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Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High taxes incentivizes more productive use of real estate, such as multi family housing.

High taxes are good because people will have less room to live? This doesn't sound like a good justification.

Why is that bad? If you own a single family home where an apartment tower could house 200 families (and there is demand for those units) why shouldn’t you pay a tax that reflects that?

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

but we just floated that $7BN dollar prop to fix it all....right?

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What particular policies did people vote for that contributed to their reasons for fleeing?

The LA mayor is telling people to not walk outside because of covid. If thats not absurd big liberal govt policy idk what is. Who would want to live somewhere where the govt thinks they can do that. Your rights as a person dont vanish in a crisis. https://fortune.com/2020/12/03/los-angeles-new-lockdown-rule... dannyincolor - He issued an order. Its not an ask. This isnt a where you live thing, this is a govt overstep…

Saying 'you can't walk outside!' is an outright lie. Read the exceptions to the order.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe only Musk is moving to Texas, not Telsa. Thought at this point they are basically one in the same.

Tesla is building factories in Texas. Long term Texas makes more sense for manufacturing as there are established supply chains there.

You also probably have tons of cheap flat land that is ideal for manufacturing? So that would seem to make sense.

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

#285
post #261

Traditionally this stuff has meant race to the bottom in terms of taxes and regulations. That is terrible. But if it instead helps wake up California to actually rezone, densify, remove prop 13, and improve social services, that could be quite good.

Prop 13 is one of the few reasons many could consider staying in California, vs having to pay property taxes on the bubble prices here. Property taxes do go up at what amounts to reasonable inflation numbers.

Prop 13 caused the bubble in the first place.

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

#286
post #16

HP and Oracle don’t exactly represent the heart of Silicon Valley today and what makes it special/unique. I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software, are somewhat the antithesis of Silicon Valley which is really about real technological innovation and disruption at it’s core. I know there are lots of…

I partially agree. However, Elon Musk has personally moved to Texas, and he's begun moving some operations of his companies there as well, like SpaceX and Tesla. And those are certainly disruptors.

You're underestimating just how toxic California's political climate has become towards business. Democrats see them as bottomless pits of money to be abused and extorted, while giving them nothing back in return. Some companies are still willing to put up with it, but many, both companies and individuals, are getting out. Already, California has a net immigration deficit. The only reason California's population isn't shrinking is due to its local birth rate.

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

#287
post #16

HP and Oracle don’t exactly represent the heart of Silicon Valley today and what makes it special/unique. I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software, are somewhat the antithesis of Silicon Valley which is really about real technological innovation and disruption at it’s core. I know there are lots of…

HP ate Compaq, whose HQ was in TX right? That move is unsurprising to say the least.

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

#288
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA still has the advantage of no noncompetes. It's fairly standard for Texas companies to require an enforceable noncompete. These companies are sort of like mules -- born from perhaps many fertile companies, but produce no offspring.

I've heard this and the general borderline unenforceability of "we own all your work, even during off hours" clauses in employment contracts as a major reason that the center of innovation shifted from Boston and the East Coast to Silicon Valley and California. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the education and a much deeper history of innovation. It also could have been down in New Jersey where Bel…

The first thing that any state should do to make itself a new tech hub is create strong protections for workers so they can freely move to different companies or found their own.

Pro-labor is not anti business, quite the opposite here. But it's never understood that way.

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

#289
post #28
post #16

HP and Oracle don’t exactly represent the heart of Silicon Valley today and what makes it special/unique. I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software, are somewhat the antithesis of Silicon Valley which is really about real technological innovation and disruption at it’s core. I know there are lots of…

Agreed. They're companies trying to avoid taxes or regulation. Only companies on the downslide really consider that as an relevant option.

To be fair, here's the complete list of companies in the known universe that don't try to avoid taxes or regulation:

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There's a cost of moving. California's taxes and regulations are bad, bad enough to force many out, but not all. If things continue on their present course, even Google and Amazon, who personally like the political climate there, will have to start looking elsewhere.

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