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Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

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Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#241

Post by watwut »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #209
ambernightcrush wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did mention racism but I would also say racism was a driving force since before white flight. The government precursors to Fannie mae and Freddie mac wouldn't back mortgages that banks created in redlined areas. And the precursor to HUD created segregated public housing, including in the west. The Federal government was pushing redlining and segregation in housing since at least the Great Depression. A lot of thi…

There were plenty of people liberal enough or cheap enough to live in a black neighborhood. Many tried. But they wound up 100% black/0% white anyway.

Redlining means that everyone living in or near black neighborhood cant get those mortgages or investments or whatever. It also means services are lower for everyone - including white liberals who have limited options just due to living there.

What that also mean is that if one black family moves into white street, every white on that street is at risk to loose exact same things. They become redlined too.

Redlining means that white people have financial incentive to segregate themselves and to push away incoming blacks. Liberal might not mind living with blacks, but will mind being unable to take mortgage he would be able to get otherwise.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#242

Post by mrgordon »

asdff wrote: post #216
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you see that this is the kind of framing that rubs people the wrong way? There's nothing wrong with having different preferences, but it's frustrating for Bay Area natives to constantly hear that it's a terrible place nobody could enjoy on its own terms.

I mean sure, but eventually you come to a reckoning of what you truly get out of an area. Is it nice restaurants? Bars? Parks? You can have those elsewhere. Walkable neighborhoods with transit exist elsewhere too. Museums, art, plays, concerts, operas, orchestras, too. At some point you have to square with the fact that your 2 million dollar home in the bay area is an order of magnitude more expensive than a comparab…

Can you give some examples of places that meet those criteria (good transit, walkable, major cultural venues, varied dining scene) with $200k houses?

I don’t think there are many places in America with good transit that are walkable so I think it’s going to be tough to find that for $200k. And if the solution is just to move somewhere so small you don’t need transit, then you lose out on the varied restaurants, cultural events, major airport, etc.

The better places for transit like NYC, SF, Chicago, and Denver are all major cities so you won’t find dirt cheap houses near the transit.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#243

Post by pjc50 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #238
howlgarnish wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protests and riots in cities I think you have cause and effect reversed here. The original "pull" trigger was the automobile becoming affordable to the middle classes, making suburban living possible and leading to many leaving cities. The racist bit here is that many of these suburbs had covenants prohibiting non-whites. The…

>but here too the push wasn't just racism, but also concerns about falling property values, rising crime, etc. As a non-American you shouldn't be so quick to relativise the importance of racism because, outside of the US, where cars also exist, there never was a white flight. In fact in Europe the affluent pretty much always move into cities, not out of them, even though those cities also have a lot of the issues sur…

I had a hard time understanding the American conception of unsafe city until I ran the numbers and found that in the 80s Belfast (with troops shooting people in the street and bombs going off) was still less lethal than Detroit. (Population adjusted)

It still baffles me how little was done about this in the US and how it was regarded as a local only problem.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#244

Post by jjav »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #152
asdff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely the math that people are weighing. Live in comparative squalor in the bay or nyc in your cramped apartment with no grass and no light and little opportunity for change as time goes by and your family potentially grows, or move back home and live like an absolute king in a legitimate mansion with yards on all sides with a three car garage, basketball hoop, and a pool in that rich rich neighborhood wit…

Don't you see that this is the kind of framing that rubs people the wrong way? There's nothing wrong with having different preferences, but it's frustrating for Bay Area natives to constantly hear that it's a terrible place nobody could enjoy on its own terms.

How is it terrible? While I'd love to move to a cheaper place (our work is all remote now), I can't think of anywhere better and I've been looking hard.

Being near the ocean is a hard requirement. And weather that isn't terrible (bay area weather isn't actually very good, but it's also never terrible). Where else could one go?

Florida could be nice but it is low land being taken over by rising oceans so not a great strategy. Washington state coast sounds promising but there is snow up there, so a hard no. Oregon coast is pretty inhospitable for water sports. Southern California isn't particularly cheaper. Southern east coast (north of Florida) could work, but way too much racism so as a minority that's a pass.

SF Bay to Monterey Bay is a sweet spot in the USA that is hard to beat.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#245

Post by jasonkester »

stanrivers wrote: post #3

Are companies going to start adjusting salaries for people who move (this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? That’s where this gets weird... people move to these better-to-live places and then all the employers decides to pay them less because of location. Then you just push up housing prices with salaries that slowly reset over time to be cost of living a…

Personally, I've never had an issue negotiating around this.

Companies will certainly try to pay you less for any number of reasons. But there's no reason you as the employee (with nearly all the leverage in this market) need to let that happen.

I mean sure, it's clear that there's a cost difference between my house here in rural France and its equivalent in the Bay Area. But personally I'd prefer that difference be captured by me rather than my employer, so I don't tend to budge from my "Bay Area" rate.

Here's hoping the rest of us fleeing the bay right now choose to stand up for themselves too.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#246

Post by rienbdj »

throwawaygh wrote: post #25
stanrivers wrote: post #3

Are companies going to start adjusting salaries for people who move (this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? That’s where this gets weird... people move to these better-to-live places and then all the employers decides to pay them less because of location. Then you just push up housing prices with salaries that slowly reset over time to be cost of living a…

Pay for software engineering will contract because it turns out programming is not that difficult and there was nothing special about the sf set except their need to cover stupid high rents.

I used to think this. Now I think that doing software well is actually very, very hard and even the best practitioners often get it wrong. The market for the best developers will always be high in my view.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#247

Post by howlgarnish »

Barrin92 wrote: post #238
howlgarnish wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protests and riots in cities I think you have cause and effect reversed here. The original "pull" trigger was the automobile becoming affordable to the middle classes, making suburban living possible and leading to many leaving cities. The racist bit here is that many of these suburbs had covenants prohibiting non-whites. The…

>but here too the push wasn't just racism, but also concerns about falling property values, rising crime, etc. As a non-American you shouldn't be so quick to relativise the importance of racism because, outside of the US, where cars also exist, there never was a white flight. In fact in Europe the affluent pretty much always move into cities, not out of them, even though those cities also have a lot of the issues sur…

I agree that inner city collapse on the sheer scale of a Detroit is a US-only phenomenon, but it's not too hard to find equivalents elsewhere. Most European cities have distinctly sketchy inner city districts, the wealthy have long since fled the old towns of both Manila and Jakarta for both suburbs and various new developments (BGC, Kuningan) etc.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#248

Post by Xcelerate »

sudosteph wrote: post #182
Xcelerate wrote: post #138

Anecdotally, I just moved from the Bay Area to Asheville and am taking my tech job with me. So, could be true... Real estate there is crazy right now. The local agents say houses have been selling very quickly, often sight unseen to California buyers.

Hello fellow Asheville-area resident! I'm actually really surprised to hear that. NC, and the southeast in general has traditionally been a pretty hard sell for Californians, from a cultural perspective at least. New Yorkers and Floridians have been colonizing the area for ages though, so figures that Californians would catch on eventually. I made the move back to NC after 5 years in Seattle, and don't regret it one…

Haha, thank you for the welcome! I actually grew up in the southeast though so we are moving back closer to family :) My wife and I always liked visiting Asheville and decided to live there.

I’m not sure if the other people from California moving there are similar (moved away and came back) or if it’s their first time in the southeast.

Re: Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them

#250

Post by prawn »

adhd_pm wrote: post #176
gnicholas wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you weigh the fire risk in the Tahoe area? The Palo Alto area has smoke risk, and some PSPS risk, but not much risk of straight up burning down. But homes in Tahoe are at significantly more risk of fire, right? Is it possible to get fire insurance there?

Riskier, sure. Insurance? Sometimes... The person who bought my place last year ended up paying over $6000 a year for insurance via CalFAIR (no fire hydrant nearby). When I bought it in 2013 - it cost about $800 a year. There are definitely people who can't get regular insurance and end up paying a lot for meh insurance.

Do houses in those areas have built-in or compulsory fire protection systems? Some Australian rural houses have roof mounted sprinklers (exterior of the building), water tanks reserved for fire fighting, and so on. I did some drone work for an insurance company after our last fire season, and got photos of places where the fire had been stopped literally a metre short of a building. Either irrigated gardens, protection systems or fire fighters.
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