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Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

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191–200 of 622 posts

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#193

This general topic seems to come back into focus on a regular basis on HN (last time, 1 week ago). People have been leaving SV in numbers for the 30 years I've been here, always citing traffic & cost of housing as the primary reasons. Though this time, you could add decriminalization of petty crime. Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust agains…

> Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. In 2019, California had negative population growth.

Citation?

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#194

This general topic seems to come back into focus on a regular basis on HN (last time, 1 week ago). People have been leaving SV in numbers for the 30 years I've been here, always citing traffic & cost of housing as the primary reasons. Though this time, you could add decriminalization of petty crime. Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust agains…

> Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. In 2019, California had negative population growth.

I think you two are saying two different things. Population in California actually went up. But the growth rate was lower than previous years.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#195
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are pockets of Nimby in Texas - truth to be told Austin is one of the most Nimby cities in Texas. The only good thing is unlike Bay Area - the Cities in Texas a primed for outward sprawl.

How is public transit in Austin? Scalable for urban sprawl? I don’t know much about it from an on-the-ground POV

Public transit in Austin is laughably bad unless you're on a small set of travel paths, mostly to the university and a narrow part of the city center.

As an example it takes about 20 minutes to drive from my house to the airport, and 3 hours to get there by bus, not counting the walk to the bus stop. The light rail line goes nowhere near the majority of the city.

If we're doing any sort of event downtown or ACL or whatever, I rent a condo nearby instead of dealing with taxis or busses despite only living 15 minutes from the city center and very much "in Austin."

Nobody deals with publix transit if they can afford not to.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#196

High taxes, regulations for everything, the government running every part of your personal life, cancer labels on everything... seems like a dream come true. What went wrong?

Can we compare regulations on the following things between Texas and California ? - Marijuana - Abortion - LGBT rights - Car dealership

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#197
post #164

These threads have to go. They attract the worst comments HN has to offer.

Yes, let's censor and ban everything you don't agree with.

It’s not that. It’s that these arguments are old and had a thousand times. I’m tired of it too. It’s the same people coming in and frequently it’s a lot of people who have never even lived in California or the Bay Area.

These threads bring out some awfully unproductive discussion on HN that is mostly a whine fest. And it’s all sides that whine and it’s old. It’s awfully old.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homelessness is not unique to Caliifornia. Seattle and Portland have a big problem with it too. Heck, I’ve seen homeless in rural Indiana by the river and in London. California doesn’t have an answer to this, and I haven’t seen any proposals from either the right or the left that seem viable, but if Texas is so great maybe we should ship the homeless there.

There are 28,995,881 people living in Texas vs 39,512,223 in California. There are 151,278 homeless in California vs 25,848 in Texas. Is homelessness a problem in Texas? Yes, but it isn't remotely as bad as California. And of course, then there are states with nearly non existent homelessness.

You still didn't answer why that's the case. If Texas has the answer I'm sure California would love to hear it.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#199
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because CA has perfect weather which is the one thing that is completely impossible to replicate anywhere else.

The 50 square miles of SF has perfect weather, if you're not put off by cold and clingy fog. The other 160,000 square miles is as much of a mixed bag as any other state (with the exception of Hawaii, which actually has perfect weather).

Agreed. And a big part of this is a person’s definition of perfect weather.

I’m in SoCal just coastal enough to not get very high highs, but lows rarely pass 55. But, if SF was exactly the same price, I’d prefer that weather by quite a bit (even though anywhere SF to TJ is leagues “better” - by my definition - than the weather of the state I moved from).

I just love that cozy but not-too-chilly climate of SF, ah. Perfect thinking/studying/hiking/reading weather for my tastes.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk if that's fair to Walmart, they are definitely trying to compete with Amazon via new efforts.

I don’t disagree that Walmart is making strides on the online shopping front but I also think they are only fighting for survival/relevance and would not produce anything new or interesting without this pressure. In contrast, companies like Amazon relentlessly develop new products and new technologies (see AWS). It’s not a response to external pressure — they don’t need to innovate to stay alive. They really embody t…

I didn’t know about Walmart’s innovation labs til recently. Might not be as innovative as I think, but it certainly changed the way I view them.
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