14 ms·

Bay Area applicants flood program that pays them $10k to move to Tulsa

151 points by ohjeez 6y ago

meekrohprocess 6y ago
Hehehe, Tulsa Oklahoma. I wonder how many of them visited before applying. I don't mean to knock the city, but it is a very different place, and SF residents might chafe at the lack of interesting nature in the surrounding area. Probably the closest large park-ish area would be the Ozarks over in Arkansas. It's a lovely forest, but still about a 2.5-hour drive away. And OK's state highways are absolutely littered with aggressive speed traps.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  These programs existed for decades before the pandemic. They never caught on for a very simple reason: CoL is literally the only advantage. $10K is nothing compared to the uphill climb of career progression that inevitably comes with remote work. Hell, $10K literally less than my first relocation package and I was moving a single bedroom. TL;DR: no one moves to SFBA because it's the best CoL vs salary choice, and there are some great sweet spots for tech before places like Tulsa (eg Portland, KC, even Seattle) CoL is the real attraction, but if you don't care about the dearth of cultural amenities, why choose a mid-sized city in a state that doesn't have any non-Catholic private schools worth paying for and couldn't even keep all of its public schools open 5 days a week in pre-pandemic times? If you don't need good schools or cultural institutions, why not instead choose New Hampshire? Or rural Oregon? Or, as you pointed out, the Ozarks? Heck, IMO, Branson and Springfield have better public schools than Tulsa suburbs, and Branson even has more theater than Tulsa if you're ok with genuinely 100% world-class performers doing kitsch on faux river boats.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Agreed that Branson is actually a nice place to live. Due to the tourism, it is rather loaded with good restaurants and entertainment like museums, Imax theater, camping, hiking, etc. Though you do have to deal with a lot of tourists and traffic during the summer busy season. Some areas in Branson even have symetric fiber, I believe even gigabit. You could probably get a nice house in a gated community on the golf course for $500k+.
  - mxcrossb 6y ago
    > We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone. Over half of them are from California, many from the Bay Area If the program isn’t new, I wonder what the total numbers are like since covid started. The article only mentioned 1000 people over two weeks (from all over the country)
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      I have to imagine there have been A LOT more than 1000 Tulsa residents who left Tulsa for tech jobs in greener pastures over the last 20+ years. This isn't an infusion of talent. It's probably a teeny tiny fraction of the brain drain returning to test the waters or, more likely, just to leverage grandparents for some free daycare while pandemic is on. And this is the high-point of interest.
  - pqoek 6y ago
    > non-Catholic private schools what's wrong with public schools?
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      In the case of Oklahoma, the phrase immediately following what you quoted: > couldn't even keep all of its public schools open 5 days a week in pre-pandemic times
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      The persistent underfunding. Everyone who can afford to send their children to private school will do so because OK public schools are plain awful. Of course it's impossible to raise taxes to attract any sort of decent teacher or buy equipment or even paint because it's Oklahoma, no one is using public school anyway, so why fund it. But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        > But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews. I went to Catholic school, and politically, they certainly seem to be for restricting other people’s freedoms (see abstinence only sex education, gay marriage, and abortion). My whole sex education at the age of 14 or so was a slideshow of genital herpes or sores and “don’t do it”. There’s also the whole decades long organizational support of child molestation issue that one might want to avoid supporting.
        HarryHirsch 6y ago
        At least the official position of the Catholic Church isn't biblical literalism, so you won't get the A-Beka crap. The Presbyterians down here in my village in Alabama inflict the stuff on the poor kids. I grew up Catholic in a tradition where the social responsibility was taken seriously (also see here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolpingwerk https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolpingwerk). We didn't have the abstinence-only nonsense either, that must be particular to certain regions in the US. BTW, the Catholic position is that marriage is a sacrament that the couple administers to each other (the only sacrament where a priest is not needed), and, well, sex is complicated, and all sorts of Reddit drama happens when FWBs catch feelings & so on. This was actually how the subject was treated in school. The recent child abuse revelations are disappointing. I always said that child abuse isn't confined to catholics, but the hierarchy at least provides some oversight that you don't have in megachurches, but it's clear that that did not happen, it was a total failure up to the Pope.
  - Bahamut 6y ago
    I actually moved to the Bay Area because long term it has the best compensation when accounting for cost of living that I calculated for net take home pay unless I wanted to move over to NYC fintech (definitely don’t want to). While $300k+ is a pipe dream in most of the US, it’s attainable in the Bay Area working for a big tech company as a modest goal.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      Absolutely true. Really. Just don't have 4 kids :)
- burnthrow 6y ago
  Tulsa's pretty rad. The Ozarks are in Oklahoma too, actually. Sorry you got a ticket: Pay attention and slow down.
  - meekrohprocess 6y ago
    Oh, I only got warnings. Including some for going under the speed limit. The state is full of small-town cops who want to throw their weight around, but they're harmless if you play their game and (sadly) if you're the right color. That's another important consideration for potential applicants.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      if you're the right color. That's another important consideration for potential applicants God, yes. I have colleagues who will not leave the interstate when driving through certain states.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    Or buy a radar detector. I actually got a warning instead of a ticket from a cop in Texas while I was going through a construction zone. Great times.
  - peterwoerner 6y ago
    The south in general has a history of funding their local governments through traffic tickets.
- eyberg 6y ago
  The Ozarks extend well into Missouri as well (also a few hours drive). Ozark the Netflix series even though filmed in Georgia? takes place ~4.5 hrs drive from Tulsa. Besides the forest it's known for all the rivers that people float down.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    The Ozarks is primarily Missouri and Arkansas. Really only a small area in far east oklahoma is part of the Ozarks.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - meekrohprocess 6y ago
    Yeah, they're huge. I love the place. You can travel for miles and miles through remote forest, then pass through a main street that looks like the center of any other large town. You can get lost following the meandering pavement, or get in trouble following a dirt track too far. Dirt bikes share the roads with sport car rallies (and logging trucks). Expansive overlooks appear out of nowhere, and you can find backpacking trails by looking for cairns along the roads. There are equestrian camp sites. It's not really possible to describe in a short text comment.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  I wonder how many of them visited before applying The program will actually pay for a tour of Tulsa for potential recipients who have no connection to the city. That's what the FAQ page says. When you apply they also ask about your connection to Tulsa (friends, family), so to their credit they do take into account that the place may not be for everyone. They have looked into these difficulties, one should give them some credit.
  - meekrohprocess 6y ago
    Oh, for sure - we can debate whether it's misguided or not, but it's definitely nice that the city is putting so much effort into this sort of outreach, and they seem to be serious about the program. People poo-poo the $10k number, but that must have been hard to sell to a city council. I'm more curious about how many of the applications are serious, and how many are reactive to the current situation. There's nothing wrong with seeking stability over excitement, but I sort of worry about people envisioning the whole "Great Plains" idyll.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I send these offers to a friend as a joke. The only one I was serious about was Helsinki.
xivzgrev 6y ago
Sure. If I rented, my job was secure, and all of my friends are packing, of course I would take a free $10k to move somewhere else for a year. The pandemic is probably going to take at least that long to wind out. I can always just move back if SF picks up again.
- 01100011 6y ago
  Yeah I just found out that we're not expected back in the office until 𝟤̶𝟢̶𝟤̶𝟣̶ 2022 at least. I wish they had communicated that earlier. We would have left the bay area already. Edit: Sorry, 2022, not 2021.
  - paxys 6y ago
    2021 is a month and a half away.
- wrsh07 6y ago
  I would love for Tulsa to succeed at creating a "new silicon valley" It could be great for the area, great for the people who are early movers, etc I don't think it will be, but I think ideas like this are good experiments. You need a certain amount of gravity before you have a good tech scene, and I am interested in knowing "what does that gravity look like? How can such friction to becoming a tech hub be erased?" Honestly, my current bets would be: Good office space (probably not a huge open office but whatever), a good space for hosting meetups / other presentations (maybe even a conference!?), and frequent infusion of new talent -- from college or a program like the one described in the article Then you just need a few people with a lot of initiative to build the community
  - blhack 6y ago
    The "new silicon valley" is already Phoenix, AZ.
    - chokeartist 6y ago
      Based on what? Not disputing you, legitimately curious. I am considering moving to Phoenix. Thanks!
xyst 6y ago
There's not enough money in the world to get me to move to "Sooner" land. I jest, but I wonder what the retention rate is like after 1 year? Looks like they have had this program in the past. Is Tulsa really getting their ROI?
bla3 6y ago
> "We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone How many tech people are in the Bay Area? Is this around one percent?
- eindiran 6y ago
  The Bay Area has around 7.75 million people, so 1k people is around 0.013% of the population. So even if only 2% of the Bay Area works in tech, this would be 0.64% of the tech workers. According to this, it looks like it is closer to 12% of residents work in tech: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tech-employment-bay-area-reaches-record-highs-google-apple-facebook-adobe/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tech-employment-bay-a... So that would mean this is about 0.12% of the tech workers in the Bay Area.
  - bla3 6y ago
    Thanks. Seems like a better headline might be "Tiny fraction of Bay Area residents apply to..."
techsupporter 6y ago
I (truly) wish these people good luck and hope they find the happiness they seek. I am from near Tulsa and there's absolutely no way in hell you'll ever catch my family moving back to there. It's hot, humid, comes with tornadoes, you have to drive everywhere (and everywhere is set up on the assumption you will drive). Plus, I will never forget the clerk at the licensing office who, after the rules changed to require "proof of legal status" to renew a driving license, gave my wife shit for having "married up to America" when she presented her green card as proof of status. (Never mind that my wife had been a permanent resident for years prior to us meeting.) Everywhere has its upsides and its flaws, but at least where I live now has the benefit of the vast majority of people and culture here doesn't want to throw my loved ones out on their ear. Perhaps some of the new arrivals moving there will change that culture. I hope so.
- symlinkk 6y ago
  You’re delusional if you think California is the only place that has good weather and isn’t racist
  - junkrat002 6y ago
    (S)He didn't say anything about California.
    - symlinkk 6y ago
      The article is titled “Bay Area applicants flood program that pays them $10,000 to leave California”
      - stouset 6y ago
        … and is about a program that pays people to relocate to Tulsa.
        yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        To be fair, that title really isn't engendering understanding.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
A few years ago, there was a similar incentive scheme by a businessman to revitalize the Jewish congregation in Dothan, AL that he grew up in. The plan was launched with great fanfare (see here: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/us/an-alabama-synagogue-once-struggling-for-congregants-stretches-out-its-hand.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/us/an-alabama-synagogue-o...) but failed badly: https://www.timesofisrael.com/billionaires-scheme-to-revive-alabama-jewish-community-goes-south/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/billionaires-scheme-to-revive-... None of the newcomers stayed, too much casual racism, no qualified jobs and bad weather. You'd think this Oklahoma scheme will work out just the same. In Tulsa you get unbearable heat in Summer, tornadoes in Spring, bad schools (the private school for your kids will really bust your budget), driving everywhere, and racist rednecks, lots of racist rednecks. Good luck to anyone who avails himself of this program, they'll need it unless they are native Oklahomians and know what they are getting themselves into.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  > bad schools (the private school for your kids will really bust your budget) Oklahoma has significantly better schools than California[1]. San Francisco has notoriously bad public schools, and hardly any upper-middle people send their kids there. It's not like NYC, which has strong magnet programs for the gifted. The one really good SF school, Lowell, is replacing its meritocratic test score system with a diversity lottery. [1]https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9617514/test-scores-naep-2013 https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9617514/test-scores-naep-2013 [2]https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/21/san-franciscos-lowell-high-school-officially-switches-from-merit-selection-system-to-lottery-in-2021/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/21/san-franciscos-...
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Anyone coming to Oklahoma from the Northeast will be in for a shock. The poor state of schools in California is a surprise, but then large parts of the state are agricultural and deep red, or otherwise simply in the middle of nowhere. CA should take a look at GA, Georgia schools are surprisingly good, especially when you compare them to the utter lousiness you find across the state line in AL. I don't know what they are doing in GA, but it works.
seltzered_ 6y ago
"If selected, applicants are required to strictly stay in the Tulsa city limits." Once you factor in relocation costs, the fact that urban apartments in major cities are offering revised rates & X months free, and that you're still in a city (free coworking doesn't make sense if you're concerned about the pandemic), it's moot. Thinking wildly aloud, maybe one idea is to have collective bargaining rather than money. Say, X number of remote employees offer to move to Tulsa and participate in their economy in exchange for say, giving Oklahoma tribes back sovereignty for their land (see https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/05/indigenous-leaders-furious-after-epa-grants-oklahoma-control-over-sovereign-tribal https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/05/indigenous-lead... )
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  Oklahoma has no jurisdiction over that.
- klipt 6y ago
  What are the effects of transferring sovereignty? Does it mean US citizens or green card holders who aren't Cherokee can't live there?
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Broadly speaking, it would mean that you are subject to tribal laws instead of state laws. Exact details vary greatly based on what the treaty the US wrote with the exact tribe in question, and to what degree Congress has explicitly expressed its intent to ignore said treaty.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    Cherokee is but one of the nations in Oklahoma. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_tribes_in_Oklahoma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_trib...
guyzero 6y ago
The article says there were over a thousand applicants but not how many were approved to get the money. Anyway, with an average income of just over $27K per year in Tulsa, a handful of tech people relocating there probably makes a bigger difference to them than it does to California.
paxys 6y ago
I understand people who have roots in the bay area and aren't in the position to leave (or just don't want to). I also understand people who, under the current circumstances, want to temporarily or permanently move to a location that will work out better for them. I don't understand, though, how $10K can be the deciding factor for someone for such a major decision.
- redslazer 6y ago
  If you are trying to bootstrap something, 10K (and a free co-working space) in a city where a two bedroom apartment costs $800 rather than $4000 is pretty sweet depending on your life situation.
  - pqoek 6y ago
    this, with everything remote, if you're dedicated and are on a budget this is an amazing offer to bootstrap your thing.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    If those numbers make a difference then it may be a sign that the business is severely undercapitalized. An under capitalized business might last longer in Tulsa. Whether that’s a feature or a bug depends on how one values failing fast. A zombie is still a zombie.
  - paxys 6y ago
    > If you are trying to bootstrap something That already doesn't meet the eligibility criteria
- TAForObvReasons 6y ago
  > In addition to the $10,000 grant, participants will receive a year membership at a local co-working space, support in identifying housing, and regular community-building opportunities. The $10K is basically "moving expenses". The program's other factors represent a serious effort to address the non-economic concerns with such a large decision.
- 6y ago
fnord77 6y ago
The title makes it sound like everyone in the bay area is applying to move to Tulsa. > "We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone. Over half of them are from California, many from the Bay Area,” so, 500+ per 2 weeks. sfgate articles are rubbish
pqoek 6y ago
Makes me think of these ads you get that pays you to move to jewish settlers camps in Palestine.
nvader 6y ago
Why does the website complain about my Ad Blocker, when the article was clearly already paid for by the Tulsa Remote Foundation?
sarora27 6y ago
If $10k is all it took to incentivize someone to leave the Bay Area, I suspect they never really moved here for the right reasons.
fortran77 6y ago
Tulsa is not a safe city: https://okcfox.com/news/local/oklahoma-ranked-14th-most-dangerous-in-us-tulsa-most-dangerous-city https://okcfox.com/news/local/oklahoma-ranked-14th-most-dang...
Cyclone_ 6y ago
Misleading headline. They're not being paid to leave California, they're being paid to come to Tulsa. Big difference.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
daisukeumon 6y ago
Wow, coming here to Y Combinator and having to see pretty damned racist things is terrible. I live in the Bay Area, San Jose, Have a place in Houston, Texas. It breaks my heart to see ignorance and racism, by the way for the racist and ignorant, I'm Native American Yaqui/Mexican so 100% American. Last time I checked we are all human, so check that ignorance/stupidity and racism at the door. Don't have time for that. Being a disabled veteran I see Army green all the same color Class dissmissed whoever User - bruceb is.
jl2718 6y ago
I wonder whether this is even good for them. What is the idea here? Are a few engineers supposed to rub off on everybody else and start the next Google there? Or are they looking to boost their services economy by catering to a massive remote work income disparity? I don’t know about the former, but the latter doesn’t work. Sustainable regional economic growth depends on development of a local industry with global comparative advantage, e.g. exports. I’m not sure this will be software in Tulsa.
wet-scarf 6y ago
Wow so the George Soros stuff is real. They’re importing blue voters.
ohjeez 6y ago
Also Arkansas is getting into the swing of things. https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/northwest-arkansas-relocation-initiative https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/northwest-arkan...

151 points by ohjeez 6y ago

Hehehe, Tulsa Oklahoma. I wonder how many of them visited before applying. I don't mean to knock the city, but it is a very different place, and SF residents might chafe at the lack of interesting nature in the surrounding area. Probably the closest large park-ish area would be the Ozarks over in Arkansas. It's a lovely forest, but still about a 2.5-hour drive away. And OK's state highways are absolutely littered with aggressive speed traps.

throwawaygh 6y ago
These programs existed for decades before the pandemic. They never caught on for a very simple reason: CoL is literally the only advantage. $10K is nothing compared to the uphill climb of career progression that inevitably comes with remote work. Hell, $10K literally less than my first relocation package and I was moving a single bedroom. TL;DR: no one moves to SFBA because it's the best CoL vs salary choice, and there are some great sweet spots for tech before places like Tulsa (eg Portland, KC, even Seattle) CoL is the real attraction, but if you don't care about the dearth of cultural amenities, why choose a mid-sized city in a state that doesn't have any non-Catholic private schools worth paying for and couldn't even keep all of its public schools open 5 days a week in pre-pandemic times? If you don't need good schools or cultural institutions, why not instead choose New Hampshire? Or rural Oregon? Or, as you pointed out, the Ozarks? Heck, IMO, Branson and Springfield have better public schools than Tulsa suburbs, and Branson even has more theater than Tulsa if you're ok with genuinely 100% world-class performers doing kitsch on faux river boats.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Agreed that Branson is actually a nice place to live. Due to the tourism, it is rather loaded with good restaurants and entertainment like museums, Imax theater, camping, hiking, etc. Though you do have to deal with a lot of tourists and traffic during the summer busy season. Some areas in Branson even have symetric fiber, I believe even gigabit. You could probably get a nice house in a gated community on the golf course for $500k+.
- mxcrossb 6y ago
  > We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone. Over half of them are from California, many from the Bay Area If the program isn’t new, I wonder what the total numbers are like since covid started. The article only mentioned 1000 people over two weeks (from all over the country)
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    I have to imagine there have been A LOT more than 1000 Tulsa residents who left Tulsa for tech jobs in greener pastures over the last 20+ years. This isn't an infusion of talent. It's probably a teeny tiny fraction of the brain drain returning to test the waters or, more likely, just to leverage grandparents for some free daycare while pandemic is on. And this is the high-point of interest.
- pqoek 6y ago
  > non-Catholic private schools what's wrong with public schools?
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    In the case of Oklahoma, the phrase immediately following what you quoted: > couldn't even keep all of its public schools open 5 days a week in pre-pandemic times
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    The persistent underfunding. Everyone who can afford to send their children to private school will do so because OK public schools are plain awful. Of course it's impossible to raise taxes to attract any sort of decent teacher or buy equipment or even paint because it's Oklahoma, no one is using public school anyway, so why fund it. But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      > But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews. I went to Catholic school, and politically, they certainly seem to be for restricting other people’s freedoms (see abstinence only sex education, gay marriage, and abortion). My whole sex education at the age of 14 or so was a slideshow of genital herpes or sores and “don’t do it”. There’s also the whole decades long organizational support of child molestation issue that one might want to avoid supporting.
      - HarryHirsch 6y ago
        At least the official position of the Catholic Church isn't biblical literalism, so you won't get the A-Beka crap. The Presbyterians down here in my village in Alabama inflict the stuff on the poor kids. I grew up Catholic in a tradition where the social responsibility was taken seriously (also see here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolpingwerk https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolpingwerk). We didn't have the abstinence-only nonsense either, that must be particular to certain regions in the US. BTW, the Catholic position is that marriage is a sacrament that the couple administers to each other (the only sacrament where a priest is not needed), and, well, sex is complicated, and all sorts of Reddit drama happens when FWBs catch feelings & so on. This was actually how the subject was treated in school. The recent child abuse revelations are disappointing. I always said that child abuse isn't confined to catholics, but the hierarchy at least provides some oversight that you don't have in megachurches, but it's clear that that did not happen, it was a total failure up to the Pope.
- Bahamut 6y ago
  I actually moved to the Bay Area because long term it has the best compensation when accounting for cost of living that I calculated for net take home pay unless I wanted to move over to NYC fintech (definitely don’t want to). While $300k+ is a pipe dream in most of the US, it’s attainable in the Bay Area working for a big tech company as a modest goal.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Absolutely true. Really. Just don't have 4 kids :)
burnthrow 6y ago
Tulsa's pretty rad. The Ozarks are in Oklahoma too, actually. Sorry you got a ticket: Pay attention and slow down.
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Oh, I only got warnings. Including some for going under the speed limit. The state is full of small-town cops who want to throw their weight around, but they're harmless if you play their game and (sadly) if you're the right color. That's another important consideration for potential applicants.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    if you're the right color. That's another important consideration for potential applicants God, yes. I have colleagues who will not leave the interstate when driving through certain states.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Or buy a radar detector. I actually got a warning instead of a ticket from a cop in Texas while I was going through a construction zone. Great times.
- peterwoerner 6y ago
  The south in general has a history of funding their local governments through traffic tickets.
eyberg 6y ago
The Ozarks extend well into Missouri as well (also a few hours drive). Ozark the Netflix series even though filmed in Georgia? takes place ~4.5 hrs drive from Tulsa. Besides the forest it's known for all the rivers that people float down.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  The Ozarks is primarily Missouri and Arkansas. Really only a small area in far east oklahoma is part of the Ozarks.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Yeah, they're huge. I love the place. You can travel for miles and miles through remote forest, then pass through a main street that looks like the center of any other large town. You can get lost following the meandering pavement, or get in trouble following a dirt track too far. Dirt bikes share the roads with sport car rallies (and logging trucks). Expansive overlooks appear out of nowhere, and you can find backpacking trails by looking for cairns along the roads. There are equestrian camp sites. It's not really possible to describe in a short text comment.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
I wonder how many of them visited before applying The program will actually pay for a tour of Tulsa for potential recipients who have no connection to the city. That's what the FAQ page says. When you apply they also ask about your connection to Tulsa (friends, family), so to their credit they do take into account that the place may not be for everyone. They have looked into these difficulties, one should give them some credit.
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Oh, for sure - we can debate whether it's misguided or not, but it's definitely nice that the city is putting so much effort into this sort of outreach, and they seem to be serious about the program. People poo-poo the $10k number, but that must have been hard to sell to a city council. I'm more curious about how many of the applications are serious, and how many are reactive to the current situation. There's nothing wrong with seeking stability over excitement, but I sort of worry about people envisioning the whole "Great Plains" idyll.
dehrmann 6y ago
I send these offers to a friend as a joke. The only one I was serious about was Helsinki.

xivzgrev 6y ago

Sure. If I rented, my job was secure, and all of my friends are packing, of course I would take a free $10k to move somewhere else for a year. The pandemic is probably going to take at least that long to wind out. I can always just move back if SF picks up again.

01100011 6y ago
Yeah I just found out that we're not expected back in the office until 𝟤̶𝟢̶𝟤̶𝟣̶ 2022 at least. I wish they had communicated that earlier. We would have left the bay area already. Edit: Sorry, 2022, not 2021.
- paxys 6y ago
  2021 is a month and a half away.
wrsh07 6y ago
I would love for Tulsa to succeed at creating a "new silicon valley" It could be great for the area, great for the people who are early movers, etc I don't think it will be, but I think ideas like this are good experiments. You need a certain amount of gravity before you have a good tech scene, and I am interested in knowing "what does that gravity look like? How can such friction to becoming a tech hub be erased?" Honestly, my current bets would be: Good office space (probably not a huge open office but whatever), a good space for hosting meetups / other presentations (maybe even a conference!?), and frequent infusion of new talent -- from college or a program like the one described in the article Then you just need a few people with a lot of initiative to build the community
- blhack 6y ago
  The "new silicon valley" is already Phoenix, AZ.
  - chokeartist 6y ago
    Based on what? Not disputing you, legitimately curious. I am considering moving to Phoenix. Thanks!

xyst 6y ago

There's not enough money in the world to get me to move to "Sooner" land. I jest, but I wonder what the retention rate is like after 1 year? Looks like they have had this program in the past. Is Tulsa really getting their ROI?

bla3 6y ago

> "We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone How many tech people are in the Bay Area? Is this around one percent?

eindiran 6y ago
The Bay Area has around 7.75 million people, so 1k people is around 0.013% of the population. So even if only 2% of the Bay Area works in tech, this would be 0.64% of the tech workers. According to this, it looks like it is closer to 12% of residents work in tech: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tech-employment-bay-area-reaches-record-highs-google-apple-facebook-adobe/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tech-employment-bay-a... So that would mean this is about 0.12% of the tech workers in the Bay Area.
- bla3 6y ago
  Thanks. Seems like a better headline might be "Tiny fraction of Bay Area residents apply to..."

techsupporter 6y ago

I (truly) wish these people good luck and hope they find the happiness they seek. I am from near Tulsa and there's absolutely no way in hell you'll ever catch my family moving back to there. It's hot, humid, comes with tornadoes, you have to drive everywhere (and everywhere is set up on the assumption you will drive). Plus, I will never forget the clerk at the licensing office who, after the rules changed to require "proof of legal status" to renew a driving license, gave my wife shit for having "married up to America" when she presented her green card as proof of status. (Never mind that my wife had been a permanent resident for years prior to us meeting.) Everywhere has its upsides and its flaws, but at least where I live now has the benefit of the vast majority of people and culture here doesn't want to throw my loved ones out on their ear. Perhaps some of the new arrivals moving there will change that culture. I hope so.

symlinkk 6y ago
You’re delusional if you think California is the only place that has good weather and isn’t racist
- junkrat002 6y ago
  (S)He didn't say anything about California.
  - symlinkk 6y ago
    The article is titled “Bay Area applicants flood program that pays them $10,000 to leave California”
    - stouset 6y ago
      … and is about a program that pays people to relocate to Tulsa.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        To be fair, that title really isn't engendering understanding.

HarryHirsch 6y ago

A few years ago, there was a similar incentive scheme by a businessman to revitalize the Jewish congregation in Dothan, AL that he grew up in. The plan was launched with great fanfare (see here: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/us/an-alabama-synagogue-once-struggling-for-congregants-stretches-out-its-hand.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/us/an-alabama-synagogue-o...) but failed badly: https://www.timesofisrael.com/billionaires-scheme-to-revive-alabama-jewish-community-goes-south/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/billionaires-scheme-to-revive-... None of the newcomers stayed, too much casual racism, no qualified jobs and bad weather. You'd think this Oklahoma scheme will work out just the same. In Tulsa you get unbearable heat in Summer, tornadoes in Spring, bad schools (the private school for your kids will really bust your budget), driving everywhere, and racist rednecks, lots of racist rednecks. Good luck to anyone who avails himself of this program, they'll need it unless they are native Oklahomians and know what they are getting themselves into.

dcolkitt 6y ago
> bad schools (the private school for your kids will really bust your budget) Oklahoma has significantly better schools than California[1]. San Francisco has notoriously bad public schools, and hardly any upper-middle people send their kids there. It's not like NYC, which has strong magnet programs for the gifted. The one really good SF school, Lowell, is replacing its meritocratic test score system with a diversity lottery. [1]https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9617514/test-scores-naep-2013 https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9617514/test-scores-naep-2013 [2]https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/21/san-franciscos-lowell-high-school-officially-switches-from-merit-selection-system-to-lottery-in-2021/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/21/san-franciscos-...
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Anyone coming to Oklahoma from the Northeast will be in for a shock. The poor state of schools in California is a surprise, but then large parts of the state are agricultural and deep red, or otherwise simply in the middle of nowhere. CA should take a look at GA, Georgia schools are surprisingly good, especially when you compare them to the utter lousiness you find across the state line in AL. I don't know what they are doing in GA, but it works.

seltzered_ 6y ago

"If selected, applicants are required to strictly stay in the Tulsa city limits." Once you factor in relocation costs, the fact that urban apartments in major cities are offering revised rates & X months free, and that you're still in a city (free coworking doesn't make sense if you're concerned about the pandemic), it's moot. Thinking wildly aloud, maybe one idea is to have collective bargaining rather than money. Say, X number of remote employees offer to move to Tulsa and participate in their economy in exchange for say, giving Oklahoma tribes back sovereignty for their land (see https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/05/indigenous-leaders-furious-after-epa-grants-oklahoma-control-over-sovereign-tribal https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/05/indigenous-lead... )

lern_too_spel 6y ago
Oklahoma has no jurisdiction over that.
klipt 6y ago
What are the effects of transferring sovereignty? Does it mean US citizens or green card holders who aren't Cherokee can't live there?
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Broadly speaking, it would mean that you are subject to tribal laws instead of state laws. Exact details vary greatly based on what the treaty the US wrote with the exact tribe in question, and to what degree Congress has explicitly expressed its intent to ignore said treaty.
- brudgers 6y ago
  Cherokee is but one of the nations in Oklahoma. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_tribes_in_Oklahoma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_trib...

guyzero 6y ago

The article says there were over a thousand applicants but not how many were approved to get the money. Anyway, with an average income of just over $27K per year in Tulsa, a handful of tech people relocating there probably makes a bigger difference to them than it does to California.

paxys 6y ago

I understand people who have roots in the bay area and aren't in the position to leave (or just don't want to). I also understand people who, under the current circumstances, want to temporarily or permanently move to a location that will work out better for them. I don't understand, though, how $10K can be the deciding factor for someone for such a major decision.

redslazer 6y ago
If you are trying to bootstrap something, 10K (and a free co-working space) in a city where a two bedroom apartment costs $800 rather than $4000 is pretty sweet depending on your life situation.
- pqoek 6y ago
  this, with everything remote, if you're dedicated and are on a budget this is an amazing offer to bootstrap your thing.
- brudgers 6y ago
  If those numbers make a difference then it may be a sign that the business is severely undercapitalized. An under capitalized business might last longer in Tulsa. Whether that’s a feature or a bug depends on how one values failing fast. A zombie is still a zombie.
- paxys 6y ago
  > If you are trying to bootstrap something That already doesn't meet the eligibility criteria
TAForObvReasons 6y ago
> In addition to the $10,000 grant, participants will receive a year membership at a local co-working space, support in identifying housing, and regular community-building opportunities. The $10K is basically "moving expenses". The program's other factors represent a serious effort to address the non-economic concerns with such a large decision.
6y ago

fnord77 6y ago

The title makes it sound like everyone in the bay area is applying to move to Tulsa. > "We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone. Over half of them are from California, many from the Bay Area,” so, 500+ per 2 weeks. sfgate articles are rubbish

pqoek 6y ago

Makes me think of these ads you get that pays you to move to jewish settlers camps in Palestine.

nvader 6y ago

Why does the website complain about my Ad Blocker, when the article was clearly already paid for by the Tulsa Remote Foundation?

sarora27 6y ago

If $10k is all it took to incentivize someone to leave the Bay Area, I suspect they never really moved here for the right reasons.

fortran77 6y ago

Tulsa is not a safe city: https://okcfox.com/news/local/oklahoma-ranked-14th-most-dangerous-in-us-tulsa-most-dangerous-city https://okcfox.com/news/local/oklahoma-ranked-14th-most-dang...

Cyclone_ 6y ago

Misleading headline. They're not being paid to leave California, they're being paid to come to Tulsa. Big difference.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

daisukeumon 6y ago

Wow, coming here to Y Combinator and having to see pretty damned racist things is terrible. I live in the Bay Area, San Jose, Have a place in Houston, Texas. It breaks my heart to see ignorance and racism, by the way for the racist and ignorant, I'm Native American Yaqui/Mexican so 100% American. Last time I checked we are all human, so check that ignorance/stupidity and racism at the door. Don't have time for that. Being a disabled veteran I see Army green all the same color Class dissmissed whoever User - bruceb is.

jl2718 6y ago

I wonder whether this is even good for them. What is the idea here? Are a few engineers supposed to rub off on everybody else and start the next Google there? Or are they looking to boost their services economy by catering to a massive remote work income disparity? I don’t know about the former, but the latter doesn’t work. Sustainable regional economic growth depends on development of a local industry with global comparative advantage, e.g. exports. I’m not sure this will be software in Tulsa.

wet-scarf 6y ago

Wow so the George Soros stuff is real. They’re importing blue voters.

ohjeez 6y ago

Also Arkansas is getting into the swing of things. https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/northwest-arkansas-relocation-initiative https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/northwest-arkan...