6 ms·

If this is the future, salaries will come down, and people will move to smaller cities.

by scoofy 5y ago

DevKoala 5y ago
Isn’t that good? High concentration of capital in specific geo’s isn’t that great either.
- bradlys 5y ago
  None of it really matters tbh. Without proper taxation and building policy - it’s all moot. Small town with a bunch of millionaires is just as bad as a big city with them. Policy is what will dictate whether or not this is good and that’s not within the hands of any company. That’s up to the federal, state, and local governments. (Of which are all fucked - of course)
  - DevKoala 5y ago
    From my experience, it is usually the non millionaires that are moving out of the expensive areas.
Solvitieg 5y ago
salaries for people in smaller cities will increase
- tjr225 5y ago
  So will housing costs. The problems facing SF, Seattle, LA will spread to smaller towns. SF, Seattle, LA, will continue to be expensive because people spend $$$$$$ to live there for reasons other than tech jobs. Be careful what you wish for. I live in the Seattle metro, and would live nowhere else in the country, for what its worth. You already see this happening in rural communities outside of big cities. "Tech-bro" approved towns such as Asheville, Knoxville, Ann Arbor, Twin Cities, etc, etc are getting so expensive the locals can't move. Where I am from in Southwest Michigan has been facing a worsening housing crisis for years. Luckily for most of the country, the weather isn't as nice as it is on the west coast, so homelessness will probably not explode as much as it has here. On the other hand, you have to deal with shitty weather ;) I think the reality is that our housing costs and our fuel costs will catch up with Europe's. In this case it sucks because never built out the public transportation capabilities that could facilitate this being as "pleasant" as it is in Europe. So now if you want to visit the rest of your country you're going to have to pony up for fuel.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    > In this case it sucks because never built out the public transportation capabilities that could facilitate this being as "pleasant" as it is in Europe. Or the publicly subsidized healthcare and higher education!
  - kerbs 5y ago
    The Twin Cities are tech bro approved?
    - tjr225 5y ago
      Erm, yeah. Pretty much anywhere with 100k+ people is at this point.
  - adam_arthur 5y ago
    Your logic doesn't really track. People move from HCOL to LCOL, so LCOL becomes more expensive. Yet the HCOL areas continue to go up too? Also why does public transit matter in a WFH/remote world? Seems to obviate it to a large degree, e.g. subway in NYC, which while used for many things, was majority used for commuting. It was losing large amounts of money even before the pandemic hit
    - tjr225 5y ago
      People in hcol cities still need to move around. People from outside of the country move to hcol cities because of their reputation. Rich people live in hcol places because they can. My logic doesn’t really need to track with whatever you are talking about- look at the cost of housing in high cost of living places; has it gone down during the last two years of pandemic? Has literally -everyone- becoming a remote worker driven down the cost of housing? No; it has made it worse. Is it cheaper to live anywhere on the planet now than it was 2,5,10 years ago? Take for instance where I am from- Kalamazoo, Michigan. This is a great town I love with all of my heart but have no wish to live there. Houses are difficult and expensive to buy there! And compared to Seattle it is pennies. Wages aren’t rising in Kalamazoo to match the money coming in: but houses aren’t getting cheaper in Seattle either.
jimbob45 5y ago
CoL will come down in California too. You won’t have the rich highly concentrated around the best job centers anymore and that will pull down the CoL in those places.
- cellis 5y ago
  I don’t think this will happen as fast as you’d like. There are tons of things in cities tons of people just don’t want to give up, chief among them a stronger network. It’s like the difference between remote learning and being on campus, at an Ivy League school.
heavyset_go 5y ago
No one with experience who currently makes top dollar would take jobs that pay them significantly less, especially as cost of living all over the country is skyrocketing. Companies will need to compete for those developers, and they'll have to compete on wages, as well. I used to work with developers in Eastern Europe who made the same amount of money as their peers in SF made, despite living in countries with median salaries of ~$8,000 USD a year. People with skills can and do command high compensation packages that are independent of where they do their work from. Market rates for talent already factor in domestic and global markets.
majormajor 5y ago
In the short term, with tons of well-funded or high-revenue companies struggling to hire, remote is a way to make your existing comp more attractive by opening it up to a new set of people and out-bidding their local employers. In the long term salaries will likely equalize a bit, but maybe not that much. Even in today's tech hubs, the existing range of salaries is VERY wide. Not every dev in SF is making 300k+, and yet the FANG companies have been in an increasing comp arms race for several years.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  That's because even remote jobs are US/Canada only.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    It'll take a long time (likely never, for small companies) for more companies to be international-friendly, for communications reasons for non-English-native-languages nearby countries, for HR/tax/legal compliance overhead reasons even for Canada, and for those plus time zone headaches for others. If you really want to do it with less paperwork as a US company, you can get around the tax headaches even today, hiring through some outsourcing staffing firms. Lots of those in Latin America now. Quite a bit cheaper. Still a bit of a communication hassle. But that hard barrier of not being employed directly keeps things at arms length in terms of affecting the overall salary market.

If this is the future, salaries will come down, and people will move to smaller cities.

by scoofy 5y ago

If this is the future, salaries will come down, and people will move to smaller cities.

DevKoala 5y ago

Isn’t that good? High concentration of capital in specific geo’s isn’t that great either.

bradlys 5y ago
None of it really matters tbh. Without proper taxation and building policy - it’s all moot. Small town with a bunch of millionaires is just as bad as a big city with them. Policy is what will dictate whether or not this is good and that’s not within the hands of any company. That’s up to the federal, state, and local governments. (Of which are all fucked - of course)
- DevKoala 5y ago
  From my experience, it is usually the non millionaires that are moving out of the expensive areas.

Solvitieg 5y ago

salaries for people in smaller cities will increase

tjr225 5y ago
So will housing costs. The problems facing SF, Seattle, LA will spread to smaller towns. SF, Seattle, LA, will continue to be expensive because people spend $$$$$$ to live there for reasons other than tech jobs. Be careful what you wish for. I live in the Seattle metro, and would live nowhere else in the country, for what its worth. You already see this happening in rural communities outside of big cities. "Tech-bro" approved towns such as Asheville, Knoxville, Ann Arbor, Twin Cities, etc, etc are getting so expensive the locals can't move. Where I am from in Southwest Michigan has been facing a worsening housing crisis for years. Luckily for most of the country, the weather isn't as nice as it is on the west coast, so homelessness will probably not explode as much as it has here. On the other hand, you have to deal with shitty weather ;) I think the reality is that our housing costs and our fuel costs will catch up with Europe's. In this case it sucks because never built out the public transportation capabilities that could facilitate this being as "pleasant" as it is in Europe. So now if you want to visit the rest of your country you're going to have to pony up for fuel.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  > In this case it sucks because never built out the public transportation capabilities that could facilitate this being as "pleasant" as it is in Europe. Or the publicly subsidized healthcare and higher education!
- kerbs 5y ago
  The Twin Cities are tech bro approved?
  - tjr225 5y ago
    Erm, yeah. Pretty much anywhere with 100k+ people is at this point.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Your logic doesn't really track. People move from HCOL to LCOL, so LCOL becomes more expensive. Yet the HCOL areas continue to go up too? Also why does public transit matter in a WFH/remote world? Seems to obviate it to a large degree, e.g. subway in NYC, which while used for many things, was majority used for commuting. It was losing large amounts of money even before the pandemic hit
  - tjr225 5y ago
    People in hcol cities still need to move around. People from outside of the country move to hcol cities because of their reputation. Rich people live in hcol places because they can. My logic doesn’t really need to track with whatever you are talking about- look at the cost of housing in high cost of living places; has it gone down during the last two years of pandemic? Has literally -everyone- becoming a remote worker driven down the cost of housing? No; it has made it worse. Is it cheaper to live anywhere on the planet now than it was 2,5,10 years ago? Take for instance where I am from- Kalamazoo, Michigan. This is a great town I love with all of my heart but have no wish to live there. Houses are difficult and expensive to buy there! And compared to Seattle it is pennies. Wages aren’t rising in Kalamazoo to match the money coming in: but houses aren’t getting cheaper in Seattle either.

jimbob45 5y ago

CoL will come down in California too. You won’t have the rich highly concentrated around the best job centers anymore and that will pull down the CoL in those places.

cellis 5y ago
I don’t think this will happen as fast as you’d like. There are tons of things in cities tons of people just don’t want to give up, chief among them a stronger network. It’s like the difference between remote learning and being on campus, at an Ivy League school.

heavyset_go 5y ago

No one with experience who currently makes top dollar would take jobs that pay them significantly less, especially as cost of living all over the country is skyrocketing. Companies will need to compete for those developers, and they'll have to compete on wages, as well. I used to work with developers in Eastern Europe who made the same amount of money as their peers in SF made, despite living in countries with median salaries of ~$8,000 USD a year. People with skills can and do command high compensation packages that are independent of where they do their work from. Market rates for talent already factor in domestic and global markets.

majormajor 5y ago

In the short term, with tons of well-funded or high-revenue companies struggling to hire, remote is a way to make your existing comp more attractive by opening it up to a new set of people and out-bidding their local employers. In the long term salaries will likely equalize a bit, but maybe not that much. Even in today's tech hubs, the existing range of salaries is VERY wide. Not every dev in SF is making 300k+, and yet the FANG companies have been in an increasing comp arms race for several years.

systemvoltage 5y ago
That's because even remote jobs are US/Canada only.
- majormajor 5y ago
  It'll take a long time (likely never, for small companies) for more companies to be international-friendly, for communications reasons for non-English-native-languages nearby countries, for HR/tax/legal compliance overhead reasons even for Canada, and for those plus time zone headaches for others. If you really want to do it with less paperwork as a US company, you can get around the tax headaches even today, hiring through some outsourcing staffing firms. Lots of those in Latin America now. Quite a bit cheaper. Still a bit of a communication hassle. But that hard barrier of not being employed directly keeps things at arms length in terms of affecting the overall salary market.