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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

#271

Post by rsync »

davidw wrote: post #190
rsync wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anyplace that people want to live should ..." ... democratically decide their own course of action with regard to housing, zoning, etc.

Exclusionary zoning is basically what they came up with when the Supreme Court decided that you couldn't straight up exclude non-white people.

That's an almost comical level of reductionism concerning exclusionary zoning.

If I lived in a suburban neighborhood I would not want a 7-11 nextdoor. Or a steel fab shop. That is exclusionary zoning and it has nothing to do with race or class discrimination.

It disappoints me to see democracy - and democratic outcomes - embraced only when it produces results we like.

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

#272

Post by Nasrudith »

monoideism wrote: post #132
silicon2401 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes it appealing to a lot of people who have been living around millions of other people. Soon many of these places will no longer be cheap and far away from other people. It'll be interesting to see how today's cultural conflicts play out when the more left-leaning, urban remote workers move en masse to smaller, more right-leaning, less urban places.

The dispersal of bay area tech workers will be good for the country, if we can avoid breaking down in the immediate future. SV had become a total thought bubble, with the average tech worker having either no conception or a very negative conception of how most of the country lives outside of the large urban areas. Moving into areas with lots of moderates or conservatives will be a good learning experience. I don't ex…

Of the US population 80% lives in urban areas. While bubbles are relative to experience it is fair to say the higher percentage is the one more representative.

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

#273

Post by 762236 »

nsm wrote: post #225
762236 wrote: post #142

Until the fires it was hard to imagine giving up the weather and outdoors here in the Bay Area. Now we have COVID which means you want to be outside, but fire smoke that you shouldn't breath, so you want to be inside. I have a lot of HEPA filters running inside, and if I exercise outside, I wear a P100 even at VO2max. But if my daughter weren't keeping us here for her friends, I'd consider moving away now.

I think this is hyperbole for the majority of people who do not have existing respiratory or other health conditions. Air quality in SF proper was only bad (by which I mean Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or above) for roughly a month this year. That certainly doesn't warrant having HEPA filters and P100 masks now in October/November (again, for most people).

In the valley it has been nearly continuously elevated AQI since the lightning strikes in late August. There were a few weeks without. But these are particles --- not gas, so your lungs don't expel it once the particles impact and embed in your tissues. The body doesn't really have a way to clean that out that I'm aware of (I'd like to learn that I'm wrong). As an endurance athlete, I move a lot of air, and I want my lungs to be in good shape.

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

#274

Post by cercatrova »

humanrebar wrote: post #148
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"?

Your customer is the person handing out raises, promotions, key assignments, etc. The person who makes it to happy hours will have the edge, fairly or not.

Raises, promotions and the like are not the way these days to make significant chunks of cash. It's job hopping every 1.5 to 2.5 years. In this case, there is no need to worry about promotions.

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

#275

Post by davidw »

rsync wrote: post #271
davidw wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exclusionary zoning is basically what they came up with when the Supreme Court decided that you couldn't straight up exclude non-white people.

That's an almost comical level of reductionism concerning exclusionary zoning. If I lived in a suburban neighborhood I would not want a 7-11 nextdoor. Or a steel fab shop. That is exclusionary zoning and it has nothing to do with race or class discrimination. It disappoints me to see democracy - and democratic outcomes - embraced only when it produces results we like.

People who run factories aren't going to tear down a house and try and wedge a factory there. That's not the sort of thing anyone wants to eliminate, anyway.

You ought to have a look at this book, which makes the link between exclusionary zoning and flat out racism pretty clear:

https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten...

Oh, and I would indeed love to live near a corner store. Lots of people did and would now, too.

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

#276

Post by jamesliudotcc »

mrgordon wrote: post #242
asdff wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, but eventually you come to a reckoning of what you truly get out of an area. Is it nice restaurants? Bars? Parks? You can have those elsewhere. Walkable neighborhoods with transit exist elsewhere too. Museums, art, plays, concerts, operas, orchestras, too. At some point you have to square with the fact that your 2 million dollar home in the bay area is an order of magnitude more expensive than a comparab…

Can you give some examples of places that meet those criteria (good transit, walkable, major cultural venues, varied dining scene) with $200k houses? I don’t think there are many places in America with good transit that are walkable so I think it’s going to be tough to find that for $200k. And if the solution is just to move somewhere so small you don’t need transit, then you lose out on the varied restaurants, cultu…

Chicago: the Red, Blue, Green, Orange, and Pink lines all run through neighborhoods with $200k houses. The Blue Line connects to O'Hare, the Orange line connects to Midway. The bus system has a line in a grid every mile, sometimes more often, with some diagonals.

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

#277

Post by TomVDB »

nostrademons wrote: post #266
three_seagrass wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My sense is that the folks buying $2M+ homes in the Bay Area or $1M+ homes in Tahoe have enough money in the bank that they could just rebuild in cash on the off chance that their home gets burned down. At that price point you're largely paying for the land. Cheap structures (which abound in Tahoe) can be built for ~$250K, while even a really fancy 4000+ square foot mansion in Los Altos can be built for < $1M. Most o…

You’d be wrong.

It’s pretty easy to find prime plots of land in the Tahoe area for less than $250k.

The problem is building: there is a shortage of construction labor (they can’t afford to live in the area anymore), and the building season is short.

Building cost per square footage is higher than in the Bay Area, often exceeding $600/sq.ft.

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

#278

Post by lasereyes136 »

SilasX wrote: post #94
d1zzy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even if it was obvious to you, I think discussions work better when people don’t have to guess what someone’s explanation is.

That is the whole point of information asymmetry in negotiation. The party with more information has an advantage. All salary discussions are negotiations.

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

#279

Post by lasereyes136 »

cma wrote: post #141
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…

A remote employee as commodity is essentially fungible, in which case why would a company bid more on the same employee living in a higher cost of living area than the same employee living in a lower one? It would only make sense if employers collude so that those employees can't get competitive offers. Otherwise, why wouldn't another company bid more since location doesn't change the value?

No one said employees are commodities or fungible. That doesn't mean that a negotiation doesn't happen.

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

#280

Post by sagarm »

refurb wrote: post #231
ryanobjc wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly all my colleagues and friends here in the Bay Area are from somewhere else. So this idea of a totally isolated bubble is a fiction made up on few facts to sell a story. And most people are fairly tolerant - except of the intolerable few who wish to destroy tolerance. Again more made up stories.

It's a pretty massive thought bubble, at least for the professional class. It has a massive number of highly paid, white, left-leaning people. Opinions outside of that bubble are met with "I didn't know people like you existed!". If that's not a bubble, I don't know what is.

The Bay area and tech is not predominantly white. While hispanics and black people are underrepresented, Asians (both south and east) are dramatically overrepresented.

In addition, Bay area people are from all over the country and from diverse backgrounds.

In contrast, rural communities tend to be highly homogeneous both in terms of race and life experience.

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