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Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

businessinsider.com

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Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#231

Post by arcturus17 »

ericmay wrote: post #195
sandworm101 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> wealth distribution At the moment that may be true but increasing the pool of potential labor rarely results in wealth distribution. I think companies will pay less. That money won't go to other hires as tech companies limit hiring for other reasons than money. The money will go to bottom lines, to stockholders: the opposite of wealth distribution.

A few thoughts: 1. Americans need to buy and hold equities. Period. When Google cuts costs or makes more money, I benefit as a shareholder (or you can hold total market indexes and the like). 2. Maybe the money will go to new hires, capabilities, expenditures, etc. ? 3. Sure, but this is certainly a good arguing point against immigration, population growth and H1-B visa programs and the like. 4. Increase taxes on the…

How much equity would you need to hold to compensate for a 30-40% decrease in wages?

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#232

Post by burntoutfire »

Xcelerate wrote: post #204

It will be interesting to see what happens. I work at one of FANG and recently relocated to Asheville from the Bay Area (sooner than I expected; we have a newborn and wildfire smoke was getting pretty bad). Compensation adjustment is surprisingly less than I would have expected, although it's hard to say if this trend will hold over the next decade or not. Our rent is 1/4 of what it was in the Bay Area for one more b…

> wildfire smoke was getting pretty bad

For reference, can you give some numbers on this situation, such as average/high daily PM25? I've heard multiple people refer to the smoke as bad, but I'm wondering what it means exactly.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#234

Post by zapita »

I don’t see much discussion of the unmovable reality of timezones. Sure, any tech worker can work remotely for any employer... In theory. In practice, timezone distance is becoming the new relevant measure of distance.

The further you are (in TZ distance) from an organization’s management, the less opportunities are available to you in that organization, because the degraded communication will make it impossible for you to fully participate in the decision-making process.

So I think that the most skilled tech workers over time will gravitate to areas which combine 1) high quality of living and 2) minimal timezone distance from management.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#235

Post by gonehome »

TomVDB wrote: post #184
gonehome wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've had some friends leave (to CO and DC), but I'm skeptical of companies and VCs leaving. For a kind of funny example, there was an episode of the all-in podcast (mostly a podcast of successful VCs) where they talked about SV politics and leaving. The irony was while they talked about CA politics to an absurd degree ("worst run state in US", etc.) when they asked each other if they were planning on leaving al…

That $5M is hyperbole, right? Nobody will deny that Bay Area housing is expensive, but even today, $1.5M will get you a decent single family house with a garden in Santa Clara. That’s a ridiculous amount of money for most, but it’s not in $5M exit territory, and something that’s relatively easy to manage for a 2 tech income family: $1.25M loan is $5600/m mortgage, $1500/m in real estate taxes.

$5M is a little hyperbolic, but $4M is not.

$1.5M will get you a shack - really old maybe a little bigger than 1000sqft in Santa Clara if you can find one at that price at all.

$4M gets you a nice, newer 2900sqft house (comparable to what you'd get in the other regions I mentioned).

$1.5M would have been enough in 2012, but it's gotten worse since then.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#236

Post by cossatot »

gedy wrote: post #19
qppo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not municipalities but the state's labor laws are highly conducive to the tech culture and don't exist most places in the country. There's not much money for the startup crop that feeds big tech outside the Bay Area. It's all on Sand Hill Road. I can only speak for myself but I'll never live in a red state again. Not even Texas, it's not worth it. Even where I grew up (the purple midwest) is too socially conservative…

Unless you are a political junky reading news all day - what practically speaking is so intolerable about living there or your neighbors?

I grew up in a small town in the Ozarks and there was a huge amount of fundamentalist Christian propaganda and social conditioning going on in the public school system. The high school principal passed out bibles, prayer was held before many sports practices or events, recruiters/councilors for Christian youth groups sat with the students at the cafeteria at lunch, etc. Some of the science teachers taught science well, though others made it explicit that they were Creationists and were only teaching evolution/Earth science because they had to, and that the students could stick around after class to hear 'what really happened'.

This was on top of another layer of class conflict between the middle class teachers/administration and lower class/trailer park kids, who mostly dropped out at 16 which was fine with the admin. Lots of additional pressure on other students who didn't conform for various race/gender/etc. reasons. And then completely bizarre stuff like, though the official reason for not having a soccer team was that it would detract from the sacrosanct football program, many of the teachers were clear that believed soccer to be a Communist sport (this was in the 90s when the cold war was long over).

Many of the perpetrators here are very nice people and fine neighbors, but if you aren't an evangelical Christian it can be a challenge. Especially if you're not white: the KKK is still a well known presence just down the road in Harrison, AR, so it's not just woke fearmongering.

It's one thing to live in these environments as an adult and be able to blow a lot of it off, but it's another thing completely to have kids there, which really detracts from the 'leave California to raise kids' motivation.

And it would be better at a larger city like St. Louis or Indianapolis but some fraction of the population of those places are from towns like mine and don't find these beliefs and practices to be particularly problematic.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#237

Post by throwaway45349 »

ericmay wrote: post #195
sandworm101 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> wealth distribution At the moment that may be true but increasing the pool of potential labor rarely results in wealth distribution. I think companies will pay less. That money won't go to other hires as tech companies limit hiring for other reasons than money. The money will go to bottom lines, to stockholders: the opposite of wealth distribution.

A few thoughts: 1. Americans need to buy and hold equities. Period. When Google cuts costs or makes more money, I benefit as a shareholder (or you can hold total market indexes and the like). 2. Maybe the money will go to new hires, capabilities, expenditures, etc. ? 3. Sure, but this is certainly a good arguing point against immigration, population growth and H1-B visa programs and the like. 4. Increase taxes on the…

> Increase taxes on the wealthy, etc.

Anyone working for a Silicon Valley company as an engineer is almost certainly considered "the wealthy" by most of America.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#238

Post by maxwell »

dekhn wrote: post #171
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one disputes that those events you cite happened. However, those events were essentially random, not caused by local efforts to stimulate industry. Because of them, the area was blessed/cursed with an excess of productivity that it didn't know how to cause. Now it's just coasting downhill, unable to maintain the altitude that it once had because it never knew how to (was never possible to?) build that altitude wit…

Stanford Research Park was a joint venture between Stanford and the city of palo alto . It was highly non-random.

Lots of failed research parks, oil wells, railroads, gold mining operations.

The thing with oil wells, railroads, and gold mining, is that geography/geology matters more than path dependence.

Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and to a lesser extent NYC and London, are more about path dependence. Their dominance in their sectors seem more resulting from, if anything specific to point to, legal factors, than geography or any particular natural resource/phenomenon.

Why make movies and software in California, one in the south and the other a bit more north?

The founding of Hollywood was just as random as the events that "caused" the rise of the Valley. What if Griffith had gone elsewhere? What if Edison hadn't enforced his patents, causing the exodus across the country to make movies out of his purview? Similar climate/environs/affordability elsewhere, why not AZ, NM, TX, GA, FL?

This is a lot different than, say, the reasons for North Carolina to eventually beat New England in textile production, or why the Rust Belt is where it is, or why rail and shipbuilding was big in the Northeast but not so much space and auto manufacturing. It's more like why the appliances that are made in the U.S. are mostly made in the south.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#239

Post by CountSessine »

badconvincer wrote: post #188
ylhert wrote: post #33

Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse ). SFBA did nothing special to attract the wealth of technology companies, they effectively got lucky with Shockley/Fairchild/Traitorous 8 and the boom in technology that followed. It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopa…

This is reactionary revisionism and based on your post history you know it.

I remain unconvinced.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#240

Post by ericmay »

arcturus17 wrote: post #231
ericmay wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few thoughts: 1. Americans need to buy and hold equities. Period. When Google cuts costs or makes more money, I benefit as a shareholder (or you can hold total market indexes and the like). 2. Maybe the money will go to new hires, capabilities, expenditures, etc. ? 3. Sure, but this is certainly a good arguing point against immigration, population growth and H1-B visa programs and the like. 4. Increase taxes on the…

How much equity would you need to hold to compensate for a 30-40% decrease in wages?

Who is experiencing the decrease in wages? For many Americans the distribution of these jobs to other locations would result in an increase in wages.

Not to mention, the top companies would still hire top talent in a competitive market.

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