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

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

#501

Post by bordercases » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

core-questions wrote: post #162

jonathanyc wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! If you have a moment: I’m a Christian and a gun owner who is not a fan of the Democratic Party. I live in SF and was born in the East Bay. Would you mind sharing some concrete examples of what you mean by CA being more intolerant than other places? I keep hearing about this but have never really experienced it myself.

Look up James Damore if you want one of the more canonical examples of this. Essentially, "tolerance" has been redefined as a term to essentially just mean "liberalism"; whenever you hear someone suggesting that one "be tolerant", you can just mentally replace that with "be liberal". The term is leveled at folks like yourself, who are deemed intolerant and illiberal for having and trying to perpetuate a different val…

James Damore was a bit of an idiot in terms of how he argued for his points. His example weakens your position rather than strengthens it.

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

#502

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #466

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…

>> I don't see how flat or even marginal income taxes disincentivize people from making more money When you hit higher tax brackets it gets more difficult to negotiate a raise with your employer, because to get X more money for yourself you need your employer to spend 1.4X more on your salary. Flat tax rates have no such effect.

But as a marginal system only taxes the income above the cutoff at the higher rate, you would still make more money.

For example, you are making $99k and paying 4% (pretty close to many state income taxes) on that with the next bracket at $100k with a 6% rate. You get a raise to $110k which means you are making an additional $10360 after tax and only paying an additional $200 in tax (4% vs 6% on that $10k). I don't see why you need a 40% increase.

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

#503

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

abernard1 wrote: post #498

nostrademons wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most startups don't care about taxes or regulations. Taxes are a rounding error (or literally zero) when you're small and not making any money, which will be the first several years of a startup's life. When you get big you can hire an army of lawyers and accountants to keep all your money in Ireland and avoid them. Regulations just get ignored. When you're small, you're too little a fish to go after; the regulators…

> Most startups don't care about taxes or regulations. Yes, but they care about cost. And the reason that everything is so expensive in California is regulation and taxes. Acting like these are separate things is not a valid assumption.

I don't believe that the reason everything is so expensive in California is regulation and taxes. Here's why:

The North Coast (Eureka, Crescent City) and Central Valley (Chico, Fresno, Modesto, Bakersfield) are under the same regulatory and tax regime as the rest of California. How expensive is Eureka? Houses average $300K [1]. Restaurant meals are about $10-12. [2][3] How expensive is Bakersfield? Houses are about $250K [4], meals are about $11 [5]. In other words, they're not much different from the rest of America.

I think that much of the contemporary political narrative gets the causality wrong. The Bay Area and LA are expensive because they are home to global monopolies that funnel cash from all over the world into a small region. There's not much land available in these metros, there's a lot of money floating around, there are a lot of people who want to move in to get a piece of this money, and so they bid up the prices of scarce goods. Regulation comes later, to curb the power imbalances from having corporations with more resources than many nation-states, and taxes come so that the state can get a piece of the huge cash flows coming in.

But the primary driver of cost-of-living is being the sink for the disposable income of 7B consumers. Eureka's primary industry is timber, and Bakersfield's is oil. Both of these are commodity markets where the money goes elsewhere in the value chain. Not so with tech and entertainment.

[1] https://www.zillow.com/homes/Eureka,-CA_rb/

[2] http://www.brickandfirebistro.com/menu-.html

[3] https://www.humboldtsmokehouse.com/menu

[4] https://www.zillow.com/homes/Bakersfield,-CA_rb/

[5] https://www.yelp.com/menu/locale-farm-to-table-eatery-bakers...

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

#504

Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

_fat_santa wrote: post #280

millstone wrote: post #37

I am curious if anyone agrees with my take: HP Enterprise and Oracle did not move because Texas is "more tech friendly." Instead they moved because HPE and Oracle are no longer primarily tech companies. While they do substantial technical work, most of that will remain in SV. It's sort of the mirror of Apple, which also has a substantial presence in Austin (finance, etc) but is headquartered in SV because it is prima…

I call it the "COVID come to Jesus moment". I remember for the last year or two. The murmurs here, twitter and reddit has been "Why don't these companies understand that their work can all be remote", "why does X company insist on having on-site employees". Meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum you had the higher ups all murmuring "well if we let people work from home, then our company will be doomed". Then COV…

Letting senior dev who knows the org chart work from home is very different than onboarding junior employees.

I've seen seniors go completely async (timezones barely compatibles) and periodically you'd see an email from them detailing what they are working on, what they are blocked on and outlining the next steps.

You knew they were doing something simply by looking at the pull requests they sent and the comments they left on the PRs they were reviewing. But try that with a new hire and I guarantee it won't go well.

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

#505

Post by corpMaverick » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #383

ylhert wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree and I think property taxes are way more fair and equitable for a society than income taxes. Usually we tax behaviors we want to curb. Income taxes disincentivize people from earning more, whereas property taxes are a consumption tax. In my mind this makes way more sense, and there's good data to suggest property taxes are the best/most efficient way to gain needed revenue for a city but do the least "…

"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…

After retirement you have the option to downsize your home.

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

#506

Post by corpMaverick » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #330

BowBun wrote: post #322

> the cost of housing is one-third of Bay Area prices and the absence of a state personal income tax amounts to a 13.3% raise for top earners. This point always makes me laugh because anyone who lives in affluent TX neighborhoods knows your property tax is _enormous_ and usually makes up for a majority of state income tax you save. They still need to pay for roads and schools, right?

Which is great. A high property tax keeps the price of housing down (what people will pay for a house is cost per month, basically mortgage plus property tax), makes people want to have new housing built so that housing prices don't go up, and promotes a general attitude of anti-NIMBYism. Just the opposite of California with its low property tax and very aristocratic prop 13 problem.

True about keeping housing prices down. Also the money you pay goes to schools and infrastructure. Instead of going towards a big mortgage and interests.

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

#507

Post by andrewflnr » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #500

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…

Oracle is one of the most hated companies on HN, and for years, I assumed that it's a backwards corporate behemoth. Of course, as I work with startups and not huge enterprises, I have actual experience only with Postgresq, MySQL and MongoDB, and not Oracle, but that video about anthropomorphisizing Larry Ellison is so funny. However, I started going through CMU intro to databases course (btw, it's amazing) and one ad…

It's not that their tech is bad, it's that the company is evil. Stuff like this, for instance: https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/950n15/amazon_...

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

#508

Post by fortran77 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

alsetmusic wrote: post #309

fortran77 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my Sunnyvale CA house in 1991. I pay $6,000 in property tax. The tax goes up 2%/year. I do not pay $3.50 in taxes. You are, quite frankly, a liar. The median property tax paid by homeowners in NY State -- a state with no "Prop 13" is $5,865 (according to facts I just googled). What, exactly, am I getting away with? How will increasing property taxes in a state with the highest income and sales tax solve the…

> in a state with the highest income and sales tax solve the housing crisis? When I think of all the people living in their cars around Oakland, raising property taxes and pooling them into social services is something I favor. Highest income is misleading. Lots of people work retail or similar and will never own a home. > I live in CA about 8 months/year, and spend the Feb-May in Tel Aviv. I think this speaks to pri…

How dare you talk about my "privilege."

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

#509

Post by buzzert » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #308

prawn wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, as someone who doesn't even live in the US, I find these discussions alluring because related topics like homelessness and NIMBY-vs-whatever are so interesting. Other than that, the "don't bring CA to TX" angle is quite alien to an Australian as laws are fairly similar in each state here.

The United States is huge and you can easily divide it into multiple regions that have their own unique culture, their own distinct histories, and different ways of speaking, sometimes dramatically different. Colin Woodard's book "American Nations" does a good job of explaining this [0], though at some point this book turns into a long rant about GWB and it's safe to put the book down at that point if you don't find…

And yet at the same time, the regions are also remarkably similar in all the same ways. Someone born in California can fly to the heart of Tennessee and have a meaningful conversation with a stranger in their native language.

(It’s one of the reasons why I love the US)

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

#510

Post by abernard1 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:39 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #503

abernard1 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most startups don't care about taxes or regulations. Yes, but they care about cost. And the reason that everything is so expensive in California is regulation and taxes. Acting like these are separate things is not a valid assumption.

I don't believe that the reason everything is so expensive in California is regulation and taxes. Here's why: The North Coast (Eureka, Crescent City) and Central Valley (Chico, Fresno, Modesto, Bakersfield) are under the same regulatory and tax regime as the rest of California. How expensive is Eureka? Houses average $300K [1]. Restaurant meals are about $10-12. [2][3] How expensive is Bakersfield? Houses are about $…

I lived in Bakersfield for a long time.

You know what they don't have, insane zoning restrictions that prevent housing. For example, the Houston MSA, which has almost no zoning restrictions is within 90% of the population (and 80% population density) of the Bay Area 9 county MSA with an average house price of... $249K at 2,000 sq ft.

And there's a reason I left Bakersfield and moved to Austin. It's because PG&E energy prices are benchmarked at Bay Area temperatures, and they have progressive pricing. Because I had a server rack in a garage in super hot (110+ F) summers, I was paying over $600 a month in energy bills in a tiny 1000 sq foot house in a ghetto. If I had lived in a 4 bedroom house, I would have paid less in energy.

And just on a secondary, personal note. Houses in Houston are way, way nicer than houses in San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco etc. This is one of those things where I know that people have just not experienced living in other places when I hear quality arguments around housing, food, or amenities.

It's just not that nice in San Francisco. Seriously. The food is just downright bad in quality and variety compared to even Austin, much less Houston. The housing stock is dreadful. Service is slow. The quality of things in Houston is better than the Bay Area, irrespective of cost.