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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

#91

Post by lotsofpulp »

throwaway_hey wrote: post #80
lotsofpulp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but I didn't think it was necessary to state "all else being equal". In a conversation about why the same employer pays less to people if they move, it's strictly because they can and the employee doesn't have a choice to defect. Whereas in SF, the employee can walk around the corner and start working for someone else. Which is an illustration of the intersection of supply and demand.

You aren’t wrong, but we need to be careful when applying typical market economics to the labor market. It has its own field of study specifically because some of these relationships/intersections breakdown in the employee-employer relationship. A classic example is the lack of perfect information in the labor market like you see in a commodities market. A more specific example is the wage-fixing scandal that hit tec…

I see that example as supporting the idea of supply and demand determining price.

Employers colluded to reduce number of buyers, hence reducing demand, causing sellers to have fewer alternatives to sell their services to, causing them to sell at a lower price than they otherwise would.

There may be more effects due to lack of information or ability to move or issues of social signaling compared to a simple example of widgets, but in the grand scheme of thing, it still follows the same principle.

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

#92

Post by Nasrudith »

triceratops wrote: post #90
stanrivers wrote: post #3

Are companies going to start adjusting salaries for people who move (this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? That’s where this gets weird... people move to these better-to-live places and then all the employers decides to pay them less because of location. Then you just push up housing prices with salaries that slowly reset over time to be cost of living a…

This "your salary = your value add" meme has never made any sense to me. In a fair world that should be the case, but it never has been and never will be. Proof: offshore outsourcing.

It is an upper bound essentially for a sustainable company and is a point of convergence "your salary If given two "equal" canidates why pay more if you don't have to? (The actual equality given other complications like cultural, language barriers, and similiar is another topic.)

The "fairness" is also not mathematically viable as it assumes axiomatically that no action can be taken to earn profit that isn't "unfair" as the deserved value is based upon output and not input provided, which leaves no room for expansion nor buffer and no incentive to actually operate a business.

TL;DR - most popular understanding of economics is pretty damn confused.

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

#93

Post by gmadsen »

notJim wrote: post #75
gmadsen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is 1-1 perfectly like that. In silicon Valley, a person with x skills is worth y dollars. If going remote, there will still be people with hard to find skills, probably because all the people with those skills were already in silicon valley. I don't see these jobs getting salary decreases. however, standard crud jobs that most programmers can do, yeah that will go down as rural employees are willing…

At least at places I've worked, there isn't really that distinction though. There's not one of type of engineer that does "standard crud jobs" (whatever that would mean) and another type that designs/scales systems or whatever. Instead, companies seem to prefer to hire generalists who can (theoretically) do either job, even if that means salaries might theoretically be higher. In other words, candidates for engineeri…

My point I was trying to make is probably such an outlier that it is hyperbole. So you are probably right.

I would guess John Carmack would get paid the same whether he lived in a small hut in Estonia or if he lived in SF. I don't think thats true for the person building a web app for a local company to sell knitted socks.

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

#94

Post by SilasX »

d1zzy wrote: post #48
SilasX wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's correct. But the question being asked is why the location changes the $X's there. I don't know that restatement of economic generalities helps unless you're going to apply them to the dynamic being asked about.

That seems obvious to me: lowering your cost of living means you are willing to accept $X-1, or if you personally don't want to another person that also moved out of high priced living area may accept a lower salary (so they get your job). Otherwise why did companies even have different compensation tiers for same type of work across US regions? Just because it takes some time for the market to price the changes it d…

Even if it was obvious to you, I think discussions work better when people don’t have to guess what someone’s explanation is.

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

#95

Post by triceratops »

Nasrudith wrote: post #92
triceratops wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "your salary = your value add" meme has never made any sense to me. In a fair world that should be the case, but it never has been and never will be. Proof: offshore outsourcing.

It is an upper bound essentially for a sustainable company and is a point of convergence "your salary If given two "equal" canidates why pay more if you don't have to? (The actual equality given other complications like cultural, language barriers, and similiar is another topic.) The "fairness" is also not mathematically viable as it assumes axiomatically that no action can be taken to earn profit that isn't "unfair"…

I'm sorry, but I did not understand your comment at all. Some of those sentences don't parse for me. I don't know what you're trying to say. Can you please clarify?

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

#96

Post by silicon2401 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #76
silicon2401 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes it appealing to a lot of people who have been living around millions of other people. Soon many of these places will no longer be cheap and far away from other people. It'll be interesting to see how today's cultural conflicts play out when the more left-leaning, urban remote workers move en masse to smaller, more right-leaning, less urban places.

It's not about left right. It's about rural vs urban and have money vs not. Everything that's terrible and soul crushing about a tourism economy is about to happen to random places that have thus far been spared that fate.

You can't reduce things to one dimension, I agree, but I disagree that left vs right is unimportant. When largely liberal city people migrate into largely conservative places, there's gonna be some conflict. Not to mention a lot of these tech workers are liberal and have money, so they'll be empowered to support changes that the locals may not be on board with but also may not have the means to combat effectively.

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

#97

Post by tolbish »

silicon2401 wrote: post #49
reaperducer wrote: post #39

People have been talking about this on HN for a few months now, and I never took it seriously since these threads are always filled with people quoting numbers saying it's not happening. That was until last month, when two tech workers from San Francisco moved into the neighborhood. Both have the same story: Their company went work-from-home when the pandemic started, then made it permanent, so the company employees…

That's what makes it appealing to a lot of people who have been living around millions of other people. Soon many of these places will no longer be cheap and far away from other people. It'll be interesting to see how today's cultural conflicts play out when the more left-leaning, urban remote workers move en masse to smaller, more right-leaning, less urban places.

The biggest trick the media has played on the working class is framing everything in a "right vs left" lens.

There does not seem to be any resistance to this indoctrination.

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

#98

Post by adenadel »

ngokevin wrote: post #33
andreilys wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Diego and LA have SFBA easily beat in terms of weather.

Unless you don't like summer heat and heat waves. SF is more consistently around 70F. Depends if you like 55F - 75F versus 70F - 90F

San Diego is right in the range that you are describing. Average highs in August are ~75. I'm biased though since I lived in San Diego for a couple of years and have never lived in or near San Francisco. Inland is much hotter in San Diego though.

https://www.weather-us.com/en/california-usa/san-diego-clima...

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

#99

Post by jiveturkey »

stanrivers wrote: post #3

Are companies going to start adjusting salaries for people who move (this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? That’s where this gets weird... people move to these better-to-live places and then all the employers decides to pay them less because of location. Then you just push up housing prices with salaries that slowly reset over time to be cost of living a…

most famously, gitlab has always done this. others do also and with covid many have announced they would, including such giants as facebook.

your perspective on value is wrong. you aren't paid for the value you bring. in capitalistic society you are paid at replacement cost. this is why unions are so important in some industries (mostly semi-skilled), to stop the next guy for agreeing to work at a lower standard.

now, if you have a lower cost of living, having moved "away", 1/ your net purchasing power is the same, so why would you complain, and 2/ your equivalent replacement cost is lower.

i don't understand your last bit about increasing housing prices. if you are paid less when you move away, how are housing prices pushed up? isn't it the opposite? if you bring your high salary with you, that pushes up housing prices.

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

#100

Post by chris11 »

davidw wrote: post #84
iaw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1978 California passed the ill-conceived Proposition 13 which encourages people to keep houses rather than sell them through lower tax rates for longer ownership. California has almost 40M residents and Oregon has a bit over 4M, even a fraction of those 40M going north to Oregon is going to overload the housing market there.

Yep. Oregon has something similar in Measures 5 & 50, and it distorts our market as well. I follow CA housing politics fairly closely because, as you point out, they are important in Oregon too. It has been really dismaying to see them consistently fail to pass the kinds of reform they need.

Prop 15 and Prop 19 are on the ballot. I think those would reduce market distortions if they pass.
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