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"When you invest in a San Francisco start-up, “you’re basically paying landlords, Twilio, and Amazon Web Services,” said Ms. Bannister of Founders Fund" Only t

by e2e4 9y ago

"When you invest in a San Francisco start-up, “you’re basically paying landlords, Twilio, and Amazon Web Services,” said Ms. Bannister of Founders Fund" Only the first part "landlord" it's affected by location.

lsc 9y ago
Eh, for amazon? I think it is location dependent. The majority of your datacenter costs, if you want to run your own hardware rather than amazon? At first, those costs will be dominated by people, and this is why it makes sense to run on amazon until you're paying a quarter million or more a year. Sure, you can get part time sysadmins. Not that bad for planned work. But getting someone who will answer your pager? You pretty much have to hire someone full time and they need to be really dedicated. (being the only guy on pager is a rough experience.) If you can find someone with my skillset in, say, Cleveland? they don't have the option of super high paying local jobs where you get fed three times a day and don't have to carry a pager. The me in Cleveland is gonna work a lot cheaper. The problem, of course, is finding a me in Cleveland. I'm sure you can, but there just isn't the density there as there is here.
- sethherr 9y ago
  This is the most amusing part of this whole article, as someone who moved from Chicago to the bay a year and a half ago. If midwesterners are hungry enough and good enough, they’ll move to the bay (or they’re already working remote for Bay Area salaries).
  - lsc 9y ago
    Fundamentally, I don't care how "hungry" my technical staff is. (I mean, I want to see to it that they are well fed, but if I'm hiring technical staff... their ability to "hustle" isn't something I am selecting for.) I know there are good technical people other places- I hired a few to work remote when I was doing my own thing, and in the last year, two of my friends have moved from here to cheaper pastures. it's just... well, the density of nerds here is incredible. If you can pay local rates, you will almost certainly be able to find someone who doesn't have to move. In the midwest, I think that most areas, there are very few local employers; if you want to jump jobs, you often have to move. That means that as an employer, if you want to hire someone on-site, a lot of times you need to talk someone into moving. I personally live within walking distance of internap, Intel, drobo, palo alto networks, EMC and tens of smaller companies that could hire me as a sysadmin or a network admin or even as my current specialty, an EDA administrator. A ten minute drive widens the field greatly. This density goes both ways; it means that an employee can easily find an employer without moving, and the other side of that is that an employer can easily find an employee. This means, I think, that people tend to work at jobs that they match with better, because there's a much smaller cost to switching to that other job that fits better.
- e2e4 9y ago
  AWS and Twillio costs are more or less location independent (w/in US at least). Good point about significant portion going to salaries. Somehow author of the article wrongfully omitted it from the top 3 expenses. p.s. and then the employees salaries to go pay for rent; so the "landlord" part is rightfully there; I just have no idea how AWS and Twillio ended up on the list.
  - lsc 9y ago
    My point re aws is that aws is way more expensive than data center space and hardware; if you have someone competent and inexpensive in the midwest to handle the datacenter/hardware stuff, it makes sense to move off of aws much sooner than in the bay area, where people to manage the hardware side of things are going to cost you a whole lot. Therefore, your amazon bill is, in a way, location dependent.

by e2e4 9y ago

lsc 9y ago

Eh, for amazon? I think it is location dependent. The majority of your datacenter costs, if you want to run your own hardware rather than amazon? At first, those costs will be dominated by people, and this is why it makes sense to run on amazon until you're paying a quarter million or more a year. Sure, you can get part time sysadmins. Not that bad for planned work. But getting someone who will answer your pager? You pretty much have to hire someone full time and they need to be really dedicated. (being the only guy on pager is a rough experience.) If you can find someone with my skillset in, say, Cleveland? they don't have the option of super high paying local jobs where you get fed three times a day and don't have to carry a pager. The me in Cleveland is gonna work a lot cheaper. The problem, of course, is finding a me in Cleveland. I'm sure you can, but there just isn't the density there as there is here.

sethherr 9y ago
This is the most amusing part of this whole article, as someone who moved from Chicago to the bay a year and a half ago. If midwesterners are hungry enough and good enough, they’ll move to the bay (or they’re already working remote for Bay Area salaries).
- lsc 9y ago
  Fundamentally, I don't care how "hungry" my technical staff is. (I mean, I want to see to it that they are well fed, but if I'm hiring technical staff... their ability to "hustle" isn't something I am selecting for.) I know there are good technical people other places- I hired a few to work remote when I was doing my own thing, and in the last year, two of my friends have moved from here to cheaper pastures. it's just... well, the density of nerds here is incredible. If you can pay local rates, you will almost certainly be able to find someone who doesn't have to move. In the midwest, I think that most areas, there are very few local employers; if you want to jump jobs, you often have to move. That means that as an employer, if you want to hire someone on-site, a lot of times you need to talk someone into moving. I personally live within walking distance of internap, Intel, drobo, palo alto networks, EMC and tens of smaller companies that could hire me as a sysadmin or a network admin or even as my current specialty, an EDA administrator. A ten minute drive widens the field greatly. This density goes both ways; it means that an employee can easily find an employer without moving, and the other side of that is that an employer can easily find an employee. This means, I think, that people tend to work at jobs that they match with better, because there's a much smaller cost to switching to that other job that fits better.
e2e4 9y ago
AWS and Twillio costs are more or less location independent (w/in US at least). Good point about significant portion going to salaries. Somehow author of the article wrongfully omitted it from the top 3 expenses. p.s. and then the employees salaries to go pay for rent; so the "landlord" part is rightfully there; I just have no idea how AWS and Twillio ended up on the list.
- lsc 9y ago
  My point re aws is that aws is way more expensive than data center space and hardware; if you have someone competent and inexpensive in the midwest to handle the datacenter/hardware stuff, it makes sense to move off of aws much sooner than in the bay area, where people to manage the hardware side of things are going to cost you a whole lot. Therefore, your amazon bill is, in a way, location dependent.