5 ms·

Have you ever tried to get someone to move to Boise? Did you succeed? I work for a tech company in North Carolina. Cost of living is very reasonable and there

Have you ever tried to get someone to move to Boise? Did you succeed? I work for a tech company in North Carolina. Cost of living is very reasonable and there are plenty of tech companies here but in my experience getting someone to move here for work is hard. It's not just the employers you need to convince.

hiram112 7y ago
That's probably because North Carolina companies (especially in Charlotte) pay horribly, especially now that homes are becoming more expensive there, like every other large city. Furthermore, Charlotte is heavily banking and finance, and thus lean heavily on H1B visas for most of their enterprise jobs. I've had recruiters contact me for jobs in the area and the salaries were a joke. Honestly, I don't know if they were for real or just using it as 'proof' that they couldn't hire any Americans so they could forward off a few hundred more H1B petitions to USCIS...
- mywittyname 7y ago
  OP is probably talking about Research Triangle Park, which does have a lot of interesting technology jobs.
  - blt 7y ago
    ... that pay a lot less than their big-city counterparts.
    - mcguire 7y ago
      Median hourly wage, Computer and Mathematical Occupations, San Francisco: $56.18 ($112,360 ann.) Median hourly wage, Computer and Mathematical Occupations, Durham-Chapel Hill: $42.77 ($85,540 ann.) https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_20500.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_20500.htm#15-0000
      - blt 7y ago
        That difference is smaller than I thought. It's probably a no-brainer if you want to buy a house and raise a family. But from the perspective of a young single person, an extra $30k/year will get you from $1k/month rent to a $3k/month rent. Of course, rent isn't the only thing more expensive in the Bay area. But once you factor in better weather, more things to do, less conservatism - I find it unsurprising that many young people would not want to switch.
        mcguire 7y ago
        I'll give you better weather. More things to do? I'm not sure. Less conservative? Well, my reference point is Austin, TX, in which case I'd disagree. Fewer hot (HOT! HOT! HOT!) tech jobs? Probably.
        fredophile 7y ago
        $1k/month to $3k/month is $24k per year in post tax dollars. You're going to need to make more than $30k more a year to get this. I just ran the numbers for a $100k salary in NC and $130k in California. The person in NC will pay $17203.92 in federal taxes and $5250 in state taxes for a total of $22453.92. The person in California pays $24403.92 and $9094.69 for a total of $33498.61. This brings their post tax income to $96501.39 for California and $77546.08 for NC. The person in California only makes about $1.5k extra a month. There are plenty of non-monetary reasons why someone might choose to live in one state or the other but you do need a lot more money in California to cover the cost of basics like housing. Not properly accounting for that could give someone quite a shock if they relocate there.
- fredophile 7y ago
  As someone else guessed, I'm near RTP. The triangle has companies like IBM, Red Hat, Cisco, and SAS. The focus here isn't just banking and finance. I don't know what other places in the area pay but I only took a small pay cut when I moved here. Once you factor in the cost of living that pay cut works out to be a decent raise.
  - non-entity 7y ago
    I wonder what is going to happen to Redhat now that it's been acquired by IBM, who from my understanding, survives off of legacy support (might he wrong though). From what I understand Redhat was pretty big in the RTP tech scene.
    - freedomben 7y ago
      I work for Red Hat but don't have any inside information. I get the impression that IBM will start using more Red Hat tech, but for the most part we are keeping the two companies pretty separate.
poulsbohemian 7y ago
My argument would be - don't convince people to move there, hire the people already there. Identify the pioneers who do want to move and incentivize them to do so as well. Here's an example from a recent client in Seattle. Two year old company, approx. ten employees, hiring at least one person a month. Couple hundred square feet of class-a office space, likely $42/square foot and increasing. Turned over nearly all of their staff on a yearly basis because they couldn't compete with comp at Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Had a number of entry-level type clerical jobs that they were outsourcing to India but doing so unsuccessfully (IE: the resources they had weren't particularly cheap but also didn't really have the necessary skills). Same entry-level jobs couldn't pay quite enough in Seattle to incentivize someone to either stick around or be willing to commute from the suburbs (unless they were really desperate). My point to them time and time again was - they were a small company, undercapitalized like many small businesses, and they were spending stupid money every month on people and office space that made no sense given their business. They could have moved to Spokane, Yakima, the Tri-Cities or lots of other cheaper places even in the same state and been able to find the talent they need and cut their office costs in half. Given the nature of their business, sure, maybe they needed to keep a couple people (mostly sales / execs / bizdev) in Seattle - but even those could have worked from home. Last I checked, the largest concentration of PhDs in the country is in... the Tri-Cities, Washington. The state with the greatest number of college graduates per capita is... Iowa. These are not exactly places on anyone's radar. Bend, Oregon has a growing number of people who "commute" to Silicon Valley. I live in the middle of nowhere, but there are a growing number of people from Seattle willing to move here (and occasionally take the 45 minute commuter flight) in order to escape the cost and crowding of living over there. Boise is growing entirely by people fleeing from coastal cities. Someone in this thread posted Paul Graham's essay about startup hubs, which I recall reading and it gels exactly with my thinking as well - go to these micro hubs around the country and be part of growing them from within.

hiram112 7y ago

That's probably because North Carolina companies (especially in Charlotte) pay horribly, especially now that homes are becoming more expensive there, like every other large city. Furthermore, Charlotte is heavily banking and finance, and thus lean heavily on H1B visas for most of their enterprise jobs. I've had recruiters contact me for jobs in the area and the salaries were a joke. Honestly, I don't know if they were for real or just using it as 'proof' that they couldn't hire any Americans so they could forward off a few hundred more H1B petitions to USCIS...

mywittyname 7y ago
OP is probably talking about Research Triangle Park, which does have a lot of interesting technology jobs.
- blt 7y ago
  ... that pay a lot less than their big-city counterparts.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    Median hourly wage, Computer and Mathematical Occupations, San Francisco: $56.18 ($112,360 ann.) Median hourly wage, Computer and Mathematical Occupations, Durham-Chapel Hill: $42.77 ($85,540 ann.) https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_20500.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_20500.htm#15-0000
    - blt 7y ago
      That difference is smaller than I thought. It's probably a no-brainer if you want to buy a house and raise a family. But from the perspective of a young single person, an extra $30k/year will get you from $1k/month rent to a $3k/month rent. Of course, rent isn't the only thing more expensive in the Bay area. But once you factor in better weather, more things to do, less conservatism - I find it unsurprising that many young people would not want to switch.
      - mcguire 7y ago
        I'll give you better weather. More things to do? I'm not sure. Less conservative? Well, my reference point is Austin, TX, in which case I'd disagree. Fewer hot (HOT! HOT! HOT!) tech jobs? Probably.
      - fredophile 7y ago
        $1k/month to $3k/month is $24k per year in post tax dollars. You're going to need to make more than $30k more a year to get this. I just ran the numbers for a $100k salary in NC and $130k in California. The person in NC will pay $17203.92 in federal taxes and $5250 in state taxes for a total of $22453.92. The person in California pays $24403.92 and $9094.69 for a total of $33498.61. This brings their post tax income to $96501.39 for California and $77546.08 for NC. The person in California only makes about $1.5k extra a month. There are plenty of non-monetary reasons why someone might choose to live in one state or the other but you do need a lot more money in California to cover the cost of basics like housing. Not properly accounting for that could give someone quite a shock if they relocate there.
fredophile 7y ago
As someone else guessed, I'm near RTP. The triangle has companies like IBM, Red Hat, Cisco, and SAS. The focus here isn't just banking and finance. I don't know what other places in the area pay but I only took a small pay cut when I moved here. Once you factor in the cost of living that pay cut works out to be a decent raise.
- non-entity 7y ago
  I wonder what is going to happen to Redhat now that it's been acquired by IBM, who from my understanding, survives off of legacy support (might he wrong though). From what I understand Redhat was pretty big in the RTP tech scene.
  - freedomben 7y ago
    I work for Red Hat but don't have any inside information. I get the impression that IBM will start using more Red Hat tech, but for the most part we are keeping the two companies pretty separate.

poulsbohemian 7y ago

My argument would be - don't convince people to move there, hire the people already there. Identify the pioneers who do want to move and incentivize them to do so as well. Here's an example from a recent client in Seattle. Two year old company, approx. ten employees, hiring at least one person a month. Couple hundred square feet of class-a office space, likely $42/square foot and increasing. Turned over nearly all of their staff on a yearly basis because they couldn't compete with comp at Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Had a number of entry-level type clerical jobs that they were outsourcing to India but doing so unsuccessfully (IE: the resources they had weren't particularly cheap but also didn't really have the necessary skills). Same entry-level jobs couldn't pay quite enough in Seattle to incentivize someone to either stick around or be willing to commute from the suburbs (unless they were really desperate). My point to them time and time again was - they were a small company, undercapitalized like many small businesses, and they were spending stupid money every month on people and office space that made no sense given their business. They could have moved to Spokane, Yakima, the Tri-Cities or lots of other cheaper places even in the same state and been able to find the talent they need and cut their office costs in half. Given the nature of their business, sure, maybe they needed to keep a couple people (mostly sales / execs / bizdev) in Seattle - but even those could have worked from home. Last I checked, the largest concentration of PhDs in the country is in... the Tri-Cities, Washington. The state with the greatest number of college graduates per capita is... Iowa. These are not exactly places on anyone's radar. Bend, Oregon has a growing number of people who "commute" to Silicon Valley. I live in the middle of nowhere, but there are a growing number of people from Seattle willing to move here (and occasionally take the 45 minute commuter flight) in order to escape the cost and crowding of living over there. Boise is growing entirely by people fleeing from coastal cities. Someone in this thread posted Paul Graham's essay about startup hubs, which I recall reading and it gels exactly with my thinking as well - go to these micro hubs around the country and be part of growing them from within.