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San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

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Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#371

Post by Periodic »

sfotoatx wrote: post #130

Lots of naysayers on HN, but I left SF last year and moved to Austin. I have zero regrets. In SF, my 1 bedroom, 650 square foot apartment in SOMA went from $2,600 to $3,200 over 3 years. In Austin, my salary went down $10k to $120k/yr. My 2 bedroom, 1,100 square foot apartment is $1,150/mo. The tech scene here isn't as vibrant as SF, but there's still plenty of great meet ups. All in all, yes there are some things I…

I'm in the process of moving to Sacramento from San Jose. My wife and I sat down and looked at what made us happy and we decided that living in Silicon Valley was not high on our list.

I'm tired of the costs and crowding. The cost of living is about 30% lower and housing is significantly lower.

I'm managing my career by working for a San Francisco company and working remotely. I'll commute in once a week, which is still less commuting than I was doing in the bay area. I'll have a house instead of a condo. I'll have a nicer/larger place. I'll have plenty of things to do (though things still close early). I'll be closer to my family. I'll be able to support my wife when she goes back to school.

I'm looking forward to it.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#372

Post by ryandrake »

x0x0 wrote: post #331
whitenoice wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up-voted, Are average SF rents that high? Boston is probably less than half that cost, with salaries comparable to the west coast and similar cultural events and excellent public and private schools. Weather is not that great though. Genuinely asking - So what makes SF so worth it, that it justifies its high cost of living? in comparison to other top class states, is it just the weather?

jobs. You can be a half-assed engineer here and be employed; if you're good, you have dozens of choices of place to work. Whenever I ponder leaving (and I'm a data scientist, so more specialized) I look around at cities like Salt Lake or Denver or other places close to good skiing and see like 3 employers. Total. What happens if I don't like my job / my boss changes / whatever? I'd probably have to move. It's just a…

I think you greatly exaggerate the health of the SF tech job market, but no matter how good or bad it is, I agree that it's consistently 3-5X better than the rest of the country. That's essentially why I increased my cost of living by about 4X moving here from Florida. Here, if you lose your job, at least you have a chance of finding something else. In most of the USA, if you lose your job, you're moving your family to another state or at least another town.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#373

Post by bogomipz »

vinay427 wrote: post #233
coderholic wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also federal tax, which is around 25%. You then pay state tax on top. I moved to the US from the UK, and the total tax is roughly the same.

The major tax difference in the UK from my understanding is the 20% standard VAT, which is obviously much higher than any sales tax in the US.

Yes there's no VAT in the US but when you add up all the "soft taxes" - toll roads, hotel tax, unemployment tax(unique in that you pay tax on money have already paid tax on) not to mention the other quasi/hidden taxes and fees like the following: gas tax, cell phone tax, electricity and natural gas, cable tv and alcohol the lack of a VAT in the US doesn't account for much.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#374

Post by Tiktaalik »

blhack wrote: post #44
dkopi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2016, and people still think that if someone moves into your neighborhood, someone else has to move out. Rising demand is great. It means people want to enjoy your neighborhood. You can either meet that demand by increasing supply, or you can restrict the demand, and let certain people be outpriced by the market. Locals aren't victims of gentrification. They're victims of zoning laws and nimbyism.

>It's 2016, and people still think that if someone moves into your neighborhood, someone else has to move out. How does this work in your head? When the new homes are being built, where do the people who were living on the land they're being built on go?

Exactly. What is always neglected in these conversations is that building housing is a process and it takes a long time.

Even if a city government has liberal attitudes toward development, it still takes years to create new supply. In the mean time the process is displacing people.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#375

Post by ryandrake »

zavi wrote: post #369
vinceguidry wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not already married, you should be using it to date. College is hands-down the best place to find a significant other. Once you've graduated, the social life you took for granted quickly fades away and finding people to spend time with and then actually spending time with them becomes vastly more difficult. If you're a cisgendered male, it can be absolutely brutal. Cisgendered female, much less so but still…

What are some smart dating strategies for a straight white male new grad in the Bay Area with 6 digits of disposable income? Dating market seems extremely competitive here.

> What are some smart dating strategies for a straight white male new grad in the Bay Area with 6 digits of disposable income?

Spend the money on a plane ticket to somewhere with women?

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#376

Post by BurningFrog »

whack wrote: post #111

It's hard to overstate the impact this is going to have on San Francisco, long-term. As Technology becomes the most important industry in America, a well-governed San Francisco could have positioned itself as the next NYC. The hub where all of tech gathers, the same way all of finance gathered in Wall St. Replace the 70 year old 2-storey homes with Manhattan style apartment buildings, and rent in San Francisco would…

Instead SF has chosen to make it's existing home owners and landlords very rich.

Democracy in action!

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#377

Post by woah »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #216
whack wrote: post #111

It's hard to overstate the impact this is going to have on San Francisco, long-term. As Technology becomes the most important industry in America, a well-governed San Francisco could have positioned itself as the next NYC. The hub where all of tech gathers, the same way all of finance gathered in Wall St. Replace the 70 year old 2-storey homes with Manhattan style apartment buildings, and rent in San Francisco would…

That's implausible: San Francisco is overbuilt to the extent that green areas are sparse, though those which exist are decent, rather than distributed throughout the city. That contrasts in the extreme with the other cities you mentioned, and matters to many people.

The majority of SF is two story suburbs (and as the song goes, they are made out of ticky-tacky). Height wise, it is underbuilt, and that's why SF has such a low population density despite every piece of land being covered in these rickety little bungalows. The bungalow owners fight tooth and nail against denser multistory construction because they realize that the housing crunch is the only possible way that their shacks can have such high prices.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#378

Post by Tiktaalik »

FireBeyond wrote: post #185
pklausler wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metro (being the Portland area's multi-county regional government) voted last year to not expand the urban growth boundary. So the supply of single-family homes with yards is basically fixed, while demand is growing. Expect home prices to continue to grow (Portland's rate is top in the U.S.) as new housing construction continues to be constrained to dense multi-family structures for the next five years until Metro vo…

What rises with house prices - property taxes. Revenue for Metro. I am going to assume there's a non-negligible correlation.

Not necessarily. The city decides what amount of revenue it wants to generate, then divides that amongst all properties based on accessed value. If in a year everyone's accessed value increases by the exact same amount, and the city doesn't increase the amount of total income they want to generate, no ones property taxes change.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#379

Post by ryandrake »

sfotoatx wrote: post #130

Lots of naysayers on HN, but I left SF last year and moved to Austin. I have zero regrets. In SF, my 1 bedroom, 650 square foot apartment in SOMA went from $2,600 to $3,200 over 3 years. In Austin, my salary went down $10k to $120k/yr. My 2 bedroom, 1,100 square foot apartment is $1,150/mo. The tech scene here isn't as vibrant as SF, but there's still plenty of great meet ups. All in all, yes there are some things I…

Just curious: How did you manage to transfer your Bay Area salary to Austin? I would imagine that $120K is a ridiculous amount there. How did you even ask for it with a straight face? Are you making 2X all of your co-workers or something?

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#380

Post by bogomipz »

chrischen wrote: post #286
timr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a well-governed San Francisco could have positioned itself as the next NYC. The hub where all of tech gathers, the same way all of finance gathered in Wall St. Replace the 70 year old 2-storey homes with Manhattan style apartment buildings, and rent in San Francisco would have remained very reasonable, despite the rapid economic growth. This would have prevented exactly this problem where tech workers are forced to…

Completely agree with you. The whole point of software and the internet is to destroy boundaries and borders, especially physical ones. Companies neither have to have physical offices nor do they have to be located in the Bay Area. And unfortunately culture dictates that an office is always necessary and that you need to locate your tech company in the Bay Area for dubious reasons like fundraising (which should only…

Ha, yeah this makes me laugh. Startups that run completely on virtual machines in the cloud and their mission is to disrupt industry X but all of this can only be done from an open plan office space in SOMA.
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