4 ms·

The US is getting outcompeted by India, basically.

franktankbank 1y ago
On short term price.
ramesh31 1y ago
>The US is getting outcompeted by India, basically. And it almost completely comes down to housing costs. If half of your $150k salary wasn't going directly into a landlord's pocket in the US, we would easily be able to compete.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 1y ago
  There's also the small matter of healthcare and education costs.
- semi-extrinsic 1y ago
  If that explains most/all of it, why don't we see more tech companies moving into areas of the US with low housing prices? I guess some of it is the "captive" effect for an individual - if you leave the expensive property market for somewhere cheaper with a lower salary, it becomes very hard to move back to the expensive place. But is that a strong enough effect? Surely an efficient free market should theoretically make tech companies much more geographically distributed?
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Many expanded to Texas, for example. Also Hollywood left LA. There aren’t any/many desirable locations left in the US that have low housing costs.
    - mixmastamyk 1y ago
      People perhaps don't like the word desirable here. What I meant is not just pretty streets, but many other factors, such as nearby industry, infrastructure, educated workforce (in the thing you need), reasonable weather/sunshine, etc. Yeah, you can find something cheap, but often it is cheap for a reason. Especially when the whole country has a housing shortage. I'm sure Alaska is beautiful, for example.
      - klardotsh 1y ago
        Alaska is beautiful, but the polar opposite (no pun intended) of where someone should be looking for LCOL. Alaska is outrageously expensive for myriad reasons, and it is also not exempt from the nationwide housing crisis / greed crisis.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    There are also cultural differences in these low cost USA areas that will make it hard to find educated techies there and/or get them to move there. Like it or not, the socially-liberal urban-California culture has become a sort of "Defacto Standard Culture" for tech, and a company is not going to be able to simply move all these people to rural Alabama because the cost of housing and living is cheaper there. When work-from-home became more widespread, my spouse and I did the whole "Oooh, where could we live to maximize our income/expense ratio!" Zillow fantasy-exploration, and we concluded that even though many places in the country are significantly cheaper than where we are, we would be miserable in these places. Reminds me of that story that made the rounds on HN a few years ago about that techie who moved to Bumblefuck Arkansas and bought an insanely cheap office for his tech enterprise, and regretted it for years due to the place otherwise being a total shithole.
    - ethanwillis 1y ago
      What could we do to produce educated techies in these low cost areas? It seems like a USA specific problem because from my understanding low cost areas in much poorer countries produce many highly skilled educated techies. What are they doing differently from the US?
      - fakedang 1y ago
        Here's an idea, better education? Replace the Bible with a science textbook.
        ethanwillis 1y ago
        There's plenty of science textbooks in our public schooling from what I've seen.
        fakedang 1y ago
        Not enough apparently, else you wouldn't see Texan schools debate about creationism vs evolution.
  - array_key_first 1y ago
    Because low housing price areas are low priced for a reason. US housing is pretty much mega fucked. The price is close to the maximum people are willing to pay. In many areas, it's well over that maximum.
DengistKhan 1y ago
Or you could say the ruling class is generously donating their software industry to India, much like they generously donated their manufacturing industry to China.

On short term price.

>The US is getting outcompeted by India, basically. And it almost completely comes down to housing costs. If half of your $150k salary wasn't going directly into a landlord's pocket in the US, we would easily be able to compete.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rchaud 1y ago
There's also the small matter of healthcare and education costs.
semi-extrinsic 1y ago
If that explains most/all of it, why don't we see more tech companies moving into areas of the US with low housing prices? I guess some of it is the "captive" effect for an individual - if you leave the expensive property market for somewhere cheaper with a lower salary, it becomes very hard to move back to the expensive place. But is that a strong enough effect? Surely an efficient free market should theoretically make tech companies much more geographically distributed?
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Many expanded to Texas, for example. Also Hollywood left LA. There aren’t any/many desirable locations left in the US that have low housing costs.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    People perhaps don't like the word desirable here. What I meant is not just pretty streets, but many other factors, such as nearby industry, infrastructure, educated workforce (in the thing you need), reasonable weather/sunshine, etc. Yeah, you can find something cheap, but often it is cheap for a reason. Especially when the whole country has a housing shortage. I'm sure Alaska is beautiful, for example.
    - klardotsh 1y ago
      Alaska is beautiful, but the polar opposite (no pun intended) of where someone should be looking for LCOL. Alaska is outrageously expensive for myriad reasons, and it is also not exempt from the nationwide housing crisis / greed crisis.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  There are also cultural differences in these low cost USA areas that will make it hard to find educated techies there and/or get them to move there. Like it or not, the socially-liberal urban-California culture has become a sort of "Defacto Standard Culture" for tech, and a company is not going to be able to simply move all these people to rural Alabama because the cost of housing and living is cheaper there. When work-from-home became more widespread, my spouse and I did the whole "Oooh, where could we live to maximize our income/expense ratio!" Zillow fantasy-exploration, and we concluded that even though many places in the country are significantly cheaper than where we are, we would be miserable in these places. Reminds me of that story that made the rounds on HN a few years ago about that techie who moved to Bumblefuck Arkansas and bought an insanely cheap office for his tech enterprise, and regretted it for years due to the place otherwise being a total shithole.
  - ethanwillis 1y ago
    What could we do to produce educated techies in these low cost areas? It seems like a USA specific problem because from my understanding low cost areas in much poorer countries produce many highly skilled educated techies. What are they doing differently from the US?
    - fakedang 1y ago
      Here's an idea, better education? Replace the Bible with a science textbook.
      - ethanwillis 1y ago
        There's plenty of science textbooks in our public schooling from what I've seen.
        fakedang 1y ago
        Not enough apparently, else you wouldn't see Texan schools debate about creationism vs evolution.
- array_key_first 1y ago
  Because low housing price areas are low priced for a reason. US housing is pretty much mega fucked. The price is close to the maximum people are willing to pay. In many areas, it's well over that maximum.

DengistKhan 1y ago

Or you could say the ruling class is generously donating their software industry to India, much like they generously donated their manufacturing industry to China.