Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 424 posts

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

#371

Post by Turing_Machine »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #111
chongli wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with kids often have different priorities. Having a slam dunk, distraction free, high productivity work day tends to be lower on the priority list. Spending time with your partner, taking care of the kids, cooking and eating dinner with the family; these all tend to be higher on the priority list. There are exceptions. Some people don’t respond well to the stresses of family life and want to escape to the offi…

Yes. I'm thinking of the old saying about no one ever arriving at his deathbed wishing he'd spent less time with his kids.

Wow. Someone is feeling guilty, I reckon.

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

#372

Post by bhupy »

city41 wrote: post #92
daenz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the rationale for this?

From what I understand, the employee loses leverage. If you don’t like the lower salary, often your only option is another company in your area that will also pay an equivalently low salary. Hopefully if enough companies start hiring remote workers, our leverage will go up.

I'm not so sure that the leverage will change.

If remote work were to go mainstream and that became the norm, employers won't pay different salaries based on location: they will pay one salary based on the cheapest location. It's not that different from outsourcing work today — there might exist manufacturing workers in the Rust belt that are capable of doing manufacturing, but employers just shift all their supply chains out to cheaper countries, since there's little difference between a Chinese person's labor, and a Pennsylvanian's labor.

Similarly, if everyone is remote, then the difference between employees that live in low COL areas and employees that live in high COL areas starts to really blur. There might be exceptions to this for extremely high skilled engineers, but they're marginal cases.

If we move to an all-remote (or even a "most-remote") engineering culture, then software engineering jobs will simply be "outsourced" to the cheapest COL areas.

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

#373

Post by kube-system »

betaby wrote: post #363
kube-system wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of products does often vary between regions when their is a regional explanation for the difference in price. iPhones and Teslas are priced differently in different locations, as are many many other products and services.

Iphones and Teslas indeed priced differently, most of the time they cost more in the places with lower purchasing power. I.e. compare cost of Iphone in Eastern Europe and US.

It's the same thing, "COL adjustment" is just phrased from a different viewpoint.

Both are simply regional adjustments for the price of a resource. That resource could be a product, or it could be labor.

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

#374

Post by cortesoft »

jahaja wrote: post #121
cortesoft wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we had daycare, I liked working from home. With no daycare, I can't get anything done at home.

But working from home doesn't require people to pull their kids out of daycare?

Currently all daycare are closed where I am.

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

#375

Post by city41 »

bhupy wrote: post #372
city41 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, the employee loses leverage. If you don’t like the lower salary, often your only option is another company in your area that will also pay an equivalently low salary. Hopefully if enough companies start hiring remote workers, our leverage will go up.

I'm not so sure that the leverage will change. If remote work were to go mainstream and that became the norm, employers won't pay different salaries based on location: they will pay one salary based on the cheapest location. It's not that different from outsourcing work today — there might exist manufacturing workers in the Rust belt that are capable of doing manufacturing, but employers just shift all their supply c…

I think this assumes all engineers are seen as equal. In some cases they may be. But in other cases companies are looking for good talent. If that good talent can show many remote companies are interested in them, they can likely command a nicer salary. But from what I understand today there aren’t enough remote friendly companies to make that work.

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

#376

Post by betaby »

kube-system wrote: post #373
betaby wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iphones and Teslas indeed priced differently, most of the time they cost more in the places with lower purchasing power. I.e. compare cost of Iphone in Eastern Europe and US.

It's the same thing, "COL adjustment" is just phrased from a different viewpoint. Both are simply regional adjustments for the price of a resource. That resource could be a product, or it could be labor.

That's kind of my point - there is no 'universally cheaper' place. However on every discussion high salaries are explained as a result of higher rent. Yet no one would apply the same logic for other things, like in Easter Europe cars are expensive - here is your car price adjusted salary.

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

#377

Post by bhupy »

city41 wrote: post #375
bhupy wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure that the leverage will change. If remote work were to go mainstream and that became the norm, employers won't pay different salaries based on location: they will pay one salary based on the cheapest location. It's not that different from outsourcing work today — there might exist manufacturing workers in the Rust belt that are capable of doing manufacturing, but employers just shift all their supply c…

I think this assumes all engineers are seen as equal. In some cases they may be. But in other cases companies are looking for good talent. If that good talent can show many remote companies are interested in them, they can likely command a nicer salary. But from what I understand today there aren’t enough remote friendly companies to make that work.

If you're making the argument that good talent will always be able to command a high salary...nobody doubts that.

This "good talent" is not the norm. Google has tens of thousands of software engineers, and only a handful of them (mostly the staff/principal/distinguished engineers) have the kind of negotiation leverage you're talking about, but they already get paid a lot in high COL cities anyway.

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

#378

Post by city41 »

bhupy wrote: post #377
city41 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this assumes all engineers are seen as equal. In some cases they may be. But in other cases companies are looking for good talent. If that good talent can show many remote companies are interested in them, they can likely command a nicer salary. But from what I understand today there aren’t enough remote friendly companies to make that work.

If you're making the argument that good talent will always be able to command a high salary...nobody doubts that. This "good talent" is not the norm. Google has tens of thousands of software engineers, and only a handful of them (mostly the staff/principal/distinguished engineers) have the kind of negotiation leverage you're talking about, but they already get paid a lot in high COL cities anyway.

True. Very top talent can basically do whatever they want. But there’s a spectrum and I think a wider range can benefit. I think you and I are mostly disagreeing on that.

I think today a lot of “good but not top” talent find themselves crammed into the very crowded Bay Area. I’m hopeful that can be relieved a bit. But I’m being pretty optimistic.

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

#379

Post by kube-system »

betaby wrote: post #376
kube-system wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same thing, "COL adjustment" is just phrased from a different viewpoint. Both are simply regional adjustments for the price of a resource. That resource could be a product, or it could be labor.

That's kind of my point - there is no 'universally cheaper' place. However on every discussion high salaries are explained as a result of higher rent. Yet no one would apply the same logic for other things, like in Easter Europe cars are expensive - here is your car price adjusted salary.

Transportation costs are typically factored into COL calculations. Rent is the #1 thing people bring up because housing is by far the largest component of COL expenses for the vast majority of people on the planet.

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

#380

Post by take_a_breath »

gowld wrote: post #287
take_a_breath wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==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)?

The government reimburses the commute costs through the tax code.
Post reply on HN