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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

#201

Post by three_seagrass »

gnicholas wrote: post #174
TomVDB wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you weigh the fire risk in the Tahoe area? The Palo Alto area has smoke risk, and some PSPS risk, but not much risk of straight up burning down. But homes in Tahoe are at significantly more risk of fire, right? Is it possible to get fire insurance there?

Just a PSA: home insurance companies have been dropping fire coverage in CA so quickly now that there's a state-mandated stay to prevent them from doing it for a year.

No word what the plan is after the stay but I would be cognizant of any insurance plans that you get.

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

#202

Post by three_seagrass »

chasd00 wrote: post #173
newusr1233 wrote: post #150

I wonder if this is just a fad until people realize they don't actually like the rural life as much as they think they would.

yeah, "the grass is always greener". I grew up in a small country town, it has its charms but it gets old too. By the time I was college age I left and never looked back. Small time life comes with a different set of problems than living in a city but they're still problems.

Same. Go back to rural midwest to visit relatives a couple times a year - I love it but after a week I'm reminded why I don't live there.

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

#203

Post by dentemple »

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?

Maybe not Saigon, but as a night owl, it's been a dream of mine to be able to slide my 9-5 EST jobs to being 2nd shift jobs, like say in Central or Eastern Europe.

People have different biological clocks, and being able to detach from geography and perfectly tailor your clock to the company's clock, frankly, sounds like good efficiency to me.

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

#204

Post by dboreham »

mythrwy wrote: post #172
x87678r wrote: post #153

Its going to make the voting tomorrow extra interesting. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah all these red states with blue voting techies arriving.

All 4 of those state will still be red. We aren't talking about a population altering number of people.

Montana already has a Democrat governor and one senator.

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

#205

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

chasd00 wrote: post #168
davidw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing I'm curious about is what the distribution will be like. Smooth, across a wide range of places - anywhere with a decent internet connection - or will people follow previously trodden paths to places like Boulder or where I am in Bend, Oregon? There are plenty of towns with lots of outdoor access in Oregon that are cheap because the mill closed. But they are not 'hot' destinations.

if starlink comes online as scheduled then all bets are off. You'll see tech workers on the mountain tops of the Rockies i bet.

the right model for the rockies (and cascades and sierras) is to be found in Switzerland/Austria/France/Germany near the high Alps. In the long run it's not going be urban development all the way up to the summits, but I would expect the Rockies to have more of the same sort of human presence that the Alps do in about 1-200 years time. The big difference is precipitation ... the Rockies are on the low side compared to the Alps, and that may take things in a very different direction.

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

#206

Post by thatfrenchguy »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #184
abeppu wrote: post #145

I wonder when the reverse will happen. As rents in SF dive, will people that were force to outlying parts of the Bay Area return? Will younger LGBT folk be able to afford to live in/near the Castro? Will more people _not_ in tech be able to live here? SF has felt like such a one-industry town for quite a while, and that can mute some of the richness and diversity that normally makes cities interesting (and perhaps mo…

For about 30 years cities were relatively undesirable places to live in for the average person. The cities that young people have flocked to in the last decade or so are designed and developed more like large scale open shopping malls than the cities of the 70s and 80s. The closest comparison to what's happening now was "White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protest…

You assume people want more suburbs, more space. There will always be a market for real dense cities, and it’s not like tech folks participate a lot in making the city attractive (and I include myself in this assessment)

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

#207

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

three_seagrass wrote: post #200
ulfw wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone is a salesman though. Why would an engineer need to be in an office coding away so "he can turn up to his customer"?

IME junior engineers benefit from being physically around senior staff, but that's just anecdotal.

I got more from reading the source code of Emacs, Ultrix, Dynix and TeX,then eventually NCSA Mosaic and Linux than I ever did from almost any other "senior staff" that I ever encountered.

I would hope the same is true of the comparison between reading the source code of Ardour and meeting me in person.

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

#208

Post by andrewacove »

blantonl wrote: post #82

I own a number of pieces of property in Whitefish Montana, where I decamped to the second my children were released from school for COVID reasons in March (we split time between TX and MT). Given what I felt were going to be significant economic disruptions due to unemployment and drops in income, I prepared myself with the understanding that our little resort town was going to be facing some hard times. Usually, sma…

I loved Whitefish when I was there, and would have considered it for the long term but was concerned about reports of a growing alt-right contingent in town. Have you encountered that?

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

#209

Post by SamReidHughes »

ambernightcrush wrote: post #198
howlgarnish wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protests and riots in cities I think you have cause and effect reversed here. The original "pull" trigger was the automobile becoming affordable to the middle classes, making suburban living possible and leading to many leaving cities. The racist bit here is that many of these suburbs had covenants prohibiting non-whites. The…

You did mention racism but I would also say racism was a driving force since before white flight. The government precursors to Fannie mae and Freddie mac wouldn't back mortgages that banks created in redlined areas. And the precursor to HUD created segregated public housing, including in the west. The Federal government was pushing redlining and segregation in housing since at least the Great Depression. A lot of thi…

There were plenty of people liberal enough or cheap enough to live in a black neighborhood. Many tried. But they wound up 100% black/0% white anyway.

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

#210

Post by gonehome »

burlesona wrote: post #164
asdff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely the math that people are weighing. Live in comparative squalor in the bay or nyc in your cramped apartment with no grass and no light and little opportunity for change as time goes by and your family potentially grows, or move back home and live like an absolute king in a legitimate mansion with yards on all sides with a three car garage, basketball hoop, and a pool in that rich rich neighborhood wit…

Space in big cities comes at a premium, but tech workers living in SF have hardly been living in squalor. Most of SF is single family homes, and the vast Bay Area beyond even more so. Also, having done the spreadsheet many times myself, it’s almost never a raise to move to a low-cost area. The reason people make that move is that they’ve accumulated so much wealth in SF that they can basically retire so long as they…

I’m not so sure - housing is so expensive in the Bay Area it’s more than just moving to retire.

I grew up in Buffalo where housing is quite inexpensive so it’s more dramatic for me, but a small house to raise a family is 2.3 million on the peninsula, super old, pretty small (1600sqft), and being a new buyer your property tax on that is 23k per year.

That’s insane even if you get a million dollars in an exit or in google shares.

People just want to be able to have a family and a place to live.

My friends mostly left in their 30s to have kids (mostly Colorado, some Texas).

Even SF is cheaper than the peninsula for a new construction apartment (which don’t really exist in Palo Alto through Cupertino).

You can’t even really escape to Santa Cruz anymore - you’d have to go to Sacramento. At that point you might as well move across the country.

Frustrating bit to me is how unnecessary this is - just people who bought first protected by prop13 keeping the supply down for others.

There’s an irony in seeing people with a Black Lives Matter sign on the lawn, and pushing for No on 22, but when it comes to the most important way to actually help the most people (increasing housing supply) - they instead repeatedly argue against building new or high density housing. And they do this while pretending they’re in favor of housing at the same time.

One of the Palo Alto city council members says there’s no housing crisis - you just need a good realtor (like her). See: https://twitter.com/lydia_kou

Kitty on the planning commission in Cupertino says if they build housing single devs will turn their high school daughters into prostitutes.

People complain about building everywhere, but the housing policy/cost is abnormally bad here.

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