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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

#121

Post by ticmasta »

SilasX wrote: post #16
lotsofpulp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? Price is the intersection of supply and demand. A buyer will ask a seller to accept a lower price if they think the seller is willing to accept a lower price. A seller might accept a lower price if they don't think they can get a higher price. You are paid $X because the buyer couldn't find someone willing to accep…

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.

When there are 100 jobs and only 10 qualified people in SF ,all paying huge cost of living, they can command very high salaries to cover COL plus more.

When there are 10 Million people living in dramatically cheaper COL centers they (a) can survive on much less, and (b) are all competing for 100 jobs, driving the supply curve way down.

>> restatement of economic generalities help

because this is a textbook example of why these generalities hold true, but only in really basic, aggregate cases.

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

#122

Post by ticmasta »

throwaway_hey wrote: post #80
lotsofpulp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but I didn't think it was necessary to state "all else being equal". In a conversation about why the same employer pays less to people if they move, it's strictly because they can and the employee doesn't have a choice to defect. Whereas in SF, the employee can walk around the corner and start working for someone else. Which is an illustration of the intersection of supply and demand.

You aren’t wrong, but we need to be careful when applying typical market economics to the labor market. It has its own field of study specifically because some of these relationships/intersections breakdown in the employee-employer relationship. A classic example is the lack of perfect information in the labor market like you see in a commodities market. A more specific example is the wage-fixing scandal that hit tec…

wouldn't the wage fixing scandal, which was essentially illegal oligopolistic behaviour, be an example of how a larger market, wider area supply/demand relationship would look more like the classic economic model, i.e., this exact case?

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

#123

Post by Beached »

mr_woozy wrote: post #111
stanrivers wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok - This is fair - as you make it easier to work from other places, you increase employee supply. That resets the balance. Good points.

Yes I think the increase in employee supply outstrips the rise in remote jobs becoming viable.

I know a know a TON of people looking forward to the next couple of years employment opportunities. lots of people I know have gotten offers from SV, seattle, etc companies but refused to relocate for one reason or another. now that people are accepting of full remote, they have their eyes open for the jobs they want, with the hope that full remote is now an option. I myself turned down many offers from west coast corps because pay wasn't high enough to justify moving and the life style cost and inconveniences increase.

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

#124

Post by kenhwang »

azinman2 wrote: post #120
bluekite2000 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till Asia's borders open. The fanout will go transpacific. Especially in Southeast Asia.

Except time zones

Even better. Play during the day, work at night. ~Most~ Many engineers prefer that.

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

#125

Post by ticmasta »

duxup wrote: post #9
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…

I worked for a valley company that changed people's salary if they moved to a new office. Work in the valley, make more, if you moved they'd lower your pay. Midwest salaries were notably lower. Oddly enough it was more of a issue brought up by folks at HQ as they knew they were more expensive and a particular group was really paranoid about it... like constantly. It was a bad scene.

This seems similar to how I felt when consulting and knew I was billing at a much higher rate than others. Even if there is some form of value-for-money angle you feel like you have a target on your back and will be an early "win" for the bean counters when the knifes come out. My advice: be prepared for the end at anytime (like 4pm today) and enjoy it while you can!

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

#126

Post by pkaye »

iaw wrote: post #61
davidw wrote: post #31

I can't read the article, but this appears to be hitting us hard here in Bend, Oregon. House prices were already high and only appear to be going higher. I think more people could be a great thing if we get them involved locally, and if we add enough housing to accommodate them, which is tricky right now. As someone involved with a local YIMBY group, it's tough to see the prices - it felt like we were making some pro…

In 1978 California passed the ill-conceived Proposition 13 which encourages people to keep houses rather than sell them through lower tax rates for longer ownership. California has almost 40M residents and Oregon has a bit over 4M, even a fraction of those 40M going north to Oregon is going to overload the housing market there.

> even a fraction of those 40M going north to Oregon is going to overload the housing market there.

Oregon just needs to build more housing.

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

#127

Post by azinman2 »

kenhwang wrote: post #124
azinman2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except time zones

Even better. Play during the day, work at night. ~Most~ Many engineers prefer that.

So right now it's 5pm PST, end of the work day for many. It's 8AM in Saigon.

You really think people are going to work from midnight to 8am? And sometimes later in the morning depending on the situation? And this is going to be a massive trend?

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

#128

Post by sokoloff »

triceratops wrote: post #95
Nasrudith wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an upper bound essentially for a sustainable company and is a point of convergence "your salary If given two "equal" canidates why pay more if you don't have to? (The actual equality given other complications like cultural, language barriers, and similiar is another topic.) The "fairness" is also not mathematically viable as it assumes axiomatically that no action can be taken to earn profit that isn't "unfair"…

I'm sorry, but I did not understand your comment at all. Some of those sentences don't parse for me. I don't know what you're trying to say. Can you please clarify?

It seemed clear enough to me. Your salary is less than or equal to the value you add (companies will usually not knowingly pay you more than you’re worth), not equal to it.

The rest was expanding on that core point by computing the expected profit a company gains by hiring someone (value - salary [minus total costs, actually]) and that a company will seek to maximize its profits.

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

#129

Post by sokoloff »

notJim wrote: post #71
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…

Anecdotally, I'm aware of two companies that do change salaries based on location. One large-ish publicly traded company, and one late-stage startup.

My wager is 90+% of tech companies will adjust salaries by location and 10% or less will pay pan-US salaries.

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

#130

Post by kenhwang »

azinman2 wrote: post #127
kenhwang wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better. Play during the day, work at night. ~Most~ Many engineers prefer that.

So right now it's 5pm PST, end of the work day for many. It's 8AM in Saigon. You really think people are going to work from midnight to 8am? And sometimes later in the morning depending on the situation? And this is going to be a massive trend?

If your company can operate on EST, yeah, the hours almost work out. Lines up even better on India Standard Time.

For PST, central Europe is perfect. 6pm-2am workday is pretty doable.

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