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

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-workers-take-to-the-mountains-bringing-silicon-valley-with-them-11604242802

by lxm • 6 years ago

171 282 6 years ago

nendroid4• 6 years ago

I think the migration out of the bay will make it a more reasonable place to live. We do have some of the best weather in the world. I'm going to gamble on staying.

Hopefully this isn't like detroit.

andreilys• 6 years ago

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

nendroid4• 6 years ago

Of course but bay is still one of the best in the world.

Also the bay encompasses more than SF, while SF and daly city have notoriously foggy weather, the rest of the bay area is quite good.

SpicyLemonZest4• 6 years ago

I feel like they're both at the level where it's a minor tradeoff between fog and summer heat, and for me fog is the clear choice.

ngokevin3• 6 years ago

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

pengaru• 6 years ago

I'm inclined to agree, if you can be near enough to the ocean to tame the summer heat.

SFBA winters are kinda miserable IMHO. It's not rust belt snow bad, but consistently cold and wet for months isn't exactly ideal.

And SF-proper regularly being fogged in renders too many nights useless WRT enjoying the outdoors, year-round. It's almost pointless to have something like a rooftop deck or outdoor patio. It'll all corrode and rot before you get sufficient use of it.

San Mateo manages to escape most of the negative fog effects though, I enjoyed living on the hill by 92 and Hillsdale Blvd. We'd regularly watch the apocalyptic fog stall @ Skyline while enjoying dinner outside on our deck.

scubbo• 6 years ago

We do have some of the best weather in the world.

Certainly some of the sunniest in the English-speaking world. Personally (as an ex-Londoner), I overheat a lot and actually miss a good rainstorm from time-to-time - but your evaluation does line up with most people's, I think.

Let's just gloss over the increasingly-common smoke from wildfires... :)

nendroid4• 6 years ago

Let's just gloss over the increasingly-common smoke from wildfires... :)

Yeah that part is bad. Not sure how to rate CA in general when you account for this as the wild fires only started getting crazy recently. For most of my life overall the fires weren't a problem.

Certainly some of the sunniest in the English-speaking world. Personally (as an ex-Londoner), I overheat a lot and actually miss a good rainstorm from time-to-time - but your evaluation does line up with most people's, I think.

Scientifically it is actually rated as some of the best in terms of closest to something like room temperature throughout the year. It's a climate zone called the mediterranean climate zone. It exists in a few places in the world.

tjr225• 6 years ago

Hopefully this isn't like detroit.

Even if it became more like Detroit you'd still have what Detroit can never have- nice weather and unbeatable nature right outside your doorstep.

pbuzbee2• 6 years ago

I think it's unlikely to turn out like Detroit, and I say that as someone who wants to leave the region.

The region will continue to have many of its best qualities: good weather, (relatively) diverse culture, access to nature, and good employment prospects. The biggest issue with the region is the high cost of living, but any relief in housing costs will only make the area more appealing again. There's a high floor.

stanrivers2• 6 years ago

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 adjusted to the area.

hello_moto• 6 years ago

The crazy salary level was set by location not by skillset alone so the skillset is still valued the same but the location depreciate accordingly.

Just like buying a house: there are 2 variables that contributes to the total value, the land (location) and the building.

WaxProlix• 6 years ago

Salaries have very little to do with how much value one adds. If anything, it's more about how much value can be extracted. If companies can pay less and get the same value, they totally will.

pdonis• 6 years ago

Salaries have very little to do with how much value one adds.

Yes, it does; but it's not how much value you, as an individual, add, but how hard it would be to find someone else who could add the same value but would work for less money.

If companies can pay less and get the same value, they totally will.

Yes, which means companies are aware of how much value an employee adds; they are just also aware of what the current market price is for that amount of value. Whereas, many employees are not aware of that.

In any case, the primary benefit of the observation that the more value you add, the more you get paid is long term, not short term: it tells you that, if you want to increase your total lifetime compensation, you need to become harder to replace. In other words, you need to add, not just value, but some particular kind of value that fewer other people could add if they were hired in your place. The scarcer the kind of value you add is, the higher the price you can get for it.

hartator• 6 years ago

It’s not about value you bring but competition to get your talent. Someone in the middle of nowhere will get far less offers and way less attractive ones than someone in the middle of SF.

lotsofpulp7• 6 years ago

(this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)?

Price is the intersection of supply and demand. A buyer will ask a seller to accept a lower price if they think the seller is willing to accept a lower price. A seller might accept a lower price if they don't think they can get a higher price.

You are paid $X because the buyer couldn't find someone willing to accept $X-1, and you accepted $X because you couldn't find someone to give you $X+1.

Droobfest• 6 years ago

Then the question becomes if Sillicon Valley will now also try to hire remotely from a larger talent pool all across the U.S. (or even world).

SilasX3• 6 years ago

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.

gmadsen3• 6 years ago

agreed if someone is remote is SF or remote in Wyoming, the pay will not depend on the employees personal expenses, but there might be a price differentiator for an SF employee that can come to the office within a moments notice. That adds value that has a cost associated with it.

komali2• 6 years ago

and you accepted $X because you couldn't find someone to give you $X+1.

My buddy accepted $X -($X *.8) = $Y because the company offering $Y was doing something ethical. Point being there's far more variables at stake here to over simplify.

cma• 6 years ago

A remote employee as commodity is essentially fungible, in which case why would a company bid more on the same employee living in a higher cost of living area than the same employee living in a lower one?

It would only make sense if employers collude so that those employees can't get competitive offers. Otherwise, why wouldn't another company bid more since location doesn't change the value?

duxup• 6 years ago

I worked for a valley company that changed people's salary if they moved to a new office. Work in the valley, make more, if you moved they'd lower your pay.

Midwest salaries were notably lower.

Oddly enough it was more of a issue brought up by folks at HQ as they knew they were more expensive and a particular group was really paranoid about it... like constantly. It was a bad scene.

ticmasta4• 6 years ago

This seems similar to how I felt when consulting and knew I was billing at a much higher rate than others. Even if there is some form of value-for-money angle you feel like you have a target on your back and will be an early "win" for the bean counters when the knifes come out. My advice: be prepared for the end at anytime (like 4pm today) and enjoy it while you can!

conductr• 6 years ago

I have a similar but totally different example from a non-tech field. I live in Texas. We had an office in Bay Area. Sometime we had people in Texas that reported to a higher level people in Bay Area.

For whatever reason, market rate of pay in Bay Area for this field was similar to the market in Texas. However COL had a large variance. We were a pretty tight bunch that knew basic details of each other’s personal lives. It was crazy the amount of subtle strife this dynamic caused. When someone in Texas buys a large home and a new BMW or is traveling all the time. And their peer or even boss in Bay Area is struggling to split an apartment with a roommate well after “roommate appropriate age” by Texas standards.

sanp• 6 years ago

What you are paid is only somewhat related to the value you bring. Remote work increases the pool of potential employees...

polskibus• 6 years ago

It happens all the time, people in EU with similar skillset are paid much less than people in the US, even after adjusting for the differences what your taxes give you (ie. healthcare).

gmadsen3• 6 years ago

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 to work for less out of Utah or something.

notJim4• 6 years ago

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 engineering positions all go through the same hiring pipeline, with small variations for front-end vs back-end, etc. I think as engineers, we should prefer this, because it gives us greater flexibility in our careers and greater room for growth.

drewda• 6 years ago

Facebook announced that they'd be adjusting employee salaries by new home location at the start of the new calendar year, I think.

Some more distributed companies like Salesforce have been adjusting compensation for years when employees move from the Bay Area to other office locations.

edmundsauto2• 6 years ago

Didn’t they adjust it not based on COLA but on what the talent market is in that region? That’s making it explicitly market based, although that obviously includes a cost of living component.

jojo2333• 6 years ago

Of course they are, and it makes perfect sense.

throwawaygh• 6 years ago

Pay for software engineering will contract because it turns out programming is not that difficult and there was nothing special about the sf set except their need to cover stupid high rents.

silicon24014• 6 years ago

It's going to be quite a reality shock when people realize their salaries were kept high _because_ their jobs weren't open to remote workers.

humanrebar2• 6 years ago

Not quite. Consider pay for athletes and entertainers. Why pay Robert Downey Jr. big bucks? There are millions of actors out there!

No, there could be a long tail of meagerly paid folks, just like baristas who aspire to be professional singers. But some folks (allegedly the best of the best somehow) will be getting top dollar.

rienbdj• 6 years ago

I used to think this. Now I think that doing software well is actually very, very hard and even the best practitioners often get it wrong. The market for the best developers will always be high in my view.

iandanforth• 6 years ago

This is exactly correct. If you pay for a product you are not entitled to force a price reduction if the efficiencies of the producer improve. In most cases purchasers are not even entitled to know about production costs. It's just that with in person labor purchasers have gotten used to having access to this privileged information and abuse it.

No, the real economic force at work for here is the halo effect. If you're in SV you must be good! You went to Stanford and worked at Google? You must be good! Then competition for that group takes over driving up prices. Housing costs are just an excuse people give themselves / investors.

spaceflunky• 6 years ago

If you pay for a product you are not entitled to force a price reduction if the efficiencies of the producer improve.

No, you actually should be. If you work in manufacturing and you're any good at your job, you analyze what it actually cost to make a product. If for example, the price of a commodity heavily used in your product bottoms out from a previously very high price, you should make a call to your supplier demanding some kind of price adjustment (either future or retroactively).

SV paid high prices because the explosive growth and geographic constraints made housing prices very high, therefore salaries had to go up to entice people to come. Rising salaries were not based on competition for talent alone.

I get that a lot of companies are posturing that they wont localize pay, but eventually they'll wise up since their talent pool has grown very significantly. Salaries use to go because pool of applicants who were willing to move to SV was a lot smaller. Now that limitation has all but evaporated. These companies aren't stupid, they'll find cost savings just like those people moving to the boonies.

NDizzle• 6 years ago

Don't let the employers do that to you. If they try, go elsewhere. I kept my bay area salary while moving to Arkansas.

mr_woozy3• 6 years ago

not everyone has this luxury unfortunately.

scarmig• 6 years ago

Supply and demand.

But, if it ultimately turns out on-site employees provide no real advantages over remote employees, the end result is going to be a grand leveling more weighted toward a downward adjustment in Bay Area wages than an upward adjustment in within-the-US wages.

lotsofpulp7• 6 years ago

Yes, just like all the textile and manufacturing wages got a downward adjustment in middle America and got an upward adjustment in Asian countries.

notJim4• 6 years ago

Anecdotally, I'm aware of two companies that do change salaries based on location. One large-ish publicly traded company, and one late-stage startup.

sokoloff3• 6 years ago

My wager is 90+% of tech companies will adjust salaries by location and 10% or less will pay pan-US salaries.

bighitbiker3• 6 years ago

Salary isn't all about "the value you add" and at the end of the day it's supply and demand.

However, regardless of if the worker is taking a lower salary they should be maximizing purchasing power in whatever location they're working. If you can move somewhere rural, have a better quality of life, and have a higher savings rate while taking a pay cut you're still better off than your counterparts in [HCOL area] making double your salary.

Your salary only matters when compared to your peers in similar living situations.

triceratops3• 6 years ago

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.

Nasrudith2• 6 years ago

It is an upper bound essentially for a sustainable company and is a point of convergence "your salary <= your value add". It actually maxing out implies being done only because all supply is accounted for. A bigger "value add - salary" essentially moves towards the front of the queue for hiring.

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.

jiveturkey• 6 years ago

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.

PenguinCoder• 6 years ago

the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)?

I have been shouting this into the wind for years (as a remote/WFH) employee. I agree with you, 98% of companies out there don't.

mr_woozy3• 6 years ago

Technically while you are correct that it should make no salary difference where workers choose to base themselves, unfortunately corporations and HR will use this as a sorting metric to pay qualified workers less because it's only to their advantage to do so.

While you'd think the worker would benefit from being more globally employable the companies conversely have a larger pool of candidates now to choose from, which means they can afford to pay less for talent.

conanbatt3• 6 years ago

Companies don't decide how much to pay, its the result of competing forces on supply and demand

asdff8• 6 years ago

Some actually do and more will probably follow suit. This might put you in a bind for lateral movement as well. Much harder to build an effective network over zoom, and nepotism is for better or worse how the world works because there are probably 1000 qualified people for every job opening. If you get laid off from your remote job, it will be tough to land another one when your competition is suddenly the entire country where people are comfortable asking for salaries far lower than yours and companies are happy to exploit cheaper labor.

ticmasta4• 6 years ago

> this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live

Salaries were/are so high because of the limited supply of qualified labour. If they now accept workers from everywhere the supply side constraint just got blown wide open.

whimsicalism6• 6 years ago

Eh.. I think most of the top tech talent in America lives on the West coast or NYC. Sure, might open up to more people - but not "blown wide open."

jasonkester• 6 years ago

Personally, I've never had an issue negotiating around this.

Companies will certainly try to pay you less for any number of reasons. But there's no reason you as the employee (with nearly all the leverage in this market) need to let that happen.

I mean sure, it's clear that there's a cost difference between my house here in rural France and its equivalent in the Bay Area. But personally I'd prefer that difference be captured by me rather than my employer, so I don't tend to budge from my "Bay Area" rate.

Here's hoping the rest of us fleeing the bay right now choose to stand up for themselves too.

shadykiller• 6 years ago

The prices of bay area homes aren't dropping still. Looks like this migration is still temporary.

bob33212• 6 years ago

Home prices are very sticky. For mental and financial reasons people are very reluctant to price their homes below the rest of the market. During the 08 crash some houses were on the market for years.

ghaff4• 6 years ago

Home prices tend to be pretty sticky downwards especially for anyone who hasn't already had significant appreciation. (Though admittedly, a lot of homes in the Bay Area have appreciated a lot unless they were purchased recently.)

That said, I expect most people leaving are those who were renting, perhaps because they couldn't afford to buy. Now they're either renting somewhere cheaper or they're possibly buying if this was something they were thinking about anyway.

jobu• 6 years ago

That does seem surprising given the massive drop in rental prices there since May. Perhaps the low interest rates are keeping the prices up?

pbuzbee2• 6 years ago

I wonder how long it will take for Bay Area real estate to take a hit if the pandemic continues longer and/or remote working becomes significantly more common.

asdff8• 6 years ago

People aren't moving out of homes in the bay area, they are moving out of apartments in the bay area to where they can actually afford a home.

odonnellryan• 6 years ago

In NJ, my girlfriend and I chose a really bad time to buy. Houses that were a very reasonable ~$300k last year are pushing $400k.

AlphaWeaver• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/MOHhK

tahoeskibum• 6 years ago

Even the federal government has geographical cost of living adjustments to salaries.

hourislate• 6 years ago

I recently came across this fellow who sold everything and bought a Ghost Town in Cerro Gordo, CA. He runs his business/startup from there remotely.

Some of the most beautiful sunsets and surroundings you can imagine.

Awesome Channel.

Ghost Town Living

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEjBDKfrqQI4TgzT9YLNT8g

dicomdan• 6 years ago

It was sad to see the hotel burn down. I'm following him on Patreon hoping to see it rebuilt soon.

davidw9• 6 years ago

I can't read the article, but this appears to be hitting us hard here in Bend, Oregon. House prices were already high and only appear to be going higher. I think more people could be a great thing if we get them involved locally, and if we add enough housing to accommodate them, which is tricky right now. As someone involved with a local YIMBY group, it's tough to see the prices - it felt like we were making some progress in several fronts and then BOOM.

iaw• 6 years ago

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.

davidw9• 6 years ago

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.

pkaye• 6 years ago

even a fraction of those 40M going north to Oregon is going to overload the housing market there.

Oregon just needs to build more housing.

subpixel• 6 years ago

I'm in a part of New England I won't name where this is also happening. Here, it's a convergence of families from both coasts who are now supported by remote work and various wealthy families able to simply buy up real estate that suddenly looks rather underpriced compared to the Bay Area or NYC/Boston. (I say families b/c this rural area is not much of a draw for singles.)

In September I called an agent the day a property hit Zillow and made an appt to look at 1pm the next day. At 10am the property had 7 offers.

notJim4• 6 years ago

I looked a bit at moving to Bend a couple years ago, and already at that point it was getting a little rich for me (also wanting to be close in town). Can't imagine what it's like now.

gregkerzhner• 6 years ago

Just out of curiosity, how long have you been in Bend? My wife was born and raised in Bend and left in her mid 20s. Due to our out of state license plates and IDs she gets a fair amount of "please don't move here you out-of-stater" gruff, and it always feels silly coming from folks that themselves moved here for exact same reasons that the newcomers are flocking now.

davidw9• 6 years ago

A bit more than 5 years. And yes, there's this inane mentality that goes around about 'the new people ruining everything'. I get that attitude from someone who had relatives in the area in 1491, but from someone who moved here not that long ago, it's silly. I think Bend's a better place than when I was growing up on the other side of the mountains. More opportunities, more things to do, even some local tech companies.

reaperducer• 6 years ago

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 are fanning out all over the country to make better lives for themselves.

Now I look at all of the new California license plates I see around town and wonder.

I never thought of my little corner of nowhere as a better place to live. I only moved here because it's cheap and as far away from as many other human beings as I can get while still being near an international airport. But maybe it will work out for them.

Good luck to the new generation of digital nomads.

silicon24014• 6 years ago

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.

throwaway0a5e3• 6 years ago

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.

tolbish• 6 years ago

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.

floor2• 6 years ago

One thing worth remembering - thousands of current "Bay area tech workers" grew up in other parts of the country, and moved to silicon valley primarily for job opportunities, but may not otherwise share in the religious, political or social views that dominate that space.

So while in some cases there may be the conflict you're alluding to, for other people, they're just moving back home.

monoideism2• 6 years ago

The dispersal of bay area tech workers will be good for the country, if we can avoid breaking down in the immediate future.

SV had become a total thought bubble, with the average tech worker having either no conception or a very negative conception of how most of the country lives outside of the large urban areas.

Moving into areas with lots of moderates or conservatives will be a good learning experience. I don't expect people to change their ideology, but I do expect much more tolerance from them than what I've seen in recent years.

fblp• 6 years ago

Where are you?

beamatronic• 6 years ago

So...uh... whereabouts is that exactly? Asking for a friend.

ghaff4• 6 years ago

I'm guessing from his twitter somewhere within range of Las Vegas.

davidw9• 6 years ago

Another thing I'm curious about is what the distribution will be like. Smooth, across a wide range of places - anywhere with a decent internet connection - or will people follow previously trodden paths to places like Boulder or where I am in Bend, Oregon? There are plenty of towns with lots of outdoor access in Oregon that are cheap because the mill closed. But they are not 'hot' destinations.

chasd004• 6 years ago

if starlink comes online as scheduled then all bets are off. You'll see tech workers on the mountain tops of the Rockies i bet.

bluekite2000• 6 years ago

Wait till Asia's borders open. The fanout will go transpacific. Especially in Southeast Asia.

azinman23• 6 years ago

Except time zones

ngokevin3• 6 years ago

Ay, I followed the wave. Heading back home to Portland for a bit and then to the Utah desert and beyond.

CinchWrench• 6 years ago

So in spite of what Friedman and his Chicago goons would have had us believe, it turns out the world is in fact not, flat.

Huh.

Mountain_Skies• 6 years ago

It's a two way street. If SV companies drop salaries, other companies will have an easier time attracting away talent. SV will have to increase salaries again to compete.

sna1l• 6 years ago

I think the burst of tech workers moving out of Silicon Valley/SF into surrounding suburbs + other areas is driven mostly by people who were already on the cusp of leaving the city.

I've been thinking about leaving SF to move to the East Bay for the last couple years, and COVID-19 has provided a very strong impetus to expedite that move.

Obviously this is anecdotal, and everyone has their own motives, but I haven't heard of many 20-27 years BUYING property outside of their home cities (SF, NYC, etc).

TomVDB3• 6 years ago

My wife and I never considered moving out, but we're now actively shopping for a house in the Tahoe area. Not as an investment or short term rental property, but to live ~50% of the time.

We're clearly not the only ones. The price of houses in the $1M+ range have gone up significantly since it became clear around the summer that this COVID thing isn't going away anytime soon.

There are many all cash offers as well.

gnicholas• 6 years ago

How do you weigh the fire risk in the Tahoe area? The Palo Alto area has smoke risk, and some PSPS risk, but not much risk of straight up burning down. But homes in Tahoe are at significantly more risk of fire, right? Is it possible to get fire insurance there?

ghaff4• 6 years ago

I would guess that's pretty accurate. Either renters decamping somewhere cheaper/nicer/less crowded for the duration. Or people who were toying with moving out and switching those plans into high gear.

code4tee2• 6 years ago

I saw a great quote recently that said something like “Everyone loves work from home until you lose a deal to the competition that turned up to your customer in person.” There’s an element of truth to this.

Best advice I’ve heard is to say the draw for living in a city may go away but you need to be close. Living in the middle of nowhere isn’t going to look like such a great idea when people start gathering together again. Maybe not as much as before, but it will still happen. For these reasons I see why the suburbs are seeing a real estate boom in many areas. I’m much less sure about the long term move to places much further away from the cities.

vmception• 6 years ago

and the people that survive in the denser environments will - by nature - be more fit to acquire goods and resources

so its unlikely that everyone in their remote prepper bunker will remain competitive just because we have video phone in the 21st century

robocat2• 6 years ago

I saw a great quote

I recall that being in Matt Levine’s Money Stuff (I did a search for it, however I didn’t find it.)

ulfw• 6 years ago

Not everyone is a salesman though. Why would an engineer need to be in an office coding away so "he can turn up to his customer"?

humanrebar2• 6 years ago

Your customer is the person handing out raises, promotions, key assignments, etc. The person who makes it to happy hours will have the edge, fairly or not.

three_seagrass4• 6 years ago

IME junior engineers benefit from being physically around senior staff, but that's just anecdotal.

code4tee2• 6 years ago

You live in the middle of nowhere and appear on Zoom calls. The rest of your team meets with company leaders in person. Who do you think has the best relationship with the leadership? Not saying it’s impossible to do this remotely but when others don’t it becomes very very hard. Applies to everything, not just sales. Full remote works until someone breaks the chain, then everyone working remotely is at a disadvantage.

nostrademons3• 6 years ago

The way to rise in your career is to work on a string of high-value projects, not to slave away on the same codebase for years. When a VP has a great idea that needs a prototype delivered in 2 weeks, who is he going to go to? The engineer in the next office who he sees in the microkitchen every day, or the engineer working 2 timezones away who he never sees and doesn't know exists?

I think remote work will be a great option for the next 2-3 years, and then once the pandemic has receded and folks start switching from fear to greed mode, there will be distinct advantages to being near people with large budgets.

refurb5• 6 years ago

To add on top of that, what about just general travel or business travel?

I could understand moving away from the bay area, but living in a remote town has it's costs. Need to jump on a plane for a business meeting? Well, now you're driving 2 hours to the airport and then connecting to some hub.

I've done it in the past, it adds a ton of friction to travel.

tylerjwilk002• 6 years ago

Reducing wasteful polluting plane travel is a bonus not a bug.

The "space" dimension is so overrated when it comes to meetings.

If that is the only thing that has been keeping cities together then they're doomed.

cwp• 6 years ago

Yup. Couldn't read much of the article, but this is me.

I was in SF because employers demanded it, because investors demanded it. Now my company is not only allowing Bay Area employees to leave the state, but hiring remotely. Hell yeah, I'm gone.

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/MOHhK

blantonl3• 6 years ago

I own a number of pieces of property in Whitefish Montana, where I decamped to the second my children were released from school for COVID reasons in March (we split time between TX and MT). Given what I felt were going to be significant economic disruptions due to unemployment and drops in income, I prepared myself with the understanding that our little resort town was going to be facing some hard times. Usually, small resort towns tend to take it on the chin when the economy turns.

Boy was I wrong.

Once the initial shock of lifestyle changes happened due to COVID, people FLOODED the area and any piece of real estate not bolted down was flying off the shelves and bought for cash unseen. I sold a small lot in the Whitefish City limits for a significant capital gain, after buying it for what I thought then was at the top of the market in 2019. I've been offered cash for home-run-knock-it-out-of-the-park prices for my retirement home property that are simply unfathomable. The only reason why I don't sell is because I treat this property like I do my two labrador retrievers - everything has a price, but I'm not interested in selling. :)

There is a lot of angst in Whitefish over the changes - all the building and influx of money really helps the local economy, but the quality of life (traffic, etc) is suffering. It's the age old dichotomy for a small Montana popular town.

stevenj• 6 years ago

I don't live in Whitefish (nor Montana), but I love it - it's such a cool town!

What do you think about Bigfork as a place for future investment/growth?

blantonl3• 6 years ago

I think that most of the towns in the Flathead Valley all have good potential - they are all nice little enclaves

robocat2• 6 years ago

Your experience could partly be explained by selection bias (e.g. sister comment “it's such a cool town!“). I am presuming you didn’t choose Whitefish randomly, and obviously you must have been an early adopter.

However, the flight to other locations does seem like a general trend. Anecdotally it appears to be happening to my neighbourhood...

chasd004• 6 years ago

i just bought 18 acres on the direct border of the Ouachita National Forest in SE Oklahoma for reasons outside the pandemic (i live in Dallas, about 4hrs away). The real estate person said all land is gone within days of listing. They're selling at $7-8k/acre what was $1-2k/acre just a couple years ago. People are flocking to the country side.

shiftpgdn• 6 years ago

I don't think it's a permanent move though. People are buying summer/weekend homes or property which already had constrained supply.

andrewacove• 6 years ago

I loved Whitefish when I was there, and would have considered it for the long term but was concerned about reports of a growing alt-right contingent in town. Have you encountered that?

blantonl3• 6 years ago

Whitefish is exactly the opposite of your concerns. It is very similar to the "Austin" of Montana.

simonebrunozzi• 6 years ago

labrador retrievers

Lovely dogs! And yes, everything has a price, but of course you might decide something is not worth being sold (I am referring to the house, not the dogs of course!)

cusp• 6 years ago

One thing we really like about where we’re living now (peninsula) is there are a lot of mixed race couples with kids and our kids feel this is totally normal.

We’re considering moving but worried that our kids will have a tough time fitting in, especially given how divided our country is.

For other mixed race parents looking to move, do you have similar concerns?

falseAss• 6 years ago

In general, folks with kids are very difficult to migrate. You need to consider whether your spouse's job is remote friendly, and as you mentioned, kids need to find new playmate / school. It's just exponentially harder to relocate than single folks.

I am under the impression that this escaping valley wave is mostly about single folks or young couples without kids.

Xcelerate2• 6 years ago

Anecdotally, I just moved from the Bay Area to Asheville and am taking my tech job with me. So, could be true... Real estate there is crazy right now. The local agents say houses have been selling very quickly, often sight unseen to California buyers.

sudosteph• 6 years ago

Hello fellow Asheville-area resident! I'm actually really surprised to hear that. NC, and the southeast in general has traditionally been a pretty hard sell for Californians, from a cultural perspective at least. New Yorkers and Floridians have been colonizing the area for ages though, so figures that Californians would catch on eventually. I made the move back to NC after 5 years in Seattle, and don't regret it one bit.

Anyhow, welcome to the area! The techie / startup scene here is pretty small, but it's good folk and a tight community.

Xcelerate2• 6 years ago

Haha, thank you for the welcome! I actually grew up in the southeast though so we are moving back closer to family :) My wife and I always liked visiting Asheville and decided to live there.

I’m not sure if the other people from California moving there are similar (moved away and came back) or if it’s their first time in the southeast.

7622362• 6 years ago

Until the fires it was hard to imagine giving up the weather and outdoors here in the Bay Area. Now we have COVID which means you want to be outside, but fire smoke that you shouldn't breath, so you want to be inside. I have a lot of HEPA filters running inside, and if I exercise outside, I wear a P100 even at VO2max. But if my daughter weren't keeping us here for her friends, I'd consider moving away now.

jonsno56• 6 years ago

I bought a bunch of N95 masks and air purifiers in anticipation of the 2019 fall fire season in the Bay (since 2018 was super bad for the time), and I must say I never could have imagined the ROI on utility from this past year lol

nsm4• 6 years ago

I think this is hyperbole for the majority of people who do not have existing respiratory or other health conditions.

Air quality in SF proper was only bad (by which I mean Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or above) for roughly a month this year. That certainly doesn't warrant having HEPA filters and P100 masks now in October/November (again, for most people).

cpeterso• 6 years ago

“Only bad for a month this year“, but these big California fires now happen every year.

vecinu• 6 years ago

This is wishful thinking. Staying for years around an area that gets "only a month" of excessive PM2.5 particles and smoke is unwise and you will soon become someone with an existing respiratory condition.

I'm leaving the Bay because I value my health way more than the "lifestyle" offered by living in the Bay. There are many other places in the US (And ESPECIALLY outside the US) that offer a fantastic quality of life.

7622362• 6 years ago

In the valley it has been nearly continuously elevated AQI since the lightning strikes in late August. There were a few weeks without. But these are particles --- not gas, so your lungs don't expel it once the particles impact and embed in your tissues. The body doesn't really have a way to clean that out that I'm aware of (I'd like to learn that I'm wrong). As an endurance athlete, I move a lot of air, and I want my lungs to be in good shape.

abeppu• 6 years ago

I wonder when the reverse will happen. As rents in SF dive, will people that were force to outlying parts of the Bay Area return? Will younger LGBT folk be able to afford to live in/near the Castro? Will more people _not_ in tech be able to live here?

SF has felt like such a one-industry town for quite a while, and that can mute some of the richness and diversity that normally makes cities interesting (and perhaps more broadly valuable?). If some tech workers are happier in the mountains, that's great that they can now live that life and keep their jobs. But I hope that in their places, we see a new diversity of people of range of jobs who can choose to live in a city that was previously out of reach.

wbl• 6 years ago

SF rents are still ridiculously high. The city don't be more diverse until it becomes a real metropolis of several million people.

baron_harkonnen• 6 years ago

For about 30 years cities were relatively undesirable places to live in for the average person. The cities that young people have flocked to in the last decade or so are designed and developed more like large scale open shopping malls than the cities of the 70s and 80s.

The closest comparison to what's happening now was "White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protests and riots in cities. White flight changed many cities in the 50/60s, in particular Cleveland, Oakland and Detroit. These cities only started to see any kind of revival in the tail end of the last economic boom. For decades cities struggled with violent crime, racial tensions, poor infrastructure, etc.

What we're seeing is a much larger scale than that and will likely change cities for decades to come. In the shopping mall era of cities you live in cities because you are close to work and close to restaurants, bars and other things to do. And cities feel remarkably safe. Nearly every tech person who "loves cities!" today would feel very uncomfortable in SF or NYC of the 1970s.

Virtually every one I know in a major metro is considering leaving because: jobs no longer require being there, pandemic has destroyed much of the food and small business scene, and cities are becoming visibly less safe. The people are moving to other areas and they are very often looking to purchase a home rather than rent (since what you can get for the same mortgage as your current rent is typically an order of magnitude more space). This means they won't be coming back soon. This will cause a feedback loop that will continue to force employers to go remote, reduce the number of restaurants and leave cities more vacant and more dangerous.

It means the city will also change very rapidly and be much less attractive, even at a lower price.

But to your point about the Castro: it's precisely because "average" people didn't want to live in SF that marginalized groups found a home there. The Castro in SF, the Village in N YC were places that Engineers didn't want to work and live, so artists and outcasts moved in.

My fear is that this collapse is going to be too extreme and too fast to allow for the creation of this interesting space of possibility that NYC and SF of the 1970-80s was. The collapse of commercial and residential real estate in these areas is going to have consequences that I think are very hard to predict right now.

whimsicalism6• 6 years ago

I don't see how your comment is at odds with what you're replying to.

cities are becoming visibly less safe

Hm, I do not think this is true.

howlgarnish2• 6 years ago

"White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protests and riots in cities

I think you have cause and effect reversed here. The original "pull" trigger was the automobile becoming affordable to the middle classes, making suburban living possible and leading to many leaving cities. The racist bit here is that many of these suburbs had covenants prohibiting non-whites.

The "push" factor came when poorer (non-white) people started moving into these vacated, now cheaper inner city properties. This in turn led more whites to leave, but here too the push wasn't just racism, but also concerns about falling property values, rising crime, etc.

Also, FWIW, as a non-American I found the SF of 2019 positively scary. Homeless camps in the Tenderloin, mentally ill people raving about murder on Market St, etc -- you don't see this kind of thing in equivalently wealthy European or Asian cities.

thatfrenchguy• 6 years ago

You assume people want more suburbs, more space. There will always be a market for real dense cities, and it’s not like tech folks participate a lot in making the city attractive (and I include myself in this assessment)

ponker• 6 years ago

Depends on what happens with crime and “quality of life.” People will step in human turd to get to a job that pays them $400K. They won’t do that to have access to great coffee shops. You’ll at best get the marginally employed bohemians if you don’t solve the crime and homelessness crises.

conanbatt3• 6 years ago

The tax rate being so high, and expenses so low that it makes living in SF not clearly the optimal economic output. And multiply that effect by 10 when you have kids.

Just school for 3 kids would be, say, 100k after taxes, which would mean you need to earn 150k just to pay school. At 400k your tax rate in california is through the roof.

seanmcdirmid• 6 years ago

That really isn’t unprecedented. SF in the 70s and 80s got pretty grimey, attracting younger and more eclectic people who could afford the rents. Those people in turn make the area more desirable, attracting gentrification and then...well, equilibriums win in the long run.

newusr1233• 6 years ago

I wonder if this is just a fad until people realize they don't actually like the rural life as much as they think they would.

chasd004• 6 years ago

yeah, "the grass is always greener". I grew up in a small country town, it has its charms but it gets old too. By the time I was college age I left and never looked back. Small time life comes with a different set of problems than living in a city but they're still problems.

three_seagrass4• 6 years ago

Same. Go back to rural midwest to visit relatives a couple times a year - I love it but after a week I'm reminded why I don't live there.

meekrohprocess• 6 years ago

Probably. I loved touring the US parks while doing remote work, and I miss the freedom of being able to wander around anywhere and sort of ignore roads, but I wouldn't have been able to live in many of the areas that I adored.

One thing that people underestimate about the US is its vast size. When you live in a city, you have at least a dozen grocery stores within an hour's drive. When you live in a rural area, you drive at least an hour into "the city" which has a Walmart and a Kroger.

There are exceptions, like Utah which is basically one giant city/suburb/church running along the Great Salt Lake with a half-dozen national parks to the South. But I would lean towards this being a temporary trend for most people.

emanuensis2• 6 years ago

People LIKE to live on the edge. It is an unfortunate fact ... especially given their are 9B of us. Super bad for the ecology, the encountering of new diseases etc. Suburbs Exurbs, retreats... never ends. If we had a Home (like most animals) we would have to worry much less about despoliation and ravages like fires. Why not have a home to live in and allow ourselves rest, relaxation and recovery in an unspoiled wilderness??

dragonwriter• 6 years ago

It is an unfortunate fact ... especially given their are 9B of us.

The current estimate I see most places is 7.8B, where does 9B come from?

bariswheel• 6 years ago

I think their writing was supposed to be interpreted a bit performance art'ish.

emanuensis2• 6 years ago

:) Whew! So glad! The planet might actually survive 38.9678 days more!

x87678r• 6 years ago

Its going to make the voting tomorrow extra interesting. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah all these red states with blue voting techies arriving.

mythrwy2• 6 years ago

All 4 of those state will still be red.

We aren't talking about a population altering number of people.

dboreham• 6 years ago

Montana already has a Democrat governor and one senator.

dmode• 6 years ago

I actually thought about getting a place in Tahoe for 6 months, but turns out it is completely not workable for me - I don't know anyone in Tahoe - My 5 year old will have no friends - Schools will soon start in person schooling - I would like to be back in office - Will miss the diversity of restaurants / groceries / wineries etc. - Ethnic food or ethnic groceries are non existent

Turns out, you can buy a giant home in the Bay Area, in East Bay and get the exact same things

robbintt• 6 years ago

All my friends and coworkers are still in the valley, excepting 1 person who was already moving to Denver to join his partner.

gandutraveler• 6 years ago

On the other hand the rent prices in Bay are have dropped 35% or more which makes it way more affordable for quality of life and good year round weather.

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