Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by chimeracoder » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

Cd00d wrote: post #114

dekhn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. The Bay Area, specifically Stanford and Berkeley, contributed to the WWII tech research initiative and then afterwards, Terman made Stanford Research Park which led to Silicon Valley.

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.

> 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

It's definitely not "no strings" - otherwise Stanford wouldn't be the actual owners of PageRank (which they licensed to Google).

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

#352

Post by ed_balls » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #67

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 ridiculous. The Bay Area, specifically Stanford and Berkeley, contributed to the WWII tech research initiative and then afterwards, Terman made Stanford Research Park which led to Silicon Valley.

Could you make a similar statement in 1970 about Detroit?

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

#353

Post by baron_harkonnen » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #89

bigyikes wrote: post #13

As it happens, tomorrow I’m putting in my 30-day notice to terminate my lease and leave the Bay. (And I’m paying 2 additional months rent in fees to do so) Not being tied to the office fundamentally changes the calculus of choosing where to live. There just aren’t good reasons to live here anymore for so many of us. Even if you enjoy the area, chances are you can get a better deal by moving just a bit further away. A…

>> 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…

Having had a fairly long tech career working in small, non-SF cities, even getting paid 70-80% of a Bay area salary, I can tell you that this allows you to live very, very well.

Bay area salaries are much larger than most other jobs (tech or not) in small cities. I recall local tech companies offering 1/2 to 1/3 of what you would get paid for average (non-FAANG) work in the Bay. In most smaller cities in the US > $100k is still quite a lot for a household, let alone a single income. If take that income outside of even small towns to more rural areas, $100k can allow you to live very, very well.

Sure eventually we'll see salaries reach an equilibrium, where local tech companies have to offer more and big tech companies will offer less. However, for the next few years, if you're coming from a Bay Area company, you can take a pretty major cut to TC and still live extremely well. You don't have to move to the middle of nowhere for this to be the case either.

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

#354

Post by TuringNYC » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #106

kilbuz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me (in SF): climate that matches what I want perfectly. The option for snow or beaches on the same day. The food, the diversity, the grittiness, the jobs, the history. And all my family lives here, too. The biggest one of all: walkability, never having to get in my car unless I want to leave the city. Where did you end up moving that you found a better fit for yourself?

Northern Virginia about an Hour from DC. The only two things you miss in VA on your list is "grittiness" which is a negative for me, and walkability, which you could get if you go closer to DC.

Same as @AndrewKemendo I re-lo'd to Northern Virginia just outside DC, 3yrs ago in my case. This is my 3rd tour in DC/Va. It has been a fantastic three years, especially w/r/t life, friends, family, society. I bike to work, and every day has been wonderful.

That said -- and I hear pushback on this from other threads -- my job opportunities here for any senior level roles are next to nil. This could be because I do not have a security clearance (a local favorite), or it could be because the job pyramid here in DC/NoVa really is differently shaped than SF/SV, or it could be that i'm an outsider w/o a deep social network, or perhaps I'm not looking at the area correctly.

As an anecdote, I get tons of Linked In messages for opportunities in California. CTO positions, VP positions at venture backed growth startups, all across the board. I get almost no in-bounds from companies in DC except for consulting firms (been there, done that when i was 20-25, not sure if that is a good fit at my current stage in life.)

I'm sure part of it is my profile. I have lots of real-time systems, model, quant, Computer Vision, and tech leadership background. I'm just not sure how much of a market there is for that -- though I'm positive having a security clearance would change things dramatically.

This presents a serious concern for me, and a balancing act for continued happiness in DC/VA.

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

#355

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #276

gonehome wrote: post #267

Earlier 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…

Prop 13 is hardly obscure.

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

#356

Post by iancmceachern » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

woofie11 wrote: post #167

gumby wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on: there’s a beautiful A/B test you can consult: in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Boston’s route 128 was the “Silicon Valley” of its time. The US poured even more money into it than they did the Bay Area. Yet which grew and which stagnated?

I think THE major difference was enforcement of noncompetes (as well as those as a proxy for a slew of similar regulatory differences). Financial resources went to route 128 because of a more corporate-friendly regulatory climate. Innovation came from Silicon Valley because of a more innovation-friendly regulatory climate. Guess which won out? US reached economic supremacy in part due to a weaker IP scheme than Europ…

>I think THE major difference was enforcement of noncompetes (as well as those as a proxy for a slew of similar regulatory differences). Exactly

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

#357

Post by jeffreyrogers » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #264

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience living in an area that has high net migration from California is that the people leaving bring California's policies with them.

Anything specific? One guess I'd have is that an influx of new people creates that anti-housing response anywhere which can lead to some of the same problems. I suspect that's less about CA policy and more about bad incentives around housing being an investment in the US. If you mean that most people from CA don't like Trump (or the Republican support/defense of him), then yeah I think you're probably right about tha…

I wasn't thinking about Trump at all. I don't think he (or any President) is very relevant at a local level, at least not on a short time-frame. The influx of people probably has something to do with it, although in Utah (where I live) there is not much anti-housing response. There is lots of construction going on both in Salt Lake City and in the surrounding areas, and lots of political support for it.

The real problems I see are more cultural ones. Homelessness is rising (as it is throughout the US). Utah had handled homelessness much better than other places due to a unique balance between the local government, the police, and the LDS church (I'm not a member FYI), but changes in the mayor and chief of police disrupted that balance.

I also perceive an arrogance on the part of some of those moving here. The idea that they can just start changing things without understanding how/why things were the way they were before. I don't think I'm against change--it's impossible to stop it in any case--but I also don't think coastal values are right for every area.

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

#358

Post by dep_b » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

It always felt to me like everybody likes to hype up the amount of people leaving in the hope that people actually leave and the rent might go down.

I don't think people really want leave San Francisco and the few unlucky ones that do will pay even more rent when they come back as soon as things start booming again.

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

#359

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #326

dragonwriter wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 rea…

You obviously don't live in California, don't make enough money to pay taxes, or are just being cussed. The US top end tax rate is 37%, plus California is .... what? 13? You're already up to giving away half of what you make in California. Meanwhile you have to pay taxes on physical property like your house, and your house is valued at 7 figures if you live in the Bay Area. Finally, there was a VAT the last time I li…

> You obviously don't live in California,

Only for a little over 4 decades.

> don't make enough money to pay taxes,

Yeah, let's just say my household income is in the top 10% in the state, so no.

> or are just being cussed.

If by “being cussed” you mean “understand the difference between total tax rates and top end marginal income tax rates in a progressive tax system”, then, yes it must be this one.

If not, you've missed at least one important possibility.

> The US top end tax rate is 37%, plus California is .... what? 13? You're already up to giving away half of what you make in California.

If you make enough in regular income that essentially all of your income is taxed at the maximum marginal federal and state, sure.

But virtually no one does that , one, because, first, you have to make a huge amount of income for that to be the case, and, second, if you make enough income for that to be the case, you probably have plenty of opportunity to structure how you make income so that, again, it's not. (Of course, while France’s top marginal income tax rate is “only” 45%, it makes a lot more of it's revenue from non-regular-income taxes than anyplace in the US, with a 20% standard VAT rate and a 42.2% top tax rate, including surtaxes and social charges, on capital gains.)

> Meanwhile you have to pay taxes on physical property like your house, and your house is valued at 7 figures if you live in the Bay Area

You don't have to pay full-value on the house except in the year you bought it, assuming market appreciation of > 2%/annum because prop 13.

> Finally, there was a VAT the last time I lived there

There has never been a VAT in any part of California. There is a sales tax, which is not a VAT, which is not a VAT, and the maximum sales tax rate in the state is 10.25%.

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

#360

Post by burlesona » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

godot wrote: post #63

ghaff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot to like about many areas of California. Which ones may depend on your weather, cultural, etc. preferences. But Silicon Valley proper I find not particularly appealing; housing costs are only part of the reason. (SF itself has well-documented pluses and minuses.) I don't live or work in CA/SV. But if I were in SV but no longer needed to commute, I might well stay in CA but I'd probably move somewhere out…

I did this and completely agree. I lived in the bay area since high school, more than two decades ago. Last year I finally moved away from it for good. Not far, just to the Greater Sacramento area. (I've been working remotely for a couple years, well before COVID) Qualify of life improvement is huge. Weather and cultural are important reasons for me to stay in California (plus family and friends), and I still get tha…

I ended up leaving SF and moving to Austin, but Sacramento was really high on my list as well. It's a very nice town, and being half-way between SF and Lake Tahoe is pretty hard to beat :)