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The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
- yacine_ 4y agoThis is a good analysis. I think we're going to see an even more extreme selection of the more highly skilled individuals. The bigger the pool, the further you can go on the right tail of the pareto distribution. There's going to be a big influx of people moving to tax havens. Especially considering the fact that highly sought out engs end up spending 90% of their time in meetings with teams across the globe, they're much more likely to continue being remote.
- adamhi 4y agoKeep in mind that they're really measuring pageviews to Stackoverflow, not actual data about movement. My intuition is that it's probably right, but this is suggestive at best.
- lmarcos 4y agoDuring my first years as a developer I used regularly SO. Nowadays perhaps once per month or so.
- smt88 4y agoThis is the correct (and massive) caveat for everything StackOverflow posts from their own data. It tells you a lot about some developers and absolutely nothing about others. I use it a lot for my secondary languages, but when writing a well-documented language/framework like C# .NET, I never use it. The Microsoft docs cover everything.
- swman 4y agoYou’re basically a god now
- omginternets 4y agoHuh, I hadn’t even thought about it, but I’m in the same boat. I haven’t needed SO since switching to Go in 2014.
- bombcar 4y agoAlso, a decent amount of SO traffic is stolen by SO-copy SEO spam sites, too. I used to frequent it, but haven't needed to in years (it seems to more rarely show up in searches for the problems I have, even though I avoid the spam sites, too).
- jsdwarf 4y agoIsn't the SO pageview data skewed by the fact that most remote workers are on their company's VPN, hiding their true location?
- LimaBearz 4y agoSlightly maybe but split tunnel would avoid that. If it was full I'd expect to see an increase from popular cloud hosting regions (if it was a prod vpn) or if corporate VPN's their home offices (which would show as a net zero change)
- sanjams 4y agoAWS has a large data center near Portland... (And Washington DC for that matter)
- rubidium 4y agoEh, maybe your company' vpn is better than mine, but I do as little work as possible on the VPN due to abysmal speed.
- astrange 4y agoAre most work VPNs full-tunnel? I thought Google didn't even use VPNs.
- mahogany 4y agoThis data could also signal that people in less traditional areas for software development now have access to remote jobs and are starting to learn more about programming (thus visiting Stackoverflow) to try to get those jobs. The fall in traffic in the traditional places is a signal about movement, but I wonder how much the upticks in other places are a combination of multiple things.
- angarg12 4y agoThis year we finally moved to the US after 2 years of Covid-induced delays. We moved to Seattle because it's where my team is based. I'm far from impressed. The housing market is so inaccessible that we had to rent a house about 1 hour commute from the office. I have hardly visited the offices a handful of times since we moved, and every time there is maybe 1 or 2 people there. Also this spring seems to be one of the wettest and coldest in recent memory. So high prices, dreadful weather and no value from visiting the office is making us very seriously consider moving to a southern state. I have already brought this up and my manager is ok with me going fully remote and coming to the office on an as-needed basis. For anyone who has no roots or reason to stay here sounds like a no brainer.
- usrn 4y agoGod only knows why we still have net immigration. I guess despite the way minorities and lower classes are "oppressed" we're still better than everywhere else somehow?
- Frost1x 4y agoI'd say that and and the global propoganda machine is strong. There's many from outside the country who have a picture of what it's like to live here that doesn't align with reality. I think much of it is due to entertainment: movies, TV shows, etc. that give this false impression that everything is rosey all the time. The lower classes are abused here as well and classes do exist but it's probably better being poor in the US than being poor in most parts of the world. If nothing else you have access to emergency rooms and food, although you may not have real housing.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- frankfrankfrank 4y agoCould it also be that the pageview method is not accurate?
- joshmaker 4y agoIt's probably directionally accurate
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- hwbehrens 4y agoI feel like the dataset they've chosen is extremely noisy at the tail, but they've obscured this in their analysis. An 11% increase in Portland should be a lot more impactful (in absolute terms) than a big decrease in El Centro, which I can imagine could be caused by a single company moving. I guess it's probably unrealistic to expect P-values in a blog post, though...
- TooKool4This 4y agoAgreed! The list of highest growth and highest decline cities by page view is almost entirely small cities. This is a pointless stat because of course the small cities are going to see the largest change from even the smallest of trends. I’m skeptical of the rest of the analysis if simple things like that are not considered.
- outside1234 4y agoIt would be interesting to see what the trends are for "spreading" decentralization. I still live near enough to San Francisco / San Jose that I can go to the office if needed once every few weeks -- but far enough away that I have a much better quality of like (Santa Cruz). I can't help but think I am not alone in that.
- zucked 4y agoI suspect the housing data would support this theory. While the 90's and early oughts marked an inflow of people and investment into the city cores, the last two/three years seems to have reversed that and sent people scurrying into the suburbs and exurbs. If your commute needs are sporadic at best, the quality of life is going to be (perceived to be) higher in single family houses, even if you're an hour or two from the "office".
- ecshafer 4y agoThe top 10 metro areas list is interesting. Philadelphia, San Antonio, Houston, San Diego and Phoenix not on there despite all 5 being in the top 10 MSA and city population, while DC, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston are on there. I am also shocked that Portland is growing. I went to Portland this year recently, it is the worst city in the country I have been to. 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, massive homelessness crisis. Elmira/Corning dropping is kind of interesting. Since Corning is entirely propped up by Corning Glass.
- kryptozinc 4y ago> 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, massive homelessness crisis. Patently untrue. Portland is booming.
- jjtheblunt 4y agowhere? i've been to Portland many times, and haven't seen any booming.
- ecshafer 4y agoI went to a half dozen neighborhoods over a week. Even post covid, comparing it to Chicago, Philly, NYC, DC (all places I have also been to in the last 6 months) it felt like an absolute ghost town. Almost no people are walking around, even in the "hip" areas. If it weren't for the cars, it would have felt downright post-apocalyptic.
- rednerrus 4y agoIt's not as nice as it was in 2019...
- citizenkeen 4y agoThe greater Portland area is booming, but downtown just feels sad.
- 8note 4y agoDowntown Portland has always felt sad though? Hop over the river asap
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- rgrieselhuber 4y agoAfter living in SF for 7-8 years and seeing a serious decline in quality of life for residents there, I wouldn’t be real excited about the tech industry spreading out to one of these new regions if I happened to live there.
- cs137 4y agoThis. I wonder if Bay Area people still claim to be "living in the future", as they did in the 2000s and early 2010s. They were right, but I wish they hadn't been, because the future turned out to suck.
- ericmay 4y agoGood and bad right? Many people are happy to take the wealth generated from job opportunities afforded by corporate location or relocation, or by being able to move to another location due to remote work options. San Francisco’s main problems stem from government mismanagement of the city, and also the state with respect to housing. Notice how New York built things like Grand Central Station, and San Francisco/California can barely build a single rail line, can’t keep up with homeless populations or defend it’s citizens? What great buildings were built in San Francisco? The Golden Gate Bridge and…? And with all the wealth there? That’s mismanagement. Where is San Francisco’s vision? It’s audacity? It’s splendor? The roads should have been paved with gold with all of the wealth that it has and continues to generate. I don’t see it anywhere.
- krinchan 4y agoI feel surprised that Miami or Fort Lauderdale or just South Florida in general didn't rate in any category. It's even more baffling to see Tampa, of all cities, used for the "Warmer Climes" category. I can't really overcome the gut feeling this data is cherry-picked.
- rootsudo 4y agoI've been to all those Floridian cities quite recently, and went frequently yearly. There are a high number of out of state plates,and drivers are much much worse - in FL driving is absolute so it's a easy check to see who's from where - most people avoid changing the registration/title until the registration expires. It makes me more considerate that there is a housing crisis, simply because Florida does not have enough diversity of industry - it's very hospitality, real estate, entertainment and military driven even though the state and people have tried to diversify into tech and manufacturing - but the pay is quite low when comparing to other cities. Growing up in FL in the late 00's also had me see people buy condos that went one year fro 35k, then to 150k, then left empty and then sold for 25k in a period of 5 years. Houses, similar.
- NortySpock 4y agoAs a Missourian, the percentage-pageview-change data looks odd, highlighting two cities, Joplin and St. Joseph. Both cities are small, between 50,000 and 75,000 population (2020 census), and are about an hour's drive away from the nearest larger city (Joplin is near Springfield, St. Joseph is near Kansas City, and it would take 3 hours to drive from Kansas City to Springfield.) In terms of Midwest tech hubs,the ones nearest to me are Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska (3.5 hour drive from Kansas City). If I were to guess, I would say you could cause this apparent shift in traffic simply by shifting a few corporate VPN exit points from several large companies in the region from St. Joseph, Missouri to Joplin, Missouri.
- corrral 4y agoI put the likelihood that the Joplin, MO / Pittsburg, KS area is becoming any kind of destination for remote tech workers at 0%. That one has to be a case of a very small number not needing to increase much to have a large percentage increase.
- ravedave5 4y agoSimilarly Mankato MN being on the list is wierd. Very small town, a college town actually. I would imagine 50% + of stackoverflow traffic to come from college kids.
- bitbang 4y agoCan't speak for St. Jo but Joplin and Pittsburgh are growing from proximity to the Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers metropolitan area just exploding in growth. The interstate was finished up that now puts them only an hour drive away, and they have been benefiting greatly from that.
- swman 4y agoI think eventually we will be back in the cities. Just not now. And by we I mean people in tech who are the only real group with this privilege.
- rednerrus 4y agoI grew up in a really small town and all of the kids who wanted to get good jobs left the town when they finished high school. I have a feeling if this had been available to them at least some of them would have come home afterwards. It would have brought some of the money and some of the brain power back to the town and created a little bit of a virtuous cycle.
- amyjess 4y agoI think you have cause and effect backwards. I've talked to a few friends who came from small towns like these: they put in the effort needed to get good jobs so they could get out of their hometowns. They were all unhappy growing up in a town where there's nothing to do but opioids and where being LGBTQ+ or anything other than an evangelical protestant would get you ostracized by the community at best or violently assaulted at worst. Getting a good job was just their method of getting the hell out of that environment.
- redisman 4y agoEspecially if we get a recession and tech employment is hit in a major way. We could be back to square 1 soon.
- jeffbee 4y agoComically bad analysis. Take a bunch of tiny denominators and stochastic numerators, cherry-pick one instant in time, and then declare Joplin and Tulsa the two hottest tech talent markets, despite the latter being so desperate for in-migrants that they will still pay you $10k to move there.
- tren-hard 4y agoThis is great news. I love that tech jobs and workers are spreading out. Some concentration is good but it’s way over saturated. That said real estate is still bonkers in Seattle (and everywhere really) so even with a huge out flow it isn’t even making a dent in affordability.
- jmyeet 4y agoI'm glad they looked at climate because for a lot of people it's a huge factor. Some people seem to like but for me the Pacific Northwest is the most depressing place on Earth (outside summer). The Northeast? Less depressing but the winters are harsh. I expect family is a big factor in wwhere people move, as in people are moving to have some proximity with their extended families. It's just that remote work has allowed this to happen. But here's another potential factor: the Trump tax "cuts" did three big things to individuals, which is particularly relevant in tech: 1. Raised taxes in the $200k to $500k tax bracket; 2. Ended the longstanding SALT deducation (mostly); and 3. Any personal income tax cuts (unlike the corporate tax cuts) are temporary and are slowly being rolled back. So consider a software engineer with TC of $500k in CA or NY. You're paying close to 10% of your income in state income taxes and might be paying $30k in property taxes. In addition to losing $80k in taxes, you no longer get a Federal deduction of 33% for those taxes so you can be losing more than 20% of your income to state and local taxes. Now that same engineer moves to, say, Nevada. State income tax is gone and property taxes are low (because of casinos) so your net pay could be almost $100k higher. Put another way: that means working in CA for 5 years will net you the same money as working in NV for 4. The Northeast has already had a longstanding trend of migration to the Sun Belt, so much so that NY lost a congressional seat in apportionment from the 2020 census while Florida gained 1 and Texas gained 2. For non-US people, every 10 years there's a census and based on the results the 435 Congressional seats are distributed. If a state gains or loses enough population they can gain or lose (respectively) Congessional seats. It's actually a big deal. I'm happy people have the option of living outside a few big urban centers. Some locals are mad at skyrocketing real estate prices. The biggest reason for this is and overall demand shock but migration doesn't help. Still, it's more high-paying jobs in those economies.
- ryandrake 4y agoThat software engineer is unlikely to make $500K in Nevada, even if working remotely for a CA or NY company. If remote tech work really does mainstream, companies will surely begin adjusting compensations to match the local cost of labor where their employee lives.
- davidw 4y agoThis is pretty interesting. There are tons of small towns throughout the western US that are nice places in their own way. Will the remote work trend cause people to move there? A few random ones the top of my head: * Baker City, Oregon: near a small ski area, mountains, sunnier and nicer than western Oregon. * Silver City, New Mexico: (very) small college town next to the national forest. Great climate because it's far south, but at enough altitude that it's not miserably hot in the summer compared, to, say, Phoenix.
- dboreham 4y agoYes. Here in Southwest Montana we have seen a very significant increase in transplantation in the past 2 years. House prices have soared. The freeway looks like 101 now (101 north of Eureka, but heck..)
- mywittyname 4y agoThere's an issue with scale with those numbers on the metro area growth/decline. For example, Vegas, Cincinnati, and Columbus are metro areas home to 2+ million people, while Elmeria is the 10th smallest American metro area listed wikipedia with just 83k people, literally a rounding error compared to the others.
- qgin 4y agoFayetteville AR is 99.9% Walmart hiring
- lumost 4y agoThis looks like a natural reaction to remote work. My anecdotal observation is that companies are giving up the ghost of offices, but employees are hesitant to commit to a full-time remote world for fear that their employer will pull them back one day. Even if the employer decides not to pull them back, there is no guarantee that they will find the next in a remote world. But, in the middle of the day - I still see empty offices all across town. At some point something is going to give.
- jmac01 4y agoWish this would include outside of US. I know a lot of people who've moved away from US as multinational companies become fully remote allowing workers to work anywhere. It'd be great to get info on potential "tech hubs" forming around the world.
- d4rkp4ttern 4y agoI think there is also another shift underway: experienced workers prefer to work as consultants for one or more companies, so: (a) they not beholden to any specific corporation and its hierarchy (b) they get tax write offs (c) they get to work on projects that excite them (d) they stay current with skills rather than stagnate (d) and other advantages I can’t think of right now :) And for consultants, being remote is the norm and corps don’t question it much.
- lumost 4y agoHasn't this always been the case in tech however? Experienced folks either seek more interesting/remunerative work, or they locate the closest sinecure via moving into low-pressure management, or high profit low ops maintenance efforts. An independent consultant can make bank, but for many legacy companies - the consultant is the only one they can pressure into working hard.
- d4rkp4ttern 4y agoPossibly, but I think the trend has accelerated due to corps being more open to remote work
- kkfx 4y agoPersonal notes on that: we know a classic game who tend to be played at a slow peace in society, efficiency vs flexibility. A city designed today for today's needs is far more efficient than a Riviera. However cities are already built and evolve at a hard and slow peace, especially dense ones, especially parts of them full of tall buildings with many owners etc. Even if we design the perfect Smart City today it will be built only after a certain amount of time (years) and we can't upgrade it much like we do for software releases. So cities are the efficiency side of the game. The flexibility side is for Riviera's (witch in some countries might be called cities, or at least being inside some cities) where people is "a bit dense" but not too much, where we have single-family homes with some ground around (let's say 1k-2km² (~10k-20k ft²) land per single one/two stairs home to have room for future changes) mixed with workspace (small buildings for various activities) and few "more dense" areas for specific activities (hospitals, schools, military/gov buildings, airports, harbors, ...) + some local districts (large enterprises, mining, manufacturing etc). For a certain amount of decades we have pushed the efficiency model, now perhaps 'efficiency' have reached a level where fragility and absence of flexibility is too much so we shift toward 'resilience' witch happen to be given by well-crafted flexibility. The point is: will it be exaggerated as we have exaggerated before? Or will it be too little too late? Or the right amount? Some theorist have crafted a "small-medium city" hypothetical future (UN New Urban Agenda), I have many doubt on it but anyway we need both a certain density for economy of scale and sociability and flexibility to evolve in a changing world. My personal choice is a middle ground but still outside urban area to have room to evolve while being near-enough to urban area to avoid being completely "out of civility", I suspect not so much but not so little others have done similar choices. Not much "talented" but just those who can and care about their future. Future air mobility might arrive in less than a decade bridging the gap between actual-city density and actual riviera density or to have the best of both world in a spread model. That's a dream, a sci-fi one, so something with some valid and solid bases behind, just in need to be drawn more and implemented :-)
- throwaway23234 4y agoHow is Portland even growing. Last time I was there the roads were simply not enough. I can't imagine 11% growth over there.