9 ms·

I feel like the South has a long way to come before the average tech worker would want to live and work there. You couldn't pay me enough (literally since comp

• ethagknight 8y ago
  Can you elaborate why the south has a long way to go before the average tech worker would want to live there?
  • octonion 8y ago
    The politics and culture (which are intertwined). Even if one area or city is more liberal, you're still dealing with a conservative, and possibly racist, sexist and homophobic, state government.
    • hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
      Agreed. State government in Texas is constantly overturning city ordinances in Austin: the whole bathroom bill BS, requiring local police to hold suspects for ICE, even overturning the plastic bag ban. All of the current political ads are pretty nauseating. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of managing immigration (and IMO there are lots of fair points on both sides that I think unfortunately get drowned out by extremists), the tone of the current set of ads is clearly "Evil brown gang members are coming to sell your kids drugs and murder your family." Makes Willy Horton look quaint.
      • deleted 8y ago
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    • tifnufiene 8y ago
      Having lived in Alabama, this would be rather offensive if it weren’t so endearing; Sounds like a child who’s so certain that the closet hides a monster, that they’re too scared to go learn that the noise is just an air vent.
      • azinman2 8y ago
        I’ve known many a gay man who has left the south because they don’t feel safe there. Certainly voting wise, the parents comment feels very true.
        • oh_sigh 8y ago
          I've known gay men who moved to the south because they liked the culture, so where are we now?
          • tomcam 8y ago
            At perfect equilibrium for gay men in the south, with a pseudo-osmotic filter allowing only hardy gay men. Meanwhile the wimpy gay men who fled are invading the rest of the country, leaving behind a trail of well-kept neighborhoods with lots of tasteful little galleries.
      • mdorazio 8y ago
        Having lived in Georgia and Tennessee and still having family in the Carolinas, you're either a straight white man or living in denial.
        • rayiner 8y ago
          I lived in Atlanta for the better part of a decade as a brown guy right after 9/11. Was great.
          • amazingman 8y ago
            I guess you never spent much time in the hills just an hour or so from Atlanta in almost any direction, in any of a good number of towns where “a brown guy” would have a hard time finding a restaurant willing to take his money for food.
    • BoorishBears 8y ago
      North Carolina?
      • wtallis 8y ago
        The North Carolina government is in the hands of the Republican party, with the exception of the governor's office, which is one of the weakest executive branches in the country and due to get weaker with some of the constitutional amendments on the ballot this year. NC has some potential to improve its standing, but so far the gerrymandering has proven insurmountable as even when the courts rule the districts to be illegal, they allow them to continue to be used because the next election is always "too soon".
      • jldugger 8y ago
        1. It's a control state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta... 2. The politics are still overtly racist: https://twitter.com/haroldpollack/status/1051657219899617280 https://twitter.com/haroldpollack/status/1051657219899617280 3. The HB2 saga demonstrates how strong the Christian right is in the state. As does a candidate in a race too close to call insisting there will never be peace in Jerusalem until Jews acknowledge the divinity of Christ: https://forward.com/fast-forward/413488/gop-candidate-no-peace-in-israel-until-jews-muslims-convert-to/ https://forward.com/fast-forward/413488/gop-candidate-no-pea... 4. gun laws are relatively permissive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_North_Carolina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_North_Carolina 5. MJ legalization is behind west coast states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_North_Carolina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_North_Carolina
        • monksy 8y ago
          Not sure if you've lived in NC... but there are a few things to that that I think you may have missed: 1. Yes, the fact that this is uniformly a control state, that is a problem. (Given how they are, I wish they had some special exclusion areas) However, a lot of the east coast operates in the same manner. The early hour for last call is bad as well. 2. Politics that you're talking about have very little to do with the tech sector. Despite what silicon valley would have you believe, you can be a conservative and be a productive member of the industry. 3. This sounds like you're pushing a political agenda here. I think a more succinct way to put this would be: Given the demographic that the tech industry attracts, the bible belt would not be favourable to their lifestyle. 4. (Also see #3) There are reasons for doing tech in NC and it does have a small tech sector.
    • deleted 8y ago
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    • yspeak 8y ago
      How is this tolerated as acceptable comment ? No way this would be tolerated if similar sentiment was said of SF but the South is fair game on HN. Everyone in the South particularly Texas is a bigot except the tech elite who are fleeing the high taxes and cost of living of California and other states for the abundant jobs in TX.
    • jupiter90000 8y ago
      With the rampant sexism in west coast tech companies, you'd think they'd feel right at home in the southern states then.
  • fierro 8y ago
    I suppose the culture, politics, and traditions. Bay Area is generally quite liberal and tolerant, even if it is not the most diverse. Tech workers tend to be highly educated, well traveled, and open to new ideas. In contrast, I feel like the South is more xeno/homophobic, resistant to change, conservative etc. I have well educated family members in the South who are low-key racist. As a single data point, most young people I know/work with in California who comes from the South does not want to return for these specific reasons. That, combined with a lack of the kind of critical mass that provides Bay Area tech workers with a thriving job market / safety net, precludes (to me) the possibility of tech ever truly thriving in the South. I realize how pretentious this probably sounds. Take is as a single anecdote, based off my own personal experience. I would love to be proven wrong, and will gladly eat my words for dinner.
    • dionidium 8y ago
      > most young people I know/work with in California who comes from the South does not want to return for these specific reasons I lived in the City of St. Louis† for 13 years (and in the County for 6 before that) before moving to NYC. What I find is that young folks here who say they're from, say, Cleveland or St. Louis or similar cities in the South and whose experiences since moving have led them to believe that nothing they've found here exists back home, are often from the exurbs of those places and don't actually know what it's like to live in the center of a Midwestern or Southern city.†† I suspect they wouldn't much like the exurbs of New York, either. We like to talk about red states vs. blue states, but the reality is that blue cities give way to purple and then red counties pretty quickly, even in liberal strongholds like New York. Now, look, that's not to say that there are no differences in culture between, say, Atlanta and San Francisco. Obviously there are big ones! But when you dig into what people actually know about living in this or that part of the country, there's often not a lot there. Or, more charitably, individual experiences vary wildly (even within a single metro area). † Not the South, but I think the point I'm trying to make here still holds. †† It also seems worth noting that the experience of living in a big, new city in your early 20s (with all the new freedoms that come with that) as compared to wherever you happened to be when you were 14 is -- well, let's just say there are important perception-shifting factors.
  • amazingman 8y ago
    The average (Bay Area?) tech worker likely sees the thinly veiled threat when the very first question their new neighbors ask is “have you found a church yet”?
    • JPKab 8y ago
      This is a bigoted generalization of an entire region.
      • amazingman 8y ago
        It’s a generalization, sure. It’s also generally true. As far as bigotry goes, I think you knew it was silly to make that claim as you wrote it. I’ll go ahead and dismiss it out of hand, because the example I gave is real and extremely prevalent.
  • ethagknight 8y ago
    Reading through the comments in response to my question, I am always blown away at the stereotyping, arrogance, and general disdain for the south coming out of these sorts of discussions. “The average tech worker” can get along absolutely fine in the south. I don’t know if it’s elitism, ignorance, or just the reverberating sounding board of popular media, but the south is actually quite nice, and I am confident that tech companies could save serious money moving workers out of incredibly high cost areas into better value areas in the south.
    • c3534l 8y ago
      What an amazing coincidence that all the most racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and religious fundamentalists in the House and Senate happen to be from the south. The same people who supported segregation, poll taxes, and the generation that still lynched black people are still alive and voting. That wasn't ancient history, that was something my parents and grandparents remember watching on TV growing up. It beggars belief that all places in America should be equally as bigoted despite the fact not even a single generation has passed since the rest of the country had to send the national guard into the south to prevent mob justice against black children attending a white school. Strom Thurmond was still getting elected into the Bush years. Weird how the south is just like any place else now despite doing nothing to change and giving no indication that they have changed.
    • NotSammyHagar 8y ago
      I'm from the south, in that it's a state that lost the civil war, had active kkk presence when I was a kid, had the national guard called out to protect black people, had racist governor in living memory, just had an article in the nytimes about racist police. Yes there are many good people there. But the public schools I went to have really changed as most of the white people went to private schools. There aren't many minorities, there's lots of implicit racism. I guess country clubs let black people in now (unlike when I was a kid). It's really a different world.
  • deleted 8y ago
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• mbrumlow 8y ago
  Comp may be lower, but so is everything else. At the end of the day the guys in the south have more in their pocket than most Bay Area workers.
  • fierro 8y ago
    I hear this often. I would like to see an analysis, breakdown, or a real life comparison that suggests this, and for which tier of engineers this is true. I think two things; 1) non bay area tech workers severely underestimate the total comps that bay area workers are earning right now. 2) many renters in the Bay Area may actually have more in their pocket. If you are willing to rent a room (i.e not have a studio or 1BR apartment), you're probably paying 1-1.5k more per month. The salary delta for Bay Area techies is way more than 12months*1.5k/month per year. Have some basic financial responsibility and you can really save a lot out here.
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    • tfehring 8y ago
      You need to apply the marginal tax rate for California workers, which would typically be ~41% (24% federal + 9.3% state + 7.65% Social Security + Medicare), to figure out how much more is needed on a pre-tax basis. You need an extra $2.5k/month ($30k/year) pre-tax to make up a $1.5k/month difference in rent, or $3.4k/month ($40k/year) pre-tax to make up a $2k/month difference in rent, which is more realistic if you want your own apartment. And that's just looking at the difference in rent. The number goes up further if you account for the fact that everything else is also more expensive in the Bay Area, and if you add in the additional money you need to save for a down payment, assuming you want to buy at some point. I wouldn't be surprised if that $40k/year difference ends up in the $60k-$70k range if you factor those in. I don't doubt that a $60k-$70k difference in total comp is achievable at FANG. At startups, you probably don't get there without counting equity, which is riskier and far less liquid than equity comp at FANG.
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• burlesona 8y ago
  Do you not realize that this is a bigoted statement?
  • fierro 8y ago
    I disagree that this is a bigoted statement?
    • burlesona 8y ago
      The original statement paints an entire region of people as though they all fit one stereotype. It’s just ironic to me that many people who otherwise laud tolerance, open-mindedness, multiculturalism etc. have no problem stereotyping an entire region of the country as “a basket of deplorables,” as if that region is not full of all different kinds of people, just like any place else. That’s all I’m trying to point out.
  • unreal37 8y ago
    bigot (n): a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions
  • mattcaldwell 8y ago
    I'm a transgender woman. I use the women's bathroom. Should I move to the South? It's not bigoted to call out bigots. It's not bigoted to prefer to live somewhere without bigoted local government.
• fipple 8y ago
  Not exactly. I work with some people who are huntin' fishin' rednecks from rural areas all over the country and are in the Bay Area because really, where else can they make $450K writing code that ships to 500 million people? They'd love a way to do that in hillbilly country and spend their weekends firing shotguns and driving pickups.