I keep hearing that I can work anywhere as a developer. I wish employers would get that message. I've had to move to expensive cities not because I want too (the exact opposite actually), but because if I don't I don't get work. Employers in Canada are hostile to remote for the most part, and working for companies outside of this country, you run into a lot of "remote....but not for you"
Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
151–160 of 408 posts
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're a fantastic developer in Ukraine, India or China and have very limited needs (compared to a guy with a family and kids), your disposable monthly income net of taxes, rent and commute expenses is still likely to be higher in Silicon Valley than Ukraine, India or China. A rational decision then would be to move to Silicon Valley arbitraging the costs as much as you can (living with roommates, commuting by Cal…
>If you're a fantastic developer in Ukraine, India or China and have very limited needs (compared to a guy with a family and kids), your disposable monthly income net of taxes, rent and commute expenses is still likely to be higher in Silicon Valley than Ukraine, India or China. No it would not. Nothing can beat sub 500 USD apartment, 5% tax rate and 3 cents for subway ticket
Yes - it absolutely can. What matters in the above scenario is the total cash left over after expenses (surplus), not the size of the expenses (expenditure).
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#153What on earth is the point in working hard and earning a large salary if there is sod all to spend it on?
If I were living in a small country town I'd be choosing a far more chilled job than I currently have because there isn't anything to spend the extra income on in a small town.
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#154I used to live in SF. It was exciting, but also shitty. I felt connected and alive, which was great, but also drained of resources, which really sucked. Oh, and there were 6 of us, in a 3 bedroom apartment. I had the living room. Yea. I lasted 3 years, until I met my wife, and by then I was ready to move. We did. Now, life in the suburbs, is slow. I feel somewhat disconnected and like I don't really belong to this co…
> Oh, and there were 6 of us, in a 3 bedroom apartment. This is such a weird American phenomenon, the whole roommate thing. What on earth can make adults choose to share their home with a stranger? Why isn't there intense pressure for building many small apartments, rather than building larger apartments that are meant for roommates? Is it connected to the equally weird college dorm roommate system? Why are people ac…
Why do you assume it is a western thing.
Have you ever been to Asia? It's extremely common in China/Korea/Japan
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Melbourne? Really? Is that a thing now? Maybe I need to head south for the winter.
Melbourne like all Australian capital cities has congestion problems and very expensive housing. I've found myself wishing I was in the startup scene in Sydney instead (seems more mature and serious.)
Can you not move? The distance is not that big as far as I remember (at least not comparing to AU in general).
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're a fantastic developer in Ukraine, India or China and have very limited needs (compared to a guy with a family and kids), your disposable monthly income net of taxes, rent and commute expenses is still likely to be higher in Silicon Valley than Ukraine, India or China. A rational decision then would be to move to Silicon Valley arbitraging the costs as much as you can (living with roommates, commuting by Cal…
Yep. I moved to SF from Slovenia. The percentage of my income that I save* is smaller, but the absolute number is still bigger. Turns out the glass ceiling for "smart dirty immigrant" jobs is much higher than the ceiling for "remote dude" jobs as well. Add the nice bonus that there's simply more to do in a megalopolis of 6mio people than a city of 300k and it's kind of a no brainer. Unless of course you're okay stagn…
Oponents / proponents sounds a lot like sour grapes / rationalisation.
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#157We have a horde of people here who, at the first opportunity, will accuse the mass of developers of being trendy when it comes to languages or frameworks or methodologies. And yet, we have a thousand perfectly rational reasons why so many of us flock to the cities that influential developers live and work in.
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#158101 urban economics.
Economies of agglomeration is a powerful thing. Expensive cities are expensive because productivity and value generation there is much higher than elsewhere.
The concentration of tech into few places is not a negative by itself. It's essential for better productivity and economic growth. Negative effects like expensive housing are failures in urban development.
Economic activity is concentrating on large cities. This is global development. Cities have better productivity than, small towns. Bigger cities have even better productivity than normal cities. High-tech industry feels the need to concentrate even more. Just handful of cities become significant technology hubs.
Currently the only way people can build a hivemind is to get together around best universities.
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that since 3 years ago Cyprus (among others) 'sells' EU permanent residency permits to rich foreigners. You know, the solution to "problems" like that is to abolish visas altogether. A visa is essentially a permission to exist in a certain geographical area. Why exactly do you need one? Yes I know governments won't let you in/out without one, but what sense does it make…
Familiarize yourself with Chesterton's fence. It might give you some insight into one of the reasons why your rhetoric finds no traction.
Nah. I know exactly what I'm talking about.
Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
#160If the type of development work you're doing can be easily done remotely, then there is a good chance it can be done much cheaper by a fantastic developer in Ukraine, or India, or China, or some country where wages are a lot cheaper than US or England or Canada. If, however, the type of work you're doing benefits from face-to-face interactions (i.e. quick iterations with lots of feedback from users, marketing and pro…
> If the type of development work you're doing can be easily done remotely All interesting types of development work can easily be done remotely. Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, name it. The unicorn billions are all things that never needed face-to-face spitting. It is therefore probably the other way around. If the type of development work you're doing requires face-to-face spitting, you are not doing anything interesti…
> All interesting types of development work can easily be done remotely.
My employer would prefer I not walk out the building with the rather expensive test equipment necessary to debug our latest prototypes (which they would also prefer to keep in the building). Some of us software developers work on actual physical products, those which involve using a logic analyzer, oscilloscope, and JTAG pod for debugging. This equipment is too expensive to replicate for every engineer and has to be configured hands-on.
Different folks have different ideas of what is interesting to work on.
> Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, name it. The unicorn billions are all things that never needed face-to-face spitting.
All terribly boring to me. That's why I'm an embedded software engineer. Somebody has to write the code that keeps your airplane in the air.