4 ms·

If talent was forbidden from leaving NY, that would be the case. But talent is a plane ticket away from SF or Seattle so if SF or Seattle company pays more tha

by kjksf 8y ago

If talent was forbidden from leaving NY, that would be the case. But talent is a plane ticket away from SF or Seattle so if SF or Seattle company pays more than NY company, the talent will move there. If there are 10 thousand jobs created in Seattle instead of NY, the talent will leave NY for Seattle. Seattle will gain 10 thousand highly paid residents and NY (and other areas) will loose them. That's the magic of a positive feedback loop: more employers mean more employees which means more employers. Yes, it does create a more competitive market for both jobs and people. Programmer A has to compete with programmer B for that great job. Company A has to compete with company B for that great programmer. Counter-intuitively, it leads to more stronger companies and programmers in a given area. This is great for the overall ecosystem, less great if you're a weak programmer or company.

grogenaut 8y ago
Yeah it's super easy to move your family to the other side of the country and lose all your friends and what not. Not a hard decision at all
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  Unless this is literally your first time talking about something in the abstract, you should know that comments like the above are referring to stochastic shifts in behavior across an entire population. Unless you have an argument that labor never moves for some reason, this is an exceedingly stupid response.
- geofft 8y ago
  A good amount of hiring in these sectors is for people straight out of college, who generally have no family and are expecting to make new friends anyway. Also, if that's your argument, it makes a lot more sense for Amazon to open several small new offices through the country instead of a single new HQ in one city. (In fact another commenter is trying to argue against me on the grounds that people would be moving to NYC to take these jobs, and the lack of such moves is harming the NYC labor market. Perhaps the two of you should argue with each other.)
  - grogenaut 8y ago
    Amazon actually has quite a few local offices now. 2k+ SF, 400+ in Irvine, 150+ in Denver, STL, Chicago, etc. Many of them went in as soon as Amazon figured out how to charge local sales tax in those states and happened in 2014-2015. Of Amazon's total dev population about 25% is college age. Much more is 5+10 years out of college and where Amazon is looking to recruit.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      >figure out how to charge local sales tax That's laughable. Charging local sales tax was always a trivial excercise for Amazon. They fought it until they knew they couldn't win any more and then embraced it knowing that they would want to try to control the discussion and try to force any smaller competitors to comply as well to eliminate any advantage for their competition. In other words, they never would have started charging local sales tax if they thought they could get away with it.
nerfhammer 8y ago
By this logic it shouldn't matter where any job is located. Why does anyone seem to care about where jobs are located then?

by kjksf 8y ago

grogenaut 8y ago

Yeah it's super easy to move your family to the other side of the country and lose all your friends and what not. Not a hard decision at all

wutbrodo 8y ago
Unless this is literally your first time talking about something in the abstract, you should know that comments like the above are referring to stochastic shifts in behavior across an entire population. Unless you have an argument that labor never moves for some reason, this is an exceedingly stupid response.
geofft 8y ago
A good amount of hiring in these sectors is for people straight out of college, who generally have no family and are expecting to make new friends anyway. Also, if that's your argument, it makes a lot more sense for Amazon to open several small new offices through the country instead of a single new HQ in one city. (In fact another commenter is trying to argue against me on the grounds that people would be moving to NYC to take these jobs, and the lack of such moves is harming the NYC labor market. Perhaps the two of you should argue with each other.)
- grogenaut 8y ago
  Amazon actually has quite a few local offices now. 2k+ SF, 400+ in Irvine, 150+ in Denver, STL, Chicago, etc. Many of them went in as soon as Amazon figured out how to charge local sales tax in those states and happened in 2014-2015. Of Amazon's total dev population about 25% is college age. Much more is 5+10 years out of college and where Amazon is looking to recruit.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    >figure out how to charge local sales tax That's laughable. Charging local sales tax was always a trivial excercise for Amazon. They fought it until they knew they couldn't win any more and then embraced it knowing that they would want to try to control the discussion and try to force any smaller competitors to comply as well to eliminate any advantage for their competition. In other words, they never would have started charging local sales tax if they thought they could get away with it.

nerfhammer 8y ago

By this logic it shouldn't matter where any job is located. Why does anyone seem to care about where jobs are located then?