Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#391

Post by tropo » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 2:52 AM UTC

fader wrote: post #271

apatters wrote: post #169

Speaking as a proponent of remote work, I think the reason is that remote workers are less productive in a _non-remote enabled culture._ And by default most companies are not remote enabled. They don't even understand what that means. This is totally reasonable, as we still have very few examples of large, successful teams that are fully remote. Many of the ones we do have aren't actually companies, Linux kernel deve…

Definitely. Companies can either "allow remote work" or be "remote first". I've worked at both types. The ones who are "allow remote work" are entirely office-focused and view remote workers with suspicion. A remote worker is very unlikely to get promoted, be able to take on interesting projects or large responsibilities. And they'll be out of the loop as far as what is going on in the company. (Even at a large compa…

Also "no remote" of course, and then... what would you call this?

I'm at a place that is heavily into IRC. Documentation goes in a mediawiki wiki. There is also video conferencing and email. You could almost call it "remote first", except... all of this is happening on a non-Internet network and nearly nobody is at home. It's separate offices connected over encrypted links. The few people at home (mostly due to health and family issues) need special hardware to get on the network, along with separate non-Internet computers.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#392

Post by tropo » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 3:05 AM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #92

flowardnut wrote: post #44

I moved from a medium sized city that had ~5 dev shops to work at. They all sucked. I had friends from college at each one, and we all basically spent our days plugging fixes into 8 year old java or .net apps and trying to keep our brains entertained. I did the usual and moved to "an expensive city" of portland. There's hundreds of places hiring, from "work on our inventory system in java" to healthcare to high tech…

I moved away from a mid-sized city where the tech employers consisted of: * Giant defense contractor. The kind of place you'd have to fill out paperwork to enter some of the rooms at. * The University * Local government * A couple of hardware companies and like 2 software startups. Needless to say, I am much happier with my job prospects in the Bay Area (not to mention my paycheck).

The giant defense contractor probably has amazing projects once you get past the paperwork. If you want to change the world, well there you go. You probably won't work overtime, but if you do there are federal limits before they have to pay you extra. Age discrimination is unlikely.

The university is probably interesting. Actual pay is probably terrible, but you might get free tuition for your kids.

The "couple of hardware companies" sounds promising. That might be real programming, with C or even assembly.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#393

Post by tropo » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 3:25 AM UTC

uiri wrote: post #246

canadiancreed wrote: post #151

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"

Employers in Canada don't actually need (or don't actually want) top developer talent. If they did, they would try to compete with US companies on salary (among other things). I agree that "remote (US only)" is completely baffling. Hiring from a global talent pool instead of a local one is a huge advantage. Yes, such an employer has to deal with tax headaches but if they want to hire locally from a global talent pool…

It's also security.

That really productive remote "person" could be a whole team. Three people do the work, and another 25 are dedicated to espionage.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#394

Post by henrikschroder » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 4:52 AM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #381

henrikschroder wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where are you from that sharing a home with strangers is such a strange concept? Sweden. When I went to university, I had a student apartment. It was cheap and tiny , 18m^2. There was a slightly cheaper student housing option where you would share a living room and a kitchen with other people, but in those everyone has their own private bedroom and bathroom with their own front door. Some of my friends rented regul…

Interesting thanks for the info. I'm in the UK and generally here if you go to University you will get a student accommodation for the first. Then you'll get your own apartment with friends for the remaining years and this would generally carry on until you're in a serious relationship and can share accommodation with your partner. Personally having also tried the living by myself thing for a year I much prefer shari…

> Then you'll get your own apartment with friends for the remaining years

That's still leaps and bounds from the American custom of advertising for a roommate, interviewing a bunch of candidates, and then picking one. There's a reason the "crazy roommate" is a trope used in American TV and cinema.

That is completely alien to me. :-)

> Living by yourself quickly becomes very lonely

Funny, that's a complaint I don't think any of my friends and acquaintances have had. I'm just gonna chalk that up to culture as well.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#395

Post by k-mcgrady » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 8:52 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #394

k-mcgrady wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thanks for the info. I'm in the UK and generally here if you go to University you will get a student accommodation for the first. Then you'll get your own apartment with friends for the remaining years and this would generally carry on until you're in a serious relationship and can share accommodation with your partner. Personally having also tried the living by myself thing for a year I much prefer shari…

> Then you'll get your own apartment with friends for the remaining years That's still leaps and bounds from the American custom of advertising for a roommate, interviewing a bunch of candidates, and then picking one. There's a reason the "crazy roommate" is a trope used in American TV and cinema. That is completely alien to me. :-) > Living by yourself quickly becomes very lonely Funny, that's a complaint I don't th…

Just to clarify the first point I meant that at university you will live with friends for the remaining years (friends whom you met during the first year). After Uni people disperse around the globe so you often end up somewhere with no friends and choose to do the sharing with strangers thing.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#396

Post by eugmill » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 3:25 AM UTC

tropo wrote: post #390

Anderkent wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like different things. What a shock! > Same goes for nightclubs, museums, movie theaters, "culture". This is really why people want to live somewhere??? What do you do in the afternoons? Almost every home-hobby I can think of is improved by company of people with similar interests. Rather than do DYI in a garage, I'd rather go to a hackerspace. Rather than play the same N boardgames with the same X people, I'd…

Thank you for answering that. It's still totally alien, but thanks. Small cities, under 100,000 people even, can have hackerspaces. Maybe they aren't to your standards. (local one here has CNC, laser cutter, 3D printers for plastic, etc.) To not cook is odd. Even when I lived alone in Boston, I cooked my meals. If you cook, you can be sure that nobody: picked their nose before handling your food, spat in your food (p…

There's also just the joy of cooking. It's a skill, no different than programming. I feel the same pride in improving my cooking skills as I do my programming skills. It's nice to make things, and make them well.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#397

Post by thatwebdude » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 3:07 PM UTC

arcanus wrote: post #256

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two factors perpetuate this: 1) Americans have a self-hating working class. 2) American home-owners are politically organized, and constantly lobby to prevent the construction of both new single-family houses and apartment buildings in general.

> American home-owners are politically organized, and constantly lobby to prevent the construction of both new single-family houses and apartment buildings in general That's over-generalizing. Many locations in the USA have sensible zoning. SF is the exception.

Agreed, in the Midwest they're building new 2,500 sqft. homes every 6 months around here. (Quite poorly BTW)

Every 5 or 10 years an entirely new development emerges.

Any hindrance occurs to municipalities without room to grow. And for city zoning, it doesn't appear they have an issue "building up" instead of out.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#398

Post by thatwebdude » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 3:18 PM UTC

Arizhel wrote: post #356

ivanvanderbyl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that the "big four" tech companies aren't the only tech companies worth working at. You could very well have a higher upside working at a small, remotely friendly company, from Chiang Mai or Bali where the cost of living is 1/15th of SF, and still have a relative mass of expats doing similar things. Speaking from experience, I'm much more relaxed working from Bali, and I get paid only 20% less…

>It's worth pointing out that the "big four" tech companies aren't the only tech companies worth working at. They're not, but there's lots of other large-to-midsize tech companies out there that people don't mention when they mention the Big Four, because they're mostly the same. They're in the same locations, and work largely the same. >You could very well have a higher upside working at a small, remotely friendly c…

This isn't cut-and-dry. There are plenty of opportunities to work in cheap parts of the country (US). If I lost my job (or more than likely, quit on my own terms, which I've done many times before, even before I had a position lined up), I wouldn't be concerned with finding another one within 2 weeks. Every day I'm responding to recruiters on LinkedIn looking for talent. And I'm not that talented.

There are even requests around the geographical region, which I consider if I hadn't had a family and mortgage.

I can utilize all the cutting-edge technologies developers on the coasts think they're privy to, too.

This flyover mentality gets me so worked up. It's really from a pre-internet era.

I can see your argument for doing so in another country (relocation, other added expenses vs. U-Haul across the country), but I'm making the assumption there's more than one fruit farmer there, too.

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#399

Post by John23832 » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 4:00 PM UTC

Arizhel wrote: post #385

467568985476 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any data that supports the assertion that liberal politics are on a strong downward trend? That struck me as odd and my (admittedly short) googling found a lot of evidence that the opposite is true.

Did you miss the November election? That should be proof enough. Compare the anti-Vietnam-war protests of the early 1970s to the anti-Iraq-war protests in the 2000s... oh wait, there were no anti-war protests in the 2000s; everyone in America was all for that. Compare the birthrates for liberal, irreligious people to conservative, religious people.

>Did you miss the November election? That should be proof enough.

Liberals won the popular vote...

> Compare the anti-Vietnam-war protests of the early 1970s to the anti-Iraq-war protests in the 2000s... oh wait, there were no anti-war protests in the 2000s; everyone in America was all for that.

That is a disingenuous comparison. The support for the Iraq war was so high because a the biggest terrorist attack in US history had just happened and we were going after the people we thought responsible. If you compare a similar situation WWII and Pearl Harbor, there were not protests for that either. In fact support for Japanese internment was high.

> Compare the birthrates for liberal, irreligious people to conservative, religious people.

Birth rates for people who typically "vote liberal"(minorities) in the united states are much higher than those of "conservative voters" (white people).

Re: Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?

#400

Post by vram22 » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 4:49 PM UTC

jaredhansen wrote: post #331

Glyptodon wrote: post #306

As someone living in working in a medium size city and non-tech-enclave I can tell you that there's very little non-remote SW/web dev work here. There are people who need someone to manage Wordpress or Drupal sites for SMBs, realtors, dentists, and similar. There are also a smattering of java/.Net nightmare jobs in companies that are non-tech-centric or defense related. There are exceptions, but you might come across…

>Rather, I think you probably need the connections from a tech-enclave As a tech employer who has consistently hired from "non-tech-enclaves", here are some practical tips that may help people in your position "swing high-paying remote work": - Have a public presence: open source, stackoverflow, portfolio on your own site (bonus points for a cool site that itself shows off what you can do), etc. - Flesh out your prof…

Great comment.