Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The US is getting outcompeted by India, basically. And it almost completely comes down to housing costs. If half of your $150k salary wasn't going directly into a landlord's pocket in the US, we would easily be able to compete.
If that explains most/all of it, why don't we see more tech companies moving into areas of the US with low housing prices? I guess some of it is the "captive" effect for an individual - if you leave the expensive property market for somewhere cheaper with a lower salary, it becomes very hard to move back to the expensive place. But is that a strong enough effect? Surely an efficient free market should theoretically m…
When work-from-home became more widespread, my spouse and I did the whole "Oooh, where could we live to maximize our income/expense ratio!" Zillow fantasy-exploration, and we concluded that even though many places in the country are significantly cheaper than where we are, we would be miserable in these places.
Reminds me of that story that made the rounds on HN a few years ago about that techie who moved to Bumblefuck Arkansas and bought an insanely cheap office for his tech enterprise, and regretted it for years due to the place otherwise being a total shithole.