Tech Workers Consider Escaping Silicon Valley's Sky-High Rents (bloomberg.com) 165
After major companies announce their employees won't need to come in, many are recalculating the cost of living near the office. From a report: With some of the highest rents in the world, the Bay Area has been dealing with an affordability crisis for years. The region saw 5.4 new jobs for every unit of housing built from 2011 to 2017, according to Bloomberg calculations of U.S. census data. The entire state is expensive, with the median price for a house exceeding $600,000, more than double the national level. In Silicon Valley that means most workers have been renting -- and are therefore able to pick up and move. Both Facebook and Google have announced that most people won't need to come in this year, and Twitter has told some workers that if they wish to work from home permanently, they can.
Employees are now considering the thousands of dollars they could save living somewhere else -- maybe even permanently. Urban parents of young children suddenly find themselves coveting backyards and playrooms in larger homes that would be affordable on a tech salary pretty much anywhere except the Bay Area. Some employees, expecting years of rolling shelter-in-place orders, are making long-term life decisions now. And they have a lot of housing options, given that the starting salary for a software engineer at Facebook and Google exceeds six figures, according to Glassdoor data. Christy Lake, chief people officer at San Francisco-based Twilio, says several employees have already approached their managers and HR representatives to discuss plans to relocate. The cloud communications company expects more than 20% of its office-based employees will transition to working remotely in the long term. But the trend raises complicated questions. If employees move to a less expensive location, should Twilio adjust their salaries accordingly?
Employees are now considering the thousands of dollars they could save living somewhere else -- maybe even permanently. Urban parents of young children suddenly find themselves coveting backyards and playrooms in larger homes that would be affordable on a tech salary pretty much anywhere except the Bay Area. Some employees, expecting years of rolling shelter-in-place orders, are making long-term life decisions now. And they have a lot of housing options, given that the starting salary for a software engineer at Facebook and Google exceeds six figures, according to Glassdoor data. Christy Lake, chief people officer at San Francisco-based Twilio, says several employees have already approached their managers and HR representatives to discuss plans to relocate. The cloud communications company expects more than 20% of its office-based employees will transition to working remotely in the long term. But the trend raises complicated questions. If employees move to a less expensive location, should Twilio adjust their salaries accordingly?
Also depends on perks at office (Score:3)
Even if you didn't need to come in, some of the amenities that many California based hi tech companies offer would seem to be compelling to stay close at hand...
But if you worked for somewhere that decided to eliminate many amenities, and you could work from home full time - there's no way you could justify paying $1-$2k more a month in rent just to be near an office you never see.
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:4, Funny)
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I have to pay >$600000 for a house but these free snacks sure are nice!
That's California. The Bay Area is far higher.
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:4, Informative)
600K. lol. try 2 mil.
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:5, Informative)
$600k is a studio condo with no parking.
A single family home in the "cheap" parts of the Bay Area with on-street only parking starts at about $1.5 mill, assuming you are looking at places that don't need a complete remodel. If you want a "nice" 2 bedroom single family home with AC/dishwasher/new floors/new roof then you are more in the 2mil -> 2.5mil range.
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:4, Interesting)
That is fantastically stupid, and I hope the morons who buy into that get stuck with them. Like the boomers who are buying expensive houses in retirement communities 50 miles outside of the nearest town, you eventually run out of suckers who buy your rationale for overinflated housing prices.
Housing is not supply and demand, it's part marketing and part social caste system.
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:4, Insightful)
In other areas of the country, housing is getting bought up like crazy, even mobile home parks. The old aphorism about real estate (that they're not making it any more) is true.
Yes, you can live very nicely away from the Bay Area. Perks are seduction, and some can be seduced. Others don't believe the BS and moved out long ago and no longer aspire to the craziness of the area.
Of my remaining Bay Area friends, most are on their fifth+ house, cashing in all the way and they know that the cycle inevitably ends. The energies that put together the success of SillyCon Valley now permeate HK, Singapore, Shenzen, Duesseldorf, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Saudi, and more.
One day, it might be affordable again.
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One snag of working remotely, such as in another state, is that your salary will likely take a hit. A lot of companies base salary upon where your office is. But if suddenly a lot of people start claiming that their office is in Palo Alto when their residence is in Montana, HR is going to start adjusting those salaries and stopping annual cost of living raises.
I don't know anyone who's done multiple houses in the bay area unless there was a divorce or something like that. The profit you get on the first
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It does depend where it is in the Bay Area though, it's not all that high. It just won't be the comfy suburban style and it probably won't be a detached home. It might be a sketchy neighborhood where you might see poor people accidentally in the morning, or maybe even people who drink instant coffee. They may even take mass transit instead of using uber, it's almost like living in a cave!
No way would my condo in San Jose go for 2 million, even if I cleaned it up and did some yard work, and it's a close co
Re: Also depends on perks at office (Score:2)
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Why exactly do you hope people you never met and know nothing about are left financially devastated by a housing crash?
Because they vote for the NIMBY policies that are causing the housing inflation.
Look, I live in the Bay Area and my house is worth a god-awful amount of money. But I did nothing to "earn" that money. The NIMBYism just puts free money into the pockets of people who are already very well off, while shutting off economic opportunities for those who can't afford to live in the area.
Liberal NIMBYism may contribute more to inequality than conservative tax cuts.
The link between land-use restriction and growing i [urban.org]
Re: Also depends on perks at office (Score:3)
YOLO, so my plan is the same as everyone else's: when I get tired of the Bay Area bullshit, I'll sell to someone younger, take my hard earned valley cash and retire to *anywhere* else. What's wrong with that?
As far as voting nimby goes, I've only seen one ballot item ever for land use. That stuff doesn't generally end up on the ballot. However, I do vote against every bind measure, no matter what it's for. That
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$600k is a studio condo with no parking.
A single family home in the "cheap" parts of the Bay Area with on-street only parking starts at about $1.5 mill, assuming you are looking at places that don't need a complete remodel. If you want a "nice" 2 bedroom single family home with AC/dishwasher/new floors/new roof then you are more in the 2mil -> 2.5mil range.
Wrong. There are 3 bed 2 bath houses with garages :-O!!!! in the East Bay (Hawyard, for.ex) that have just sold in the 600-700K range. If you want something on the Peninsula with a good school district (eg, Mt. View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Carlos, Belmont, San Mateo), then yeah, you're dealing with prices between 800k-1.2million.
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And the Santa Clara schools keep the price down. Go a few blocks north and you luck into the Cupertino schools, and you will see $400K added to the price
Granted Covid will
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The proximity to Apple, Google, and other high paying easy-living jobs is what keeps Sunnyvale high priced, even though it has a log of legacy dumps from when it was poorer. Same with Mountain View which used to be a working class town supporting Palo Alto and the air force base. East bay is cheaper because of the distance, and cross over the hills and it's even better. I have one worker who's a daily commuter from Tracy, and he always seems very happy,
Re: Also depends on perks at office (Score:2)
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For $600k in the mid-west you would be looking at a 5 bed 5 bath 4 car garage on maybe a couple acres or on a lake with your own dock.
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I just want condo with no yard that I have to take care of myself. A lot of small towns don't have anything like that except for apartments.
Actually I was suprised in southern Minnesota last year in a small town and I saw some nice but not huge homes selling for over $500K and was surprised. They were on a small lake though so probably for the retirees instead of the locals.
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if you're willing to live in East Palo Alto.
Not until CA becomes a shall-issue state. Too many gangs there.
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:4, Insightful)
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Zoning problems in what way? One major issue is that the areas where people live and work have some very hard borders - the bay, hills, and mountains. Sure, take down the open space preserves, sell off the county and state parks, but that's just going to be snatched up by the super wealthy who already live in the foothill areas. Housing needs to grow up instead of out; meaning high rises instead of sprawl. In the meantime the cities have learned that they get more income from major businesses in town ins
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:5, Interesting)
Companies stop having employees show up Valley offices, it's likely you could expect to see rents and home prices plummet. You can also expect a fair number of places people eat at to go under without a lunch crowd. There's more ripple effects from that of course.
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It is ironic that a middle class, middle manager in OK, likely has a much larger, nicer home on acreage than does some guy making 6 figures in silicon valley.
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Re: Also depends on perks at office (Score:2)
The rest of us are glad those freaks live there instead of near them too.
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Depends what you find interesting but OK City has over half a million people and with 24 hour everything and they may not be Disney but 3 theme parks or skip south to Texas and hit 6 flags... I used to be a member of a somewhat exclusive club that had $20 coffee, w/ Dave Matthews and George lynch playing on stage in nowhere southern Illinois hours from Chicago.
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Acreage isn't important to me. When I retire the last thing I want is a whole lot of daily chores leaving no time left over for retirement relaxation. I want something where I don't have yardwork or maintenance :-)
Re:Also depends on perks at office (Score:4)
If I could get Silicon Valley wages without having to pay Silicon Valley costs I'd gladly jump ship to one of those companies. However, I've never found the higher salaries to even come close to offsetting the higher costs of living, the longer commute times, and the litany of other reasons I wouldn't want to move there.
Hell there are plenty of places in the country where you could buy a decent-sized starter home for what you'd pay in yearly rent in the bay area for what amounts to a glorified shoe box. Sure you're not living in a major metro area or near the beach, but you at least own some property.
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for me, i want to live near the beach, and the mountains. I don't mind that my home here is a quarter of the size of the home i owned in wisconsin, or that it costs 4x as much. I'd live in this area, ok maybe i'd consider moving down somewhere else along the south coast, where its still equally expensive.
Then move to New Hampshire.
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Bay Area denizen here. I went to the beach yesterday; Half Moon Bay, car ride, followed social distance protocols, had a great drive and lunch with friends (ea. in our respective cars, arranged so we could talk with the window down but far enough to meet or exceed COVID-19 distancing protocols).
People kinda miss the point of living in the Bay Area -- the economic benefits of living here offset the costs when you figure out how to make money. That's why so many of us came here and stayed (30 years and 6 da
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Exactly. Personally, I want to live somewhere "nice." Now we will all have different definitions of "nice" and those definitions will change over time. And that's fine. Lord knows, I love my warm climate and I've always enjoyed gently ribbing the people I work with in the Northeast of the US when it's 25 degrees outside where they are and 72 where I am. But if they're happy where they are? More power to them!
There's one interesting thing to consider when it comes to moving--it's a little bit harder to
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What amenities are these companies offering that add up to $2k per month? They have massage parlors with happy endings or something like that now?
Tinder HQ is in LA, so no, we don't get that in the SF Bay Area.
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I know a few people that live on boats or in RVs where they are only there a day or two a week. e.g. airline staff. Of course, in the Bay Area, it's not that much cheaper to rent a berth for your boat or a parking spot with hookups for an RV...
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It seems like the best solution for you might be renting a house with someone else (or several people), so you can all share the cost but still have room for kids and it's not as much of a financial hit... you'd just need to make sure to find roommates who are fine with having kids over at times.
Not really a great solution either, a tricky problem to be sure.
Years of rolling shelter in place? (Score:3, Informative)
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Good luck with that. It's been a month, give or take, for most people, and you're already starting to see pockets of people that are done putting up with it. I'm not even going to start arguing the legality/science/whatever of the lockdown, I'm just pointing out that the people of this country aren't going to tolerate another month of it, much less years of it.
We will have another lock down in a month or 2 after cases and deaths spike again, then people will quickly forget why and demand to come off lockdown again, and another month or 2 after that we are in typical flu season again which means covid gets even worse, so back to another lockdown, etc.
Re: Years of rolling shelter in place? (Score:2)
I doubt we'll even stop shaking hands, which was always a stupid culturally tradition anyway.
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Community fiber areas such as Chattanoogas... (Score:3)
This is why Chattanooga has been a boom place after they put in community fiber, and have gigabit to the house for less than $100/month.
Once you treat gig fiber to the house as a utility, it helps you grow your economy.
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I am lucky enough to live in the Bay Area _and_ have gigabit fiber for $100/mo. :)
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They had gigabit to the home in 2010, and 10gig to the home in 2015.
https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]
https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
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This is why Chattanooga has been a boom place after they put in community fiber, and have gigabit to the house for less than $100/month.
Once you treat gig fiber to the house as a utility, it helps you grow your economy.
I don't think most remote workers would notice much different between 100 MB and 1 GB. It also depends on what you're connecting to. For media production it would be amazing, however.
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Since 2015, they have 10gig to the home. You do see a difference once all your appliances are all streaming media over the Internet at 4K or above.
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Remote worker would be using the same line for work and for home. You wouldn't be putting in a separate line for work and one for home. Are you not able to imagine the scenario where an IT (or non-IT) worker actually has a family, you know, spouse and kids, and they all have their own TVs and are watching TV or doing school work, while the remote worker is working?
And what's all this about "you wouldn't need more than 100mb"? That starts to sound a lot like you would never need more than 640k. What if t
Re: Community fiber areas such as Chattanoogas... (Score:2)
What's the point? I used to run a 150 person office on a 10mb line. The only thing I had to do to make it viable was block a few of the music and movie pirate sites. No one else noticed and they still watched the various big games (Super Bowl, etc) every year on streams.
If You Move... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't be surprised if your salary goes down. Companies generally base salary on cost of living, which depends upon where you live.
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Exactly, there can be adjustments on both sides. Also the companies can move HQ if there is no longer perceived to be a need to be "in the thick of it".
I don't see the longer-term residents complaining about how much their houses have appreciated and there was presumably some upside to a company being based in the valley, so if that is evaporating it might be bad news for everyone involved.
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Or not. Basecamp, for example, pays the same no matter where you are. They can afford higher salaries since no expensive offices for one thing, and for another, if they pay Bay wages to someone in, say, Nebraska, that person is going to think two or three or four times before jumping to another local company.
And don't forget turnover, hiring, training... all of those things are expensive too.
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But is it sustainable? That VC funding runs out eventually, and once you're public the board will demand that profits go up. If salaries can be cut then that's an easy way to increase profits. It's going to be really hard to justify to the board why someone in South Platte is bieng payed $200K. I *have* seen this happen, but it get allowed only for a few people who really are essential and it's not done across the board for everyone. The reason the salaries are justified for Silicon Valley is because yo
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If you can do your job from home then so can someone in India getting paid 5% your salary.
That would be true if companies based their hiring decisions on who was closest and not who was most qualified.
I mean it's certainly possible that there's an equally qualified person in another country that's willing to work for 5% of the money but I don't know think that's a foregone conclusion.
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If you can do your job from home then so can someone in India getting paid 5% your salary. Expect a lot of American jobs to get moved to the third world, where public safety rules are more "Flexible" about Covid-19.
This already happened, the insourcing started with Trump's tariffs and offshoring restrictions and has been going strong to move jobs back to the US over the last several years, especially within the tech sector. Just keeping the policies we have now is enough to make it a non-issue (incidentally, why all the major tech leaders hate him so much.)
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If you can do your job from home then so can someone in India getting paid 5% your salary. Expect a lot of American jobs to get moved to the third world, where public safety rules are more "Flexible" about Covid-19.
Clearly you are not paying attention or do not work with anyone in India. Unless your company is paying bribes to the local government your company has exactly 0 personnel in the office in India right now. They are stopped by the police on their way in.
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If you can do your job from home then so can someone in India getting paid 5% your salary. Expect a lot of American jobs to get moved to the third world, where public safety rules are more "Flexible" about Covid-19.
If someone's job is so undemanding of specialized skills that "someone in India" making 5% of their salary can do it adequately, perhaps that someone's salary is too high to start with.
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This is already true. If your job can be accomplished by the million other people who also have the same set of Microsoft Certificates, then it's likely that you will get replaced. If you want a long term career then you must make sure that you either stand out from the hordes or learn skills that are less common or get a union. Because these days a lot of the tech jobs aren't the equivalent of the assembly line workers in the past, and several foreign countries have very competitive educational systems
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This is already done. If the company chose to have ALL their WFH-type jobs out of country, they'd have done it already.
Yes it is done already, but not at the same scale it might be done if they start realizing a much greater percentage of their workforce could work from home than they previously thought.
If I moved from Reston VA to Des Moines IA (Score:4, Informative)
You could cut my salary by 20% and I'd still have more money at the end of the month from a lower mortgage. Well, assuming the house was only half again as large as the one I have now.And that doesn't take into account an easier commute.
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Personal preference of course, but as someone who spent a decade in Ames / Des Moines, I couldn't get out of there fast enough!
Re: If I moved from Reston VA to Des Moines IA (Score:2)
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If you want to go to Iowa, consider moving outside of a city. While more rural than most people would like, I was looking at a 4 Bed, 3 Bath house on 2.8 acres for only $279k. The "shed" for your yard gear had three overhead doors. Not full-size car overhead doors, but enough for your riding mower, quad, Bobcat, or whatever other yard equipment you wanted. Farm/rural property is CHEAP because most people want to live in a city instead of enjoying quiet and nature.
The property was about 20 miles to the ne
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Cost of living adjustments are mostly a myth if you are an in-demand person. Everything is negotiable, but getting paid enough in a very high-cost place to fully offset the difference from a moderate-cost place just doesn’t happen.
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Some do, some don't. The company I work for does not. They just got bought out by another company that does. (And some of us are waiting for that hammer to drop...)
Not Only Bay Area - Nationwide & Worldwide Cha (Score:2)
I live in the 3rd largest city in the nation and our organization has also decided a few weeks ago to test the waters by asking all IT employees if they would like to work remotely on a permanent basis. I've heard that almost everyone at the office said that they would except for the folks that had children in the house and a few others who need to get out of their house once in a while.
Now the organization is toying with the idea of sub-leasing and renting out our office and cubbicle spaces and rebuilding
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This raises the possibility of buying a much nicer house in a few housing community that is freshly built on the outskirts of the city and live there for a lot less money
It will be a lot less money for about 5 years, and then the schools will start to be built, and property taxes will skyrocket to pay for them.
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The issue largely becomes what happens if you need to change jobs.
I'd say for the past 3 companies I've worked for, if I chose to move far away and remote in, they'd have all been fine with it. I had established myself well. Heck, I'm fully remote now (and before covid), but I still stay within commuting distance of the city.
Yet, these are not the days of lifetime employment, so most likely at some point, I'll need to change jobs. Moving to a small place means it is much harder to get a new job.
I'm not sayi
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Just for the local office, half the workers seem to be able to work from home in the near future, about 20% will be in the office in the first stage of opening because of needing access to labs and such. However, 10% claim to have difficulty working from home and will be in the second stage of opening.
Not sure what all that means; I know some who just have really lousy internet connections, or they didn't upgrade the service to suitably handle lots of online video meetings (silicon valley really has crappy
Prediction (Score:2)
Rents in the California suburbs will creep up a little faster than before, and rents in San Francisco won't drop a dime.
Oh great (Score:2, Troll)
now they can move out and drive up the rents all over California. Build a wall and keep them in Silicon Valley.
Every young person I know (Score:2)
But I don't expect there to be much shortage of folks wanting to live there, and I can tell you my college grad kid would be there in a heartbeat if the pay was enough (it isn't).
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would kill to live in the valley. As soon as they hit about 25 they start going sour on it because they want kids and you can't realistically have them in the kind of tiny apartments available there.
I'm guessing many people who want to live in the valley are hoping to find that start up opportunity that will make them a fortune. Living there is like buying a lottery ticket. High risk but potentially a huge payoff, with better odds than a lottery. But once a family or the hassle and expense of living there becomes too much, people think about making a change. Now that the big telecommute experiment is on, the desire to move away will increase..
I have been telecommuting for a while. I certainly don't mi
Re: Every young person I know (Score:2)
Big cities become less appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
For Tech workers the ability to now work remotely is a Godsend for some. Traditionally we have been told that in order to work for the big companies we have to live in the big cities. Big companies have traditionally built their headquarters in big cities in order to access a larger skilled labor pool.
With Covid-19 and work from home/remote work rules all of that has gotten turned on its head. If you are working from home there is no need to live in a big city, unless you desire the big city amenities. The only real requirement is a fast and stable internet connection. Beyond that it comes down to personal preference. Some people desire the convenience, variety and energy of a big city. Others might prefer a quieter lifestyle with less expensive housing, more room and less crime.
Many rural areas don't have great options for fast internet but with Amazon/Space-X satellites that will change. At that point it really does become a viable choice. I just wonder what these companies are going to do with these half empty buildings.
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Brainstorming and collaboration are still easier in person. Companies generally shouldn't be running rote work in their most expensive offices/cities. It should be where complex interweaving decisions are discussed and made.
It's why the rural South is where a lot of 1st-level help desks are stationed. It's cheap & low tax, but not where deep thinking systematically happens. Don't mean it as in insult, it's just the niche/tradeoff they chose to carve out.
Maybe in the future better media equipment/bandwid
Base Pay + Locality (Score:4, Interesting)
That isn't a complicated question. The Federal Government solved this years ago by having base pay for a position, then locality pay adjustments. Do that.
There's even a handy map for the entire country here: https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality [federalpay.org]
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That doesn’t begin to compensate for the differences in many places. A 20% pay premium over “rest of US” rate, after higher taxes especially, does not cover a housing delta of 2x annual pay vs 10x annual pay. Add in non housing costs, and you are clearly in the red. (It does work for renting to some degree though.)
GitLab (Score:2)
GitLab is an all remote company. It seems to work okay for them.
GitLab also adjust salary based on location. They even have a calculator [gitlab.com].
Then Silicon Valley Picks up and Walks Away (Score:2)
And so Silicon Valley advances further toward its inevitable fate.
It is a self-perpetuating nexus; The best tech employees move there because that's where the best business are and the best tech businesses are founded there because that's where the best employees are. It's also a system of informal social and professional networks, an established business culture. You need someone for that? Well, people there know people, they know who's good and who to trust and how to get them. The founders at the plac
Article's premise is false- Bullshit (Score:2)
The entire state is expensive
More bullshit from myopic NY-based sources. There's about 1/6 of the state that is cheap as hell--it's just that it's north of the SF-Sacramento-Tahoe line. (It's about 1/3 of the state but a lot of the land is National Parks and Forrests).
Check out towns like Weaverville, Redding, Chico, Tehema, Red Bluff, Corning, Hayfork, Fortuna, Garberville, Susanville, Alturas, etc.. In Modoc , Lassen, Humbolt, and Del Notre counties. I'm pretty sure you can get a nice big house for under 200K -- it's in the middle o
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I remember laughing during Kill Bill, that the world's most effective assassin who is presumably well paid has to live in an Airstream in the middle of the desert...
This might do some good (Score:2)
This might do some good for rents in Northern California (and by extension help with our homeless problem in some areas). The cities in Silicon Valley's refusal to allow the building of anywhere near enough housing (which would require building upwards) for all of its workers is the reason for the sky high rents and property values there and now throughout Northern California as the problem bleeds out from the valley.
It would be nice to be able to go grocery shopping or eat out without knowing the people se
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Boy, I wanted to prove you wrong, so I looked at Zillow for Redding and the first house was a beautiful 3,600 square foot place on 10 acres for less than $600k. It looks like just wireless or DSL, and a neighbor has an old bathtub out at the street, but it is a chunk of paradise.
They're going to drive prices up elsewhere (Score:2)
If a lot of them leave the Bay Area, they're going to drive up prices elsewhere. They don't know how to function in a normal housing market so they're going to walk in and offer well above asking price to ensure that they are the ones getting the house. This stupidity will drive up prices everywhere else.
Employee push-back (Score:2)
Fun tip (Score:2)
Re: Fun tip (Score:2)
Why do you think no one does that?
It Shouldn't Matter (Score:2)
seven figure starting salary? (Score:3)
the starting salary for a software engineer at Facebook and Google exceeds six figures
Programmers. They are programmers, or I am a licensed slashdot post engineer.
Why all the hate for coders and all the love for "engineers?"
That's how it should be written on academic departments, resumes, business cards, etc.:
Software "Engineer"
Exceeding six figures must mean something like
$37,500.12.
Wow, a seven figure salary!
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Isn't every Democrat-run planned city? Look at Detroit, also a planned city.
Re: Why not move to California City? (Score:2)
Re: Long term rent (Score:2)
Troll advice: keep it short and readable and work up to the crazy from more commonly believed things. Don't start off with crazy shit on the first line.