14 ms·

The 'root' cause is that industries tend to concentrate, and that's not an easy problem to solve. And at the same time there's a massive economic draw, Califor

by davidw 7y ago

The 'root' cause is that industries tend to concentrate, and that's not an easy problem to solve. And at the same time there's a massive economic draw, California refuses to let the market provide anything like enough housing.

CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
Hire remote. Provide relocation assistance to get developers to move out of major cities, instead of the other way. Fringe benefit: Less payroll overhead since the cost of living in rural areas is much lower. > that's not an easy problem to solve. The solution is simple, it's just getting people to actually do it that's hard. > And at the same time there's a massive economic draw, California refuses to let the market provide anything like enough housing. I don't know enough about California's politics to provide insightful commentary, but from what I have heard, none of it was good or sane.
- davidw 7y ago
  I've worked remote, and it's ok, but it's not the same thing as being in the office. It's not the same thing as having a bunch of local companies to choose from. Or from the company's point of view, it's nice to have a lot of local workers. And then there's stuff like high quality universities, and of course venture capital.
  - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
    > It's not the same thing as having a bunch of local companies to choose from. What is the intrinsic advantage to having "local companies" to choose from in a world where every company you'd want to work for also offered remote positions? > Or from the company's point of view, it's nice to have a lot of local workers. Same question for that perspective, except I do have a few ideas of a cynical answer to that question from the company's perspective.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      >What is the intrinsic advantage to having "local companies" to choose from in a world where every company you'd want to work for also offered remote positions? The advantage is that on the path in-between now and the perfect future where all companies are remote-first( that we are not sure will ever happen), you will not be at a significant disadvantage when it comes to job prospects. I don't think that many people would be willing to heavily limit their job prospects (not even taking into account all the other advantages that come with living in a densely populated coastal city) while waiting for that "bright all-remote future" that may never come.
      - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
        As a short-term strategic move, sure. That's pragmatic. But given a ceteris paribus comparison of the two, my question is what is inherently superior about the onsite position over the remote position?
  - onemoresoop 7y ago
    How about remote offices or remote subdivisions? It always worked out, why wouldn't it work out now?
    - davidw 7y ago
      Remote offices seem like a good compromise once a company is big enough. There are still coordination issues though, I would imagine.
manigandham 7y ago
Why is it not easy? The internet is global just like the products these companies create. There's not much, if any, reason they need to be so consolidated in a single region or city.
- dymk 7y ago
  Face-to-face communication has not been supplanted with online tools yet, and face-to-face communication is very important to this job.
  - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
    > and face-to-face communication is very important to this job [citation needed] It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team.
    - dymk 7y ago
      > It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team. [citation needed] It's clearly important enough for Amazon, Facebook, and Google to invest heavily in already established tech hubs where it's incredibly expensive to build, so they can have their engineers working in the same physical location(s).
      - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
        Do I understand your argument correctly? Effectively, what I'm reading is, "Because large tech companies do X, it's very important for everyone else too (including billion-dollar companies that don't do X)."
        dymk 7y ago
        You're not understanding my argument correctly. I'm saying, in spite of it being cheaper to distribute their engineers and hire remote, they do not. These aren't companies run by incompetent people, and they're large enough to have some remote workforce, so they understand how remote workers compare to onsite with as few other variables changed. These companies hire onsite because it's important to be able to meet face-to-face. Emotion is particularly poorly conveyed over email or VC, and sometimes to convince somebody of something, meeting them in person is the best way to do that.
falsedan 7y ago
Software development isn't an industry like oil refining. Imagine if all the architects or civil engineers were located in a small handful of cities!
- davidw 7y ago
  Architects and civil engineers mostly work where their services are needed, which makes sense. The economics of their industries are different.
  - falsedan 7y ago
    I don’t know what the point of this fact is. Architects and engineers mostly work from offices, which are usually located so that there is a good pool of potential employees around.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Oil workers go to where the oil is. Which is both concentrated and distributed. Software is dematerialised, which means, perversely, it tends to concentrate to a far greater extent. Much as local and regional entertainment, constrained by material proximiy to audience, gave way to Hollywood.
erentz 7y ago
People respond to this agglomeration factor with the argument we should “hire remote cuz the internet thing”. But the other factor to consider is how we are less tied by our jobs to physical location and that allows more choice in where people decide to live too. A lot of people want to live in the Bay Area and other coastal cities. They don’t want to live where housing is cheap in the Midwest. So you may have a liberating force in the way jobs have changed, but that works both ways. People are moving to the big coastal cities. The big coastal cities (and states) are doing a piss poor job of accommodating this - actually they’ve taken active measures to worsen the housing problem with zoning and tax rules. I would guess that google would get a lot more bang for its buck if it just outright bribed politicians with that $1 billion to enact policies that allowed constructing of more housing and better transit.
- davidw 7y ago
  > I would guess that google would get a lot more bang for its buck if it just outright bribed politicians with that $1 billion to enact policies that allowed constructing of more housing and better transit. Hah - see my comment elsewhere. Local politicians are definitely the choke point that doesn't allow the market to function properly.
xtracto 7y ago
Given that "About 71 percent of tech employees in the Valley are foreign born," I think that if a group of FAANG+Friends agreed to open campuses in some other state at the same time, they could easily build a new tech community.
- CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
  If they can launch a global currency, they damn sure can build a tech community in a red state.
gamblor956 7y ago
California recently passed several laws to make it easier for the market to provide housing. However, local governments are still the ultimate deciders and many of them are opposed to new housing, such as in the SF Peninsula. Other parts of CA are less resistant to new housing. In LA's downtown, for example, almost 50,000 units of new housing are being brought online between 2016-2021. In both Korea Town and Hollywood, more than 5,000 new units have come online in the past 3 years (and they're already the densest neighborhoods). In Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Rey, roughly 2500 new units have opened/will open up in 2018 and 2019. Along the Metro Expo Line, more than 25,000 residential units within 4 blocks of a station are planned or already under construction. Inglewood will see somewhere between 500 and 2500 new apartments in the neighborhood around the Sofi Stadium, not including other residential development. Even Santa Monica will see roughly 2000 new apartments over the next 2 years. Edit: these are just the developments that I'm aware of. There are plenty more. If you're interested in following LA-area development, there are several Facebook groups devoted to this subject.

by davidw 7y ago

CiPHPerCoder 7y ago

Hire remote. Provide relocation assistance to get developers to move out of major cities, instead of the other way. Fringe benefit: Less payroll overhead since the cost of living in rural areas is much lower. > that's not an easy problem to solve. The solution is simple, it's just getting people to actually do it that's hard. > And at the same time there's a massive economic draw, California refuses to let the market provide anything like enough housing. I don't know enough about California's politics to provide insightful commentary, but from what I have heard, none of it was good or sane.

davidw 7y ago
I've worked remote, and it's ok, but it's not the same thing as being in the office. It's not the same thing as having a bunch of local companies to choose from. Or from the company's point of view, it's nice to have a lot of local workers. And then there's stuff like high quality universities, and of course venture capital.
- CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
  > It's not the same thing as having a bunch of local companies to choose from. What is the intrinsic advantage to having "local companies" to choose from in a world where every company you'd want to work for also offered remote positions? > Or from the company's point of view, it's nice to have a lot of local workers. Same question for that perspective, except I do have a few ideas of a cynical answer to that question from the company's perspective.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    >What is the intrinsic advantage to having "local companies" to choose from in a world where every company you'd want to work for also offered remote positions? The advantage is that on the path in-between now and the perfect future where all companies are remote-first( that we are not sure will ever happen), you will not be at a significant disadvantage when it comes to job prospects. I don't think that many people would be willing to heavily limit their job prospects (not even taking into account all the other advantages that come with living in a densely populated coastal city) while waiting for that "bright all-remote future" that may never come.
    - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
      As a short-term strategic move, sure. That's pragmatic. But given a ceteris paribus comparison of the two, my question is what is inherently superior about the onsite position over the remote position?
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  How about remote offices or remote subdivisions? It always worked out, why wouldn't it work out now?
  - davidw 7y ago
    Remote offices seem like a good compromise once a company is big enough. There are still coordination issues though, I would imagine.

manigandham 7y ago

Why is it not easy? The internet is global just like the products these companies create. There's not much, if any, reason they need to be so consolidated in a single region or city.

dymk 7y ago
Face-to-face communication has not been supplanted with online tools yet, and face-to-face communication is very important to this job.
- CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
  > and face-to-face communication is very important to this job [citation needed] It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team.
  - dymk 7y ago
    > It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team. [citation needed] It's clearly important enough for Amazon, Facebook, and Google to invest heavily in already established tech hubs where it's incredibly expensive to build, so they can have their engineers working in the same physical location(s).
    - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
      Do I understand your argument correctly? Effectively, what I'm reading is, "Because large tech companies do X, it's very important for everyone else too (including billion-dollar companies that don't do X)."
      - dymk 7y ago
        You're not understanding my argument correctly. I'm saying, in spite of it being cheaper to distribute their engineers and hire remote, they do not. These aren't companies run by incompetent people, and they're large enough to have some remote workforce, so they understand how remote workers compare to onsite with as few other variables changed. These companies hire onsite because it's important to be able to meet face-to-face. Emotion is particularly poorly conveyed over email or VC, and sometimes to convince somebody of something, meeting them in person is the best way to do that.

falsedan 7y ago

Software development isn't an industry like oil refining. Imagine if all the architects or civil engineers were located in a small handful of cities!

davidw 7y ago
Architects and civil engineers mostly work where their services are needed, which makes sense. The economics of their industries are different.
- falsedan 7y ago
  I don’t know what the point of this fact is. Architects and engineers mostly work from offices, which are usually located so that there is a good pool of potential employees around.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Oil workers go to where the oil is. Which is both concentrated and distributed. Software is dematerialised, which means, perversely, it tends to concentrate to a far greater extent. Much as local and regional entertainment, constrained by material proximiy to audience, gave way to Hollywood.

erentz 7y ago

People respond to this agglomeration factor with the argument we should “hire remote cuz the internet thing”. But the other factor to consider is how we are less tied by our jobs to physical location and that allows more choice in where people decide to live too. A lot of people want to live in the Bay Area and other coastal cities. They don’t want to live where housing is cheap in the Midwest. So you may have a liberating force in the way jobs have changed, but that works both ways. People are moving to the big coastal cities. The big coastal cities (and states) are doing a piss poor job of accommodating this - actually they’ve taken active measures to worsen the housing problem with zoning and tax rules. I would guess that google would get a lot more bang for its buck if it just outright bribed politicians with that $1 billion to enact policies that allowed constructing of more housing and better transit.

davidw 7y ago
> I would guess that google would get a lot more bang for its buck if it just outright bribed politicians with that $1 billion to enact policies that allowed constructing of more housing and better transit. Hah - see my comment elsewhere. Local politicians are definitely the choke point that doesn't allow the market to function properly.

xtracto 7y ago

Given that "About 71 percent of tech employees in the Valley are foreign born," I think that if a group of FAANG+Friends agreed to open campuses in some other state at the same time, they could easily build a new tech community.

CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
If they can launch a global currency, they damn sure can build a tech community in a red state.

gamblor956 7y ago

California recently passed several laws to make it easier for the market to provide housing. However, local governments are still the ultimate deciders and many of them are opposed to new housing, such as in the SF Peninsula. Other parts of CA are less resistant to new housing. In LA's downtown, for example, almost 50,000 units of new housing are being brought online between 2016-2021. In both Korea Town and Hollywood, more than 5,000 new units have come online in the past 3 years (and they're already the densest neighborhoods). In Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Rey, roughly 2500 new units have opened/will open up in 2018 and 2019. Along the Metro Expo Line, more than 25,000 residential units within 4 blocks of a station are planned or already under construction. Inglewood will see somewhere between 500 and 2500 new apartments in the neighborhood around the Sofi Stadium, not including other residential development. Even Santa Monica will see roughly 2000 new apartments over the next 2 years. Edit: these are just the developments that I'm aware of. There are plenty more. If you're interested in following LA-area development, there are several Facebook groups devoted to this subject.