3 ms·

I can believe that, but NYC is just as bad, maybe even worse, isn't it? Seems like "out of the frying pan into the fire".

kcorbitt 7y ago
Software engineer salaries are fairly comparable between NYC and the Bay Area, although most quantitative sources I've seen have NYC coming in slightly lower. But NYC could have a large number of engineers who (1) are willing to work for Facebook (2) for $240k but (3) are unwilling to leave NYC. Expanding their NYC office will allow Facebook to hire more of those engineers without lowering their hiring bar or further fragmenting campuses.
ghaff 7y ago
At a minimum, NYC is just very different from SF and the South Bay. Leaving aside costs and salaries, which are both probably a bit higher in the Bay Area, the environments overall are just a lot different. Lots of people who love the access to nature, the climate, etc. in the Bay Area would never move to NYC. And lots of people who consider anyplace that's not Manhattan to be a provincial hick town would never move to the Bay Area.
- tombert 7y ago
  > Lots of people who love the access to nature, the climate, etc. in the Bay Area would never move to NYC. And lots of people who consider anyplace that's not Manhattan to be a provincial hick town would never move to the Bay Area I'm closer to the second camp (though I live in Brooklyn). Something a lot of people don't seem to realize is that there are a lot of very smart people working on trading apps for big banks on Wall Street that absolutely hate it. High Frequency Trading apps require a ton of programming talent, but a lot of the engineers who work on this stuff really dislike the bank atmosphere. When I worked at Jet.com, I had several coworkers who were substantially smarter than me, who actually took a paycut to work for Jet, simply because they hated the bank environment so much. I think some of the tech companies know this fact, and feel that they can probably poach some of this talent by offering competitive salaries while having a more interesting atmosphere. EDIT: DISCLAIMER I work for one of these "primarily California companies expanding stuff to NYC".
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I actually like visiting Manhattan but I don't think I could ever tolerate living there. I spent a summer interning in Midtown for a small consulting firm while in business school. We're admittedly talking pre-Giuliani New York in the summer with very little money but it still wore on me to the point where I pretty much decided I wasn't interested in working there. I do, on the other hand, understand the attraction of the Bay Area given enough money although, in this case, the negative side of the balance sheet has gotten much longer and redder. I agree with your basic point. Another reason I never seriously went after an investment banking job was that the sort of thing I was interested in was pretty much viewed as grunt stuff that techies did, i.e. not really respected. (ADDED: I was using Manhattan as a term for the [nice uber-urbanized] parts generally although I know that's not accurate. I don't think I ever set foot in Brooklyn until relatively recently.)
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      The nice thing about New York is that the transport infrastructure, while unreliable, exists so that you could live anywhere in the five (well, four) subway connected boroughs that pleases you. Want to live in a leafy suburb with a modest front and back yard? Head to Queens! The Bay Area’s transit system is a joke in comparison; if companies have to resort to a private shuttle system to get anything done, it’s reflective of a failure in planning.

kcorbitt 7y ago

Software engineer salaries are fairly comparable between NYC and the Bay Area, although most quantitative sources I've seen have NYC coming in slightly lower. But NYC could have a large number of engineers who (1) are willing to work for Facebook (2) for $240k but (3) are unwilling to leave NYC. Expanding their NYC office will allow Facebook to hire more of those engineers without lowering their hiring bar or further fragmenting campuses.

ghaff 7y ago

At a minimum, NYC is just very different from SF and the South Bay. Leaving aside costs and salaries, which are both probably a bit higher in the Bay Area, the environments overall are just a lot different. Lots of people who love the access to nature, the climate, etc. in the Bay Area would never move to NYC. And lots of people who consider anyplace that's not Manhattan to be a provincial hick town would never move to the Bay Area.

tombert 7y ago
> Lots of people who love the access to nature, the climate, etc. in the Bay Area would never move to NYC. And lots of people who consider anyplace that's not Manhattan to be a provincial hick town would never move to the Bay Area I'm closer to the second camp (though I live in Brooklyn). Something a lot of people don't seem to realize is that there are a lot of very smart people working on trading apps for big banks on Wall Street that absolutely hate it. High Frequency Trading apps require a ton of programming talent, but a lot of the engineers who work on this stuff really dislike the bank atmosphere. When I worked at Jet.com, I had several coworkers who were substantially smarter than me, who actually took a paycut to work for Jet, simply because they hated the bank environment so much. I think some of the tech companies know this fact, and feel that they can probably poach some of this talent by offering competitive salaries while having a more interesting atmosphere. EDIT: DISCLAIMER I work for one of these "primarily California companies expanding stuff to NYC".
- ghaff 7y ago
  I actually like visiting Manhattan but I don't think I could ever tolerate living there. I spent a summer interning in Midtown for a small consulting firm while in business school. We're admittedly talking pre-Giuliani New York in the summer with very little money but it still wore on me to the point where I pretty much decided I wasn't interested in working there. I do, on the other hand, understand the attraction of the Bay Area given enough money although, in this case, the negative side of the balance sheet has gotten much longer and redder. I agree with your basic point. Another reason I never seriously went after an investment banking job was that the sort of thing I was interested in was pretty much viewed as grunt stuff that techies did, i.e. not really respected. (ADDED: I was using Manhattan as a term for the [nice uber-urbanized] parts generally although I know that's not accurate. I don't think I ever set foot in Brooklyn until relatively recently.)
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    The nice thing about New York is that the transport infrastructure, while unreliable, exists so that you could live anywhere in the five (well, four) subway connected boroughs that pleases you. Want to live in a leafy suburb with a modest front and back yard? Head to Queens! The Bay Area’s transit system is a joke in comparison; if companies have to resort to a private shuttle system to get anything done, it’s reflective of a failure in planning.