4 ms·

More computer jobs than San Francisco

16 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

maerF0x0 5y ago
This is just job count. One might try to make a qualitative analysis. For example one may have pointed out that the top paying jobs are in centers like San francisco / bay area. If an employer is willing to pay more, it must be because there is more value being provided. If more value is being provided then maybe the talent group is higher. If one wants to work with the top in their industry they likely will go where the top talent is. (All on average...) This is the typical rhetoric for why endure San Francisco.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > it must be because there is more value being provided Jesus Christ, it gets so old listening to HN Econ 101 pedants. No. SV companies pay eng. staff more because FAANG companies pay more - there's hiring competition for eng. staff in SV. You can easily prove this: tally up the value you provide as an engineer, then ask for a raise. Unless you have some kind of personal relationship with the owners, you just nuked your career at that company. Why? Because if mgmt. caves for you, then they might get inundated with requests from other staff. Your value isn't even considered, unless it's inconsiderable, in which case you will get an out-of-cycle review that you don't really want. Then just join another company and negotiate yourself a raise. So much simpler. Which one was easier?
djcapelis 5y ago
This is pretty much exactly what results when economists just throw numbers at things without context. Pretending that an IT helpdesk job and a systems programmer are the same type of 1 unit of job leads to ridiculous conclusions.
cwp 5y ago
Next we'll see articles talking about how we've overestimated the centrality of New York for "money jobs".
paxys 5y ago
There are obvious flaws in the data and methodology (WTF is a "computer job"?), but one part stood out to me: > Anyone familiar with Silicon Valley already knows that the city of San Francisco is not considered core to “the valley”. This hasn't been true for well over a decade now. Newer startups are overwhelmingly headquartered in San Francisco. Lots of holdouts like Facebook have finally given in and opened offices in the city. The biggest signal for this though might be all the VC firms shifting north from Menlo Park/Palo Alto all the way to SoMa. And their justification: > Even though computer technology seems antithetical to anything “historical”, there is in fact a Silicon Valley Historical Association. They list the cities of the valley, which does not include SF. But when you click through to the link (https://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/where-is-silicon-valley https://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/where-is-silicon-val...), it does list San Francisco and chunks of North and East Bay as Silicon Valley.
- quantified 5y ago
  Yes, well, no one has gotten a revised term to stick. Instead, the term Silicon Valley has grown to be less precise, especially when you’re outside. I love it when the FAANG group is considered “Silicon Valley”, since one of them definitely ain’t. My favorite example of a similar phenomenon is “where do Yankees live”? In Mexico, it can be pretty much anywhere north of the Rio Grande. In Missouri it might be New York, in New York it’s probably New Hampshire or Maine.

16 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

This is just job count. One might try to make a qualitative analysis. For example one may have pointed out that the top paying jobs are in centers like San francisco / bay area. If an employer is willing to pay more, it must be because there is more value being provided. If more value is being provided then maybe the talent group is higher. If one wants to work with the top in their industry they likely will go where the top talent is. (All on average...) This is the typical rhetoric for why endure San Francisco.

redis_mlc 5y ago
> it must be because there is more value being provided Jesus Christ, it gets so old listening to HN Econ 101 pedants. No. SV companies pay eng. staff more because FAANG companies pay more - there's hiring competition for eng. staff in SV. You can easily prove this: tally up the value you provide as an engineer, then ask for a raise. Unless you have some kind of personal relationship with the owners, you just nuked your career at that company. Why? Because if mgmt. caves for you, then they might get inundated with requests from other staff. Your value isn't even considered, unless it's inconsiderable, in which case you will get an out-of-cycle review that you don't really want. Then just join another company and negotiate yourself a raise. So much simpler. Which one was easier?

djcapelis 5y ago

This is pretty much exactly what results when economists just throw numbers at things without context. Pretending that an IT helpdesk job and a systems programmer are the same type of 1 unit of job leads to ridiculous conclusions.

cwp 5y ago

Next we'll see articles talking about how we've overestimated the centrality of New York for "money jobs".

paxys 5y ago

There are obvious flaws in the data and methodology (WTF is a "computer job"?), but one part stood out to me: > Anyone familiar with Silicon Valley already knows that the city of San Francisco is not considered core to “the valley”. This hasn't been true for well over a decade now. Newer startups are overwhelmingly headquartered in San Francisco. Lots of holdouts like Facebook have finally given in and opened offices in the city. The biggest signal for this though might be all the VC firms shifting north from Menlo Park/Palo Alto all the way to SoMa. And their justification: > Even though computer technology seems antithetical to anything “historical”, there is in fact a Silicon Valley Historical Association. They list the cities of the valley, which does not include SF. But when you click through to the link (https://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/where-is-silicon-valley https://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/where-is-silicon-val...), it does list San Francisco and chunks of North and East Bay as Silicon Valley.

quantified 5y ago
Yes, well, no one has gotten a revised term to stick. Instead, the term Silicon Valley has grown to be less precise, especially when you’re outside. I love it when the FAANG group is considered “Silicon Valley”, since one of them definitely ain’t. My favorite example of a similar phenomenon is “where do Yankees live”? In Mexico, it can be pretty much anywhere north of the Rio Grande. In Missouri it might be New York, in New York it’s probably New Hampshire or Maine.