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Let People Move to Jobs

jefftk.com

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Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#261

Post by ericmay »

jefftk wrote: post #252
ericmay wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, and why bother making the country a mess by letting foreigners into your country? I mean, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? And unless you’re a proponent for open borders, you advocate a similar position - just a different scale. I’m also not really a fan of the “deny others opportunities” grandstanding. I mean you do it right now. I bet someone wants the job you have. Why not give your money away so others…

> unless you’re a proponent for open borders I don't know about TulliusCicero, but I agree with their comment and I think open borders would probably be good. The US's historically high levels of immigration have been very positive for the country and I think we could let more people in. > My idea of America is a lot of untamed wilderness, clean air, national parks, peace and quiet The US is enormous, and people who…

> I don't know about TulliusCicero, but I agree with their comment and I think open borders would probably be good. The US's historically high levels of immigration have been very positive for the country and I think we could let more people in.

My take on that is that it’s a naive, anarchist position. I’m also unsure that anyone can anticipate the potential downsides as well. I see so many problems it’s hard to even get a start. And it’s not about not letting in “bad” people, but that infrastructure would be absolutely overwhelmed and it would be an unmitigated disaster. We wouldn’t have like a couple million more people moving in, it would be tens, maybe hundreds of millions. They all won’t fit in NYC and SF - they’ll move to Columbus, and Pittsburgh, and they’ll move to suburbs, and shanty towns. I just don’t see positives outweighing negatives unless we really just skyrocket prices - but on a macro level that’s no different than how things are.

To me it’s like putting your oxygen mask on before you help someone else. We can’t even solve problems in this country now. But I do imagine mega corps would love this since they’d have a much higher pool of workers, and an expanded market that is easier to get access to, which kind of gets back to my last point about growth-mindset.

> You're only considering the interests of the people who already live here. Keeping people out doesn't make fewer people, just fewer people here, just like it doesn't decrease wealth disparity only wealth disparity here. Lots of people around the world would love to come here and have the same opportunities we have. I think we should generally let them.

I appreciate your comment but I don’t think it’s a fair one. To start, I think GLOBAL population is far too high, and I’d apply the same principles to the US that I am suggesting but globally, but we were talking about the US. I also think that this is a case where it’s easy to say “oh but if they only had the opportunity” because it sounds great while also ignoring how it affects others. Generally I don’t think we should let people in to the US, because it doesn’t really solve any problems. It certainly doesn’t help the rest of the world. Am I lucky that I was born here? You bet. But that’s it. I’m also lucky to not be born with a disability, I’m also not lucky since I wasn’t born wealthy.

The last point I’ll add is that the vast majority of the world disagrees with open-borders and I think for good reason. Even the most liberal countries (broadly speaking) don’t do it.

Thanks for your discussion points here. I’d love to hear more of what you think - and I hope what I said doesn’t come off too poorly. It’s hard with text and not in-person.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#262

Post by whatsmyusername »

If you're going for VC capital you have two choices. The bay area and NYC.

I live in Pittsburgh. I like Pittsburgh. But I'm also realistic. There's no VC money here.

If I wanted to work on something that capital N Needed VC money I'd move. But I don't so I'm good.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#263

Post by pb7 »

cryptica wrote: post #205

>> If Google announced it was moving everything to Pittsburgh, ~80% of the company would quit. They don't have to move everything to Pittsburgh, they could just open a small office there and give their employees the option to move there. >> People expected telecommuting to change this, but even though we have many technical tools that make remote work far more practical than it was even ten years ago, physically bein…

> They don't have to move everything to Pittsburgh, they could just open a small office there and give their employees the option to move there.

Google has had an office in Pittsburgh for over a decade now. There is physical office space for 2-3x the employees it has now and year after year, the growth there does not exceed the overall company growth. Turns out that people don’t really want to relocate to cheap cities in droves.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#264

Post by pkalinowski »

_xnmw wrote: post #106
thatcat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just an argument for government subsidized fiber internet, repeating your self a few times a day is a minor inconvenience compared to commuting.

Some of the best work happens not during scheduled meetings, but in spontaneous conversations with coworkers at random times during the day. Fiber internet doesn't solve that.

You know, you can send a message to your coworker: "5 min call?" and BAM! One click of a button and you are talking live.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#265

Post by seansmccullough »

cheese4242 wrote: post #200
zorak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with a great tech salary, your wealth is NOT noteworthy at the local bank. The amount of ego in this thread is impressive!

Seriously, tech has got to have some of the most inflated egos on the planet. Do people in this thread really think there aren't plenty of other people making 150-200+ outside of the major tech hubs? Do they really think they are going to be Mr. Monopoly Man because they have a 150k remote job in Des Moines?

150k in Des Moines doesn’t go as far as you’d think, the top income tax in Iowa is 8.9%.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#266

Post by anonymoushn »

jefftk wrote: post #250
anonymoushn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to make sure to join in the bay area though. Offers in my local office are typically for 1/11 the initial equity of offers for the same level in Mountain View, San Francisco, or Sunnyvale, and I was not permitted to speak to any hiring managers in the US after seeing a four-day exploding offer from my local office.

I'm surprised you received an exploding offer; I had thought that was something we didn't do? Pay depends enormously on the local market for your skills. NYC and Boston pay almost as much as Mountain View, while (ex) London pays much less. People moving between offices are often offered large increases/decreases. A strategy of joining in Mountain View and then transferring to a lower-paying office isn't generally goi…

Working in Mountain View for 6 months is worth literally a million dollars of (MV initial equity - local office initial equity), assuming I was going to work in the local office for the remaining 3.5 years either way.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#267

Post by marcus_holmes »

esotericn wrote: post #211
marcus_holmes wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get out into the country proper, and you'll find plenty of rich people to hang out with. They don't tend to live in villages or towns, and they don't socialise with "townies", and they certainly won't share any interests with some nouveau-rich tech worker who thinks they're wealthy

Sure, but then you're not taking advantage of cost of living differences (first line of my post). You seem to have this idea that everyone here thinks they're uber wealthy or whatever. It's just relative to the locale. If you move to a depressed northern town with the idea that it's going to be some utopian bliss in your massive house then you are in for a shock. That's what is being discussed. Obviously there are ni…

I've lived all over the UK. I think Cardiff was the hardest to "slot into" - an English accent in Wales can prompt some interesting interactions ;) Though small-town England is also a nightmare of "if you didn't grow up here, fuck off".

Social class in the UK is all about where you were educated, it has nothing to do with your income (same for Australia, but apparently not the USA, though I think that's changing). Your accent, your manners, whether you call it "dinner" or "tea", whether you go to the toilet, the lavatory or the bathroom. If you actually care about social class, these are the things that matter. Income doesn't.

But attitude is the big one. You can fit in and make friends anywhere with an open attitude. People are people. Friendships can easily overcome class and income differences if there's mutual respect, empathy, and a desire to be friends.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#268

Post by bitforger »

reallydontask wrote: post #221
bitforger wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really the money, it's the level of education and ambition. I worked remotely from Mount Pleasant, Michigan for a year and had a difficult time finding anyone to talk with about things that were interesting to me. The only group on Meetups.com was "Housewives of Mount Pleasant." Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor). Sometimes people like that are hard to find.

> Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor) This is an pretty narrow definition of friendship.

If you have a better definition, I'd like to hear it. I don't have many friends, so my definition encompasses all of them. Maybe if I had a better definition, I'd be able to make more friends.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#269

Post by munificent »

Spoom wrote: post #110
munificent wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, Google has a Pittsburgh office which is doing quite well as far as I can tell.

The fact that that office exists was a major reason I was able to consider them as an employer. I'd already looked at SF / NYC as options and basically priced myself out because I'd be moving with my family, and I wanted a house / decent commute / to not have roommates. (Admittedly, when I was looking at SF / Silicon Valley before, I was looking at startups; having a Big N as an employer might have just made it work,…

Google actually has good-sized, growing offices in a number of major US cities these days. SF and NYC are huge, but there are plenty of other options: Seattle, Boulder, Austin, Pittsburgh, LA, Irvine, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Cambridge, etc.

I also have a family and have no interest in ever living in Silicon Valley or New York. I'm at Google and absolutely love being in Seattle.

Re: Let People Move to Jobs

#270

Post by ckrailo »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #62
remote_phone wrote: post #4

The author made a blind guess that 80% of Google would quit If they moved HQ without any actual evidence. If Google opened up a new large office in a place like Kansas City with no salary cut and a strong internet presence and some other tech companies (ICE exchange for example), I bet enough Google employees would want to move there to make it worthwhile. Cheaper cost of living, better schools, better for families e…

As a counterpoint, in the leadup and when Amazon announced their HQ2 in Northern Virginia, one thing they were very clear about is that no teams and no employees except some execs were going to actually get reassigned to the new location. All staffing at the new location would be via new hires at the new location. They knew full well that if they tried to move a team, most of the members of the team would transfer to…

Counter-counterpoint, Toyota consolidated several offices in CA/KY/NY to one HQ to Plano, TX and brought about 2800 out of 4000 employees. It was a big disrupter to local housing prices, with massive swaths of land experiencing the maximum-by-law 10%-yearly property tax increases.

(Source: https://www.dallasnews.com/business/local-companies/2018/07/...)

I don't know if there's any easy generalizations to suss out. Probably every case will be very specific to the work being done, the environment it's done in, and the people it's done by.

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