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MainStreet – $10k to Leave Bay Area
- blakesterz 7y agoI'm not sure if this is a real site or not... but let's assume it is, what's the deal with "Stop waiting in line for brunch"? I get the commute and own your own home things, these seem like BIG deals in life. Is standing in life for brunch really the 3rd biggest problem with living in the Bay Area or is this an inside joke or something like that? Everything I know about living around there I've learned from HN and I don't think I've ever seen someone complain or even joke about troubles at brunch.
- chipgap98 7y agoI assume this is a joke about millenials and brunch. Kind of like how millenials can't afford houses because they spend too much money on avocados
- csa 7y agoI believe the meme is “avocado toast” — a perfect brunch!
- i_am_nomad 7y agoIt honestly seems like a Brooklynite's take on urban woes, without understanding that brunch isn't nearly as big a deal in the Bay Area as it is there.
- robbyt 7y agoIt's not a problem here.
- samstave 7y agoSeriously. Name the last time you went to brunch. Now name the last time you were so upset at a brunch line that it inspired you to bitch about it online, let alone make it a part of your job-sites pitch...
- steveklabnik 7y agoIt's also just volume of spots, and walkability/ease of transport between them. I made a mistake and tried to get brunch at 11am in Bushwick recently, the place didn't open till noon. I walked a few minutes and just got it somewhere else. By 1pm there was a wait, but for the first three hours that spot is open, no big deal at all.
- bluntfang 7y agoThere's a joke I like to make at Burning Man when I see lines for dumb shit: If I wanted to wait in line I would've went to San Fransisco.
- stevehawk 7y agohaving never been to burning man.. what are there lines for at burning man?
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Is standing in life for brunch really the 3rd biggest problem with living in the Bay Area It's not a problem. More another manufactured nuisance of the kind San Francisco seems to enjoy creating. New Yorkers have brunch later, brunch boozier and--broadly speaking--brunch with a reservation. San Franciscans (or at least my friends in San Francisco) eat brunch at the crack of dawn at establishments that prefer lines out the door to taking reservations. (They may claim to take "reservations" at the door. Those aren't reservations. They're names on a wait list. Lots of waiting.) It's a cultural factor loosely related to (a) recent population and affluence increases outstripping a locale's (b) ability to build new businesses in the midst of (c) a greater value placed on exclusivity than time. (It's also present in Brooklyn and parts of Los Angeles.)
- akhilcacharya 7y agoI'm a software engineer at a FANG, in a VHCOL city...and I feel completely out of touch with whatever cultural circles these people live in. > We are three former Googlers who are on a mission to help create jobs in rural and suburban cities around America. Ok, yeah, that explains it
- ShteiLoups 7y agoCould you please explain how that explains it to someone who needs more explanation?
- akhilcacharya 7y agoI'm also a software engineer allegedly in the same cultural circles as these folks...but this brunch reference is honestly baffling to me to an extent that it makes me wonder if I even am in the same class as these folks. I've never even been to brunch!
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoFor anyone like me who hasn't seen the VHCOL acronym before: Very High Cost Of Living.
- paulgb 7y agoI think it's meant to be a synecdoche for all of the bad parts of living in a crowded metropolis.
- rdiddly 7y agoIt's about waiting in line for everything you have to wait in line for.
- mattrp 7y agoheh last time I stood in line for brunch was in Nashville. There are all sorts of pros/cons wherever you go. I’ve lived in Charlotte, Denver, Chicago, Austin, New York and have traveled enough to places like La, SF, London, etc that I don’t need maps to get around and know many of the neighborhoods fairly well. I don’t have a 6 horse barn like the person above but we did move a bit further out and have a pretty decent chunk of property but I can still be at one of several airports in around an hour. What would I change? I’d be closer to family. My wife and I both grew up as transplants in towns that were separate from our extended families. We don’t know what it’s like to walk down the street to visit grandma. Or having lots of siblings and cousins nearby. I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance who bought a house for his daughter and fiancé to renovate. He and his extended family own close to twenty houses in a neighborhood together - I’m sure they have a whole other set of issues being that close but I’d be happy if close was like a two hour drive or less rather than an all day flight a few times a year. Give that some thought. in my view it almost doesn’t matter where you live. Everything has something nice to like and something you won’t like.
- 333c 7y agoI do think it's funny that the footer lists an address in San Jose. It's also unclear from the "how it works" page whether it's actually required that participants initially reside in the Bay Area to be eligible for the program.
- readyp1 7y agoYeah, they should definitely clarify that on the "how it works" page. However, they do state residency as a requirement in section 4(a) here: https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms
- mjlee 7y agoFrom the contact details: 105 North 1st Street #28, San Jose, CA 95113 I'm certainly not an expert, but Wikipedia claims that's in the Bay Area... Are they paying their own team to quit?
- zpallin 7y agoAsk most people in SF or Oakland and they'll probably think SJ is not part of the bay area. Lol. Mostly joking, but I grew up in the Bay Area and live in SJ so it's not actually that uncommon to hear, especially from new folks to the area.
- jweir 7y agoI was surprised to see that too. They aren’t walking the walk.
- steveklabnik 7y agoExtra cynicism: by getting others to leave, they can stay and it gets better for them.
- jrockway 7y agoIf I owned a house in the bay area, I would be asking anyone and everyone to move there. More money for me! Rent in downtown Mountain View is higher than Manhattan.
- icebraining 7y agoI think it's a post office box: https://www.yelp.com/biz/us-post-office-san-jose-35 https://www.yelp.com/biz/us-post-office-san-jose-35
- thomascgalvin 7y agoI moved to Boston about 18 months ago, and while it's not as crazy out here as it is in the Bay, I really don't think I want to spend the next ten years with a 3 hour daily commute, living in a house that costs four times as much, for half the square footage, as the one I had in rural New York.
- akhilcacharya 7y agoI'm around Boston too. Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but what's your commute like now?
- sfkdjf9j3j 7y agoA 1.5 hour commute is pretty unusual, how did you end up in that situation?
- gwbas1c 7y agoI got a laugh out of the picture of the house; a stereotypical Eichler. (https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/what-are-eichler-homes/ https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/what-are-eichler-homes/) Eichlers are very common in Palo Alto, but not so common throughout the rest of the US. (Edit: And yes, I left the Bay Area, and bought what most people living in the Bay Area would consider a mansion, in a high-cost-of-living state. I paid less then my Bay Area rent for a 1-bedroom with a loft.)
- i_am_nomad 7y agoThanks, I never knew there was a name for this, though I've seen this kind of house all through the Peninsula - there are also a lot of them in the hills west of San Mateo. And, now that I think of it, Erlich Bachmann's house is one.
- cheese4242 7y agoYep, Erlich Bachmann's house immediately came to mind when I saw the picture.
- 0xEFF 7y agoLikely intentional because Steve Jobs grew up in a similar home. https://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/jobs-likeler-no-eichler https://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/jobs-likeler-no-eichl...
- sharkmerry 7y agoThe link's headline that you posted says "For the record: Steve Jobs wasn’t raised in an Eichler—but partner Steve Wozniak was."
- 0xEFF 7y agoThe article is entirely about Steve Jobs growing up in a home very similar to, but not technically, an Eichler.
- 7y ago
- et2o 7y agoSo it looks like you have to join one of their "Main Street Communities" and work remotely from there for 1 year, but I can't find a listing of the community locations anywhere. Do they not exist yet? What gives? Terms: https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms
- flowersjeff 7y agoSo...basically good luck ever collecting on that 10k.
- guitarsteve 7y agoFine print here https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms
- sgarrity 7y agoWhere does the money come from?
- Finnucane 7y agoIt is not entirely clear from the website, but it basically seems to be a kind of employment agency--they set you up with a workspace, and get you jobs with their paying corporate clients. So the deal they're offering is to give you a cut of the fee in exchange for moving, because they need to have workers to sell before they can make any money. Also a little odd is that they want to bring jobs to non-urban areas, but they're selling themselves as an escape for people in expensive urban areas, rather than an opportunity for people in non-urban areas who need jobs. And it also leaves aside less expensive urban areas that need jobs.
- sct202 7y agoAre recruiting fees that high that they are able to pay their own staff and the recruits $10k (plus the "member" benefits) and make money?
- auspex 7y agoUsually 30% of the first year salary. Hire a $150k dev the recruiter gets $50k
- kfk 7y agoThe idea is sound. There are a lot of amazing places in Italy where I am from. Some of these towns sell houses for few thousands. Just think about it. No traffic. No over-crowded restaurants. Your own property. Sun. Sea side. I think this is more an issue of community. Of course if you are the only remote worker in a place with aging population is not fun. But if some start up would be able to build a community of remote workers in a specific location, wouldn't that make a lot of sense? Also once you have a bunch of highly skilled people in a specific location it gets easier for companies to hire there.
- asdfman123 7y agoAnother option is you can just find a job in Dallas or Atlanta or something. There's enough programming jobs in cities like that, the COL is relatively low, you can live in pretty much any part of town that suits your fancy, and they're probably much nicer to live in than you might imagine if you've never left the coasts. Personally if I were looking to move anywhere after leaving the bay I'd consider Raleigh or Nashville. Midsize-to-largeish cities are pretty cool.
- namdnay 7y agoI think it depends on each person. I briefly lived in Dallas, it's just way too ... flat? No sea, no mountains, no thanks :)
- asdfman123 7y agoThat's a good point, which is actually why I listed Nashville and Raleigh. Actually, Boulder would be pretty damn cool but without checking, I think it's essentially a high COL place by now.
- jahlove 7y agoIt is.
- nkrisc 7y ago
- i_am_nomad 7y ago"To collect the $10,000, you’ll need to become a MainStreet Member and work out of one of our MainStreet offices for at least 12 months." This is raising red flags, somehow.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoMainStreet is sharing a cut of their fee taken in from employers who want to pay less for labor, but aren't entirely comfortable with remote work. Think of it as headhunter meets coworking space meets UpWork. If you can't fix your corporate culture, and you can't compete on comp, fake it until you make it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- harikb 7y agoI think they meant to write work at of one of our MainStreet companies (who hired you) for at least 12 months. This might be a recruiter + wework deal
- awithrow 7y agoThat's not really that different from a signing bonus. Just rebranded for a catchy headline
- mattrp 7y agoBesides have you tried moving a modest amount of stuff across the country these days? Unless it’s literally the clothes on your back, $10k is barely enough to move very far.
- jefftk 7y agoMore details seem to be in https://workonmainstreet.com/how-it-works https://workonmainstreet.com/how-it-works
- tootie 7y agoAt the risk of sounding overly woke, houses and cars are terrible for the climate. Also, there's a reason that big businesses and highly-educated professionals gravitate towards. More fluid labor and job markets. I'd think a better goal here would be build up technology industries in smaller cities.
- deadbunny 7y agoHouses are terrible for the climate?
- GhettoChild 7y agoI am assuming that they mean the clear cutting of natural habitats to build more housing in some areas.
- tootie 7y agoThe biggest factor is actually heating and cooling. Central heated apartment buildings use far less energy than individually heated houses.
- helen___keller 7y agosprawling suburbs that necessitate driving everywhere are terrible for the climate Houses themselves aren't great for the climate (there's CO2 emission in materials productions, heavy machinery operation, etc), but they're necessary for human survival so it's hard to claim we have an alternative
- odonnellryan 7y agoAlso heating a 2k+ Sqft home when you're just two old folk (used to get this a lot in more expensive retirement communities) can't be great!
- dublinben 7y ago>it's hard to claim we have an alternative The alternative is apartments, which use roughly half as much energy as single-family houses. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11731 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11731
- jrochkind1 7y agoWeird. The splash page says: > help you find a job you love in a city you can afford But the "About", "For Companies" and "How it works" pages are pretty focused on remote work: > Companies are more ready than ever to utilize distributed workforces, and this is creating opportunities for workers everywhere to be part of the digital economy... MainStreet provides the community, communication, and career tools you need to be happy and successful as a remote employee. > Interested in expanding your remote workforce? ...All our candidates have been evaluated for remote-readiness so they can hit the ground running from day one. > The companies we work with pay us to help successfully recruit and retain remote talent. Sounds like it's REALLY about setting up remote work, which is not what the home page implies, right? Doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me. Ah right, the "About" page leads with: > We are three former Googlers who are on a mission to help create jobs in rural and suburban cities around America. OK, it's just the usual engineer-entrepeneurs trying to "get rich by doing good," with a plan that may or may not make sense either on the business or the pro-social end. I suppose the employer's interest in paying them to help recruit and coordinate remote workers is... paying them less then they'd have to in the bay area? (plus less overhead compared to on-premises in the bay area, office rent etc).
- TheMagicHorsey 7y agoI think its crystal clear. They are making remote work easy for employees and employers, which enables you to work from cities other than coastal ones. Is that really such a hard thing to understand? I Think most people connect the dots. It doesn't need a mini blog post to explain.
- nkrisc 7y agoSure. But what's not clear is how, especially you read further about "Main Street offices" and "MainStreet member." It's not clear if they're just remote-focused recruiting agency or something else.
- TheMagicHorsey 7y agoI'll agree with you there. They are incredibly opaque about what, where, how much, etc. I came away thinking ... hmmm I'm interested in remote work. I'm really interested in convincing my current employer to use a program like this. BUT, I'm not going to take the trouble to email people because I'm an engineer, and I'd prefer to just send a link to HR. But this link has no information. So meh.
- tempsy 7y agoIt's really hard to beat living and working in San Francisco. Having lived here a few years I find costs highly overstated for single people. e.g. some costs: Studio in Lower Haight (water + trash included): $2100/month Utilities: $50 Monthly Muni: $81 Groceries are no more expensive than anywhere else. Eating out is similar vs other cities I've been to, and if anything the quality of the food is better here at the mid price range. If I lived in a smaller or mid-sized city there's a good chance I would have to get a car, so any savings in terms of rent would just go to owning and maintaining a car.
- mdszy 7y agoI live in a medium sized city in Wisconsin (~100k population) and my costs are: - $850 for rent for a 2 bedroom 1200sqft apartment - ~$70 for utilities (i have free heat so it's less in the winter and more in the summer) and if i still had the car i previously had, my only expense would be gas (~$100/mo) and the minor maintenance it needed, which was less than $1000/yr (i tracked everything each year i had it). I bought a newer car recently and am financing it. I pay $350/mo on it and gas is closer to $200/mo for it but that's still well within the over $1000 difference in living costs. I think you vastly understate just how insane $2100/mo for rent is, and overstate how much it costs to own a car. If $1k a month in savings isn't enough to own/maintain a car and that's a problem for you, you need a car that doesn't cost over $1k a month to own.
- shhshahassa 7y agoYes, but you live in Wisconsin haha
- realbarack 7y agoPaying an extra $1.5k per month on rent isn't insane when it gets you $50 or $100k additional annual salary.
- tempsy 7y ago$1.5k is generous...it's more like $500-$1k maybe. I'm lucky to have my own place in SF but most people have roommates because SF rentals is mostly houses, but if you lived nearly anywhere else you'd almost certainly find your own place and not scramble to find a roommate. So you go from paying $2k/month with roommates to maybe $1.5k/month without. Not a huge difference.
- beauzero 7y agoAtlanta for $ to cost of living/quality. Rural Alabama like Sylacauga (metro/eletric company fiber to your home) for "work from home". Both my wife and I work from home in rural Georgia (Carrollton)...$300k bought us 25 acres, a refurbished 2500 square feet farm house, 6 stall horse barn, 1/2 acre pond, and shop with concrete floor and electricity. There are options out there, lots of them.
- chasd00 7y agowow that almost exactly describes where i'm headed to next but outside of Dallas. My plan is to lease the stables since I have no livestock and don't desire any. Most of my family are West Texas ranchers and oil hands, i'm the lone computer nerd. I have no desire to work as hard as the ranchers in my family do.
- ramraj07 7y agoHow far out of Dallas do you need to get 25 acres for 300k?
- chasd00 7y agowell, ok not exactly. I'm not getting 25 acres for 300k but am getting 10 with horse barn/stables, a large "shop", a house+pool the wife loves and a MIL suite for about 650k and 30min Southeast of downtown. It's not a done deal but my mother-in-law will be moving in with me/wife+2kids so we're taking it seriously and will be making an offer soon.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoCongrats on the estate!
- nradov 7y agoTexas is the #1 destination for people leaving California. https://m.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-california-where-to-go-cheap-states-best-14811246.php https://m.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-ca...
- usaar333 7y agoWho is this targeting? An engineer already saves far more than this moving to a lower income tax state with lower COL (e.g. Washington, Nevada, Texas).
- jiveturkey 7y agoIt's targetting people that don't want to move. "How it Works": > A free remote-first office, designed specifically for the needs of remote workers So what it is, is a we-work like space aggregator, positioning themselves somewhat above the value chain of just empty space.
- nkrisc 7y ago> To celebrate our company’s launch, we’re passing along our fees back to you in the form of a $10,000 check. To collect the $10,000, you’ll need to become a MainStreet Member and work out of one of our MainStreet offices for at least 12 months. But what is a "MainStreet Member" and how does one become one? What/where are "MainStreet offices"? So is it remote or not? You're working remotely for a customer out of one of their offices? Is one an employee of MainStreet and contracting with their customers? What happens when I give them my email address? Their site raises more questions than it answers.
- bryanh 7y agoWe (Zapier) did this a few years back, its been really cool: https://zapier.com/blog/move-away-from-sf-get-remote-job/ https://zapier.com/blog/move-away-from-sf-get-remote-job/ I hope it continues to catch on! Major metros certainly have a lot to offer, but minor metros or rural America does too -- it's a little odd that all the online "tech" jobs land in the former. If you have a decent internet connection, you can do your work from anywhere.
- JDiculous 7y agoAs a remote worker who left a high cost of living city (NYC) myself, I'm all in favor of promoting remote work, but I don't see the value add in me adding my email there. What exactly do I get? Job listings? The site doesn't really make it clear. I guess every startup these days starts off with a fancy landing page who's goal is to get you to input your email, which they then use to gauge interest and decide whether or not to actually build out the product. Doesn't really tempt me to want to sign up. Also I'm all in favor of promoting underdeveloped communities in America, but my #1 hesitation would be boredom. America seems extremely rural outside of the big cities and you need a car to do anything, and I'd imagine there isn't much of a sense of community. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and even that I found very boring. I'd love to be proven wrong, but in any case that's why I choose to work remotely from outside the U.S.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- JDiculous 7y agoWow, downvoted for providing my honest feedback? Looks like HN is really becoming like Reddit, why even bother spending time writing detailed comments anymore.
- dmode 7y agoLet’s be honest, $10k is chump change for engineers pulling $400k. If you want people to move, how about offer $400k ?
- themagician 7y agoI doubt there are more than a few hundred engineers with that salary in the entire Bay Area and they aren’t the ones who complain about cost of living. This is the software engineer making $80,000 a year who tries to live alone and has to spend half their paycheck on a studio.
- jrockway 7y agoThat is quite false. When I worked at Google, my W2 income was about $270k every year, as a nobody senior engineer. I worked with multiple people that made at least $600k a year. There are thousands of engineers at Google making that kind of money, and no doubt Uber/Lyft/Facebook/Apple/Netflix/Microsoft are paying similar salaries. This was not the Bay Area, rather New York, but the salaries are about the same in both areas. The people that own homes in the Bay Area are Googlers that married each other. That is some good income. Enough for a shed in someone's backyard anyway!
- pchristensen 7y agoThere are thousands of employees at each of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google making more (some significantly more) than that. And although they generally pay best, they also are a fraction of overall tech employment in the Bay Area. Poke around in https://www.levels.fyi https://www.levels.fyi if you're curious.
- bradlys 7y agoVery few companies will ever pay engineers that money. And those companies have campuses all over the USA. So, they don't need this... The ones who could be interested in what this company offers are those that are much more financially constrained. Thus, offering more than $10k for a sign on bonus is probably not plausible for them either. I'd be surprised if anyone who gets hired through this company would have a TC past $200k. (ignoring silly valuations of startup stock)
- markbnj 7y agoThe main reason why we remain in a high cost area (North-central NJ) is opportunities. Yeah I work remotely now and have for awhile, and I doubt I will leave my current company any time soon... but things change, and I would hate to relocate to an idyllic rural paradise (I grew up in very small towns), lose this job and be unable to find another remote gig. At least in the NYC area I know there is going to be _something_ available within commute distance if I have to do that again.
- flowersjeff 7y agoI just hope that if you're thinking about a move, read comments from folks that either grew up in the area being considered and/or those that moved back from. There are very real reasons why people move into the Bay Area - and put up with all the "problems". This is coming from a person that grew up in the South and would rather not move back.
- realbarack 7y agoI'm glad to see innovation in this space. I work remotely as an ML engineer in a "Main Street"-ish city (not really, but it's a middle-class city with a reasonably affordable COL that's part of a large MSA). Remote work has generally delivered on all its promised benefits for me. I make much more money than I would if I got a job in the city where I live, and my apartment is much nicer than what I could afford if I still lived in the Bay area. I had hoped to move somewhere with great access to the outdoors (this is what initially made me interested in remote work), but ultimately ended up moving for relationship reasons and had to give up the outdoor mecca dream for the time being. Now, I'm thinking of going back to office life. Since taking the remote plunge I've struggled with loneliness and anxiety about career stasis, and haven't been able to find a critical mass of educated, ambitious, like-minded friends where I now live. There's a tremendous opportunity for whoever can make it easier to build and find in-person communities of ambitious remote/satellite workers. Offices and cities are blunt instruments for matching people on ambition and education/intelligence. If it were easier to find and integrate into smaller (but equally ambitious) hubs, it would make remote work a more attractive option for many more people. Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to speak more on this subject.