11 ms·
Many people I talked to in the bay area temporarily left b/c housing is unnecessarily expensive and the apartments there are not great to WFH. Most of those pe
by itake 6y ago
Many people I talked to in the bay area temporarily left b/c housing is unnecessarily expensive and the apartments there are not great to WFH.
Most of those people fully plan on returning to SF once their offices open back up, because they feel that they need to be in the office in order to grow their career.
I think its a bit presumptuous that tech workers are perm leaving the city.
- coliveira 6y agoI agree that career grow will require living close to HQ, but some people don't care too much about career growth and prefer to live in a place they like. So I suspect that many people will never return.
- jdxcode 6y agoI think people with that mentality were unlikely to live in SV in the first place
- dimitrios1 6y agoSV was very different even just 5 years ago, even more so 10, and doubly 15 years ago.
- bradlys 6y agoI think people with that mentality were unlikely to even get a job in SV. The ridiculous interview process alone should be a barrier enough.
- coliveira 6y agoThat's not true. Many people go to big cities and SV because of the jobs. If they had a choice, they would prefer to live somewhere else.
- bradlys 6y agoI’m aware of that - as that was the reason I moved to the Bay Area as well. But I’ve been here a few years, I could get a job elsewhere without the leetcode interview. It just wouldn’t pay as well or have the same career growth track.
- VRay 6y agoI don't care about career growth, but I do care about adding an extra 50k/year to my net worth for the same work with the same standard of living (or living in a crappy little hole-in-the-wall apartment and saving even more) If I can make a competitive amount of money without living in California's armpit, I'm going to do it for sure
- qqqwerty 6y agoThere are plenty of folks, especially on the technical side, that are here for the interesting work and high salaries. They could care less about climbing the managerial ladder. Also, millennials are starting to hit the mid-career phase, where it becomes clear that the 'ladder' gets really narrow, and things like children and mortgages start to weigh heavily on life choices. There will be plenty of folks who stick around, for sure. But by all indications (surveys, anecdotal reports, rent prices, etc...), there is plenty of interest in remote work.
- caogecym 6y agoIf WFH becomes the new norm for a company, the concept of HQ would become irrelevant, companies I know are planning to fill physical work space with hotel seats, then you should be able to grow career via WFH no problem.
- doopy-loopy2 6y agoThere will be a group of people who prefer not to WFH... and they will be in the office and therefore be much more involved/at the forefront of the company.
- DevKoala 6y agoAs a team lead in a group distributed team, we make sure we include everybody regardless of physical location. You Zoom with people enough, and over time you realize there is nothing extra than the office provided except easy distractions.
- ghaff 6y agoI'm rarely on a call of any size where everyone would normally be in the same office or often even in the same country. In some ways, I actually prefer the situation where everyone is on their own video chat rather than having a mix of a couple conference rooms and everyone else by themselves. A couple teams I know even have a standing rule about everyone calling in individually on team calls even if a few people are in the same office. I think a lot of people come at this from the perspective of small companies where everyone is co-located. But the reality at large companies if people are pretty scattered around even if they're not working from home.
- doopy-loopy2 6y agoI don't know how anyone can say that video calls and face-to-face time are equivalent with a straight face. Of course, this is my opinion, but it seems pretty obvious that in-person interaction is what builds relationships.
- 6y ago
- badfrog 6y ago> I think its a bit presumptuous that tech workers are perm leaving the city. The survey in OP suggests that they are, with two important caveats: * This is obviously not even close to a representative sample of workers * It's predicated on "if you had a choice", and we don't know how many people will actually have that choice
- misun78 6y agoThis article doesn’t provide a baseline to compare the latest survey against? What percent of tech workers were already on the fence with regards to moving out before the pandemic hit?
- base698 6y agoAnecdotal but: 6 of my 9 direct reports have asked about permenantly relocating.
- vanadium 6y agoMyself and half my team are looking at permanently relocating out of Chicago. The pattern holds across other teams where I work. Others I know in the industry are just up and leaving for remote-first companies and then moving to where they’re most comfortable.
- marcosdumay 6y agoThe most important caveat is that "they plan to". People fail to do all kinds of things that they plan to.
- ixtli 6y agoFor 15+ years I have noticed a certain set of people trying to make a claim that people are leaving or desire to leave "the cities" for the suburbs or rural areas in America. NYC growth has slowed since 2017, and certainly there will be a rush for cheaper housing as a result of COVID, but the physics that have driven people to urban centers hasn't changed at all.
- lazerpants 6y agoThe Millenial generation is the largest birth cohort in the USA at this point. Their shifting preferences due to age may be very impactful on real estate generally, since many people are generally going through the same phases of life at the same time. This is likely one of the things that made urban real estate so desirable over the past decade too.
- akamia 6y agoI've noticed the same thing and especially in tech. I have a few friends who are engineers and have this idea that if everyone went completely remote, cities would clear out as everyone rushed to buy acres of land in the country. I always find it a bit funny that these friends are also the ones who seem to have the most city oriented lives. They are going out to bars and restaurants all the time. They get their coffee from local artisanal coffee roasters and their beer from the many local microbreweries. They don't seem to recognize that the cities they think people want to flee offer more than just career opportunities.
- xyzzyz 6y agoThey are most likely also childless. When you have young children, your demand for fancy restaurants, artisanal coffee roasters and visiting local microbreweries diminishes, as there are now more things that occupy your time and attention, and are not very conducive for above-mentioned entertainment venues. The trend of delayed or foregone childbearing is also contributing to increase in interest in urban life.
- ghaff 6y ago
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoIf you're living somewhere with a third the cost of SF, is it necessary to further your career growth? Outside the city, people will realize there's more to life than high tech and lean into the "life" portion of work-life balance.
- ironman1478 6y agoI think if you enjoy your job enough, then yeah. Some people just really like their job and org enough to dedicate extra time to it and that's fine (as long as their paid proportionally, don't work for free). I don't love my job and tech that much though
- josh2600 6y agoThere are salary adjustments when you leave urban areas like SF.
- notyourwork 6y agoDepends on the company and circumstances.
- notyourwork 6y agoIt's hard to generalize what everyone wants. Not everyone wants the same things in life.
- closeparen 6y agoThere is also more to life than big cheap houses. People to meet and things to do with them, for example. A pleasant and engaging public realm.
- nitrogen 6y agoIn the "big cheap house" world people host parties.
- jcims 6y agoCareer growth slides up and down the priority stack for many as they go through life. For young folks just getting started, absolutely. For folks that are 15-20 years in, starting to plateau in comp, have a family, maybe have some parents that need care, etc, career growth can start to fall away as a major motivator.
- temp231239 6y agoI am really happy that people who always wanted to work remotely outside of crowded and overly expensive cities now have an opportunity to do that. I also remember seeing in news some states mandating quarantine for people moving b/w states. I wonder if that is intended to deter people from making such move out of cities which can lead to the collapse of the cities businesses.
- ghaff 6y agoIt's the more rural areas that are putting requirements on people coming into their states, not cities/states keeping people from leaving. (And the requirements I'm aware of may weekend getaways harder but they're not a real barrier for someone making a long-term move.)
- baddox 6y agoIs it really so easy to move out in the few short months since the pandemic hit? I wonder if these people were living in a shared housing situation and didn't have a lease or a lot of physical possessions to worry about. I'm in downtown SF and have been considering moving somewhere in the Bay Area where I can step outside and not be in a literal and figurative cesspit, but it's really not easy. Or maybe I'm just getting old and have too much furniture. I certainly can't imagine just hopping out of town when the pandemic hit and then hopping back once it blows over.
- ghaff 6y agoI've probably always had too much stuff. It's admittedly easier these days to have more possessions be small and digital. But moving has always been a major operation for me. Certainly not something I was going to undertake casually for a few months.
- seangrogg 6y agoAnecdotal, but I was actively looking to get out of FAANG for a fully WFH position and managed to get one. About a month and a half later - with my lease coming due - I left San Jose. No need to pay the exorbitant rent and taxes and get peanuts in return.