After living in SF for 7-8 years and seeing a serious decline in quality of life for residents there, I wouldn’t be real excited about the tech industry spreading out to one of these new regions if I happened to live there.
The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
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Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#22This year we finally moved to the US after 2 years of Covid-induced delays. We moved to Seattle because it's where my team is based. I'm far from impressed. The housing market is so inaccessible that we had to rent a house about 1 hour commute from the office. I have hardly visited the offices a handful of times since we moved, and every time there is maybe 1 or 2 people there. Also this spring seems to be one of the…
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What a terrible take. You're the kind of NIMBY who creates the problems then blames them on new residents. How about you listen to their problems and solve some of them instead of blaming them for problems they did not create.
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#23I feel surprised that Miami or Fort Lauderdale or just South Florida in general didn't rate in any category. It's even more baffling to see Tampa, of all cities, used for the "Warmer Climes" category. I can't really overcome the gut feeling this data is cherry-picked.
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#24Keep in mind that they're really measuring pageviews to Stackoverflow, not actual data about movement. My intuition is that it's probably right, but this is suggestive at best.
During my first years as a developer I used regularly SO. Nowadays perhaps once per month or so.
You’re basically a god now
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#25As a Missourian, the percentage-pageview-change data looks odd, highlighting two cities, Joplin and St. Joseph.
Both cities are small, between 50,000 and 75,000 population (2020 census), and are about an hour's drive away from the nearest larger city (Joplin is near Springfield, St. Joseph is near Kansas City, and it would take 3 hours to drive from Kansas City to Springfield.)
In terms of Midwest tech hubs,the ones nearest to me are Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska (3.5 hour drive from Kansas City).
If I were to guess, I would say you could cause this apparent shift in traffic simply by shifting a few corporate VPN exit points from several large companies in the region from St. Joseph, Missouri to Joplin, Missouri.
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#26This year we finally moved to the US after 2 years of Covid-induced delays. We moved to Seattle because it's where my team is based. I'm far from impressed. The housing market is so inaccessible that we had to rent a house about 1 hour commute from the office. I have hardly visited the offices a handful of times since we moved, and every time there is maybe 1 or 2 people there. Also this spring seems to be one of the…
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Those pesky people living their own lives and spending their own money moving to where they want to, driving up costs by existing
If only they did with their lives exactly as I told them to
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#27The top 10 metro areas list is interesting. Philadelphia, San Antonio, Houston, San Diego and Phoenix not on there despite all 5 being in the top 10 MSA and city population, while DC, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston are on there. I am also shocked that Portland is growing. I went to Portland this year recently, it is the worst city in the country I have been to. 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, mas…
> 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, massive homelessness crisis.
Patently untrue. Portland is booming.
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#28Could it also be that the pageview method is not accurate?
It's probably directionally accurate
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#29The top 10 metro areas list is interesting. Philadelphia, San Antonio, Houston, San Diego and Phoenix not on there despite all 5 being in the top 10 MSA and city population, while DC, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston are on there. I am also shocked that Portland is growing. I went to Portland this year recently, it is the worst city in the country I have been to. 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, mas…
The Corning drop is interesting. Maybe the Corning engineers are all working from home but live in towns not included in the defined Corning/Elmira area like Binghamton?
Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
#30Keep in mind that they're really measuring pageviews to Stackoverflow, not actual data about movement. My intuition is that it's probably right, but this is suggestive at best.
Isn't the SO pageview data skewed by the fact that most remote workers are on their company's VPN, hiding their true location?
Slightly maybe but split tunnel would avoid that. If it was full I'd expect to see an increase from popular cloud hosting regions (if it was a prod vpn) or if corporate VPN's their home offices (which would show as a net zero change)