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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

#281

Post by reidjs »

luckylion wrote: post #264
talmr wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair - I used to live in Ohio and my parents and I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment that cost $600/mo about fifteen years ago. You could buy a 5 bedroom house for $250k. The school district I attended was also top notch. It was a great family area and I remember the mall, rec center, and numerous parks. I checked zillow recently and 5 bedroom homes are ~$300k and apartments are about $800/mo. At the time, my dad…

So if you lived in that Ohio suburb, your code quality would be reduced vs living in California?

I'm going to take an unpopular/wrong sounding opinion and say it's possible. If you leave the bubble filled with world-class programmers, techies and entrepreneurs, it's possible your code quality will be 'reduced' because you don't see the value in it as much compared to taking care of your kids, building up your local community, etc. Peer pressure is important and if your peers are teachers, cops, store managers, etc would you care more about learning the ins and outs of the newest JS framework or about what dishes to make at the BBQ you're throwing this weekend?

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

#282

Post by rohansingh »

s0rce wrote: post #235
Consultant32452 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is NOT what working remotely is really like. During normal times if I am missing socialization at work I can make up for it by going out more during the week. During normal times if I want I can spend a few hours working from the local cafe. But the cafes are closed. During normal times, kids are at school for most of the day so they don't disrupt you. But schools are closed. I'…

That is a really important point, but I think that it still doesn't counter the argument about the career downsides of being remote when you don't work for a 100% remote organization. My company is pretty flexible but as a scientist/engineer I still have some duties where being in the lab is necessary. I'll probably increase my remote work for now but likely not move further away. I enjoy my bike commute in the East…

People weight "career downsides" differently. A lot of folks who are further in their careers are done trying to climb the ladder and would be happy working remotely.

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

#283

Post by nradov »

iso1631 wrote: post #132
cortesoft wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Who is taking care of the kids when the 'door is closed'? Same person taking care of them when you're at work. Except for 3 hours a day less

Most day care centers are still closed.

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

#284

Post by watwut »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #151
_jal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In my company it’s the opposite. Every parent in the company is voicing very strong opinions to work from the office. The main issue seems to be that (a) they need full time childcare during the workday period, regardless of whether they are home or not, and (b) the childcare cannot take place inside the same house where they are working. The opinion I’ve heard most is that if it was non-pandemic times, at best they…

> But in the case that kids have to be home because school is shut down / child care closes / child care has to be hosted in the same place where they are working, it’s a straight up no-go, 100% dead set against it.

So basically, they expect their spouses to deal with the problem by themselves? At home they pretend there is no choice, while at work lobby to keep excuse to not have to contribute?

Do I sound salty about phenomenon I noticed among some of my male colleges too (using work as excuse when they definitely had choice, but actually wanted to avoid boring or uncomfortable home-work)?

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

#285

Post by lliamander »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #233
davidw wrote: post #209

Another thought: those workers and their companies could contribute to changing the situation in Silicon Valley and the rest of California: https://cayimby.org/ Without a change in housing policy in the US, this just becomes a big game of musical chairs: Guy moves from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon. Portland gets too expensive for some other family, who move to Boise, Idaho. And so on...

>Guy moves from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon. Portland gets too expensive for some other family, who move to Boise, Idaho. And so on... Yup. It's a fundamental values problem that can't be fixed without a major ideological shift. A large number of people do not believe that people have the right to do more or less whatever they want on their property. Until that is fixed you're always going to have people sayin…

Another option could be that living in a big city becomes less necessary.

People flocked to these cities in the first place because they were seen as sources of social opportunities (jobs, venture capital, social networks). I would like to see the Internet disaggregate those opportunities.

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

#286

Post by marcosdumay »

ransom1538 wrote: post #48
zaidf wrote: 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.

If you are up-front with this, it's just a salary offer that people will take or not depending on how good it is. No problem.

Companies can do this because so few of them hire remote. If it gets normalized, the practice will not be sustainable.

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

#287

Post by gowld »

take_a_breath wrote: post #277
ghaff wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does a one-time stipend of $1,000 cover that? Probably not for many people. On the other hand, commuting is usually not cheap--even if it's just a transit pass. Your points about space are reasonable though most people I know with houses seem to be doing OK. (But then we're a large distributed company so many are on video calls from home on a regular basis anyway.) It's certainly fair though that, if you have a tiny…

==On the other hand, commuting is usually not cheap== Not cheap, but tax advantaged and sometimes even reimbursed. The tax advantages for working-from-home are much harder to unlock, especially in the short-term or if you work from your bedroom. Anyways, I thought it was an interesting economic thought-exercise to discuss the second-level impacts of a work-from-home society. I've seen a lot of talk on people fleeing…

"tax-advantaged" just means "discounted". It's still a large expense. Why would an employer reimburse commute costs but not pay a workstation stipend to non-commuters (possibly marked down 50% due to taxes)?

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

#288

Post by kube-system »

tfehring wrote: post #255
zaidf wrote: 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

For reference, GitLab are fully remote and publish their rationale [0] for paying regionally-adjusted salaries. Some of the arguments I don't really buy (for example, I don't think you need to hire anyone from very high cost of living areas to build a world-class engineering org at GitLab's scale) and others (e.g., the golden handcuffs argument) I think are just a consequence of fully remote teams currently being rar…

This isn't anything unique to remote companies. This has been standard practice for a very long time at companies with a presence in multiple locations, for the same reasons.

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

#289

Post by kube-system »

sigfubar wrote: post #126
gremlinsinc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a forwarding mail box from Manhattan and tell your company that's where you live. I mean seriously if the company's gonna dick around w/ salaries like that. I mean other than mailing tax documents is it really their business where you live?

You'll end up paying New York income tax too, which is quite hefty.

And you'll not be paying your real local income tax, which is quite illegal.

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

#290

Post by [deleted] »

ransom1538 wrote: post #48
zaidf wrote: 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.

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