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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

#541

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

bradlys wrote: post #436
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their home life is shit because they're frequently sharing a two bedroom apartment with another family This sounds like a spoiled rich person talk: it's unimaginable how people manage to survive without a separate bedroom. And a private gardener, one should add. A mere hundred years ago having a room per family was considered to be okay. In USSR two generations living in the same one-bedroom apartment was a usual t…

Ah, yes, ye old argument: "BACK IN MY DAY"

Ye olde, but goode.

It's less of an argument and more of a question: what has changed so that a separate bedroom and PS5 are now deemed basic necessities?

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

#542

Post by bcheung »

birdyrooster wrote: post #107
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…

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.

I think for Ops / sysadmin work this is probably more true than general software engineering. Ops people tend to cluster in the bay area more. Probably because Ops work used to be more "physical hands" dealing with physical servers which requires being onsite.

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

#543

Post by majormajor »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #505
txsoftwaredev wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was an option they would have already outsourced the work.

It is an option and they will, it will start slowly though. First offering a job to someone out of state. Maybe they save some money and the next hire, they look à little further and they pick up an employee from another English speaking country, they save even more salary. The more these tests work out the more companies will expirement. Eventually hiring an American will seem unnecessary and costly if you're distri…

Last time I was at a company that tried that, the (US-based) management would fight over making sure their projects went to the US-based devs (even if not in the same office) vs the overseas devs because the communication gap - timezones and physical distance both - was that bad.

Zoom hasn't fixed this.

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

#544

Post by alentist »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #451
alentist wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what this has to do with my comment.

It appears you saw the word libertarian and got caught up in a blue/red debate rather than contemplate what was written.

> got caught up in a blue/red debate

Huh?

> rather than contemplate what was written

That’s exactly what I did?

Do you actually have anything substantive to say?

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

#545

Post by notSupplied »

bcheung wrote: post #529
Raidion wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a landowner is having trouble making a profit on rent due to high mortgage costs, that just means that the wealth was captured by the previous owner via a high sale price. So the point still stands that a disproportionate amount of wealth is flowing to land instead of capital or labor.

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

#546

Post by heavyset_go »

throwaway45349 wrote: post #237
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…

> 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.

Wealthy people don't need to work to eat, keep a roof over their head, see a doctor, or live a lavish lifestyle.

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

#547

Post by lotsofpulp »

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…

>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 large parts of the country is relatively impoverished.

This statement can be generalized to:

"I think one of the big problems in the world is that growth and wealth are concentrated to a few hyper rich countries, where most people can't afford to move. While large parts of the world are relatively impoverished."

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

#548

Post by jelliclesfarm »

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…

> 4. Increase taxes on the wealthy, etc.

This won’t work. When the tech exodus begins, it’s going to cause CA to buckle at its knees because the wealthy has been subsidizing more than 80% of the population. It is not sustainable or healthy at all to suckle at the teat of the wealthy.

We should abolish all taxes and only retain taxes based on consumption. And a flat modest capital gains tax. With dedications gone, this might actually bring in more public money.

Public spending will also decrease if we figure a way out of unfunded pension liabilities. This is huge. Don’t know how it can be resolved.

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

#549

Post by sulam »

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…

> Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse).

Okay, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you said "reminds [you]", not that it _is_ in fact the Resource curse. However, you must acknowledge that the Resource Curse doesn't describe the SF Bay Area _at all_.

We have the richest real estate in country, some of the highest earning zipcodes in the country, employment rate most of the country would love to have, etc. There's no "curse" here, as defined in the economic sense.

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

#550

Post by unethical_ban »

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…

Maybe not entirely - those SF-area in demand jobs will hopefully demand their current or near-current wages. The company valued their work at pay $x.

If only there was some kind of organization in which tech workers could "unify".

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