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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

#261

Post by [deleted] »

tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #220
refurb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add on top of that, what about just general travel or business travel? I could understand moving away from the bay area, but living in a remote town has it's costs. Need to jump on a plane for a business meeting? Well, now you're driving 2 hours to the airport and then connecting to some hub. I've done it in the past, it adds a ton of friction to travel.

Reducing wasteful polluting plane travel is a bonus not a bug. The "space" dimension is so overrated when it comes to meetings. If that is the only thing that has been keeping cities together then they're doomed.

[deleted]

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

#262

Post by tylerjwilk00 »

refurb wrote: post #232
tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing wasteful polluting plane travel is a bonus not a bug. The "space" dimension is so overrated when it comes to meetings. If that is the only thing that has been keeping cities together then they're doomed.

Assuming you remove all "wasteful" travel, you're still causing more pollution living away from a major hub. Instead of a non-stop SFO to JFK flight, now you're taking a 1 hr Uber (or driving yourself) to a local airport, then taking a connecting flight to SFO.

You're still in a bubble. Taking a flight for a business meeting is wasteful. Full stop.

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

#263

Post by nsm »

vecinu wrote: post #236
nsm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is hyperbole for the majority of people who do not have existing respiratory or other health conditions. Air quality in SF proper was only bad (by which I mean Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or above) for roughly a month this year. That certainly doesn't warrant having HEPA filters and P100 masks now in October/November (again, for most people).

This is wishful thinking. Staying for years around an area that gets "only a month" of excessive PM2.5 particles and smoke is unwise and you will soon become someone with an existing respiratory condition. I'm leaving the Bay because I value my health way more than the "lifestyle" offered by living in the Bay. There are many other places in the US (And ESPECIALLY outside the US) that offer a fantastic quality of life…

I never implied that one shouldn't take the necessary precautions that you mentioned (respirators, filters) _during_ that month and stay indoors. I am merely stating that "Now we have COVID which means you want to be outside, but fire smoke that you shouldn't breath, so you want to be inside." is a false dichotomy 11 months of the year in the Bay Area, which is not the case for a lot of other places.

Coming from a country where the air quality is bad 365 days a year, I appreciate what is possible here, and cannot empathize with this tendency to exaggerate the situation.

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

#264

Post by nsm »

cpeterso wrote: post #230
nsm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is hyperbole for the majority of people who do not have existing respiratory or other health conditions. Air quality in SF proper was only bad (by which I mean Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or above) for roughly a month this year. That certainly doesn't warrant having HEPA filters and P100 masks now in October/November (again, for most people).

“Only bad for a month this year“, but these big California fires now happen every year.

Sure! Yet, (as I mentioned in a sibling comment) living in a beautiful place with really clean air where one can be outside 11 months of the year is way better than most of the world, so I find this tendency to go "OMG everything is now broken" to be an exaggeration that detracts from the continued value the Bay Area offers.

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

#265

Post by nostrademons »

ulfw wrote: post #139
code4tee wrote: post #59

I saw a great quote recently that said something like “Everyone loves work from home until you lose a deal to the competition that turned up to your customer in person.” There’s an element of truth to this. Best advice I’ve heard is to say the draw for living in a city may go away but you need to be close. Living in the middle of nowhere isn’t going to look like such a great idea when people start gathering together…

Not everyone is a salesman though. Why would an engineer need to be in an office coding away so "he can turn up to his customer"?

The way to rise in your career is to work on a string of high-value projects, not to slave away on the same codebase for years. When a VP has a great idea that needs a prototype delivered in 2 weeks, who is he going to go to? The engineer in the next office who he sees in the microkitchen every day, or the engineer working 2 timezones away who he never sees and doesn't know exists?

I think remote work will be a great option for the next 2-3 years, and then once the pandemic has receded and folks start switching from fear to greed mode, there will be distinct advantages to being near people with large budgets.

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

#266

Post by nostrademons »

three_seagrass wrote: post #201
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?

Just a PSA: home insurance companies have been dropping fire coverage in CA so quickly now that there's a state-mandated stay to prevent them from doing it for a year. No word what the plan is after the stay but I would be cognizant of any insurance plans that you get.

My sense is that the folks buying $2M+ homes in the Bay Area or $1M+ homes in Tahoe have enough money in the bank that they could just rebuild in cash on the off chance that their home gets burned down. At that price point you're largely paying for the land. Cheap structures (which abound in Tahoe) can be built for ~$250K, while even a really fancy 4000+ square foot mansion in Los Altos can be built for < $1M. Most of the mid-level FAANG employees and ex-startup/growth folks easily have that much in liquid assets.

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

#267

Post by nostrademons »

redblacktree wrote: post #77
minhazm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley, at least the bigger companies, already do that. Most people are not native to the area. Almost everyone I know in the bay area moved there for work.

Yes, but the set of people who are available to work remotely is much bigger than the set of people willing to relocate.

The big tech companies have plenty of satellite offices, though. If you want to work for Google but need to stay in NYC, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Santa Monica, Seattle, Boulder, Austin, etc. for whatever reason, you can totally do that. You just are somewhat limited in the teams/projects you can be working on, and it may affect your career advancement. (But this likely applies to remote work as well.)

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

#268

Post by whimsicalism »

pjc50 wrote: post #243
Barrin92 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> 80s Belfast (with troops shooting people in the street and bombs going off) was still less lethal than Detroit

Well yeah, even during the worst of the troubles it wasn't like there was a drug war going on.

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

#269

Post by whimsicalism »

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.

> 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.

No, I think when put to the test most liberal people would not do this. If they "tried", why did those neighborhoods wind up 100% black?

Where I grew up, for instance, the second best school in the city (by test scores, at least) was 99% black (mostly the children of alums of a nearby HBCU). White parents would send their kids to worse performing schools with more white kids over sending their kids to that school.

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

#270

Post by asdff »

mrgordon wrote: post #242
asdff wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, cultu…

Shaker Heights.
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