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> Many of those who lost their jobs worked in technical fields in an industry that pays an average wage of $180,000 a year. Those were great jobs and helped buo

> Many of those who lost their jobs worked in technical fields in an industry that pays an average wage of $180,000 a year. Those were great jobs and helped buoy the whole state, but most won’t find similar work locally. This is the big risk we all took when we moved away from the Bay Area to work remotely. You arbitrage the COL difference and come out ahead big time, but it might be very hard to make the same salary locally if you can't find a remote job. Best to make some hay while the sun is shining.

UncleOxidant 1y ago
Hillsboro is pretty much a company town (well, there are some datacenters now, but those don't need a lot of employees). Actually the whole of Washington County is heavily dependent on Intel. There's also Nike, but it's also heading for significantly lower headcount than it's had in a while. So it's kind of a double-whammy here (Triple if you count federal government funding cuts hitting places like OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University)). I was contracting out at Intel Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro in 2004 and I'd walk around the (then) new neighborhood there by the campus and I distinctly recall thinking "What if something were to happen to Intel in, say 25 or 30 years? What would happen to these neighborhoods?" It was just kind of a thought experiment at the time, but now it seems like we're going to find out.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  There are hundreds of new homes being built in/near Hillsboro -- probably planned a few years ago when Intel "promised" it was expanding its Oregon facilities. Can't see them selling now. The local economy's going to take a major hit.
  - chneu 1y ago
    I live in Hillsboro. Home sales are fine. There are whole subdivisions selling out before they are finished. The $180k figure is also inflated. Most folks being laid off don't make over $100k.
    - sverhagen 1y ago
      I don't think they're talking about actual home sales prices up to this point, but rather the situation going forward, over a longer period of time.
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        Price per sq ft in Oregon (except Bend) have been flat or down for a few years already (more than other markets).
  - Wohlf 1y ago
    Hillsboro real estate has slowed down and prices have come down a bit but the whole metro is short on housing, and Hillsboro is on the light rail lines.
  - cloverich 1y ago
    Maybe, but Oregon as a whole is far behind on housing, and prices are inflated in the area especially relative to the available jobs. I think more likely it just drives home prices downward. There's plenty of holdouts (myself included) that would happily move sooner if prices came down.
    - insane_dreamer 1y ago
      I think it’s interest rates that are keeping that from happening , not housing prices, which have been flat for the past 2-3 years. Since these are new homes not sure how much it will drive prices down as developers expect a certain profit. But you may be right!
- wvh 1y ago
  Not unlike what happened to Finland when Nokia went down. That took a long time to recover from, and some would say we're still trying to overcome, though it's hard to say what could have been post-Coved with the current state of the world economy.
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  I used to commute from Tigard to JF5 as a contractor and I too wondered what would happen to everything I drove past.
- jermberj 1y ago
  > Hillsboro is pretty much a company town No, it's not. Not even close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
lelandbatey 1y ago
> This is the big risk we all took when we moved away from the Bay Area to work remotely. I suspect most of those folks did not "come from" the bay area in the first place.
- zumu 1y ago
  Yea, Intel has been in Hillsboro since the 70's. People moved from all over the world to work for Intel in office in Oregon. This has nothing to do with remote.
- draw_down 1y ago
  [dead]
smolder 1y ago
IBM left my once prosperous hometown as a kid. Others followed suit. Since then it's been in a sad state economically, just some rust belt town. Corporations abandoning communities is hardly anything new. Capital acts with 0 empathy, or rather, the people who direct it do. I've heard on this forum of a tactic Intel employed where they broke off some people into a subsidiary, dissolved the subsidiary, and then offered to rehire them with the caveat: Oops, the pension you were promised is now gone. Then Intel's foundry business started failing. Oops!!
- raverbashing 1y ago
  It feels like these older companies had more of "let's open a campus in flyover country" or at least medium sized cities The newer "web 2.0" companies (and I mean, even Google and Amazon) opened shop in more affluent places
  - chartered_stack 1y ago
    I'd argue it's not a choice of "let's open a campus in flyover country," but a reflection of how the industry has changed. The "older" companies were manufacturers. Even places like Mountain View and San Jose were the working-class towns with HP factories and semiconductor plants. The concentration of engineering talent (HP/Intel/Apple/Atari) is what created the affluence, especially after manufacturing itself was outsourced globally. The newer Web 2.0 companies don't make physical things; they make software. Their most critical infrastructure isn't a factory but a dense network of developers. They go to the Bay Area, Seattle, etc., because that's where the network is. For the parts of their business that don't require that network, like customer service, they locate in less expensive regions, just as PayPal did with Nebraska. They were even the second largest employer in Nebraska iirc.
    - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
      Amazon's customer service HQ is in West Virginia IIRC.
  - Arainach 1y ago
freddie_mercury 1y ago
Saw the same thing happen 20 years ago with DEC in Colorado Springs. Lots of people assumed it would last forever until it didn't. They were getting paid "California salaries in Colorado" (well, really Massachusetts salaries but popular sayings don't have to be completely accurate) and lots of people had virtual mansions on senior tech salaries (plus probably stock options?). Then DEC imploded and there were almost no other options for hundreds of storage engineers. Knew a lot of people who had their houses foreclosed because so many were flooding the market at the same time.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Intel has had its main R&D in Oregon for 40+ years. They didn’t get a bunch of people from the Bay during the pandemic.

UncleOxidant 1y ago

Hillsboro is pretty much a company town (well, there are some datacenters now, but those don't need a lot of employees). Actually the whole of Washington County is heavily dependent on Intel. There's also Nike, but it's also heading for significantly lower headcount than it's had in a while. So it's kind of a double-whammy here (Triple if you count federal government funding cuts hitting places like OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University)). I was contracting out at Intel Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro in 2004 and I'd walk around the (then) new neighborhood there by the campus and I distinctly recall thinking "What if something were to happen to Intel in, say 25 or 30 years? What would happen to these neighborhoods?" It was just kind of a thought experiment at the time, but now it seems like we're going to find out.

insane_dreamer 1y ago
There are hundreds of new homes being built in/near Hillsboro -- probably planned a few years ago when Intel "promised" it was expanding its Oregon facilities. Can't see them selling now. The local economy's going to take a major hit.
- chneu 1y ago
  I live in Hillsboro. Home sales are fine. There are whole subdivisions selling out before they are finished. The $180k figure is also inflated. Most folks being laid off don't make over $100k.
  - sverhagen 1y ago
    I don't think they're talking about actual home sales prices up to this point, but rather the situation going forward, over a longer period of time.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      Price per sq ft in Oregon (except Bend) have been flat or down for a few years already (more than other markets).
- Wohlf 1y ago
  Hillsboro real estate has slowed down and prices have come down a bit but the whole metro is short on housing, and Hillsboro is on the light rail lines.
- cloverich 1y ago
  Maybe, but Oregon as a whole is far behind on housing, and prices are inflated in the area especially relative to the available jobs. I think more likely it just drives home prices downward. There's plenty of holdouts (myself included) that would happily move sooner if prices came down.
  - insane_dreamer 1y ago
    I think it’s interest rates that are keeping that from happening , not housing prices, which have been flat for the past 2-3 years. Since these are new homes not sure how much it will drive prices down as developers expect a certain profit. But you may be right!
wvh 1y ago
Not unlike what happened to Finland when Nokia went down. That took a long time to recover from, and some would say we're still trying to overcome, though it's hard to say what could have been post-Coved with the current state of the world economy.
selimthegrim 1y ago
I used to commute from Tigard to JF5 as a contractor and I too wondered what would happen to everything I drove past.
jermberj 1y ago
> Hillsboro is pretty much a company town No, it's not. Not even close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

lelandbatey 1y ago

> This is the big risk we all took when we moved away from the Bay Area to work remotely. I suspect most of those folks did not "come from" the bay area in the first place.

zumu 1y ago
Yea, Intel has been in Hillsboro since the 70's. People moved from all over the world to work for Intel in office in Oregon. This has nothing to do with remote.
draw_down 1y ago
[dead]

smolder 1y ago

IBM left my once prosperous hometown as a kid. Others followed suit. Since then it's been in a sad state economically, just some rust belt town. Corporations abandoning communities is hardly anything new. Capital acts with 0 empathy, or rather, the people who direct it do. I've heard on this forum of a tactic Intel employed where they broke off some people into a subsidiary, dissolved the subsidiary, and then offered to rehire them with the caveat: Oops, the pension you were promised is now gone. Then Intel's foundry business started failing. Oops!!

raverbashing 1y ago
It feels like these older companies had more of "let's open a campus in flyover country" or at least medium sized cities The newer "web 2.0" companies (and I mean, even Google and Amazon) opened shop in more affluent places
- chartered_stack 1y ago
  I'd argue it's not a choice of "let's open a campus in flyover country," but a reflection of how the industry has changed. The "older" companies were manufacturers. Even places like Mountain View and San Jose were the working-class towns with HP factories and semiconductor plants. The concentration of engineering talent (HP/Intel/Apple/Atari) is what created the affluence, especially after manufacturing itself was outsourced globally. The newer Web 2.0 companies don't make physical things; they make software. Their most critical infrastructure isn't a factory but a dense network of developers. They go to the Bay Area, Seattle, etc., because that's where the network is. For the parts of their business that don't require that network, like customer service, they locate in less expensive regions, just as PayPal did with Nebraska. They were even the second largest employer in Nebraska iirc.
  - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
    Amazon's customer service HQ is in West Virginia IIRC.
- Arainach 1y ago

freddie_mercury 1y ago

Saw the same thing happen 20 years ago with DEC in Colorado Springs. Lots of people assumed it would last forever until it didn't. They were getting paid "California salaries in Colorado" (well, really Massachusetts salaries but popular sayings don't have to be completely accurate) and lots of people had virtual mansions on senior tech salaries (plus probably stock options?). Then DEC imploded and there were almost no other options for hundreds of storage engineers. Knew a lot of people who had their houses foreclosed because so many were flooding the market at the same time.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

Intel has had its main R&D in Oregon for 40+ years. They didn’t get a bunch of people from the Bay during the pandemic.