Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#411

Post by maedla » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #395

Hypx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. They're companies trying to avoid taxes or regulation. Only companies on the downslide really consider that as an relevant option.

> They're companies trying to avoid taxes or regulation. Only companies on the downslide really consider that as an relevant option. Which is why continental Europe has so many fast-growing tech companies.

I think that the work culture in Europe is also a factor. Europeans are much less willing to work the way a lot of the startups expect.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#412

Post by mrep » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

almost_usual wrote: post #346

paloaltokid wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you never been to Chicago? Pretty nice town.

Yes, and Cook County has a property tax rate that is nearly 2x San Francisco county.

But from a quick google search result [0], price per square foot is 4 time as expensive in SF versus chicago.

[0]: https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/2020/07/07...

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#413

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

vmchale wrote: post #294

api wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this and the general borderline unenforceability of "we own all your work, even during off hours" clauses in employment contracts as a major reason that the center of innovation shifted from Boston and the East Coast to Silicon Valley and California. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the education and a much deeper history of innovation. It also could have been down in New Jersey where Bel…

> Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the education Boston is a tech hub, just smaller.

Yes. Interestingly, 80%+ of the world's Ion Implanters for semiconductor fabrication are designed in Greater Boston by Applied Materials (formerly Varian Semiconductor) and Axcelis (formerly Eaton). Implanters are serious science and engineering[0] machines with nearly $2 Billion worth sold in 2020.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_(semiconductor)

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#414

Post by blaser-waffle » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

game_the0ry wrote: post #403

abernard1 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The damage to CA's economy won't come from the has-beens leaving, but the never-will-be's that never happen. It's hard to have a ramen startup when your garage costs a million dollars. SF has been operating on the "Get Big Quick" financial injection model for a while now, so it probably won't stop those types of companies. But we shouldn't pretend that there's been a good environment for the idyllic startup in at lea…

> It's hard to have a ramen startup when your garage costs a million dollars. Word. Peter Thiel had something to say about this - basically, he said that so much of the VC money that a start up would raise would go to rent that it no longer makes sense to start a company in the Bay Area. And those garages in Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, Railegh-Durham, and basically every where else are starting to look very attract…

Austin's been on the tech radar for a while, but I've seen a lot of my friends from the DC area head down to Raleigh-Durham, easily 5+, and a couple who headed to Nashville.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#415

Post by prostoalex » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

dkobran wrote: post #16

HP and Oracle don’t exactly represent the heart of Silicon Valley today and what makes it special/unique. I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software, are somewhat the antithesis of Silicon Valley which is really about real technological innovation and disruption at it’s core. I know there are lots of…

A large company like that fertilizes the employment landscape - they hire in large numbers, conduct university recruiting, file H1B paperwork, bring Canadian students and accommodate their co-op schedules, pay relocation, etc. Rarely an expense that a small or medium startup is willing to undertake.

I remember seeing a recruiting report for Yahoo! when I worked there a decade and a half ago. Recruiting kept track of employees' previous work history as well as longevity of such employees within Yahoo! Turns out the top feeder company for them (easy to recruit people, and those recruits tend to linger on) was Oracle.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#416

Post by bsagdiyev » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

game_the0ry wrote: post #403

abernard1 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The damage to CA's economy won't come from the has-beens leaving, but the never-will-be's that never happen. It's hard to have a ramen startup when your garage costs a million dollars. SF has been operating on the "Get Big Quick" financial injection model for a while now, so it probably won't stop those types of companies. But we shouldn't pretend that there's been a good environment for the idyllic startup in at lea…

> It's hard to have a ramen startup when your garage costs a million dollars. Word. Peter Thiel had something to say about this - basically, he said that so much of the VC money that a start up would raise would go to rent that it no longer makes sense to start a company in the Bay Area. And those garages in Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, Railegh-Durham, and basically every where else are starting to look very attract…

Raleigh is where we’re headed in January, California has been great for the past 20 years or so but now with full WFH we don’t need to stay.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#417

Post by blaser-waffle » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

mainstreemm wrote: post #342

mrlala wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also probably have tons of cheap flat land that is ideal for manufacturing? So that would seem to make sense.

The Midwest has that too. But it also has unions. :)

It's also a lot further away from the Mexico border, where an awful lot of car parts are manufactured. A whole lot of those parts are already flowing through TX as it is, easier to dip into the existing streams than build new supply chains.

Also a lot of bigger, tech friendly cities -- Dallas, Austin, and Houston is poised to overtake Chicago as the 3rd largest city in the US within a decade or two.

Kanasas may be similar in terms of taxes and political climate (unions) but all its really got going for it is empty space. Ditto for much of the rest of the Midwest.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#418

Post by bigdubs » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

dude3 wrote: post #375

“Some who have already left San Francisco complained of mismanagement of the city and state. Though it's not clear what exactly they're referring to” (read this the other day) “Haven't left Silicon Valley; they're still continuing to employ people” There is this general aloofness of the problems. They need to address it head on and make it more hospitable for companies and residents.

My bone to pick with this is in order to make a real dent in these problems, you have to be able to put down roots and live in a place for many years.

San Francisco and the bay area generally are just too expensive (and frankly, too dangerous) for most people to put down those roots and raise a family and get involved meaningfully in the community.

Doesn't excuse most gold-rush tech people from not being involved in local politics at all, you can get involved trivially, but in order to build real lasting coalitions and build real influence people need to stay here a long time and fight it out.

And it's just easier to throw your hands up and move to a new trendy city that doesn't have these problems.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#419

Post by ak217 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #213

lern_too_spel wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The California budget is public information. Proposition 13 means you as a new arrival were subsidizing property owners who were there before you, and the broken initiative process means that there's billions from the general fund tied up to pay bonds for pet projects of swindlers who are clever enough to put their projects on the ballot instead of trying to get them past the legislature.

You make it sound like newcomers came and built a viable city for existing Californians. It’s not like California was a wasteland before ‘new comers’ arrived. ‘New comers’ have always been entering California. The new comers came because California already had an ecosystem and infrastructure in place built ready made for them to thrive. New comers are not subsidizing existing property owners. They ..and their childre…

You're analyzing the effects of Prop 13 at face value, while ignoring its many unintended effects of commercial property undertaxation and rentiering, reduced workforce mobility, concordant increased incentives for NIMBY behavior, effective increase in regressive taxes, etc. Prop 13 (along with California's constitutional amendment referendum system) has a network of pernicuous effects that promote cynical behavior and economic inefficiency on a scale that is unmatched in California politics.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#420

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

lukeramsden wrote: post #410

giantg2 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I totally agree and I think property taxes are way more fair and equitable for a society than income taxes." Until you retire and no longer can pay the tax and are kicked out of your home. Logically, it makes more sense to tax people who are actually making money (income and capital gains) since that means they actually have money. Taxing people on a fundamental need (shelter) could potentially increase homelessness…

Couldn't you give property tax breaks to retirees, or to people temporarily out of work?

You could. But you see, that's really working as an income tax then, but even less efficiently/equitably because you now need a mechanism and oversight to classify people/households as retired/out of work and that classification may not be taking into account the difference between someone making more money in retirement than others might make while working.

For example, if I'm retired and making 5% annually on $5M dollars, that's more income than many working class people. Why should I get a break on property tax? If it's income tax, then it applies to everyone equally and you don't need special exceptions for people who lost their income since it would automatically remove the need to pay the tax (no income to withhold from).