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Tech Workers Take to the Mountains, Bringing Silicon Valley with Them
- nendroid 6y agoI think the migration out of the bay will make it a more reasonable place to live. We do have some of the best weather in the world. I'm going to gamble on staying. Hopefully this isn't like detroit.
- andreilys 6y agoSan Diego and LA have SFBA easily beat in terms of weather.
- nendroid 6y agoOf course but bay is still one of the best in the world. Also the bay encompasses more than SF, while SF and daly city have notoriously foggy weather, the rest of the bay area is quite good.
- umeshunni 6y agoThere's a narrow slice between San Mateo and Santa Clara that has great weather. Anything North or West is cold and foggy. South Bay and East Bay pushes 100F for 3 months a year. And this is before you consider that we now have 1-2 months of smoke season.
- reducesuffering 6y agoSouth and East Bay only have ~10 days a year of 95+. You make it sound like Texas.
- nendroid 6y agoFor the south bay it's not 3 months of the year, 100F lasts for like 2-3 weeks at most (actually realistically it's more like 95-100). It's the same for socal. Socal has about 2-3 weeks in the summer where the temps become sweltering. Even within LA the temperatures vary, the closer you are to the coastline the better the weather. I know because I grew up in the south bay, I lived in SF for 2 years and lived in LA for 10 years. What's overall better in socal is that the winters are much more mild. In the south bay the worst you can get is ice in the morning and really cold nights. Socal winters just has a very slightly lower temperature than spring. Not trying to say NorCal has better weather than Socal. I'm saying NorCal has some of the best weather in the world despite it not having the "perfect" weather that Socal has. The entire CA coast line is afterall still in the mediterranean climate zone.
- kenhwang 6y agoThe best weather really lies between Socal and Norcal: SLO and SB. Their biggest weakness was always the lack of local jobs.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI feel like they're both at the level where it's a minor tradeoff between fog and summer heat, and for me fog is the clear choice.
- ngokevin 6y agoUnless you don't like summer heat and heat waves. SF is more consistently around 70F. Depends if you like 55F - 75F versus 70F - 90F
- mdorazio 6y agoWe're talking about the same SF from this summer where the heat waves were just as bad as SoCal? California climate change now means you're going to get heat waves pretty much everywhere.
- ngokevin 6y agoNever felt remotely hot where I live in SF. Maybe towards Mission and further south/east.
- adenadel 6y agoSan Diego is right in the range that you are describing. Average highs in August are ~75. I'm biased though since I lived in San Diego for a couple of years and have never lived in or near San Francisco. Inland is much hotter in San Diego though. https://www.weather-us.com/en/california-usa/san-diego-climate#temperature https://www.weather-us.com/en/california-usa/san-diego-clima...
- asdff 6y agoA 100* heat wave in LA only clocks like 82* in san diego. Then again on that 100* LA day it is still only like 85* on the coast.
- pengaru 6y agoI'm inclined to agree, if you can be near enough to the ocean to tame the summer heat. SFBA winters are kinda miserable IMHO. It's not rust belt snow bad, but consistently cold and wet for months isn't exactly ideal. And SF-proper regularly being fogged in renders too many nights useless WRT enjoying the outdoors, year-round. It's almost pointless to have something like a rooftop deck or outdoor patio. It'll all corrode and rot before you get sufficient use of it. San Mateo manages to escape most of the negative fog effects though, I enjoyed living on the hill by 92 and Hillsdale Blvd. We'd regularly watch the apocalyptic fog stall @ Skyline while enjoying dinner outside on our deck.
- scubbo 6y ago> We do have some of the best weather in the world. Certainly some of the sunniest in the English-speaking world. Personally (as an ex-Londoner), I overheat a lot and actually miss a good rainstorm from time-to-time - but your evaluation does line up with most people's, I think. Let's just gloss over the increasingly-common smoke from wildfires... :)
- nendroid 6y ago>Let's just gloss over the increasingly-common smoke from wildfires... :) Yeah that part is bad. Not sure how to rate CA in general when you account for this as the wild fires only started getting crazy recently. For most of my life overall the fires weren't a problem. >Certainly some of the sunniest in the English-speaking world. Personally (as an ex-Londoner), I overheat a lot and actually miss a good rainstorm from time-to-time - but your evaluation does line up with most people's, I think. Scientifically it is actually rated as some of the best in terms of closest to something like room temperature throughout the year. It's a climate zone called the mediterranean climate zone. It exists in a few places in the world.
- tjr225 6y ago> Hopefully this isn't like detroit. Even if it became more like Detroit you'd still have what Detroit can never have- nice weather and unbeatable nature right outside your doorstep.
- pbuzbee 6y agoI think it's unlikely to turn out like Detroit, and I say that as someone who wants to leave the region. The region will continue to have many of its best qualities: good weather, (relatively) diverse culture, access to nature, and good employment prospects. The biggest issue with the region is the high cost of living, but any relief in housing costs will only make the area more appealing again. There's a high floor.
- stanrivers 6y agoAre companies going to start adjusting salaries for people who move (this makes zero sense to me, the value you add most likely doesn’t change because of where you live)? That’s where this gets weird... people move to these better-to-live places and then all the employers decides to pay them less because of location. Then you just push up housing prices with salaries that slowly reset over time to be cost of living adjusted to the area.
- hello_moto 6y agoThe crazy salary level was set by location not by skillset alone so the skillset is still valued the same but the location depreciate accordingly. Just like buying a house: there are 2 variables that contributes to the total value, the land (location) and the building.
- WaxProlix 6y agoSalaries have very little to do with how much value one adds. If anything, it's more about how much value can be extracted. If companies can pay less and get the same value, they totally will.
- pdonis 6y ago> Salaries have very little to do with how much value one adds. Yes, it does; but it's not how much value you, as an individual, add, but how hard it would be to find someone else who could add the same value but would work for less money. > If companies can pay less and get the same value, they totally will. Yes, which means companies are aware of how much value an employee adds; they are just also aware of what the current market price is for that amount of value. Whereas, many employees are not aware of that. In any case, the primary benefit of the observation that the more value you add, the more you get paid is long term, not short term: it tells you that, if you want to increase your total lifetime compensation, you need to become harder to replace. In other words, you need to add, not just value, but some particular kind of value that fewer other people could add if they were hired in your place. The scarcer the kind of value you add is, the higher the price you can get for it.
- 6y ago
- shadykiller 6y agoThe prices of bay area homes aren't dropping still. Looks like this migration is still temporary.
- bob33212 6y agoHome prices are very sticky. For mental and financial reasons people are very reluctant to price their homes below the rest of the market. During the 08 crash some houses were on the market for years.
- ghaff 6y agoHome prices tend to be pretty sticky downwards especially for anyone who hasn't already had significant appreciation. (Though admittedly, a lot of homes in the Bay Area have appreciated a lot unless they were purchased recently.) That said, I expect most people leaving are those who were renting, perhaps because they couldn't afford to buy. Now they're either renting somewhere cheaper or they're possibly buying if this was something they were thinking about anyway.
- jobu 6y agoThat does seem surprising given the massive drop in rental prices there since May. Perhaps the low interest rates are keeping the prices up?
- pbuzbee 6y agoI wonder how long it will take for Bay Area real estate to take a hit if the pandemic continues longer and/or remote working becomes significantly more common.
- asdff 6y agoPeople aren't moving out of homes in the bay area, they are moving out of apartments in the bay area to where they can actually afford a home.
- odonnellryan 6y agoIn NJ, my girlfriend and I chose a really bad time to buy. Houses that were a very reasonable ~$300k last year are pushing $400k.
- AlphaWeaver 6y agohttps://archive.is/MOHhK https://archive.is/MOHhK
- tahoeskibum 6y agoEven the federal government has geographical cost of living adjustments to salaries.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hourislate 6y agoI recently came across this fellow who sold everything and bought a Ghost Town in Cerro Gordo, CA. He runs his business/startup from there remotely. Some of the most beautiful sunsets and surroundings you can imagine. Awesome Channel. Ghost Town Living https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEjBDKfrqQI4TgzT9YLNT8g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEjBDKfrqQI4TgzT9YLNT8g
- dicomdan 6y agoIt was sad to see the hotel burn down. I'm following him on Patreon hoping to see it rebuilt soon.
- davidw 6y agoI can't read the article, but this appears to be hitting us hard here in Bend, Oregon. House prices were already high and only appear to be going higher. I think more people could be a great thing if we get them involved locally, and if we add enough housing to accommodate them, which is tricky right now. As someone involved with a local YIMBY group, it's tough to see the prices - it felt like we were making some progress in several fronts and then BOOM.
- subpixel 6y agoI'm in a part of New England I won't name where this is also happening. Here, it's a convergence of families from both coasts who are now supported by remote work and various wealthy families able to simply buy up real estate that suddenly looks rather underpriced compared to the Bay Area or NYC/Boston. (I say families b/c this rural area is not much of a draw for singles.) In September I called an agent the day a property hit Zillow and made an appt to look at 1pm the next day. At 10am the property had 7 offers.
- iaw 6y agoIn 1978 California passed the ill-conceived Proposition 13 which encourages people to keep houses rather than sell them through lower tax rates for longer ownership. California has almost 40M residents and Oregon has a bit over 4M, even a fraction of those 40M going north to Oregon is going to overload the housing market there.
- davidw 6y agoYep. Oregon has something similar in Measures 5 & 50, and it distorts our market as well. I follow CA housing politics fairly closely because, as you point out, they are important in Oregon too. It has been really dismaying to see them consistently fail to pass the kinds of reform they need.
- chris11 6y agoProp 15 and Prop 19 are on the ballot. I think those would reduce market distortions if they pass.
- reaperducer 6y agoPeople have been talking about this on HN for a few months now, and I never took it seriously since these threads are always filled with people quoting numbers saying it's not happening. That was until last month, when two tech workers from San Francisco moved into the neighborhood. Both have the same story: Their company went work-from-home when the pandemic started, then made it permanent, so the company employees are fanning out all over the country to make better lives for themselves. Now I look at all of the new California license plates I see around town and wonder. I never thought of my little corner of nowhere as a better place to live. I only moved here because it's cheap and as far away from as many other human beings as I can get while still being near an international airport. But maybe it will work out for them. Good luck to the new generation of digital nomads.
- silicon2401 6y agoThat's what makes it appealing to a lot of people who have been living around millions of other people. Soon many of these places will no longer be cheap and far away from other people. It'll be interesting to see how today's cultural conflicts play out when the more left-leaning, urban remote workers move en masse to smaller, more right-leaning, less urban places.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoIt's not about left right. It's about rural vs urban and have money vs not. Everything that's terrible and soul crushing about a tourism economy is about to happen to random places that have thus far been spared that fate.
- silicon2401 6y agoYou can't reduce things to one dimension, I agree, but I disagree that left vs right is unimportant. When largely liberal city people migrate into largely conservative places, there's gonna be some conflict. Not to mention a lot of these tech workers are liberal and have money, so they'll be empowered to support changes that the locals may not be on board with but also may not have the means to combat effectively.
- ngokevin 6y agoAy, I followed the wave. Heading back home to Portland for a bit and then to the Utah desert and beyond.
- CinchWrench 6y agoSo in spite of what Friedman and his Chicago goons would have had us believe, it turns out the world is in fact not, flat. Huh.
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoIt's a two way street. If SV companies drop salaries, other companies will have an easier time attracting away talent. SV will have to increase salaries again to compete.
- sna1l 6y agoI think the burst of tech workers moving out of Silicon Valley/SF into surrounding suburbs + other areas is driven mostly by people who were already on the cusp of leaving the city. I've been thinking about leaving SF to move to the East Bay for the last couple years, and COVID-19 has provided a very strong impetus to expedite that move. Obviously this is anecdotal, and everyone has their own motives, but I haven't heard of many 20-27 years BUYING property outside of their home cities (SF, NYC, etc).
- TomVDB 6y agoMy wife and I never considered moving out, but we're now actively shopping for a house in the Tahoe area. Not as an investment or short term rental property, but to live ~50% of the time. We're clearly not the only ones. The price of houses in the $1M+ range have gone up significantly since it became clear around the summer that this COVID thing isn't going away anytime soon. There are many all cash offers as well.
- gnicholas 6y agoHow do you weigh the fire risk in the Tahoe area? The Palo Alto area has smoke risk, and some PSPS risk, but not much risk of straight up burning down. But homes in Tahoe are at significantly more risk of fire, right? Is it possible to get fire insurance there?
- adhd_pm 6y agoRiskier, sure. Insurance? Sometimes... The person who bought my place last year ended up paying over $6000 a year for insurance via CalFAIR (no fire hydrant nearby). When I bought it in 2013 - it cost about $800 a year. There are definitely people who can't get regular insurance and end up paying a lot for meh insurance.
- prawn 6y agoDo houses in those areas have built-in or compulsory fire protection systems? Some Australian rural houses have roof mounted sprinklers (exterior of the building), water tanks reserved for fire fighting, and so on. I did some drone work for an insurance company after our last fire season, and got photos of places where the fire had been stopped literally a metre short of a building. Either irrigated gardens, protection systems or fire fighters.
- code4tee 6y agoI saw a great quote recently that said something like “Everyone loves work from home until you lose a deal to the competition that turned up to your customer in person.” There’s an element of truth to this. Best advice I’ve heard is to say the draw for living in a city may go away but you need to be close. Living in the middle of nowhere isn’t going to look like such a great idea when people start gathering together again. Maybe not as much as before, but it will still happen. For these reasons I see why the suburbs are seeing a real estate boom in many areas. I’m much less sure about the long term move to places much further away from the cities.
- vmception 6y agoand the people that survive in the denser environments will - by nature - be more fit to acquire goods and resources so its unlikely that everyone in their remote prepper bunker will remain competitive just because we have video phone in the 21st century
- robocat 6y ago> I saw a great quote I recall that being in Matt Levine’s Money Stuff (I did a search for it, however I didn’t find it.)
- ulfw 6y agoNot everyone is a salesman though. Why would an engineer need to be in an office coding away so "he can turn up to his customer"?
- humanrebar 6y agoYour customer is the person handing out raises, promotions, key assignments, etc. The person who makes it to happy hours will have the edge, fairly or not.
- cercatrova 6y agoRaises, promotions and the like are not the way these days to make significant chunks of cash. It's job hopping every 1.5 to 2.5 years. In this case, there is no need to worry about promotions.
- cwp 6y agoYup. Couldn't read much of the article, but this is me. I was in SF because employers demanded it, because investors demanded it. Now my company is not only allowing Bay Area employees to leave the state, but hiring remotely. Hell yeah, I'm gone.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/MOHhK https://archive.is/MOHhK
- blantonl 6y agoI own a number of pieces of property in Whitefish Montana, where I decamped to the second my children were released from school for COVID reasons in March (we split time between TX and MT). Given what I felt were going to be significant economic disruptions due to unemployment and drops in income, I prepared myself with the understanding that our little resort town was going to be facing some hard times. Usually, small resort towns tend to take it on the chin when the economy turns. Boy was I wrong. Once the initial shock of lifestyle changes happened due to COVID, people FLOODED the area and any piece of real estate not bolted down was flying off the shelves and bought for cash unseen. I sold a small lot in the Whitefish City limits for a significant capital gain, after buying it for what I thought then was at the top of the market in 2019. I've been offered cash for home-run-knock-it-out-of-the-park prices for my retirement home property that are simply unfathomable. The only reason why I don't sell is because I treat this property like I do my two labrador retrievers - everything has a price, but I'm not interested in selling. :) There is a lot of angst in Whitefish over the changes - all the building and influx of money really helps the local economy, but the quality of life (traffic, etc) is suffering. It's the age old dichotomy for a small Montana popular town.
- stevenj 6y agoI don't live in Whitefish (nor Montana), but I love it - it's such a cool town! What do you think about Bigfork as a place for future investment/growth?
- blantonl 6y agoI think that most of the towns in the Flathead Valley all have good potential - they are all nice little enclaves
- robocat 6y agoYour experience could partly be explained by selection bias (e.g. sister comment “it's such a cool town!“). I am presuming you didn’t choose Whitefish randomly, and obviously you must have been an early adopter. However, the flight to other locations does seem like a general trend. Anecdotally it appears to be happening to my neighbourhood...
- cusp 6y agoOne thing we really like about where we’re living now (peninsula) is there are a lot of mixed race couples with kids and our kids feel this is totally normal. We’re considering moving but worried that our kids will have a tough time fitting in, especially given how divided our country is. For other mixed race parents looking to move, do you have similar concerns?
- falseAss 6y agoIn general, folks with kids are very difficult to migrate. You need to consider whether your spouse's job is remote friendly, and as you mentioned, kids need to find new playmate / school. It's just exponentially harder to relocate than single folks. I am under the impression that this escaping valley wave is mostly about single folks or young couples without kids.
- Xcelerate 6y agoAnecdotally, I just moved from the Bay Area to Asheville and am taking my tech job with me. So, could be true... Real estate there is crazy right now. The local agents say houses have been selling very quickly, often sight unseen to California buyers.
- sudosteph 6y agoHello fellow Asheville-area resident! I'm actually really surprised to hear that. NC, and the southeast in general has traditionally been a pretty hard sell for Californians, from a cultural perspective at least. New Yorkers and Floridians have been colonizing the area for ages though, so figures that Californians would catch on eventually. I made the move back to NC after 5 years in Seattle, and don't regret it one bit. Anyhow, welcome to the area! The techie / startup scene here is pretty small, but it's good folk and a tight community.
- Xcelerate 6y agoHaha, thank you for the welcome! I actually grew up in the southeast though so we are moving back closer to family :) My wife and I always liked visiting Asheville and decided to live there. I’m not sure if the other people from California moving there are similar (moved away and came back) or if it’s their first time in the southeast.
- 762236 6y agoUntil the fires it was hard to imagine giving up the weather and outdoors here in the Bay Area. Now we have COVID which means you want to be outside, but fire smoke that you shouldn't breath, so you want to be inside. I have a lot of HEPA filters running inside, and if I exercise outside, I wear a P100 even at VO2max. But if my daughter weren't keeping us here for her friends, I'd consider moving away now.
- jonsno56 6y agoI bought a bunch of N95 masks and air purifiers in anticipation of the 2019 fall fire season in the Bay (since 2018 was super bad for the time), and I must say I never could have imagined the ROI on utility from this past year lol
- nsm 6y agoI think this is hyperbole for the majority of people who do not have existing respiratory or other health conditions. Air quality in SF proper was only bad (by which I mean Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or above) for roughly a month this year. That certainly doesn't warrant having HEPA filters and P100 masks now in October/November (again, for most people).
- cpeterso 6y ago“Only bad for a month this year“, but these big California fires now happen every year.
- nsm 6y agoSure! Yet, (as I mentioned in a sibling comment) living in a beautiful place with really clean air where one can be outside 11 months of the year is way better than most of the world, so I find this tendency to go "OMG everything is now broken" to be an exaggeration that detracts from the continued value the Bay Area offers.
- vecinu 6y agoThis is wishful thinking. Staying for years around an area that gets "only a month" of excessive PM2.5 particles and smoke is unwise and you will soon become someone with an existing respiratory condition. I'm leaving the Bay because I value my health way more than the "lifestyle" offered by living in the Bay. There are many other places in the US (And ESPECIALLY outside the US) that offer a fantastic quality of life.
- abeppu 6y agoI wonder when the reverse will happen. As rents in SF dive, will people that were force to outlying parts of the Bay Area return? Will younger LGBT folk be able to afford to live in/near the Castro? Will more people _not_ in tech be able to live here? SF has felt like such a one-industry town for quite a while, and that can mute some of the richness and diversity that normally makes cities interesting (and perhaps more broadly valuable?). If some tech workers are happier in the mountains, that's great that they can now live that life and keep their jobs. But I hope that in their places, we see a new diversity of people of range of jobs who can choose to live in a city that was previously out of reach.
- wbl 6y agoSF rents are still ridiculously high. The city don't be more diverse until it becomes a real metropolis of several million people.
- baron_harkonnen 6y agoFor about 30 years cities were relatively undesirable places to live in for the average person. The cities that young people have flocked to in the last decade or so are designed and developed more like large scale open shopping malls than the cities of the 70s and 80s. The closest comparison to what's happening now was "White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protests and riots in cities. White flight changed many cities in the 50/60s, in particular Cleveland, Oakland and Detroit. These cities only started to see any kind of revival in the tail end of the last economic boom. For decades cities struggled with violent crime, racial tensions, poor infrastructure, etc. What we're seeing is a much larger scale than that and will likely change cities for decades to come. In the shopping mall era of cities you live in cities because you are close to work and close to restaurants, bars and other things to do. And cities feel remarkably safe. Nearly every tech person who "loves cities!" today would feel very uncomfortable in SF or NYC of the 1970s. Virtually every one I know in a major metro is considering leaving because: jobs no longer require being there, pandemic has destroyed much of the food and small business scene, and cities are becoming visibly less safe. The people are moving to other areas and they are very often looking to purchase a home rather than rent (since what you can get for the same mortgage as your current rent is typically an order of magnitude more space). This means they won't be coming back soon. This will cause a feedback loop that will continue to force employers to go remote, reduce the number of restaurants and leave cities more vacant and more dangerous. It means the city will also change very rapidly and be much less attractive, even at a lower price. But to your point about the Castro: it's precisely because "average" people didn't want to live in SF that marginalized groups found a home there. The Castro in SF, the Village in N YC were places that Engineers didn't want to work and live, so artists and outcasts moved in. My fear is that this collapse is going to be too extreme and too fast to allow for the creation of this interesting space of possibility that NYC and SF of the 1970-80s was. The collapse of commercial and residential real estate in these areas is going to have consequences that I think are very hard to predict right now.
- newusr1233 6y agoI wonder if this is just a fad until people realize they don't actually like the rural life as much as they think they would.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chasd00 6y agoyeah, "the grass is always greener". I grew up in a small country town, it has its charms but it gets old too. By the time I was college age I left and never looked back. Small time life comes with a different set of problems than living in a city but they're still problems.
- three_seagrass 6y agoSame. Go back to rural midwest to visit relatives a couple times a year - I love it but after a week I'm reminded why I don't live there.
- meekrohprocess 6y agoProbably. I loved touring the US parks while doing remote work, and I miss the freedom of being able to wander around anywhere and sort of ignore roads, but I wouldn't have been able to live in many of the areas that I adored. One thing that people underestimate about the US is its vast size. When you live in a city, you have at least a dozen grocery stores within an hour's drive. When you live in a rural area, you drive at least an hour into "the city" which has a Walmart and a Kroger. There are exceptions, like Utah which is basically one giant city/suburb/church running along the Great Salt Lake with a half-dozen national parks to the South. But I would lean towards this being a temporary trend for most people.
- emanuensis 6y agoPeople LIKE to live on the edge. It is an unfortunate fact ... especially given their are 9B of us. Super bad for the ecology, the encountering of new diseases etc. Suburbs Exurbs, retreats... never ends. If we had a Home (like most animals) we would have to worry much less about despoliation and ravages like fires. Why not have a home to live in and allow ourselves rest, relaxation and recovery in an unspoiled wilderness??
- dragonwriter 6y ago> It is an unfortunate fact ... especially given their are 9B of us. The current estimate I see most places is 7.8B, where does 9B come from?
- bariswheel 6y agoI think their writing was supposed to be interpreted a bit performance art'ish.
- emanuensis 6y ago:) Whew! So glad! The planet might actually survive 38.9678 days more!
- x87678r 6y agoIts going to make the voting tomorrow extra interesting. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah all these red states with blue voting techies arriving.
- dmode 6y agoI actually thought about getting a place in Tahoe for 6 months, but turns out it is completely not workable for me - I don't know anyone in Tahoe - My 5 year old will have no friends - Schools will soon start in person schooling - I would like to be back in office - Will miss the diversity of restaurants / groceries / wineries etc. - Ethnic food or ethnic groceries are non existent Turns out, you can buy a giant home in the Bay Area, in East Bay and get the exact same things
- robbintt 6y agoAll my friends and coworkers are still in the valley, excepting 1 person who was already moving to Denver to join his partner.
- gandutraveler 6y agoOn the other hand the rent prices in Bay are have dropped 35% or more which makes it way more affordable for quality of life and good year round weather.