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Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

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Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#51

Post by lotsofpulp »

scarmig wrote: post #47
stanrivers wrote: post #3

Are companies going to start adjusting salaries for people who move (this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? That’s where this gets weird... people move to these better-to-live places and then all the employers decides to pay them less because of location. Then you just push up housing prices with salaries that slowly reset over time to be cost of living a…

Supply and demand. But, if it ultimately turns out on-site employees provide no real advantages over remote employees, the end result is going to be a grand leveling more weighted toward a downward adjustment in Bay Area wages than an upward adjustment in within-the-US wages.

Yes, just like all the textile and manufacturing wages got a downward adjustment in middle America and got an upward adjustment in Asian countries.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#52

Post by TomVDB »

sna1l wrote: post #46

I think the burst of tech workers moving out of Silicon Valley/SF into surrounding suburbs + other areas is driven mostly by people who were already on the cusp of leaving the city. I've been thinking about leaving SF to move to the East Bay for the last couple years, and COVID-19 has provided a very strong impetus to expedite that move. Obviously this is anecdotal, and everyone has their own motives, but I haven't h…

My wife and I never considered moving out, but we're now actively shopping for a house in the Tahoe area. Not as an investment or short term rental property, but to live ~50% of the time.

We're clearly not the only ones. The price of houses in the $1M+ range have gone up significantly since it became clear around the summer that this COVID thing isn't going away anytime soon.

There are many all cash offers as well.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#54

Post by xur17 »

edmundsauto wrote: post #28
drewda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook announced that they'd be adjusting employee salaries by new home location at the start of the new calendar year, I think. Some more distributed companies like Salesforce have been adjusting compensation for years when employees move from the Bay Area to other office locations.

Didn’t they adjust it not based on COLA but on what the talent market is in that region? That’s making it explicitly market based, although that obviously includes a cost of living component.

Are they taking into account the fact that the talent market is now national / international given remote work?

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#55

Post by fblp »

reaperducer wrote: post #39

People have been talking about this on HN for a few months now, and I never took it seriously since these threads are always filled with people quoting numbers saying it's not happening. That was until last month, when two tech workers from San Francisco moved into the neighborhood. Both have the same story: Their company went work-from-home when the pandemic started, then made it permanent, so the company employees…

Where are you?

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#56

Post by silicon2401 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #25
stanrivers wrote: post #3

Are companies going to start adjusting salaries for people who move (this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? That’s where this gets weird... people move to these better-to-live places and then all the employers decides to pay them less because of location. Then you just push up housing prices with salaries that slowly reset over time to be cost of living a…

Pay for software engineering will contract because it turns out programming is not that difficult and there was nothing special about the sf set except their need to cover stupid high rents.

It's going to be quite a reality shock when people realize their salaries were kept high _because_ their jobs weren't open to remote workers.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#57

Post by [deleted] »

d1zzy wrote: post #48
SilasX wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's correct. But the question being asked is why the location changes the $X's there. I don't know that restatement of economic generalities helps unless you're going to apply them to the dynamic being asked about.

That seems obvious to me: lowering your cost of living means you are willing to accept $X-1, or if you personally don't want to another person that also moved out of high priced living area may accept a lower salary (so they get your job). Otherwise why did companies even have different compensation tiers for same type of work across US regions? Just because it takes some time for the market to price the changes it d…

[deleted]

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#58

Post by beamatronic »

reaperducer wrote: post #39

People have been talking about this on HN for a few months now, and I never took it seriously since these threads are always filled with people quoting numbers saying it's not happening. That was until last month, when two tech workers from San Francisco moved into the neighborhood. Both have the same story: Their company went work-from-home when the pandemic started, then made it permanent, so the company employees…

So...uh... whereabouts is that exactly? Asking for a friend.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#59

Post by code4tee »

I saw a great quote recently that said something like “Everyone loves work from home until you lose a deal to the competition that turned up to your customer in person.” There’s an element of truth to this.

Best advice I’ve heard is to say the draw for living in a city may go away but you need to be close. Living in the middle of nowhere isn’t going to look like such a great idea when people start gathering together again. Maybe not as much as before, but it will still happen. For these reasons I see why the suburbs are seeing a real estate boom in many areas. I’m much less sure about the long term move to places much further away from the cities.

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