This is wonderful, in my opinion. The bay area has become crowded and expensive. Looking forward to that changing :-)
Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
311–320 of 1001 posts
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that, but he himself left California for Austin. He's in the set of people he's complaining about. [Edit: Apparently not Austin, but some other place - point still stands]
I have never lived in Austin. I never will: too many Californians have ruined the place; now they've got skyrocketing housing prices, traffic, homeless tent cities with rivers of human feces and the general high quality of life one can find in other paradisical California shit holes. No doubt they'll find a way to jack the taxes up if enough move to Texas. Very typical of a Palo Alto resident to think the only proble…
> the tax rate makes France look reasonable,
France has taxes around 45% of GDP, California has (including all levels, including federal) around 30%, the US as a whole (again, counting all levels) is around 25%. California is one of the higher overall tax jurisdictions in the US, but unless your argument is that the US as a whole has unreasonably low taxes, I don't get how you can say California makes France look reasonable.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#313How many are really leaving? A few thousand departures can result in a flood of rentals on the market, depressing prices.
Many articles on many subjects began with the writer observing a few people doing something and turn it into trend spotting.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I thought it was somewhat due to Stanford's handling of IP. The argument I heard was that if you're researching at Stanford and make a productizable discovery you can spin off a company no strings. I was at Cornell when I heard this, where any company built off on-campus research had to sign over 20% of the company up front. Makes those initial pitches to VC that much harder.
I don't think that's the case. I've anecdotally heard that Stanford does take some (possibly small) amount of equity. From the first paragraph of Stanford's patent policy[0]: > All potentially patentable inventions conceived or first reduced to practice in whole or in part by members of the faculty or staff (including student employees) of the University in the course of their University responsibilities or with more…
Yeah, the important part about this is "with more than incidental use of University resources," which, for software, is almost nonexistent. (Even internet usage doesn't count as more than "incidental," which I know is a point that many places use to "suggest" they had a part in the creation.)
Otoh, they are extremely supportive of professors and PhDs (and undergrads, though those are often more software) starting companies based on research, and have very good policies regarding this. Most people end up generally happy on all sides.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree with this comment if by 100 you meant 1000
e: oh whoops, it was edited
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#316Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> and still come out ahead financially. Ya. Earning a SF wage but living elsewhere is great. But there is a flip side to this coin. As employees realize they can work from home, employers also realize they can have employees work from home. They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages. Those who convert their in-office jobs into work-from-home are a covid oddity. Those who will be hired in the future on th…
We’ve been trying to hire these people for ages locally and remotely and we still couldn’t find them so I have no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19.
The same talent will be hired, they'll just be paid far less if they aren't in a HCOL area because they can be. Businesses don't want to pay more money than they have to and are ultimately in a much, much better position to play hardball than individual ICs, "rockstar" or no.
The fact that some folks think so highly of themselves that they don't believe this to be true in their case is just hubris.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#318To me, 'supremacy' sounds scary -- not positive at all. Too much misuse of all kinds of perceived supremacy.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I could, I'd leave tomorrow, but, besides tech, there is another unique aspect of Bay Area: the Biotech scene. My wife works in Biotech and the only other alternative for us would be the Boston area. But, after running some numbers pro/cons, the Bay Area wins. So we are stuck here ... for now.
Depends - Boston can be cheaper if you don't have a big commute and the public transportation can help. Source: I've lived in both.
Yeah I looked into home prices rent/buy. True that you can find something _cheaper_ but not cheap/good enough to justify the lower salary and less tech opportunities. I came to the conclusion that Boston is just as expensive as SF but with less opportunities.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#320It 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…
I think people in this thread have expressed well that the concern is when you want to change jobs. It's just a lot easier to do when you're in the area.