at home.

Mid 30s, partner, two kids, will only work from home. Will not consider a commute or an office. Have worked remotely for almost a decade. Doing the math, I've saved almost 3360 hours by not having to commute (~2 hr/workday), not to mention wear and tear on a vehicle and the associated commute costs. When my office door is closed, everyone knows I'm "at work". If you don't have a separate physical space where you only…

Who is taking care of the kids when the 'door is closed'? I guess it depends on how old your kids are... I have a 4 year old and a 1 year old, so someone has to be watching them all the time.

Also, my house only has 3 bedrooms, and the kids take two of them. My office is in the corner of the living room with no walls. I can't lock anyone out of it.

Your house has to be large enough to support a home office to work from home full time.

Although if I wasn't living in this city I could probably afford a bigger house... we pay a premium to live within 10 minutes of work, so we don't have to face that 'two hour commute' you speak of.

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

#103
post #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

Salary based on your locale even though everyone is remote: hilarious. "Oh you live in Alabama you get 60k" "Oh you live in Manhattan on 65th street that is 150k". This will backfire into a political hell.

It certainly could, depending on how it's done, but consider the possibility that part of the motivation for allowing people to work remotely is to save on salaries, which are probably by far the biggest expense for a typical tech company.

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

#104
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

For me it has reinforced my opposition to remote work. I feel like without a dedicated space for work, it is hard for me to mentally unplug from work. I'm already burned out from 2 months of this. I feel like I never know what day it is. Pre-pandemic, I set my life up so that I was walking distance to everything I needed. My apartment is super small, but that's fine when things are open. I'm actually considering buyi…

Squalor because of the virus?

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

#106

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…

One minor difference in the story: a global pandemic

How do you think that will change things this time around exactly?

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mid 30s, partner, two kids, will only work from home. Will not consider a commute or an office. Have worked remotely for almost a decade. Doing the math, I've saved almost 3360 hours by not having to commute (~2 hr/workday), not to mention wear and tear on a vehicle and the associated commute costs. When my office door is closed, everyone knows I'm "at work". If you don't have a separate physical space where you only…

Who is taking care of the kids when the 'door is closed'? I guess it depends on how old your kids are... I have a 4 year old and a 1 year old, so someone has to be watching them all the time. Also, my house only has 3 bedrooms, and the kids take two of them. My office is in the corner of the living room with no walls. I can't lock anyone out of it. Your house has to be large enough to support a home office to work fr…

[deleted]

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

#108

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…

Well to some degree it actually happened. All the activity in the first dot com book was in the Valley. Afterwards a lot of it migrated up to San Francisco. Now that both places are saturated. It's starting to happen in the East Bay.

After San Francisco and the East Bay have started saturating, other places were put on the map like Seattle, NYC, Austin and Pittsburgh.

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

#109
post #79

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 an…

What's the rationale for this?

It costs someone less to live in a cheaper city so businesses don't need to pay as much to hire workers in that city. The employee's choice is to take the pay cut, or to take a lower-paying job at another company in their new home city.
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