Live data from Hacker News

Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

wsj.com

111–120 of 1001 posts

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#111
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the purpose of a hospital is to provide for the sick And the purpose of society is to provide for its people. All of them.

Perhaps true for society depending on your views, but the point of a city is simply somewhere many people want to live together. A sign of a healthy city is steady growth, this could be from the opportunities available or the attractiveness of the quality of life of the city. For Sf, the opportunity aspect is strong enough so people are willing to overlook the widespread homelessness.

> depending on your views

Not views, but human history.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#112
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how the homeless have made many areas of the city uninviting That's a very ugly sentence. Its is not "the homeless" who made the city uninviting. That is like saying "the sick made this hospital uninviting". Homeless people need help. They are people in distress. Those who made the city uninviting are self-centered voters, who apparently can't give two shits about the situation, and keep voting people into power wh…

Semantics, we all know what the poster meant. Whatever the cause, the homeless make large swaths of San Francisco unappealing, especially for people with young families. BTW, quite the irony that the most liberal city in the country has the biggest homeless problem. Whatever they're doing isn't working, maybe they should try something different?

Again, its society and its lack of compassion does it. Not "the homeless".

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#113

So I decided to take a road trip, just me and my dogs recently. Went from California to Southern Texas, up to New Mexico, over to Arizona, Nevada, back to California, up to Oregon, Washington, hit the upper border, came back down to southern California. What I saw astounded me. It was like the scene from Grapes of Wrath, crossed with the Beverley Hillbillies, crossed with Tokyo Drift. I saw people leaving in droves b…

They think it's "not real" because the scale of the reaction to it isn't justified by the data and people can see that. If you really know several people who died of covid19 your very unusual. The vast majority of people will know none.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#115
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three possibilities: 1. All the bay area companies realize they can employ the best talent remotely from around the country (globe?) successfully. The SF pay premium drops. 2. Bay Area companies pay according to cost of living, many remotely. Some people move, some stay. SF pay premium holds. 3. Everyone realizes the pre pandemic normal was right all along and having a lot of talented people in the same building matt…

Feels like we've been through #1 with the wave of Indian outsourcing prophesied to eat up US IT industry 20 years ago. If Austin or Denver offer employees at a discount, why not Manila and Bangalore?

Staying within North America largely eliminates the timezone problem.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#116
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three possibilities: 1. All the bay area companies realize they can employ the best talent remotely from around the country (globe?) successfully. The SF pay premium drops. 2. Bay Area companies pay according to cost of living, many remotely. Some people move, some stay. SF pay premium holds. 3. Everyone realizes the pre pandemic normal was right all along and having a lot of talented people in the same building matt…

Feels like we've been through #1 with the wave of Indian outsourcing prophesied to eat up US IT industry 20 years ago. If Austin or Denver offer employees at a discount, why not Manila and Bangalore?

Culture and time zone differences are generally greater SF to Manila, over SF to Austin.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#117
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three possibilities: 1. All the bay area companies realize they can employ the best talent remotely from around the country (globe?) successfully. The SF pay premium drops. 2. Bay Area companies pay according to cost of living, many remotely. Some people move, some stay. SF pay premium holds. 3. Everyone realizes the pre pandemic normal was right all along and having a lot of talented people in the same building matt…

Feels like we've been through #1 with the wave of Indian outsourcing prophesied to eat up US IT industry 20 years ago. If Austin or Denver offer employees at a discount, why not Manila and Bangalore?

Having worked with tech workers from Manila and Bangalore I'm not worried about getting replaced by a tech worker from Manila or Bangalore.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#118
post #8
post #6

I got a job offer from Capital One several years ago in Richmond, VA. I liked the location and the company but my current gig is paying over twice as much in San Jose, CA. I just don't see this panning out on a large scale once people realize that their paychecks will also drop significantly when they move away.

Three possibilities: 1. All the bay area companies realize they can employ the best talent remotely from around the country (globe?) successfully. The SF pay premium drops. 2. Bay Area companies pay according to cost of living, many remotely. Some people move, some stay. SF pay premium holds. 3. Everyone realizes the pre pandemic normal was right all along and having a lot of talented people in the same building matt…

or: Companies realize that the SF Pay Premium is so large that it's okay to overpay in some areas. Ex: Paying $250k in South Carolina may sound outrageous but it's a steal if you find a really good dev there rather than a similar dev in Atlanta for $350k if they're both going to work remote. Or $500-600k for SF/Cali.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#119
post #8
post #6

I got a job offer from Capital One several years ago in Richmond, VA. I liked the location and the company but my current gig is paying over twice as much in San Jose, CA. I just don't see this panning out on a large scale once people realize that their paychecks will also drop significantly when they move away.

Three possibilities: 1. All the bay area companies realize they can employ the best talent remotely from around the country (globe?) successfully. The SF pay premium drops. 2. Bay Area companies pay according to cost of living, many remotely. Some people move, some stay. SF pay premium holds. 3. Everyone realizes the pre pandemic normal was right all along and having a lot of talented people in the same building matt…

1 & 2 are actually the same thing, just at different points on the timeline.

2 comes first (and arguably already exists - many large employers already adjust pay by locality). If 2 is sustained long enough, there's an implied drop in demand within SF/SV (or Seattle or NYC) which leads to 1.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#120
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like we've been through #1 with the wave of Indian outsourcing prophesied to eat up US IT industry 20 years ago. If Austin or Denver offer employees at a discount, why not Manila and Bangalore?

Staying within North America largely eliminates the timezone problem.

It also avoids a lot of cultural/communication problems. Even when everyone speaks the same language, words have subtly different meanings in different cultures. This is true across NA as well, but SF vs Atlanta is much closer than Chicago vs India or Brazil. Not to mention that these are also big countries with their own regional language variations.
Post reply on HN