11 ms·
San Fran is so expensive, some tech companies can't convince employees to move
- mattbillenstein 10y agoSF or The City please -- never call it "San Fran"
- tradersam 10y agoThe City is way too generic of a name. Bay Area people would only recognize this as SF--here in O.C., "The City" means Los Angeles. In NY, "The City" means NYC, so on and so on.
- stan_rogers 10y ago...and most of the world would assume the City of London (the Square Mile, as opposed to Metropolitan London).
- neom 10y ago"The City" mean NYC everywhere buster, and don't you be forgetting it.
- ryguytilidie 10y ago"The City" makes sense when you are near a large city. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and you would hear "the city" a lot. When I moved to Oakland, you heard SF described as "the city" a lot. When I go visit friends in Brooklyn and they say lets go into "the city", its a generic name, but we all know what they mean.
- tradersam 10y agoExactly my point.
- tutufan 10y agoIn NY, "NY" means "NYC"...
- davesque 10y agoSan Fran
- hermitdev 10y agoSan Fran...the runner up to Chicago about how to not run a city (end of politics). Complaining about San Fran as a nickname is...odd or idiotic/strange (why the objection?). It's unique, everyone knows what you're referring to, it's not derogatory - merely a truncation, why the objection? Chicago's nick as the 2nd City is a reference to the rebuilding after the great Chicago Fire of 1871 (and the source of the MLS team of the same name - and a source of pride). Now, our nicknames for Columbus, OH are intended to be derogatory (Detroit south). But, I don't get the objection to San Fran...
- untog 10y ago"Frisco" it is, then
- dragonwriter 10y agoNo, Frisco is in Texas.
- sverige 10y agoNo, Frisco is in Colorado.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThat, too. Where Frisco is not, however, is anywhere on the California coast.
- tradersam 10y agoFrisco is in Texas, but nothing is in Frisco.
- nunez 10y agoThat is quickly changing given how Plano is blowing the fuck up
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- beatpanda 10y agoI prefer "The Big Fran" myself
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoTo immediate parent's credit, the CNBC article does not abbreviate SF as San Fran in its title.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- thrill 10y agoSad Fran's Disco.
- webosdude 10y agolol
- moonka 10y agoI was debating San Fran vs SF in order to fit the title limit, but was worried that not everyone would know what SF is. Based on the number of replies, I shouldn't have worried. Now I know for next time!
- tejon 10y agoI would have just dropped "tech".
- seiferteric 10y agoOddly enough my pet peeve is people calling it "The City". Something so grating an arrogant about it, like other cities in the area don't exist, so of course you must be talking about SF. Also, I am pretty sure people from NY would probably laugh hearing people referring to SF as "The City"
- grzm 10y agoI think this is common in and around any major city. I've lived in or near five major cities in the US and the only one that didn't have some use of "the city" was in Minnesota, where "the cities" is used instead to refer to Minneapolis/St. Paul.
- seiferteric 10y agoYes I know, although growing up in the bay area, I don't really remember people calling SF "The City" until relatively (maybe last 10-15 years) recently, but maybe I just missed it when I was younger.
- dottrap 10y agoEven more odd is that San Jose is a larger city than San Francisco.
- nebabyte 10y agoDrop the "The". Just "City". It's cleaner
- tarr11 10y agoThis is all Herb Caen's fault! [1] I vote for bringing back Frisco. It's a lot easier to say and write. [1] https://thebolditalic.com/amp/p/5c14348d49c https://thebolditalic.com/amp/p/5c14348d49c
- tn135 10y ago> some tech companies can't convince employees to move I have outright blacklisted San Fransisco for potential employers. I would avoid travelling to SF even for consulting work for limited duration. I am surprised why tech companies want to setup shop there in first place.
- Cofike 10y agoIs it due to the cost of living or do you just not like the city?
- capkutay 10y agoNot going to SF even for a limited time sounds a bit extreme. You can rent a cheap AirBnB and buy groceries from Safeway if you really want to control your costs. If its the homeless issue that bothers you, don't stay in SoMa or the Mission. You can actually get around the city for cheap using MUNI. Uber Pool and Lyft are also affordable options.
- tn135 10y agoI think it is mostly because of traffic, lack of free parking space and bad roads. I like to drive myself and also have eating habits that require me to visit specific places only.
- nunez 10y agolol I would 1000% go to SF or NYC on expenses! Awesome places to have lots of fun; it's even more fun when it's paid for
- kgc 10y agoIf money is the issue, couldn't they convince them with more money?
- bichiliad 10y agoI know your comment is probably tongue-in-cheek, but that answer sounds like a band-aid at best. More seriously, people who aren't used to spending $15 for a quick lunch and whatever a month on rent aren't going to jump at that opportunity. I moved to New York from Pittsburgh, and paying 3x for rent really took a while to get used to, despite an increase in income that afforded me rent in New York.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI don't know if it is a band-aid, rather it is part of the system. Specifically you're a company and you're trying to hire people to fill roles. If they are are required to be at the company you have to pay them enough that they can live near you. You set up a series of constraints on hiring: 1) Compensate[0] enough so that someone from outside can enter the local economy effectively. 2) Compensate enough to convince someone who is already in the local economy to change from where they work to working for you. 3) Compensate enough that someone working for you won't go work somewhere else. Within that system to have to operate a business model where the value you capture in the market has to cover not only your operating costs (which include compensation for the employees creating that value) but allows for you to fund maintenance, depreciation, and some R&D efforts for new product development. If you can't find a solution set that works you have to improve the business model (generally add revenue or cut costs). Not really rocket science of course. I keep watching to see if some large presence in SF ends up moving to the east bay or even Reno as a way of changing the cost parameters. If you look at job changing as brownian motion you can watch an environment parameters start to change which results in people (the particles in this case) start changing where they are likely to be. Personally I would love some quantitative data collection that helped map out the weights of the various factors. It would help predict the next 10 years. [0] Compensation is also a complex thing, more than just dollars per week/month/year there are things like free food, bus rides, and other services in addition to environmental plusses and minuses and work demands.
- kprybol 10y agoZero incentive to move to SF. The cost of living has reached a point where I'd end up taking home less disposable income even with a significant increase over my current base salary and signing bonuses get eaten up by moving expenses. Barely escaped the housing bubble crash in south Florida a few years back. No way I'd want to run the risk of experiencing another market adjustment.
- hermitdev 10y agoAround 2005 or 2006, I got a call from a headhunter that wanted to shop me out in finance in NYC. Told him I wasn't interested, but he persisted and inquired what it'd take for me to relocate (from Chicago suburbs) and it was simple: triple my salary. I'm not a city person; I like the outdoors (I prefer real wilderness, but plentiful forest preserves around Chicago suffice). I figure 3x was a reasonable figure to do one of two things: either sacrifice my lifestyle to have a reasonable commute or put up with an absurdly long commute to have the lifestyle I wanted. That was the last I heard from that recruiter. I'm not disappointed.
- drawkbox 10y agoCosts indicate it is full. Going there is like going to Disneyland when it is over occupancy, too expensive and not enough efficiency at that scale to have a good time. The housing/rental market of SF is screaming "get out", unless of course if you own real estate property. All SF tech companies promote how with technology you can be anywhere, but apparently there is a single point of failure on physical work locations, or on the flip a nice real estate funnel for above market rates. SF is part tech play part real estate, the smartest investors are investing and collecting the rents of those investments and salaries.
- kevinburke 10y ago> Costs indicate it is full The city of SF is half as dense as Brooklyn and there are a lot of empty lots here. There is a lot more room for development. The problem is that the current political situation makes it easy for people to block new housing. As an example - there is a 600-acre empty lot near the Bayshore Caltrain station. The developer wants to build 4400 units. The city wants to build 0 units and build an office park instead. Which will get built? It's not clear - the 5 people voting on it will probably be swayed by how many people show up to the meetings and advocate one position or another. I showed up last Thursday and one city resident said we should not build housing there because an earthquake may cause the buildings to fall over. You have agency in this situation. I wrote about this a little more here: https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/sf-housing-politics/ https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/sf-housing-politics/
- cwyers 10y agoThe cost signal is what, not why. From the perspective of a potential buyer/renter, it doesn't matter if the cause is "density" or "politics."
- kevinburke 10y ago"Full" is a really meaningless term. It would be pretty easy for rents to rise a further 20%. I am just pointing out that tech workers are generally apathetic about the housing supply and the local politics, because we can outbid everyone. At some point the high prices will become a problem for the tech industry as a whole. It's already a problem for me. I also want to point out that we have agency in this situation; we can lobby for SF supervisors and city council members and state senators that will implement more pro-housing legislation, and we can show up to the meetings where new housing gets denied and lobby for it.
- duren 10y agoI love living in San Francisco. For me, it's a near-perfect city and climate. Obviously it is expensive but I find it completely worth it.
- kevinburke 10y agoPlease consider joining YIMBY Action, SFHAC, or other pro-housing groups to try to make/keep housing less expensive. https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/sf-housing-politics/ https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/sf-housing-politics/
- sverige 10y agoIt may be that one of the things about SF that makes it attractive for OP is that it is expensive. Keeps the riff-raff out. Not that anyone in SF would ever admit that publicly.
- madeofpalk 10y ago> Keeps the riff-raff out If you mean keeps the riff-raff out of homes and onto the streets, then yes.
- kevinburke 10y ago70% of SF's homeless had homes in SF before they were on the street, and there's good evidence that high housing prices correlate with high homelessness. Decreasing home prices will probably help with homelessness.
- brownbat 10y ago> ...high housing prices correlate with high homelessness. Decreasing home prices will probably help with homelessness. Nice weather, good infrastructure, funding for city services, and disposable income in the area could be driving both. Pool of affordable housing might provide a better signal for homelessness than median housing costs in an area this expensive. ie, There's probably not a large percentage of marginal homeless in SF, who could afford a $1.03 million home but not the current median $1.15 million home. Either way, average rent is trending slightly downward, and Zillow predicts home prices in SF to fall 0.5% next year, so maybe we'll see. I don't think these marginal shifts, even if magnified 10 times, will really be a substitute for something like housing first or mental health programs. https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren... https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First
- ld00d 10y agoWhy is it San Diego never makes these lists? Proximity to LA? Oakland's on there, and it's a lot closer to SF. Doesn't have a thriving tech scene like all of the others? Like Miami?
- bsder 10y agoPoorer salaries relative to cost of living. San Diego has what we refer to as the "sunshine tax" so employers feel that they can get away with paying less. The startup scene is pretty much moribund for the 20-something: The dynamic people left Qualcomm years ago--it currently resembles DEC or IBM of old. Med/biotech is long term--if you're a 20-something who wants to get rich that isn't a great path. (Side note; biotech salaries seem to suck--it's part of the reasons why we have so many microbreweries--if you're going to be underpaid doing microbiology anyway, you might as well brew beer. LOL.) Culturally San Diego is kind of a suburban wasteland--that means very little "Social Network Foo Yahooglezonsoft(tm) Buyout Bait". The "cool kids" are going to want to be in NYC, SF, or Austin with possibilities in LA or Chicago.
- JBlue42 10y agoKind of sad given that it's a pretty nice, clean place with some fun stuff to do downtown. Maybe it's a lack of vision given that it's a bit more, as stated, on the conservative, suburban side. The company I work for is helping redesign some office space just outside of town. The "branding" efforts are trying to tout it as a tech-friendly building with stereotypical signposts - yoga, cycling, etc. At the end of the day, it's a suburban office campus, with little to no good access to public transit, and not near anything walkable when you want to get outside the buildings. I don't know if anyone has studied the benefits of this but I have to say it's so nice to just be able to walk out the door of the office at lunch and wander around, sit on a bench, etc. Escape for 45 min - 1 hr and be refreshed. I think that's the appeal in more 'happening' city areas, even if we don't acknowledge or necessarily know it consciously.
- smaili 10y ago> And while employees complain about San Francisco's high housing costs, the city's casual culture means they don't have to spend as much on clothing. That's...interesting? I always figured this was an industry phenomenon - not a city one.
- Arubis 10y agoI love where I live (CO) and, factoring in the cost of living difference despite higher market salaries, moving to SF would be a significant pay cut--and I'm far from the only one.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dcre 10y agoI don't know about the other cities in the table, but a studio apartment in Chicago does not cost $1490 a month. Even downtown you can find a few studios for around $1200, and in the rest of the city it's more like $1000, maybe even less. I live in a 2-bedroom for less than $1490.
- jostmey 10y agoI lived in Chicago for 8 years. The best decision I ever made was to leave. I moved to Dallas and Chicago is a dump by comparison. San Francisco may be expensive but there are better alternatives (San Diego, Austin, Seattle...)
- nunez 10y agoAgreed Dallas is amazing especially with a NYC salary
- thesmallestcat 10y agoYou waited eight years before leaving a place you hate?
- dcre 10y agoCool story.
- sverige 10y agoI got out of Seattle 25 years ago when I saw the writing on the wall. I don't regret it. SF has always been worse in terms of cost, density, self-importance, etc.
- aabajian 10y agoI almost purchased a condo in East Palo Alto back in 2013 for $300K. That same 1-bedroom is now selling for $680K; biggest missed opportunity of my life. Here it is on Zillow: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/East-Palo-Alto-CA/condo_type/15636176_zpid/11228_rid/1-_beds/100000-_price/375-_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/37.491034,-122.104841,37.444982,-122.166639_rect/13_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/East-Palo-Alto-CA/cond... There are no 1 bedrooms from Santa Clara to Burlingame for < $350K, and only one two-bedroom for less than $500K.
- nunez 10y ago$300k list or $300k all in? Either way, consider that between buying costs, potential upkeep, selling costs, property taxes and capital gains taxes, you probably would not have made out with very much.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cddotdotslash 10y agoI live in NYC right now, but you couldn't pay me 5 times the salary to move to SF. NYC knows how to build housing. While it can be expensive in the newest buildings in the most convenient areas, if you go to the outer boroughs, you can find plenty of spacious housing for decent costs and a 30 min subway ride to Midtown. SF needs density, and fast or they could keep driving out the average citizens. But tech workers probably don't make good firefighters, police, or trash collectors.
- gorkemyurt 10y agoPeople have different lifestyles and they should choose where they move according to that. Lots of people move to SF from smaller cities and expect to continue living a suburban life.
- ryanmarsh 10y agoI was thinking, "no way I'm going to try to move a 5 person single income family to SF on a raise that doesn't cover the difference in cost of living" Then I realized, I'm almost 40, no startup wants to hire my geriatric ass.
- mbleigh 10y agoI (barely) tolerate the bay area to get to do the work I love. It's a permanent game of weighing pros and cons and doesn't feel sustainable long-term even working at one of the best-compensating companies on the planet. When 40% of the people in your city want to move away, you know there's a problem.