27 ms·

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

• oyebenny 10y ago
  Cuz, I love you all.
• hasenj 10y ago
  In my personal experience remote work does not work so well. At least I haven't been able to make it work for me. For the second point, well I think expensive cities are expensive because people want to be there. If you can choose to live anywhere, why not go to the best place, specially when you can afford it?
  • toomuchtodo 10y ago
    I've worked remote for almost three years for a profitable startup. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but not having a commute is incredibly liberating. I've also found my careeer options to not be limited by being remote. Also, I live in Florida 20 minutes from one of the best beaches in the country. Not as "culturally fulfilling" as say the Mission or Castro districts (have been to SF more times than I can count, but have never lived there), but I sit on a quarter acre lot with a 2600 sq ft 4 bed/3 bath single family home with a backyard pool for ~$1000/month (owned, not rent). Trade offs. Living in expensive cities doesn't necessarily translate to a higher quality of life.
    • deecewan 10y ago
      I live in Brisbane, Australia. The global hub of literally nothing. What you've just described for living expenses makes me cry a bit thinking about the amount I pay in rent here for a small apartment.
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        The world is a big place with lots of housing options, and you can always generate income somewhere if you've got the skills.
      • lacampbell 10y ago
        Brisbane has direct flights to Singapore, Kuala Lumpar, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Taipei, Seoul, and Los Angeles. I mean I'm not saying it's New York or Tokyo or anything, but it's hardly isolated. Full disclaimer - I live in Provincial NZ so my perspective may be slightly skewed. Also, unrelated, what's it like to live there? Rents don't seem too bad (by NZ standards, our housing inflation is even worse than yours hooray!). My company want me to move there in a year or so.
    • recursio 10y ago
      Same boat as you, my friend. I actually just moved from Austin to the treasure coast for the exact same reasons (remote, beach, backyard pool on the cheap). It might not be the cultural apex by tech hub standards, but being a big fish in a small pond is mighty rewarding. Not to mention, bringing that "tech hub" experience to an area like ours is attractive to all sorts of employers, regional and remote.
    • matwood 10y ago
      I'm basically in your same situation (although my area is getting more expensive as people realize it's a great city). I have worked fully remote or partially remote for years. I live on the marsh, have a boat, and get to enjoy the ocean all the time. I love visiting cities, but after traveling to many different cities I have never wanted to live full time in one (if forced to pick it would be London). I grew up more how I live now, so that probably has something to do with how I feel.
    • felideon 10y ago
      I'm going to guess you live on the west coast of Florida? As a South Floridian, I'm curious.
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Outskirts of Tampa. Join me for a beer sometime, my treat, if you're in the area.
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      That sounds great! I'd move back to Florida in a heartbeat if I could. I used to live on the beach for chrissakes. But it sounds like a tremendous risk. You're betting that you're always going to get to stay with that company that allows remote work, or that you'll be able to find another one. I've done a tech job search while living in Florida--not pretty. It goes like this: Company's hiring manager: "Move to the Bay Area or GTFO." I eventually had to do it so here I am.
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job https://remoteok.io/ https://remoteok.io/ https://weworkremotely.com/ https://weworkremotely.com/ https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote https://www.wfh.io/ https://www.wfh.io/ https://jobmote.com/ https://jobmote.com/
• jacmoe 10y ago
  Because developers are social animals too?
  • jacmoe 10y ago
    Did I say something wrong? I mean that it is only natural that like minded people seeks one another, and group up in clusters. It is human nature. Yes, it's expensive, but there are also opportunity, and humans are opportunistic creatures.
• seibelj 10y ago
  So I live in Boston, and bought a condo in the slums as soon as I could. Not the worst slum (Green St., near Hatoff's gas station for those who know JP), but 50 yards from a halfway house, the suboxone at Arbour counseling and the needles near it, Mattapan is pretty close. 5 years later the condo is up 40%, Hatoff's gas is now being destroyed for (I assume?) more condos, a brewpub is opening pretty close, and families are moving in everywhere. And my mortgage is still $1500, and it will be for the next 25 years until it's paid off. So why move? I can make great money and I locked into an improving neighborhood. Don't a lot of young people with useful skills do this? Buy into a hood-ish area and wait for it to develop? I wouldn't have raised a family here before gentrification, but every month it seems more realistic... My point is, I live an expensive city but I made the right decisions. And now it isn't so expensive, and when I'm at 10 years, 15, 25 years experience, I will still be here. And anyone who thinks I'm bragging, you can do the same thing I did. My recommendation is Jackson Square and Roxbury Crossing, you can find quite affordable properties in Roxbury. Don't buy where things are nice now, buy where things will be nice later. EDIT - Hatoff's is just undergoing renovations.[0] I wish it would close! Cheapest gas in the entire city, and connected to a gambling parlor. Not quite gentrified yet... EDIT 2 - Yes down-vote all you want, sorry me and thousands of other people make economically rational decisions regarding where we put down stakes. [0] http://www.jamaicaplainnews.com/2017/04/02/historic-hatoffs-gas-station-closed-for-weeks-getting-new-pumps/24080 http://www.jamaicaplainnews.com/2017/04/02/historic-hatoffs-...
  • mahyarm 10y ago
    Hood can stay hood a lot longer than your personal life timeline. It's kind of like the assertion 'the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent'. Younger people who want to buy somewhere affordable get long commutes instead in boring bedroom communities.
    • seibelj 10y ago
      I'm fine with it being hood, I live here after all. But it is nice when things improve.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• vosper 10y ago
  Because some of the most expensive cities are awesome places to live, if you can afford it.
  • will_pseudonym 10y ago
    You get what you pay for.
• PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  "Working anywhere" isn't as great as people make it sound. Being remote-only severely reduces your job pool, which is fine if you've got a good enough resume to get hired by anyone, but not so much if you're average and competing with everyone else. Once you have the job, you find that it takes a terrifying amount of discipline to get as much work done at home, or in a coffee shop, as you could in an office. Some people can manage it; many can't.
  • innocentoldguy 10y ago
    That's not the case for me. I find being in an open-space office incredibly distracting. When I'm working at home, I can get completely absorbed in the job and work continuously all day long. Being remote is much more productive for me. It isn't for everyone though.
• generj 10y ago
  There's a similar issue with finance: someone anywhere in the world can execute stock market trades from a computer. But as a practical matter in the US 90% of trades are executed in a few blocks from each other.
  • wapz 10y ago
    Yes but where do you think all the information flows
    • generj 10y ago
      Yeah, but really just about anyone with a Bloomberg terminal has 99% of the same info.
      • fuckemem 10y ago
        Talent pools?
      • nikanj 10y ago
        As we learned from the aftermath of the last major meltdown, banks do a lot of deals that require more than just a Bloomberg terminal. If anything, deals like ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/goldman-bet-against-securities-it-sold-to-clients-1953406.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/goldman-bet-... ) require more physical presence, as nobody wants to leave a paper trail.
        • vostok 10y ago
          Can you elaborate on this? If you bought something from me then I think you paid too much and you think that you paid too little. That's, like, how buying things works. I wouldn't sell it to you if I thought you were paying too little and you wouldn't buy it from me if you thought you were paying too much.
      • coralreef 10y ago
        And the illegal kind of info?
• pembrook 10y ago
  Is it really that surprising? The cost-of-living vs. increased salary equation almost always works out in your favor if you are young, single, and don't mind a roommate. It's essentially an arbitrage. You're being paid in the employment market where salaries are based on an average standard. Meanwhile you're happy living in the housing market at a below average standard and keeping the profits. That profit quickly disappears though once you are no longer satisfied living like a college kid.
  • chmaynard 10y ago
    I wonder if sociology has anything to say on this topic. My sense is that young tech workers flocking to coastal cities are voluntarily extending their adolescent years, in the same manner as many graduate students. For many young people, 10 years working in Silicon Valley is really a form of graduate school, equivalent in earning potential to a Ph.D. at a world-class university. The big question: after you get your tech "graduate education", are you able to put down roots and create an adult life in these places, or does it make sense to move elsewhere?
• hn_throwaway_99 10y ago
  If the type of development work you're doing can be easily done remotely, then there is a good chance it can be done much cheaper by a fantastic developer in Ukraine, or India, or China, or some country where wages are a lot cheaper than US or England or Canada. If, however, the type of work you're doing benefits from face-to-face interactions (i.e. quick iterations with lots of feedback from users, marketing and product managers), you're likely to demand a premium, and those types of jobs tend to be clustered in large cities.
  • prostoalex 10y ago
    If you're a fantastic developer in Ukraine, India or China and have very limited needs (compared to a guy with a family and kids), your disposable monthly income net of taxes, rent and commute expenses is still likely to be higher in Silicon Valley than Ukraine, India or China. A rational decision then would be to move to Silicon Valley arbitraging the costs as much as you can (living with roommates, commuting by Caltrain, BART or a plain walk, relying on company-provided lunches and dinners vs going out), until the music stops and the industry hits a headwind. Then one can still return to comfortable living in Ukraine, India or China, but with a much nicer savings account than before.
    • adamors 10y ago
      Moving to the US is not a rational decision in 2017.
      • randomsearch 10y ago
        For many people I work with, even visiting the US is something they're trying to avoid.
        • StavrosK 10y ago
          I can confirm, I'm definitely thinking twice before visiting my friends and coworkers in the US again, and I'm positively not going to book a flight that goes through the US when flying to another American country (eg Canada).
• exabrial 10y ago
  Dunno. Come move to Kansas. We love our civil liberties and we have a metric crap ton of open space.
• catenthusiast 10y ago
  Developers are especially susceptible to groupthink, and living in places like San Francisco is trendy.
  • jack9 10y ago
    Job security (and availability), not groupthink. Groupthink is the side effect.
    • pmiller2 10y ago
      Surprised this is so far down. I'm here in the Bay Area because that's where the jobs are. I also don't particularly enjoy remote work, but I do like to take advantage of the occasional WFH day.
• AYBABTME 10y ago
  There are successful unicorns that are distributed, remote companies today. That people haven't caught on it amuses me. It should be old news by now that remote companies are possible, that it works and doesn't impede success.
  • askafriend 10y ago
    Ok but I don't want to live in a suburb or out in the middle of nowhere. I want to live in a major city. I chose this lifestyle for myself and so have many many others. Yes it's expensive but I make a lot of money. Money that I wouldn't make if I lived elsewhere. So like someone else mentioned above, the economics work out at my stage of my life. If I have kids, the economics might change and make me consider something different. But I don't plan on having kids for a long time so that's not something I have to consider at all.
    • kukabynd 10y ago
      So what major city do you live in? And what sum is considered a lot?
    • AYBABTME 10y ago
      I don't quite understand your point. You can be remote and chose to live in a major city that's not SF/NYC/London/Toronto, or be remote from SF/NYC/London/Toronto if that's your deal. The idea is to be remote so you make the choice at your leisure. Also there's a ton of really cool cities out there that are nowhere as expensive as SF/NYC/London/Toronto and that are just as fun, if not more (minus NYC), and way cheaper. And working remote, they're pretty much all within your reach.
• npratini 10y ago
  I'm not a developer, but after doing (remote) independent consulting for a year, here are my $0.02 -Human interactions: as mentioned, we are social animals and (mostly) enjoy being around others. You might not think this applies to you, but try staring at a computer and not speaking to anyone for a day. It can get old. -Similarly, being in the expensive cities means you also get to be around smart people like yourself, who are also flocking there. Sure, you could live somewhere super cheap, but then who would you share your v intelligent thoughts with? There's value in being able to bounce ideas, compare notes, etc. with real people in real life. -I've worked at companies who have employees in other geographies, but they pay these people less than they would in-house developers. If you're good at what you do and have the right connections, it can be lucrative to work remotely - but companies value face-time and might not be willing to pay as much if they know your living expenses are less. -Motivation: It can be tough to be motivated to get work done if you're living outside the confines of an office. If you can master the remote lifestyle, it offers a ton of flexibility, but a lot of people need more structure in order to be productive. Working remotely and getting paid the same as you would in an expensive city works for some people, to be sure - and they crush it in terms of $$. But it comes down to a lot more than money - it's a certain personality type that can excel with this type of work, and without the right disposition it's not really worth the extra change.
  • 3131s 10y ago
    So poor cities are all filled with dumb people? At least we're not overflowing with massive pretension. I'll stay here and leave SF for the rest of you geniuses.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• anovikov 10y ago
  LOL it is the other way around, cities become most expensive because developers flock there and spend cash. This happens now in Limassol, Cyprus: crowds of developers, most having their own startups, started to flock there since 3 years ago from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - it was always a country to keep offshore companies/accounts, so every rich developer in ex-USSR already been there and knew the place, but since 2014 it started to make sense to move physically as well - in Russia people escape propaganda and mass chauvinist hysteria, in Belarus economic crisis prompted government to jail IT business people to milk them on their money (then frequently releasing with no right to leave the country - in order to make them earn more, then milk again), in Ukraine they are simply leaving the unrest and crumbling infrastructure. Since about last year it became a virtuous cycle because developers started to move in simply because it's a place with many developers already so it's easy to exchange ideas, and then investment funds joined. We are witnessing a small Silicon Valley in the making (of course, with probable limits of about a few percent of the real Valley). It already made Limassol a much more expensive place, rents on cheap apartments almost doubled in 3 years. Developers want to be where developers are, and VCs want to be where there are many developers, and then more developers come where VCs are... and you get another 'most expensive city'.
  • enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>LOL it is the other way around, cities become most expensive because developers flock there and spend cash. Startups flock to where the capital is. Proximity to capital makes it easier to meet investors, get noticed and get funded.
    • alkonaut 10y ago
      But startups has to be a tiny tiny fraction of software devs. Even in an area of new offices popping up I can't imagine startups being a large fraction of the companies.
      • anovikov 10y ago
        Correct. 'real' startups (those you would read on techcrunch or hacker news about) are a small fraction. Most of them are 'internet moneymakers' in the wide sense, most don't need the investments, or operating in the grey area (like: arbitrage of porn traffic, various bots, etc), they basically just want interesting IT people to exchange ideas with. They still attract VCs wishing to prey on them whenever possible.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  Because there is no critical mass to "work from anywhere". Amazon/Facebook/Google/Microsoft doesn't let its workers work from home in general. A lot of tech companies don't as well. So moving to CheapSmallTown means when losing the job still having to go back to ExpensiveTechHub to network and find a new job. So might as well stay in ExpensiveTechHub just to be sure. Imagine if all those large tech companies and others allowed working from home as a default. I think that would be a sizeable economic and cultural shift. It might revitalize various part of the country, small cities and towns. It might reduce congestion, real estate prices in coastal cities. I work from home and love it. But yeah I am still living next to a tech hub because chances are if I switch jobs I might not necessarily have a choice of working from home.
  • ivanvanderbyl 10y ago
    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 than I did in SF. Instead of spending 35% of my net pay on rent, I only spend 2.9% and have a higher quality of life in general. When all your hard earned money goes to just maintaining social status or staying in a trendy neighbourhood, what have you got to show for it?
    • danmaz74 10y ago
      > and I get paid only 20% less than I did in SF Out of curiosity, did you start your current job while in SF and then moved? Or did you find the job while you were already overseas? If the latter, was the hiring process remote too?
      • eyko 10y ago
        In my case (and a couple of friends) the remote salary was slightly less than your typical SF salary but I had no "fixed location". Right now I'm in London working for a different company but the job is also remote. The point of working remotely should never be "find very cheap talent" but rather "find talent globally and remove geographical bottlenecks". Or something like that. When negotiating a salary, don't let your current location define your salary because in a couple of months you could be in London, SF, NYC or Tokyo.
• glitch003 10y ago
  I work remote, and I like living in SF. I've lived and travelled to many places, and SF is my favorite, despite how expensive it is. I live in a 40 bedroom "hacker house", where else am I gonna find somewhere like that? I can discuss the latest javascript framework in the kitchen. I learn about new cryptocoins in the common room. I like living in the Mission, where new restaurants are popping up all the time. It's also really convenient when I'm working on something really complicated for a client and I can take a 10 minute bus ride downtown to discuss in person. Could I save literally thousands of dollars a month living somewhere else? Totally, but it wouldn't be the same.
  • noarchy 10y ago
    >I live in a 40 bedroom "hacker house", where else am I gonna find somewhere like that? A university dorm?
• kayoone 10y ago
  Probably an outlier, but i really enjoy my commute, because its 20 minutes by bike so I bascially get 40 minutes of workout per day for free as i cycle at a decent pace. I also enjoy working with a team in person, many of which became my friends. If I loose my job here, there are plenty of interesting alternatives to choose from. The city also offers a lot of non-work related things that i would not want to miss at this point in my life (no, it's not clubs) After having worked 5+ years from home I am really happy about my decision to have moved to a big city (Berlin) 2 years ago and giving up working at home, it literally changed my life.
  • jordwest 10y ago
    I'm working at home now and really miss my old 20 minute bicycle commute. It's such a great way to start and finish the day, and separate work from life. Now I try to ride every morning, but it's too easy to just stay inside and start work. I'm considering moving to a co-working space full-time just to force myself to get on the bike. In my experience, Commuting by car < Commuting by train < No commute < Commuting by bike
    • kayoone 10y ago
      In theory i could work remote some days, but the cycling is actually a big driver for me to go to the office even on days where i am only there for half the time because of some appointment for example. While the individual trip is only about 6km, this way i do 60+km per week which amounts to somewhere around 2500-2800km per year and i usually go pretty fast so that i am quite exhausted after 20 minutes. Last year i watched my eating habits and it was pretty easy to loose 10kg of weight and keep it at that level only due to cycling. It also is a great time to think in the morning and even better to relief stress after work. The only upside to taking public transport would be being able to read, but in the usually crowded trains with 1 stop where i need to change trains, the uninterrupted reading time would be pretty small anyway.
• nathan_f77 10y ago
  Hello from a cafe in Chiang Mai. > Chiang Mai is very nice, but doesn’t have the Met, or steampunk masquerade parties or 50 foodie restaurants within a 15-minute walk. That's true, I do miss museums, theater, and live music from my favorite bands. But there's some really fun events (Songkran is coming soon), you can find some good music, and there's a lot of really good restaurants. If I had a lot more money, I would probably live in NYC, LA, Hong Kong, or Melbourne. But Chiang Mai is great for now.
  • deecewan 10y ago
    Melbourne? Really? Is that a thing now? Maybe I need to head south for the winter.
    • jackgolding 10y ago
      Melbourne like all Australian capital cities has congestion problems and very expensive housing. I've found myself wishing I was in the startup scene in Sydney instead (seems more mature and serious.)
      • stonith 10y ago
        I'm in Sydney and was under the impression the scene in Melbourne was much better! The grass is always greener...
        • jpatokal 10y ago
          I've lived in both, and I can assure you Sydney's startup/dev scene is far larger. For one thing, basically all the multinational IT giants (Google, Facebook, Amazon etc) have their Oz HQs in Sydney.
          • stonith 10y ago
            Fair enough, although Facebook don't have any devs here, so I'm not sure they belong on that list. I found a bunch of places are similar in that they only have sales staff here - RedHat has most of their devs in Brisbane and Cisco has more in Melbourne, for example. Looking at Amazon's jobs page it seems like there's dev roles in Sydney at least, and Google definitely have devs here.
• vostok 10y ago
  I make good money. Why would you expect me to live in the middle of nowhere when I can live in the greatest cities of the world?
  • Mikushi 10y ago
    I lived in big city and while I enjoy most of my time in them, most of what I got to show for is health problems related to living in a big city. I understand some people enjoy it, I for one traded a 50% pay cut for the ability to live far from any big town with a smile on my face. I can cycle without breathing exhaust fumes, I can go kayaking from my backyard, I can go fishing after work, I can grow my own food, I can have a dog without feeling like holding it prisoner in a town, I can offer a healthy and low stress environment to my family, I can watch the stars from my backyard,... Just giving a bit of perspective, coming from a guy who made big money. In the end money is worthless if I'm dead from one of the many things that will end up killing me by living in a big town.
    • vostok 10y ago
      I agree that money is worthless in the end. I would rather live here than earn twice as much in a rural or suburban area.
  • Lio 10y ago
    I'll give you a reason, although it's a reason that's personal only to me, probably. I love road cycling as a sport. IMHO cycling for pleasure sucks in cities, even ones with great cycling infrastructure. The cycle paths are full of slow commuters calmly pootling their way to work|shops|date|whatever. The roads in cities are full of distracted|incompetent|psychopathic drivers in motor vehicles all wanting to "punish" me for shaving my legs and wearing lycra. The place for people like me is haring about in the lanes and hills of the sticks. :)
    • reustle 10y ago
      Sounds like you just need to move to a more bike friendly city/country :)
• BurningFrog 10y ago
  The article assumes developers could and would build great companies working remotely if only conservative managers, VCs and others irrationally standing in the way would allow it to happen. That day will probably come. It might even be here, but I seriously doubt it. I think it still takes a lot of personal interaction and teamwork, and the tech for it is still clumsy, incomplete and annoying enough that it's just not good enough. Are there any great companies built from the ground this way?
  • briandear 10y ago
    Basecamp and Gitlab seem to be off to a good start. Github also is extensively remote.
    • sidlls 10y ago
      I don't know about Basecamp but Gitlab's salaries are about 60% of my current base for SF, and go down for less expensive locations that I have already considered living in. These locations cost about 66% of my current situation (I commute into the City from about a 30 minutes train ride). I'd have to move to a place that resembles a rube filled backwater by comparison for break-even.
      • softawre 10y ago
        Care to give numbers? I will. I make 125k/year with 15k bonus, good 401k/stock/health/etc. This is outside Indianapolis, where you can buy a nice 3k sq. ft. home for 250k. To have the same size house where you live, how much would I have to make? I have done some math, it is well over 200k. Maybe you make that much?
        • sidlls 10y ago
          Please note I don't contend your scenario is impossible. It's just that there isn't convincing evidence it can be considered normal.
• rubicon33 10y ago
  I used to live in SF. It was exciting, but also shitty. I felt connected and alive, which was great, but also drained of resources, which really sucked. Oh, and there were 6 of us, in a 3 bedroom apartment. I had the living room. Yea. I lasted 3 years, until I met my wife, and by then I was ready to move. We did. Now, life in the suburbs, is slow. I feel somewhat disconnected and like I don't really belong to this community. My neighbor is a teacher, not a tech worker. I miss the buzz of the city, the energy. But, I'm saving money, and, working remotely is mostly positive (though I do yearn for office banter more and more). Life I guess, is all about trade offs. Rarely have I found a situation that is entirely positive, or negative. Most, if you look closely enough, are a balance of good and bad. For me now in my life, the reassurance that I will be able to retire some day, is worth more to me than the excitement of the city. That may change... we shall see. If it does change, I'll be lured back to the city for the exact reasons the article states. The city itself, is the draw. There's something about living in an urban environment, for some people, it's just a pace of life more resonant with their existence.
  • el_benhameen 10y ago
    Where did you move, if I may ask?
  • ido 10y ago
    If you're working remotely, there are plenty of cities much cheaper than SF.
  • henrikschroder 10y ago
    > Oh, and there were 6 of us, in a 3 bedroom apartment. This is such a weird American phenomenon, the whole roommate thing. What on earth can make adults choose to share their home with a stranger? Why isn't there intense pressure for building many small apartments, rather than building larger apartments that are meant for roommates? Is it connected to the equally weird college dorm roommate system? Why are people accepting a situation where they live together with someone they don't like? It's such an obvious recipe for misery! Who perpetuates this system?
    • 10y ago
• soufron 10y ago
  Which leads me to learn that the 6 “Alpha Regions” of the world are SF, LA, NYC, Boston, Toronto, London, Paris. Even if it’s not perceived to be at the center of the technological metamorphose, Paris is still being seen as a place where you can get stuff done. It’s also one of the places in the world where you will get the most infrastructure, meaning technological infrastructure but also political, democratic, social, medical, legal, education and even cognitive infrastructure. Yes, you get what you pay for.
  • zabana 10y ago
    Berlin and Barcelona are way better places than Paris. Unless you're into old cities filled with pretiensious people.
    • johnomarkid 10y ago
      Paris is also good if you're into smog. +1 for Berlin.
    • godiskpp 10y ago
      Like yourself?
• 35bge57dtjku 10y ago
  Most employers don't like remote employees. I go where the jobs are, and that happens to pay more because there's more companies fighting for developer talent. I'd go back to a smaller city in a heartbeat if I could find a job paying the same amount of money, or even just the same adjusting for CoL, but I doubt I'd find that. In larger cities I think pay goes up a lot faster than CoL does.
• pmontra 10y ago
  I work from home but I meet some of my customers in person at least once per month, one of them at least once per week. Living in a distant place wouldn't be as good for business. A customer of mine is a less than ten people company. A couple of developers work from remote almost all the time, in different cities. They come to the office a few consecutive days every few months. They are employees so their relationship with the company is stronger than mine.
• flowardnut 10y ago
  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 to whatever. It's a bit more expensive here (housing-wise) but my raise alone paid entirely for my housing expense for the year. Plus it has a vibrant meetup community, tons of beer/biking, etc. I hate that I didn't stay east to try to build this type of community myself, but I haven't regretted it in the least.
  • Eric_WVGG 10y ago
    I lived in the "affordable city" of Portland about fifteen years ago. There was ~5 dev shops to work at. They all sucked. :) My career didn't turn around until I bailed and went to NYC. It is nice to see that the city has turned around, but I have to confess that I don't miss it in the slightest.
  • pmiller2 10y ago
    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).
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • tropo 10y ago
      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.
• blazespin 10y ago
  It's very very very simple. Politics. If you are in the Valley and making 300K, you're going to politically gang up with fellow 300Kers rather than release responsibility to people living in <100K salary areas. The truth is, remote works extremely well. Just get mature people and make sure everyone is remote so there is no ganging up (though you may get some timezone tribes..)
• egocodedinsol 10y ago
  Opinionated take about costs and benefits that doesn't make strong statements about whether remote work or onsite is better: For context: I moved from NYC to Philadelphia, to finish my thesis and be with my wife who works at the world's best children's hospital. I have lived in Portland, Chicago, and spent extensive time in Toronto. I haven't spent much time in SF. The change in cost of living is dramatic, and the quality of life is higher by far. I have eaten in extraordinary restaurants in my life and I don't feel Philadelphia suffers in that regard. There is a similar caliber of restaurant (with the exception of a very select few you are likely to eat at a few times a year and could honestly fly to and still save money). While I'm sure ballet and music are better in NYC, I'm not sure most consumers can tell the difference or whether it's worth living nearby. I don't like remote work as much, and I make no arguments about remote work vs onsite. The talent pool in big areas is probably a huge plus for expensive areas (although healthcare related industry is probably great in Philadelphia, so maybe I haven't lost much there). And if you need onsite workers (again, that's maybe best, I have no argument either way), you can just hire them in SF. (You could probably pay 2x going rate adjusted for cost of living in Philadelphia and still come out ahead, but it might be harder to hire replacements). Quantity of cool jobs is definitely lower. But if your goal is just financial independence, you could cut your rent to 20-40% of NYC and be within walking distance to work here, it's like getting a 3x pay raise. I miss certain things about NYC, to be clear. Philadelphia is smaller, there's less of the intense artist feel, less craziness in the streets and much, much more typically dressed men and women. I miss hundreds (literally) takeout places that deliver amazing food in 30 minutes. I do not miss the trash in the streets (piled three times a week in big bags in Manhattan ) the smell (everyone knows that returning-to-NYC smell), the rats, or the 500 sq foot apartment I was lucky to get in Williamsburg that pales in comparison to the apartment I leased in one of the top ten neighborhoods to live within North America here in Philadelphia.
  • beatpanda 10y ago
    I don't understand how Philadelphia gets away with being such a wonderful city. It's an incredible anomoly.
  • maxfurman 10y ago
    Yes! Philly is the best.
• sidlls 10y ago
  There is an assumption that developers could work anywhere. This isn't generally true, except in the sense that it's possible to do so in a way it hasn't been in previous decades thanks to the internet speeds and collaboration technology we enjoy today. In reality remote work opportunities are still very much a rarity and they tend to offer lower compensation.
• zobzu 10y ago
  you can work remote as long as it's from the bay area...
• rsuelzer 10y ago
  The reality is that as long as companies keep building campuses and requiring people to come into the office in the Bay that many people can't move. I work remotely, only because our building was shut down due to a natural disaster. And when management realized productivity actually increased for the three months all 500 of us were working remotely,they never reopened the office.
  • jaffaq 10y ago
    That sounds like a really interesting case. Do you or someone else in the company have a blog post about this?
• js8 10y ago
  It seems to me that in economic theory, capital should move around and people should stay at places. It would be rational and also it makes sense from human perspective (you're close to your family, you don't have to deal with the logistics of moving etc.). However, in economic reality, quite the opposite is often true. Capital doesn't flow into underdeveloped regions even if they contain great talent. And people try to migrate, in fact so much that some think it's actually a threat. Ha-Joon Chang's "23 Things about Capitalism" has a great chapter on capital not being that international (that is, interchangeable) as people typically think.
• ccozan 10y ago
  Is not the developers, is the business that attracts developers there. You cannot run a business from everywhere and have all the connections totally non personal. Is not working. So you must have the business in that locations, or you don't succeed. Then the developers come. And later they want to have their own businesses too. And need the connection, have a dinner with an investor, etc. It feels like a fission reaction out of control, start-up acceleration programs made it into a real explosion.
• papaver 10y ago
  i would say this is the epitome of followers vs leaders... a significant portion of devs are introverted, and don't have a life outside work, hence being in a social setting like the office is how they make friends and communicate with the world... yes i used to be one of them... but once you have other avenues of creativity and life, suddenly working in an office is little more than mundaneness... i've been working remote for over 5 years, and usually do my best to hang out with my team ever few months, mainly to bond on a more personal level which can only be achieved in real time. but a week or two every few months is enough to gain that perspective. working remote is blissful. there are two major problems. most companies are scared of remote workers because they don't have the trust that remote workers can integrate into the culture, and a large portion of people just can't handle working remotely. it's an art to be able to work without a definite schedule (like being at the office for x hours). open space work environments are bullshit, read the actual studies done and all of them point to more controlled settings, which allow devs to get into the flow which allow them to produce some of their best work and allow the to be the most fulfilled by their work. my dollar goes way father than the devs living in sf. i can visit when i want and then bail. i'd rather invest in my family, my house, and my hobbies than paying rent in sf or nyc. and yes there are plenty of cities that offer similar awesomeness for way lower price.
• SandB0x 10y ago
  > there’s nothing about software development that requires meatspace interactions This is a big claim that is not true in my experience. Dealing with highly ambiguous situations, talking people out of bad ideas and learning through collaboration works much better in person.
• quinndupont 10y ago
  This phenomenon has been fairly well studied in the academic literature, and you can sum it up to a variety of factors including productivity from co-location (Skype just won't cut it in some circumstances!), capitals flows (VC funding is only located in certain places), and other fuzzy things like quality of life and access to similar people. The emergence of "technopoles" led Richard Florida to call the globe not "flat" but "spiky." Consider also the case study of complex geographies and languages (not English!) in Brazil: http://codingplaces.net http://codingplaces.net [full disclosure: Takhteyev was on my PHD committee]
• mathw 10y ago
  Because I can't work anywhere. It may be theoretically possible but business in the UK is pretty traditional in a lot of ways and just won't consider anything else. Fortunately I live in the East Midlands, where there's a developer talent shortage, and I'm pretty good at my job, so whenever I want to change something seems to come up.
  • zeristor 10y ago
    Leicester? Why?
• twblalock 10y ago
  I know someone who was a remote worker from the early 1990s until a year or two ago. He was working from home in the Bay Area for a while, and moved somewhere else to get a lower cost of living. Well, he pulled that off for a long time, but eventually he got laid off and couldn't find remote work. It's actually harder to find remote work now than it used to be. So, he settled for a local job with a lower salary than he was used to, because the alternative was moving at least 100 miles away. The bottom line is that living in an area with a high concentration of tech companies gives you a much better chance of finding work (both on-premise and remote) when your current job is no longer viable. If you work remotely, you need to be aware of the risks.
  • Etheryte 10y ago
    I'd say the situation is quite the opposite - it's now easier to find remote work than ever before. With numerous known companies embracing remote work, it's becoming both a lot more common to work remotely and also a lot more acceptable to inquire whether remote work would be an option.
    • pjmlp 10y ago
      Here in Europe, it pretty hard, because companies considering remote work will rather do it with eastern or asian companies, not local people. If you are on the same country, the expectation is that remote work is to be done occasionally, mostly between one to two days per week, if at all.
• apexalpha 10y ago
  > it was always a country to keep offshore companies/accounts, so every rich developer in ex-USSR already been there and knew the place, but since 2014 it started to make sense to move physically as well I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that since 3 years ago Cyprus (among others) 'sells' EU permanent residency permits to rich foreigners. You can imagin that an EU permanent residency permit, allowing you to live and work in all of the EU is worth more than gold for rich people in Putin's Russia, KGB Belarus and war-thorn Ukraine. Let's not pretend Cyprus is an international tech hub for developers and start ups... http://gulfnews.com/business/property/cyprus-property-opens-avenues-to-eu-residency-1.2001249 http://gulfnews.com/business/property/cyprus-property-opens-...
  • arjie 10y ago
    Everyone sells residency and citizenship. The list of desirable countries that don't is probably shorter than the list that do. Latvia, for instance, is much cheaper and gets you into Schengen with an investor visa followed up by investor citizenship.
    • stupidcar 10y ago
      Yep. Want to become resident in the UK? Agree to invest £1m and a "Tier 1" visa is yours: https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-investor https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-investor. The US has a similar programme to sell Immigrant Investor Visas: https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/immigrate/Immigrant-Investor-Visas.html https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/immigrate/Immigran....
      • rahimnathwani 10y ago
        2m for a limited time visa. 5m if you want to settle
        • geff82 10y ago
          And I personally there is nothing wrong with being able to buy a visa. Many people in a country don't pay few taxes in their life. So when someone comes and invests a good amount, it is ok to honor this with visa or passport. Would just be cool if every country would allow easier immigration for ordinary people, too.
• viach 10y ago
  This is because some of the developers have children. And it is not guaranteed that their children will take the same career path.
• pipio21 10y ago
  As a company owner where most work is done remotely, I believe it is just education, people have been brainwashed all his life, and it takes time and work to make people operative remotely. Working remotely means you can life whenever you want,not just in cheap places, (in practice anywhere in the US, as living in other countries have political problems like taxes and bureaucracy) L.A or New York, but people are not conscious they can, and that is the biggest problem, the biggest limitation is the one implanted in their mind. I love traveling and after some time I need to go met a new city. In remote working, we have to teach the people the most basic things like they are children or even worse because children would learn it right away but people have to unlearn what they already know. They know you go to a locked place called school when you get with other people and do what other tell them to do. Over time you don't need physical locks, the locks are already in people's heads. This behavior has been trained for years. Anything alternative competes with this psychological training. This model place called school was designed after 1850 in order to train people for the industrial revolution, and it worked wonders for it. We can't really understand the consequences of improved communications like talking from the US to Japan ultra cheap, simply and fast. This happened over my lifetime, so social structures have not adapted to the new reality. It is such a big problem that I am seriously considering creating a company just to train other companies to work remotely.
  • jumpkickhit 10y ago
    I've worked remotely online since 2000, my preferred way to work. You should offer training. A problem I see in a lot of businesses is old school thinking. Some people just think "Business" means dressing up in a suit, having 3 hour meetings daily and making eye contact and shaking hands. Like it's still the 1920's.
• expertentipp 10y ago
  Because that's where the jobs are. I'm always wondering why the most interesting and best paid sofware openings in EU are in the shithole cities cities like London, Paris, Zurich, Munich etc (I'm not talking about these "best cities to live" rankings). Try renting anything livable there - it's not only extortionate but can be very difficult in terms of required documentation, try to eat out or use any services (prices), hanging out is difficult (Germany is simply old in terms of demographics, Switzerland boring and formal), etc. Don't make me relocate there.
  • sokoloff 10y ago
    "No one goes there anymore; it's too crowded..." I don't think "shithole" is a reasonable description of the concern that's in your head about those cities. Overly expensive and cramped to live in, sure. Shithole? No way...
• barilla1234 10y ago
  Ok. Let's look at Mark Zuck. He and his facebook plan were going to succeed anyway. If he had said, I need 10 000 devs working right next to me in Managua, Nicaragua, that is where they would be today. He didn't do it, but Zuck could have. Doing Facebook out of Managua would have worked, just like doing Skype out of Talinn, Estonia today works perfectly-well too.
  • ulfw 10y ago
    No he couldn't have. He needed Bay Area investor money, he needed Bay Area connections and he needed the Bay Area press echo chamber. That's why he moved as a college kid out west to Palo Alto and not Nicaragua.
    • sokoloff 10y ago
      Exactly. I'm from Cambridge, MA and as much as it pains me, I'm not convinced he could have Facebook into what it is today from here. There was a time not that long ago when it wasn't obvious who the social winner was going to be.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• lacampbell 10y ago
  I've had two jobs (including my current one) where I've been what you might call an "industrial analyst programmer". That is, I'm on site at a place that isn't service oriented or financial, the IT team is tiny, and I have to be the BA and the Programmer all in one. One involved me working at the maintenance department of an international airport, and the current one I am attached to a small factory and distribution centre. It's a lifestyle I quite like, though I'm not sure how common such opportunities are. With the incredible wealth of information and communication options on the web I really don't feel like I'm some isolated backward village person who can't possibly know the same stuff someone in a city can.
• k__ 10y ago
  I like public transport and hate driving myself. So I'm bound to big cities
• septimus111 10y ago
  Here in the UK the difference between London vs the rest of the country is insane: I would love to live somewhere with a better quality of life but it's much harder to find a good job outside London. I wonder how much of the resistance to setting up offices in smaller cities is due to senior managers and engineers not wanting to move away because of kids / partners, or because at their level of income they can pretty much afford anywhere.
  • LifeQuestioner 10y ago
    Hmm, there's quite a few places in the UK I think you'd be surprised. The salary's are not as high - but they're still really high and outside of london you save mega moneys. Moved to Glasgow for a higher salary than I had in London, and where rent is 1/3 of the price. There's Edinburgh, Manchester(home of the bbc) (ranked as two of the best cities for tech in the UK, manchester for media city), Bristol, Bath, Newcastle, Cambridge. All good salaries and likely to save more money than in London.
    • septimus111 10y ago
      That does surprise me, in a good way! My concern, aside from salary, would be job security - in London it's possible to find a new job within days... I will look into Edinburgh :)
      • LifeQuestioner 9y ago
        Edinburgh is a beautiful city - although to warn the rents are higher than most other cities. (I lived there for 5 years). HOWEVER the flats tend to be HUGE so it's good value for money. I had a bedroom in Edinburgh that was the size of my entire 1 bedroom flat in London. There's some startup hubs in Edinburgh that are really friendly - i'd go put your cv in there. One is called "codebase"
  • cardiffguy 10y ago
    I was earning a London weighted salary of 10% on top of my basic. I've since moved to Cardiff have lost that weighting but gained a house. It's swings and roundabouts, Cardiff isn't as happening as London or even Bristol (certainly food wise) but money certainly goes further. The worry is if I lose job at 'Thisbigcorp' there are fewer places that would offer a package this good. Working from home is fairly standard a couple times a week here too.
• canadiancreed 10y ago
  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"
  • uiri 10y ago
    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, they will have to deal with immigration headaches which are much worse for the US.
    • tropo 10y ago
      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.
• intoverflow2 10y ago
  What on earth is the point in working hard and earning a large salary if there is sod all to spend it on? If I were living in a small country town I'd be choosing a far more chilled job than I currently have because there isn't anything to spend the extra income on in a small town.
  • xienze 10y ago
    Nicer house (or just a house, period), vacations, toys, earlier retirement, children...
    • dagw 10y ago
      I think it depends where you are in you life. I spent my 20s in an expensive city earning good money and 'wasting' it all on good old hedonistic fun and adventures. I'm now spending my 30s living in the suburbs as a dull respectable member the (upper)middle class. There is no way I would have wanted to live my 20s like I'm living my 30s, nor would I particularly want to live my 30s like I lived my 20s (even though I sometimes do miss it).
      • strictnein 10y ago
        Nothing worse than drinking like you're in your 20s and waking up again in your 30s with your two kids crawling on you demanding breakfast.
  • sokoloff 10y ago
    I have focused so hard on income as one leg of the financial security stool. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim... I'm in a position to retire now at 45 if I chose (or was somehow forced to). Big income, reasonable (though far from Spartan) expenses, and regular long-term investments lead to a secure financial position for my family. I happen to (mostly) really enjoy my work, so I expect to keep doing it until our kids are off to college, at which point we should have well more than enough to retire in style. THAT is what (and when) there is to spend it on in my case.
• Semiapies 10y ago
  We have a horde of people here who, at the first opportunity, will accuse the mass of developers of being trendy when it comes to languages or frameworks or methodologies. And yet, we have a thousand perfectly rational reasons why so many of us flock to the cities that influential developers live and work in.
• Nokinside 10y ago
  101 urban economics. Economies of agglomeration is a powerful thing. Expensive cities are expensive because productivity and value generation there is much higher than elsewhere. The concentration of tech into few places is not a negative by itself. It's essential for better productivity and economic growth. Negative effects like expensive housing are failures in urban development. Economic activity is concentrating on large cities. This is global development. Cities have better productivity than, small towns. Bigger cities have even better productivity than normal cities. High-tech industry feels the need to concentrate even more. Just handful of cities become significant technology hubs. Currently the only way people can build a hivemind is to get together around best universities.
• reason_police 10y ago
  > people with self-determination, i.e., a country, have decided You know that's just flat out false, especially considering you've personally never been asked about it. > countries agree to give up part of sovereignty Again, you were not asked. Neither was any other ordinary person affected. > the tourist visa explicitly has a number of terms and conditions I brought up the idea of the Social Contract. You're talking about something completely unrelated, and thus not addressing my point. But whatever. You're most likely just yet another psychopath spewing your bullshit, and this account is probably shadow-banned already, because I'm.. wrong?
  • lucaspiller 10y ago
    >> people with self-determination, i.e., a country, have decided > You know that's just flat out false, especially considering you've personally never been asked about it. Assuming the country in question is democratic, and you are of legal voting age, then yes, you have been asked about it. If you don't agree with certain laws you are free to vote for somebody who follows your views or stand yourself.
  • PeterisP 10y ago
    What difference does it make if someone has been asked or not? The rules apply anyway, consent or consensus is not required. Sovereignty works not only for full democracies, but also for monarchies, dictatorships, and various kinds of representative decisionmaking. But the main point I was trying to make is that if "you were born in England and lived there all your life. Then you fly over to Thailand on a tourist visa" then whatever social contract Thailand people have established in Thailand doesn't matter - you are not entitled to its benefits, you are not part of their social group (yet?), you don't have an inherent right to be part of that group, and it's up to them whether they will extend their social contract to you at all and if so, on what conditions. In this regard it doesn't make a meaningful difference how Thailand decides it and who gets asked. Self-determination of countries is a thing even if those countries are internally governed very unfairly - coming from outside it doesn't matter, you anyway wouldn't get a say on how they're governed. Again, it doesn't matter of all or most people there were asked on that - if they don't like their system, they're free to change it, but until then whoever or whatever rules there gets to make the rules how Thailand will handle travel across it's borders. Unrestricted travel is not a core human right, the right of national/regional self-determination is considered more important and overrides it. There is a right to decide who visits in your territory, and there is no inherent right for a visitor to come if they're not invited.
• apatters 10y ago
  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 development being a good example. I don't think we yet have a single case we can point to of thousands of full-time employees working together remotely. Which means at the end of the day, enterprises still have to build or lease a huge box and stuff it full of people -- there is no well-understood alternative. They naturally end up building or leasing boxes that are nearby boxes built or leased by similar companies, and here we are. The only real barriers to ever larger remote teams, though, are information, training and precedent. I doubt the tech industry will ever be more concentrated in a few megacities as it is today. Remote work in one form or another is on a 30 year upward trend.
  • fader 10y ago
    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 company with probably 15% of the workers remote, it was frequent that people would just forget to open up a conference line for company-wide announcement meetings.) On the other hand, "remote first" companies structure themselves around tools to enable remote working. So meetings happen online (via phone or web conference), project discussion or just water cooler chat happens in a messaging system like Slack or IRC, and projects are documented in a system accessible to everyone. In these environments remote workers are first class citizens and are as much a part of the company as any other. I was at a "remote first" company that grew out of the open source development world for close to 5 years. I went to a company with the "allow remote work" model and lasted barely a year before leaving for another "remote first" company. It was a painful year, but at least now I know what to look for.
    • 10y ago
• OliverJones 10y ago
  Steven Johnson, in his recent book Where Good Ideas Come From, pointed out that cities are more innovative the bigger they are, demonstrably according to a quarter power law. Aggregates of people are more creative than individuals. http://www.penguin.com/ajax/books/excerpt/9781594487712 http://www.penguin.com/ajax/books/excerpt/9781594487712 But he ALSO points out that the internet has greatly reduced the need for physical proximity to get the aggregation benefits to creativity. So, the question stands: why do people flock to the places with absurdly high rent when they could work remotely? The Sand Hill Road Shuffle (raising money for the next startup) isn't THAT much fun.
  • Nokinside 10y ago
    I list agglomeration benefits from my study notes (Urban economics). * Knowledge spillovers. This core idea for information-based agglomeration economies. Robotics researcher benefits from touching randomly elbows with metallurgy expert and vice versa. Random human contact happens in internet too, but you don't form deep connections as a rule. Has anyone had a hours long beneficial discussion with random guy in the internet? * Labor market pooling allows labor to be more efficiently allocated following productivity shocks. Changing jobs is easier. The ability to switch into a new job is first order agglomeration benefit. When large number of similar jobs are located at the same area, its easier for people to change jobs and find the job that makes them most productive. * Marriage multiplies the effect of labor market pooling. When people marry each other and move together they must find a two jobs within working distance. If they are both highly specialized, highly educated or both, only largest cities allow best job for both without sacrifice. * Services and more choices. Even a Pizza delivery guy can be more productive in dense city. That justifies the little higher salary for pizza delivery guy. There is more different services available. Increasing the value of the location. * coagglomeration. The tendency of industries to colocate with other industries and form tight networks that respond fast to new demand. * Cost of moving people. Travel time reduces productivity significantly. * Logistics in general is and faster and more efficient. Benefit of moving goods is now considered relatively second order. * Congestion has costs. Pollution and expensive housing are results of failing urban development. Without congestion costs the concentration of people into the best cities would be even faster.
  • 10y ago
• kppiskingpp 10y ago
  What a stupid naive shitty as article. What a bunch of shit.
  • godiskpp 10y ago
    AGREED FUCKTHEMALL
  • dang 10y ago
    We've banned this account for trolling. Commenting like this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
• jherdman 10y ago
  I've been working remote for four years in Toronto. I'm here for a few reasons: * My partner's work is based here * It's easy to visit both of our family's from here * If the company I work for goes belly up, there's an abundance of work available here (though I'd strongly prefer to stay remote) We've toyed with the idea of moving, but remain here for now due to combinations of the above. I can virtually assure you that we'll move if and when we decide to purchase a home.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• godiskpp 10y ago
  BECAUSE GOD IS DED
• codingmyway 10y ago
  I'm contemplating this right now. I work in London because the extra money over working elsewhere in the UK more than pays the rent and I know people here now. I if lived further out and commuted then the cost of transport would almost wipe out the rental saving and I'd have two hours+ commute everyday instead of a healthier cycle through the park. I could get a remote job for half the money and that would be worth it for a change of scenery living somewhere cheap despite the tanking pound. Personally I think I'd be more productive living in Asia working London hours, so 3 in the afternoon until 11pm, as this suits me more especially somewhere where there is little to do in the evening. It just suits my body clock. I know this because I did it for a while despite the financial crisis ruining it at exactly the wrong time, happening two weeks after I left the country for two years. Now I need a financial crisis to stand a chance of buying a house I figure going back to that life is my better option for now.
  • verbify 10y ago
    If there's a financial crisis: * You're more likely to lose your job or find it difficult to switch jobs, which will impact your earnings * Banks are less likely to give easy lines of credit, making it difficult to get a mortgage Timing the housing market is as difficult as timing any market - time in the market beats timing the market.
    • codingmyway 10y ago
      Maybe. 2008 to 2012 were actually the best years for me, both for life and jobs. I even managed to get a contract straight back from my travels in 2010 at a rate that I haven't beaten since. The economy didn't totally shut down. My issue was getting a mortgage but if I hadn't had a gap I could have got one even then as I had a good deposit. It's the aftermath of QE and years of zero rates that I wasn't prepared for so it turned out to be a very expensive break.
• krystiangw 10y ago
  The best jobs positions often do not allow for remote. Here is a map showing average tech wages in a nice way: https://jobsquery.it/map https://jobsquery.it/map You can spot cities with highest salaries quite easy
• krystiangw 10y ago
  The best jobs positions often do not allow for remote. Here is a map showing average tech wages in a nice way: https://jobsquery.it/map https://jobsquery.it/map You can spot cities with highest salaries quite easy
• iplaw 10y ago
  Just because developers can feasibly work from anywhere, especially remotely for already-established companies, do not immediately presume that it is best for developers to work from anywhere. Working remotely is not for everyone. Some people have problems with efficiency and procrastination when working from home or when working without immediate oversight. Some people have poor communication skills which are further hampered by the long distance communication and lack of face to face interaction. Some companies and, perhaps, developers prefer human interaction and team cohesiveness, which is difficult to achieve in an all-remote development team. In many cases, the most expensive tech cities became that way after the developers landed and earned crazy money and bonuses. Take Austin for example. A mere ten years ago, it was a very affordable city. Now, there are 800 sq. ft. homes with window-unit air conditioning selling for $600,000. Why? Austin became a tech hot spot in Texas while it was still affordable and, due to the exorbitant salaries being paid and countless millionaires being made, the demand for housing skyrocketed. With limited supply of proximate housing, the prices shot up.
  • TACIXAT 10y ago
    Austin seems incredibly cheap to me (when considering southern California as the alternative). You can get a nice house on a large lot for less than 500k. It's not in the city center but I prefer having more space anyway. In San Diego and any reasonable commute around it you get a repair project with anything below 500k. Couple the cheaper housing with income tax savings and I see the appeal.
    • arcanus 10y ago
      Yea, Austin isn't cheap anymore but it's by no means expensive when compared to the coasts. It used to be something like a factor of two more expensive in SF or NYC, and I don't think it's quite that large a gap. The Austin city center is also so much smaller than many major cities that it can be misleading. Just 1.5 miles from downtown the price of housing starts to drop substantially.
      • John23832 10y ago
• sjg007 10y ago
  I think the answer is that you have to be close to the money. The VCs in the case of SF. Hedge funds and finance HFT in the case of London and NYC (speed of light limitation). Then you get a local network effect of consolidated industries.
• rpazyaquian 10y ago
  Expensive cities are where the jobs are. The grand majority of companies want their employees to work in their offices. I really think the "developers can work anywhere" adage is way overstated. We're still tied to location like anyone else.
• ThomPete 10y ago
  Because the expensive cities is where the work is. How can that be such a big question?
• davidf18 10y ago
  I live in NYC, but have also lived in Boston, London, Paris, Tel Aviv during my professional life. These are fun cities with lots of young professionals with many things to do. There is lots of networking and international communities. Lots of Jazz, Blues, and other cultural attractions. The cause of the high cost of housing is not that many want to live in these cities, but rather the "rent-seeking", a market failure or market inefficiency which is caused by a politically induced scarcity of housing through the use of zoning density restrictions. The inefficient markets interfere with wealth creation and instead the use of politics transfers wealth to special interest groups, in this case wealthy landlords like President Trump from people who rent and are buying housing. Economist David Ricardo first developed the concept in the mid-19th century and joined British Parliament just to overturn the rent-seeking which harmed the British economy. In his particular case it was the "Corn Laws" which taxed imported grains of all types with the result that bread and basic food cost more for consumers. Farmers would receive more money for their grain, but ultimately the landlords who leased the farmland to farmers simply charged the farmers more money as a result. Thus, there was a politically induced transfer of wealth (ultimately) from (often lower class) consumers to wealthy landowners. This is analogous to what is happening in the housing market today. Japan fixed the problem in 2002 when it passed a federal law taking zoning authority away from local municipalities. The result: in 2014 Tokyo built 140,000 housing units compared with 20,000 for all of NYC and less than 90,000 for the entire state of California. Interested readers should consult writers of Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser, Economist and Financial Times Columnist Tim Harford (book, "The Undercover Economist"), and articles by Steve Beyer Edward Glaeser: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1.1913739 http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1.... Tokyo's Affordable Housing Strategy: Build, Build, Build https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/08/12/tokyos-affordable-housing-strategy-build-build-build/#1dada29548d5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/08/12/tokyos-af... What Liberals Don't Get About Affordable Housing: Filtering. https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-liberals-dont-get-about-affordable-housing-filtering/#50bd85302879 https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-libe... See also "Green Belt"
• mediaserf 10y ago
  If you really can be remote, a smaller city can be nice. I live in Cleveland, right on the lake. It is a functional city and gives me a longer runway for my startup. As more of the workforce becomes truly remote, I believe we'll see a resurgence of small towns. Some smaller cities are putting fiber in already planning for urban refugees from larger cities.
• dsmithatx 10y ago
  My boss asked me the other day what my long term career goals are. I said I do not aspire to move up into management. I just want to move to a cheaper city or maybe live on the road and work from somewhere not so expensive. I used to want to live in a nice tech city but, then I had kids.
• Glyptodon 10y ago
  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 one every six months, end even the exceptions tend to have downsides. So I think the "could work anywhere" thing isn't true. Rather, I think it you probably need the connections from a tech-enclave to swing high-paying remote work or find situations that give you the freedom to relocate.
  • jaredhansen 10y ago
    >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 profile on AngelList. Many startups do not care where you are so long as you are doing a good job, and there is plenty of room for salary/location arbitrage in between "market for SF Bay" and "way better than I can earn anywhere near where I live". - Actively look for remote-only stuff. It's really not about connections. It's about showing that you are a fit for the company doing the hiring. That's why I'm taking the time to respond here -- there is a pernicious meme that "it's all about who you know". This idea is not only false, but harmful, because it encourages defeatism and fatalism among highly skilled individuals who could dramatically improve their own work situation if they were willing to take a few relatively simple steps to do so.
    • vram22 10y ago
      Great comment.
• zephyrfalcon 10y ago
  In spite of what the article claims, the vast majority of employers do NOT let you work remotely 100% of the time. They are mostly located in the big/expensive cities, so that's where developers will go. There's really no mystery there.
  • jamie_ca 10y ago
    Yep. Network effects. Best place to start a business is where you have easy access to a large employee pool for your specialty. Best place to locate yourself as a specialized employee is where your industry concentrates a large number of employers. This is true if you're in software, finance, film, ....
  • chadgeidel 10y ago
    This should be the highest rated comment. A survey of any number of developers would reveal this very simple reason.
  • Arizhel 10y ago
    Not only that, but from what I can tell, telecommuting is becoming more and more rare. I'd guess that it hit a peak somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago. Now it's really hard to find a company that'll let you telecommute (I've been looking).
• orasis 10y ago
  The answer is simple: most people don't live intentionally. I regularly meet miserable people in SF that could elevate their happiness by changing their life situation. But they don't, because the default path is easier.
  • astrange 10y ago
    If you're in debt or you can't break your lease, there's only ever very short windows to change your life. And it wasn't until recently that you could find FI-style communities about avoiding debt.
• bingomad123 10y ago
  I think American Tech industry's failure to invest in various American and foreign cities is what is going to eventually make a Detroit of Silicon Valley. I am not sure why Facebook or Google do not have full fledged development centers in San Antonio or Phoenix or Singapore. Facebook still does not have a development center in India. Sooner or later the Trump driven protectionism will be make other countries like India reciprocate in similar fashion where American tech companies will be denied access to say Indian market.
• bighi 10y ago
  I would guess that something close to 97% of the available jobs for developers in my country are NOT remote. So where you live counts A LOT for your career.
• lkrubner 10y ago
  (Please forgive the side-story, I believe this comment eventually forms a cohesive story.) Once upon a time I had 7 years experience doing web development and a young friend of mine came to me and asked "Would you please teach me web development?" So I did. This was in 2006. Then she moved to New York City, and she started job hopping. She worked at Huge, she worked at Blue Ocean, she worked at Alexander Interactive. I visited New York in 2008 and had lunch with her. I was surprised that her knowledge of project management techniques was now ahead of mine, even though she had less experience. What she did have was perspective -- she'd seen the strengths and weaknesses at Huge, and she was able to compare them to the strengths of weaknesses at Alexander Interactive, and other places. I had worked at my own company for 6 years, so I had much less perspective. I realized that if I was ever going to become a technology consultant, I would need to gain her broad overview of the strengths and weaknesses of multiple companies. I spent 5 years living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and then 10 more years living in a Richmond, Virginia and Charlottesville, Virginia. Those were very comfortable places to live, but also a bit boring. My friends who had children described them as good places to raise children, but I had no interest in kids so I had no use for what might be the #1 best attribute of those places. If you know the joke by that NFL player "You can't do nothin in Charlotte, except live" -- that really applies to quite a few places. I was hoping I would eventually get to a more interesting place, like New York or London or Berlin. In 2009 I moved to New York. I really, truly love New York. I've been working as a contractor and since I've moved here I've worked with 20 different companies. I've gotten to see a great diversity of what works and what fails. I've collected a lot of stories, some of which I've written about, and some of which I am still planning to write about. There are very few places in the world that offer as exciting a scene as New York. These mega cities, that combine culture and technology and funding and startups -- there are only perhaps 100 in a the world, and of the ones where English is the dominant language there are only perhaps 10. It was in New York that I gained that broad overview that my friend had demonstrated in 2008. Therefore, New York has been fundamental to me becoming the kind of technology consultant that I was hoping to be. I've spent a few months in San Francisco and I love that city, but to live I would prefer New York or London, because they are so much bigger and there are so many other offerings aside from the companies that work there. For what I want to do, offer high level technology advice, having seen what works and what fails at dozens of different companies, there are only a few places where it makes sense for me to live and work. I've visited Costa Rica and I love it. I hope to go back many more times. But only to visit. I'm still open to someday moving to London or Berlin, but I'm not considering "move to Costa Rica and live on the beach". It's simply not the career path that I'm interested in. For my retirement, if I'm looking for some place cheap, I will consider Krakow. That assumes that Poland some day elects a sane government and therefore remains in Europe. I certainly hope to buy real estate in Krakow, as I think investing there is a bit like investing in New York in 1982, back when everyone thought that New York was dead and without a future.
• lkrubner 10y ago
  Have I been shadowbanned or something? Either something is wrong with the way my browser renders this page, or my comment was deleted from this page. My comment was here, I thought it was a good one: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=14035764&goto=threads%3Fid%3Dlkrubner%2314035764 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=14035764&goto=threads%...
  • lkrubner 10y ago
    I think maybe Hacker News is suffering some kind of glitch. I am not able to see any of my comments getting posted, but someone was able to downvote this previous comment, so I have to assume that this previous comment was being posted somewhere, even if I can't see it. It's a confusing situation where other people can see my comments, but I can not see them.
• kppisgpp 10y ago
  Because they like to eat yummy foods