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There are already several comments on this Hacker News thread where people suggest things like remote work. Others suggest moving to less expensive cities. Some

There are already several comments on this Hacker News thread where people suggest things like remote work. Others suggest moving to less expensive cities. Someone mentioned Tennessee. "mooreds" made the suggestion "consider starting a company outside of San Francisco". But such comments ignore (are in denial? are in defiance?) what is actually happening, which is described in the 3rd sentence of the linked article: "the migration of startups from the Peninsula to San Francisco have led to the lowest vacancy rates ever" The big move away from the cities played out in the USA as automobiles became popular. The trend started in the 1930s and was at its peak during the years 1945 to 2000. It's worth noting that what we are looking at now is some re-centralization. That may be surprising or counter-intuitive, but since it is happening, it is worth investigating why it is happening. And all of the folks who think remote work is the answer might want to ask themselves why the ease of remote work is not offsetting the trend that's moving jobs into place like San Francisco and New York.

famousactress 11y ago
"...why the ease of remote work is not offsetting the trend that's moving jobs into place like San Francisco and New York" Because it's scary. If you're Google or Facebook you don't have to bother with it because people will move to you. If you're startup whatever.io then you want to avoid risk that isn't directly related to your purpose so you probably try to park next to Google or Facebook and work hard on other solutions to the "how do we hire" problem. That said, it actually is offsetting that trend. It's just doing it too slowly to be noticed, but as someone who's worked remotely for an SF startup for almost 6 years and pays attention to the Who's Hiring remote posts, etc. I can tell you there's been a somewhat dramatic uptick in remote hiring in the past couple of years.
mbillie1 11y ago
All fair points, but remote work also has increased massively ( http://fortune.com/2015/02/12/lessons-learned-from-3-companies-that-have-long-embraced-remote-work/ http://fortune.com/2015/02/12/lessons-learned-from-3-compani... ). It is interesting to consider that well-paid remote workers, free to live where they choose, may also be choosing to live in these bigger cities. I'm fully remote and I live in a city, albeit a relative small one (SLC), when I could easily pay a ~$300/mo mortgage for a small rural house in the middle of nowhere if I chose to. I suspect that re-centralization is orthogonal to, rather than antithetical to, remote work.
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  > ~$300/mo mortgage for a small rural house in the middle of nowhere How's the internet access out there?
  - mbillie1 11y ago
    Slow but available. There's a lot of empty land if you aren't picky about where you live...
  - Fomite 11y ago
    In many communities, quite good.
_delirium 11y ago
> It's worth noting that what we are looking at now is some re-centralization. I think there are some local re-centralization trends, but it doesn't really show up in the overall numbers. Most of the fastest-growing areas in the U.S. are suburban, e.g. the Dallas suburbs are growing far faster than SF is. Fivethirtyeight had a piece on this focusing on millennials: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-prefer-the-city-think-again/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-prefer-...

famousactress 11y ago

"...why the ease of remote work is not offsetting the trend that's moving jobs into place like San Francisco and New York" Because it's scary. If you're Google or Facebook you don't have to bother with it because people will move to you. If you're startup whatever.io then you want to avoid risk that isn't directly related to your purpose so you probably try to park next to Google or Facebook and work hard on other solutions to the "how do we hire" problem. That said, it actually is offsetting that trend. It's just doing it too slowly to be noticed, but as someone who's worked remotely for an SF startup for almost 6 years and pays attention to the Who's Hiring remote posts, etc. I can tell you there's been a somewhat dramatic uptick in remote hiring in the past couple of years.

mbillie1 11y ago

All fair points, but remote work also has increased massively ( http://fortune.com/2015/02/12/lessons-learned-from-3-companies-that-have-long-embraced-remote-work/ http://fortune.com/2015/02/12/lessons-learned-from-3-compani... ). It is interesting to consider that well-paid remote workers, free to live where they choose, may also be choosing to live in these bigger cities. I'm fully remote and I live in a city, albeit a relative small one (SLC), when I could easily pay a ~$300/mo mortgage for a small rural house in the middle of nowhere if I chose to. I suspect that re-centralization is orthogonal to, rather than antithetical to, remote work.

Domenic_S 11y ago
> ~$300/mo mortgage for a small rural house in the middle of nowhere How's the internet access out there?
- mbillie1 11y ago
  Slow but available. There's a lot of empty land if you aren't picky about where you live...
- Fomite 11y ago
  In many communities, quite good.

_delirium 11y ago

> It's worth noting that what we are looking at now is some re-centralization. I think there are some local re-centralization trends, but it doesn't really show up in the overall numbers. Most of the fastest-growing areas in the U.S. are suburban, e.g. the Dallas suburbs are growing far faster than SF is. Fivethirtyeight had a piece on this focusing on millennials: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-prefer-the-city-think-again/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-prefer-...