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I don’t understand why all the growth need to happen in this place and this place alone. Wouldn’t it be nice if “good” jobs overflow SV and appear in other plac

by option 7y ago

I don’t understand why all the growth need to happen in this place and this place alone. Wouldn’t it be nice if “good” jobs overflow SV and appear in other places? (kind of happening to Austin, Boulder, NY, etc.) And people who already live in the area should absolutely have a right to direct it’s future.

s3r3nity 7y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted - it's the argument from NIMBY's that keeps getting pushed aside and needs to be properly addressed if this issue will ever get resolved. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: you don't have to live in California. For $1B, you could probably build enough houses for every single Google employee in a place like Detroit, or most other states (Arizona? Nevada? Colorado? etc. etc.) and then have those employees live there on campus. In fact, with the savings on cost of living and the like, which would mean those workers don't need as high wages, you could probably do the math that this would _save_ you money in the long run. (...then again someone probably _did_ do the math and determined that the investment in these 20k homes, with current market rates increasing at a crazy pace, would probably be a higher return, but I digress.) People can complain about NIMBY's / supply side all they want, but the fact that the demand side (the labor market) refuses to correct itself more strongly (there is _some_ growth in places like Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Boston, etc., but not enough) is bonkers to me. And if I owned a home in the Valley, my incentive would be to never change that market dynamic.
- ivalm 7y ago
  Why would people move to Detroit for lower salaries to live in Google provided housing? They would just find other jobs in the bay.
  - s3r3nity 7y ago
    Because a rational labor market participant would consider that $1 purchasing power in SF <> $1 purchasing power in [Any other city / state]. Hypothetically if you were planning this as Google you wouldn't make the 1-1 scaling of lower salaries, but if you as employee would pay 80% less rent, could buy a massive home after working for <1 year, and still have more left over than you would ever have working in the bay, the trade-off would at least look somewhat appealing.
    - allochthon 7y ago
      Having lived in Oakland for years, as well as smaller cities around the country, I can add that there's an additional appeal to living in out-of-the-way places. It's definitely a different thing from living in the heart of where everything is happening, like in the middle of San Francisco. But places off the beaten path have their own kind of allure.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  > it's the argument from NIMBY's that keeps getting pushed aside It gets pushed aside because it's a bad argument, and it's often asked in bad faith. "Hubs" for various industries pop up all the time. Hollywood for movies, NYC for finance, etc. There are very real advantages to the strong ecosystems created by gathering so many specialists in a single area, both for companies AND for workers; working for Google making a Google salary in a small office in Topeka instead of SF sounds great until you think about whatever happens if you lose your job somehow, and suddenly you have no local options for jobs of that tier. Plus, most of the NIMBYs are trying to avoid density to preserve suburban sprawl-type neighborhoods, which themselves are anti-environment and classist. Pushing people out to metros where they'll contribute to yet more sprawl is A Bad Thing.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    ”Hubs" for various industries pop up all the time. Hollywood for movies I think you just argued against your point. A lot of blockbuster movies and popular TV shows are being shot in other places because other places are cheaper and they offer better incentives.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      And there are already a lot of programmers who aren't in the bay area. That's fine. That there are cheaper options available that many take advantage of doesn't change the fact that LA is still the center of the movie world (at least for American movies), and SF/SV is the center of the software/internet world, with many choosing to locate in those places despite the higher absolute costs.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        https://www.lamag.com/askchris/percentage-movies-filmed-in-los-angeles/ https://www.lamag.com/askchris/percentage-movies-filmed-in-l... Last year a scant 7 percent of the 100 top-grossing live-action movies were shot here,
chaostheory 7y ago
You bring up a good point. Why is this happening? Because there's value in having a bunch of people of the same profession being grouped to together in a location. It's easier to share ideas, collaborate, and get things done. It was already evident from all the innovations that came when Venetian glass blowers were all forced to live & work in the same little location. Silicon Valley is no different. Maybe this will change in the near future once VR and AR and our internet speeds get much better.

by option 7y ago

s3r3nity 7y ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted - it's the argument from NIMBY's that keeps getting pushed aside and needs to be properly addressed if this issue will ever get resolved. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: you don't have to live in California. For $1B, you could probably build enough houses for every single Google employee in a place like Detroit, or most other states (Arizona? Nevada? Colorado? etc. etc.) and then have those employees live there on campus. In fact, with the savings on cost of living and the like, which would mean those workers don't need as high wages, you could probably do the math that this would _save_ you money in the long run. (...then again someone probably _did_ do the math and determined that the investment in these 20k homes, with current market rates increasing at a crazy pace, would probably be a higher return, but I digress.) People can complain about NIMBY's / supply side all they want, but the fact that the demand side (the labor market) refuses to correct itself more strongly (there is _some_ growth in places like Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Boston, etc., but not enough) is bonkers to me. And if I owned a home in the Valley, my incentive would be to never change that market dynamic.

ivalm 7y ago
Why would people move to Detroit for lower salaries to live in Google provided housing? They would just find other jobs in the bay.
- s3r3nity 7y ago
  Because a rational labor market participant would consider that $1 purchasing power in SF <> $1 purchasing power in [Any other city / state]. Hypothetically if you were planning this as Google you wouldn't make the 1-1 scaling of lower salaries, but if you as employee would pay 80% less rent, could buy a massive home after working for <1 year, and still have more left over than you would ever have working in the bay, the trade-off would at least look somewhat appealing.
  - allochthon 7y ago
    Having lived in Oakland for years, as well as smaller cities around the country, I can add that there's an additional appeal to living in out-of-the-way places. It's definitely a different thing from living in the heart of where everything is happening, like in the middle of San Francisco. But places off the beaten path have their own kind of allure.
TulliusCicero 7y ago
> it's the argument from NIMBY's that keeps getting pushed aside It gets pushed aside because it's a bad argument, and it's often asked in bad faith. "Hubs" for various industries pop up all the time. Hollywood for movies, NYC for finance, etc. There are very real advantages to the strong ecosystems created by gathering so many specialists in a single area, both for companies AND for workers; working for Google making a Google salary in a small office in Topeka instead of SF sounds great until you think about whatever happens if you lose your job somehow, and suddenly you have no local options for jobs of that tier. Plus, most of the NIMBYs are trying to avoid density to preserve suburban sprawl-type neighborhoods, which themselves are anti-environment and classist. Pushing people out to metros where they'll contribute to yet more sprawl is A Bad Thing.
- scarface74 7y ago
  ”Hubs" for various industries pop up all the time. Hollywood for movies I think you just argued against your point. A lot of blockbuster movies and popular TV shows are being shot in other places because other places are cheaper and they offer better incentives.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    And there are already a lot of programmers who aren't in the bay area. That's fine. That there are cheaper options available that many take advantage of doesn't change the fact that LA is still the center of the movie world (at least for American movies), and SF/SV is the center of the software/internet world, with many choosing to locate in those places despite the higher absolute costs.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      https://www.lamag.com/askchris/percentage-movies-filmed-in-los-angeles/ https://www.lamag.com/askchris/percentage-movies-filmed-in-l... Last year a scant 7 percent of the 100 top-grossing live-action movies were shot here,

chaostheory 7y ago

You bring up a good point. Why is this happening? Because there's value in having a bunch of people of the same profession being grouped to together in a location. It's easier to share ideas, collaborate, and get things done. It was already evident from all the innovations that came when Venetian glass blowers were all forced to live & work in the same little location. Silicon Valley is no different. Maybe this will change in the near future once VR and AR and our internet speeds get much better.