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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

#521

Post by corytheboyd »

vmception wrote: post #476
corytheboyd wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Tech killed SF” is such a tired scapegoat. I also didn’t even work in tech when I first moved here, does that unfairly change your perception of my “killing SF”? Without the tech angle, arguments like this to me are reduced to the weight of “KIDS THESE DAYS DON’T GET IT AND RUIN EVERYTHING THAT I USED TO LIKE”

I don't care I'm mocking the entire sentiment. Every single thing I've ever heard about how "SF used to be" sounds even more unappealing than what it is today. "Oh wow all the currently nice neighborhoods were sketchy ghettos? How quaint! " but at least artists could live there! As soon as you leave SF you will realize how weak and absurd the various generation's arguments about SF are.

Maybe it came across differently but I’m not so emotionally attached to this place that I can’t see past the romance tinted glasses. Any place you spend a good chunk of your life in will have an impact, one of those places was SF for me. I’m not defending anyone, or really standing on a platform of my own even. It was just a nice place to live for a while and it’s also nice to be moving on :)

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

#523

Post by Arubis »

standardUser wrote: post #293
Arubis wrote: post #71

Having read this headline ad infinium over the last 20 years or so, I will believe this when the majority of VCs move out of, and not "keep a place" in, the Bay Area. Other places have and will continue to develop, and that's great! But the center of gravity is going to remain where you can get face time with investors.

Keen observers will notice a dozen or more US-based tech hubs emerging in those 20 years. Twenty years ago, where else would you go for a promising/lucrative tech career? Today, you can pick a state!

Completely true! But the center of gravity remains unmoved. For context: I've never lived in the bay area; if anything, I'd benefit from there being more dissipation.

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

#524

Post by throwaway1777 »

dustingetz wrote: post #509
sandworm101 wrote: post #89

Earlier 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…

.

Ludicrous comment. The US has many fabulous university CS programs.

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

#525

Post by SoSoRoCoCo »

munaf wrote: post #40

It's notable that a lot of people are moving, but I'd wait until at least early 2022 to make judgements about lasting impacts on SV. WFH might not stick widely, and some firms will pick a hybrid model (i.e. partial WFH) over going fully remote. Not to mention that few places can match all the benefits of SV, i.e. unenforceable non-competes, fantastic weather and surroundings, an educated and diverse population, cultu…

For years, Intel had a ~+20% geographic compensation adjustment for people who lived in the bay area. Not sure if it still exists, but if you were smart about it, and worked in San Jose, you could pocket quite a bit of bonus $$$ that you wouldn't have access to if you worked in, say, Chandler, AZ or Folsom, CA Intel sites.

If you changed sites you lost this compensation.

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

#526

Post by throwaway1777 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #408
sandworm101 wrote: post #89

Earlier 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…

I've seen a lot of predictions for "races for the bottom" over the years, and yet it's hard to remember one that actually happened. Economies usually don't work like that. Even if some version of that happens, it will still pay off to move out of SF. I think one of the big problems in the US is that growth and wealth are concentrated to a few hyper rich coastal cities, where most people can't afford to move. While la…

Economic growth would come from bringing other areas up, not dragging the coasts down.

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

#527

Post by three_seagrass »

vl wrote: post #440
sandworm101 wrote: post #89

Earlier 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…

>They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages. The reason they pay “SF wages” is because they can’t hire talent at other prices, not because of some goodness of the heart. While total talent pool might be slightly expanded with people who didn’t want to move to SF previously, overall it’s not going to be a big shift.

For talent that needs to come to live and work in the Bay Area. Remove that need, suddenly wages are normalized for the area the talent lives in.

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

#528

Post by jaredtn »

sneeze-slayer wrote: post #477
jaredtn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it youself: political mismanagement. Make it illegal to build apartment buildings, make it impossible to build good public transit. Ban plastic straws. Refuse to prosecute criminals. Close the safe outdoor parks. Force public servants to pay into a bloated pension system. That's how you reduce the quality of life.

Yes, if only we had our plastic straws, then all the problems in the area would magically disappear.

That's exactly my point :) It's not that plastic straws are significantly good or bad - they're a distraction from the real issues. And the fact that it gets any airtime at all is absolutely ridiculous. Certainly distracted you from discussing housing, infrastructure, or crime in your response.

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

#529

Post by bcheung »

Raidion wrote: post #471
dpoochieni wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not maybe, it is supply and demand. IF the supply of remote labor does increase then the share of economic profit going to capital also increases. (i.e. Employers keep more of the profits as opposed to sharing)

This is true both ways though. If you're getting paid 140k, but your rent is 5k a month, you're only capturing 80k of wages, and the landlords are capturing 60k in rent. If you're working remotely for 100k, and paying 1.7k a month in rent, you're capturing ~80k as well. That means more capital is going to the employers(who saves 40k) at the expense of the landlords (who lose out on that 40k). I honestly think I'd rat…

The bay area is one of the worse places to have rental properties in the country though in terms of ratio of rental income to mortgage costs. If it wasn't for appreciation most would sell instead of try to rent out homes. Landlords aren't making their money from the rents, they are making it from the appreciation.

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

#530

Post by gopalv »

ip26 wrote: post #412
gopalv wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19 The talent isn't being converted from potential - as was recently said, "You can't be what you can't see". I was in Kansas City meeting people in Jan and it's pretty clear that there's a lot of talent hiding out there in downtown Missouri. The talent there tops out at SSE because there's no vertical space without jumping to management & two years down…

To clarify, you're saying that limited career growth opportunity at satellite sites is stunting the talent development at that locale?

Not satellite offices, I was specifically talking about employers who are entirely local.

Yes, the strong incentive is to stay put, stick to the local employer as long as you can and still get a role that pays more money. The skills you get from sticking around just make it harder to shift as well sometimes. The output gets equated to talent - "built my sixteenth monolith .NET CRUD web app" is not as well respected as it should be.

For example, there's folks in Portland who are looking at the Nike CEO situation with great trepidation - talented people who would do very well in a new job, assuming they don't need to move.

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