What impressed me when visiting the area, was the density of IT companies and startups.
When going out, you could easily meet people working for those, and get a foot in the door, as you may have made already a positive initial impression in a casual environment.
Remotely, you will compete with a much larger pool of people.
> When going out, you could easily meet people working for those
It's not just that, you actually can't avoid them. If you write software and are walking someplace in a commercial part of San Francisco, basically every conversation you overhear is one you could immediately join in on.
Breaking up the clump is probably healthy for everyone involved.
I dunno. I live in San Diego County. My house monitor has recorded 14 power outages during previous 11 months. Three were planned power cuts, two were due to high winds, and the remainder varied between 3 minutes to over 14 hours where SDG&E could offer no explanation. My neighbor's PV system measured 16 power outages during same period, so my system may have missed some 'glitches'.
I used to live in Anza Valley (Riverside County), where the local co-op lost power at least once per month.
California do not have reliable power. California utilities have been charged with various felonies. California utilities had previously been allowed, by the state government, to increase rates without requiring routine maintenance to power and gas infrastructure.
It doesn’t help the state literally approves all repairs. Meaning the state itself is at least, in part, to blame for even that.
I even personally know some people who worked on the grid. They told me the regulations keep them replacing decades old part designs because they’re the only ones approved.
The reality is California’s government is both incompetent and corrupt. Businesses are owned by the politicians in many cases, so you can’t really distinguish.
I left for 6 months and now returning because SO is scared that the job market isn’t as good elsewhere. (Eventhough her current contract is remote and my sf job became remote too)
I’m guessing remote work during the pandemic (and unplanned loss of childcare and coworking space) has not been successful enough to convince management to make it permanent. But hey, some of us get to ride the Bay Area tech gravy train for a little while longer.
My wife and I live in the East Bay but we're probably here for the long-haul. But, it's tough to stay. Most of our friends are not software people and it's challenging for folks to find good living situations here, so a lot of our friendships have become increasingly long distance. There's also this nagging sense I've got that kids raised here might end up being priced out of their home, unless they also happen to wind up in a high-paying career. Which, that's not bad if you want it necessarily but to grow up _knowing_ you have to end up in a high-income bracket or else you'll really struggle does weird things to people.
Or how about the "mapping tech xodus" map that has no sources except in the image it credits ... themselves.
What an interesting website...
"Resources & Editorial Information
We’re incredibly selective with where we draw our information in developing stories and when to make assertive points while providing perspective. The contents on this site are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, accounting, or legal advice, and in no way is promoting or an endorsing any investment and business decisions or strategies. By using this site, you agree that Brookfield Brief is without fault for any financial loss, or otherwise, that could occur from actions taken due to information published by Brookfield Brief. If we provide perspective regarding market movements, that perspective is grounded by data and heuristics from the following sources or reflects the perspective of subject matter experts.
Our news sources include but are not limited to: The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, TheFinancial Times, Barron’s, Reuters, CNBC, PitchBook, New York Times, Axios, Vox-ReCode,TechCrunch, Hacker News, The Information, Vice News, Crunchbase News,Associated Press, McKinsey Insights, GS Insights, JPM Insights, A16Z, HBR, IBR,MIT Sloan, and MIT Technology Review."
So to be objective, they just ingest a lot of other subjective news and do their own research but then don't post their own research? I'm a bit confused.
There will always be a cohort which values living in the metropolis as opposed to just working for a company that has an address there, but clearly the growth in remote work is allowing workers in all sorts of industries to spread out somewhat and live where they would like to live. I can't help but think this will be a huge boon for smaller communities.
Crime and housing cost are not new. Most people fleeing California do that over tax uncertainty and general business unfriendliness. Stuff like retroactive income tax increase or exit tax.
I disagree. Taxes haven't materially changed in California in a decade. People are leaving because they aren't happy here. Look around, you don't see a lot of smiling faces.
The $10,000-deduction limit on State and Local Taxes (SALT) materially changed the calculation for highly compensated tech workers. It effectively raised federal taxes for people living in high-tax states, of which California is way up there.
First time I hear that and it sounds more like wishful thinking. Most people I know who either are still here or left would be willing to pay more in taxes to get universal healthcare, less homeless, etc.
San Francisco's crime rate is trending very strangely [1]. Property crime is up dramatically, but violent crime is down. Shelter-in-place likely has a lot to do with that--people just aren't out as much as they were before, so burglaries are easier, and assault is harder.
But the overall trend is very disturbing. Crime may be old news, but the rate is higher than it has been in a while, and going up.
Housing is down recently from all-time highs, but still very high in absolute terms.
So none of this is new, but the Covid shock to the system has created the opportunity for people to leave in the way that there wasn't before.
San Francisco will be OK, wave after wave of rise and decline has been its way since the gold rush.
I believe SF will thrive in the next wave. SF has decades of progressive exploration to continue, from the 1960's music scene, through hippies and psychonauts and LGBTQ+ culture, to the rise of open source and software, SF keeps thriving on new kinds of ideas. Then mix in the California outdoors, the ongoing health and wellness movements, and top research labs at Berkeley and Stanford.
My hope is we'll start seeing the next wave soon-- I'm seeing a lot of potential SFBA groundwork relating to CRISPR and genetics, neural links with AR+AI, and biopharma coupled with human potential advancements.
These problems are not in spite of SF's success, they are largely due to SF's success. Anywhere else in the US which experiences the same level of success would end up having to deal with mostly the same problems. Henry George predicted this 142 years ago.
> If there is less deep poverty in San Francisco than in New York, is it not because San Francisco is yet behind new York in all that both cities are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point where New York now is, who can doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets?
In our current system, poverty advances alongside progress. Landlords are the only beneficiaries in a system without Land Value Tax, everyone else is at best doomed to face the trade-offs of going to less productive cities.
I am not familiar with the SF tax code, but doesn't Prop 13 essentially only limit property taxes for people actually living on their ground? Can you give any reason why someone should pay higher property taxes every year just because the surrounding prices skyrocket? Aren't you essentially demanding to disown people?
Property taxes wouldn’t rise for no reason, those people get to watch their personal wealth benefit from the housing scarcity surrounding them.
Now if they bought at an extremely high price and are highly leveraged, they might now feel that way, but the net effect either way is the same. The people who own homes lobby against pro growth policies that would bring down housing costs, while the people who don’t aren’t driven out and unable to vote to make the necessary changes.
On top of that it's passed down between generations so anyone who's bloodline has a landowning Native Son of the Golden West gets a cut. CA tax policy might as well be game of thrones.
But what about "poor old grandma who's house is now worth 2M"? She has the CA Tax Postponment Program that will guarantee her stability until the day she dies. Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary.
But when 13 was passed it wasn't about grandma. Jerry Brown put together 1978 Prop 8 for that. Howard Jarvis convinced voters that the state was taxing their money away for no reason and demanded big cuts as a vengeful "revolt".
It's gross down to the core. Look at the kind of things Jarvis was saying:
> The public school system is second to none in waste, incompetence, and zero results. I think the public school system is a cancer on this society. The only difference between the public schools and the Mafia is that the public schools steal more money.
Jarvis isn't wrong. Even today the United States is either at the top or near the top of education spending per student [1] with little to show for it in terms of results. The solution that government has proposed for the last 40 or so years has been to throw billions (if not trillions) of dollars into a wishing well, hope for best, and tax some more in case that doesn't work out. Why should people be forced to pay more at gunpoint for the same brand of mediocre education? Inflation rates have been wildly outpaced by education spending for such a long time now that it's not a reasonable excuse. So then at what point does one pull away the wool covering one's eyes and begin to see that they are being robbed? It may not be the teachers' doing but someone, may be at the administrative levels, is obviously profiting.
> Even today the United States is either at the top or near the top of education spending per student
And the US is dead near the bottom in social spending. As a result American schools are asked to do a hell of a lot more than other nations.
American teacher salaries are higher than overseas but, by US standards, teachers aren't paid very much. In the US salaries are high but social safety nets are non-existent. In California it's even more extreme because the cost of living is out of control (arguably because of Prop 13).
> little to show for it in terms of results.
Curious why you think that.
The UCs are the envy of the planet and, before Jarvis, they were free. People bust their ass at IIT, Tsingua, or ETH Zurich then fly over here for grad school at UCLA where they ultimately land jobs at American companies. Why you'd want to defund this process I have no idea. Seems like the kind of thing we should be aggressively expanding.
For K-12, unlike most of the world, US schools have been educating more and more people from different ethnic backgrounds. It's no secret that blacks and hispanics do worse on standardized math tests and when you mix them in with the rest of course average scores go down. But when you slice by ethnicity both groups individually have been improving.
> someone, may be at the administrative levels, is obviously profiting.
"obviously" you should be able to point to who it is
How is NYC refusing to grow? This city has been exploding in every direction for the ten years I've been here.
> Every time someone moves from the suburbs to a transit connected apartment building in SF their carbon emissions are cut in half.
I kind of agree, but if these people are truly shifting to remote work, commutes won't be quite as big a deal. (but there are of course a laundry list of other reasons why suburbs are unsustainable)
I'm less familiar with NYC land use than the other two. However if commute times and rents* are both rising that's a sign there's a problem. Transit and housing need to keep up with the growth in offices.
It appears “good for America” is shorthand for “good for anyone leaving SF or already owning property in one of the cities experiencing an influx of new tech employees”
As a tourist or a person new to the city, you can have a good time in San Francisco. There are a lot of things to do.
Living in SF is a different thing.
The traffic really sucks and the public transportation is inadequate.
During major conferences the city gets completely saturated with people and transportation sucks even more.
Commuting from outside the city is a via crucis that will destroy your spirit.
Public works take fucking forever to complete, blocking streets for years.
Air quality is nice, except during wildfire season. You will need to seal your windows, doors, AC, buy air filters and masks. It sucks.
The cost of living is fucking absurd. The will keep raising your rent every goddamn year.
The homelessness situation is pretty bad, and since the city has not installed public bathrooms, they have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars removing poop from the streets.
I feel like this analysis is missing the forest for the trees a little bit. The main premise is that exodus of tech brain to smaller hubs like Austin, Denver and Miami will help them grow. But if the assessment of the downsides to SF is merely that "cities don't die, they languish", that ignores the dynamic aspect of an economy, namely that it is the centralization aspect that made places like SF and NY the powerhouses in their respective flagship industries in the first place.
I saw a video recently about the Ogallala Aquifer (a large body of water that feeds the agricultural belt in central US). It argued that because state lines were drawn in a nearly arbitrary fashion, states are incentivized to compete against each other to develop/maintain their agricultural industries, even if that means draining the water unsustainably. It argues that a hypothetical megastate whose area encompasses the entirety of the aquifer would see that it's in its own interest to manage the aquifer efficiently and sustainably, rather than fight against neighbouring states in a tragedy of the commons.
`s/water/VC money + talent/` and I think you can see where we're going with this. Could the next Apple be born in Denver? Could the next Google be born in Miami? You could arguably look at Toronto, Canada as an example of what sort of level of innovation one could reasonably expect from a local growing hub. But if hypothetically, the SF tech scene were to actually die (or be irreparably crippled by the tech exodus), I'd think the US as a whole would lose a major economic/technological edge, especially compared to places like China.
Is that "good for the US"? Perhaps so for the folks that can ride the growth in the local hubs. Perhaps their locals will also come to loathe techies. But alas, perhaps it won't be so good after all, if it means the existing tech giants will never again see worthy competition/disruption, and if it means that the US starts seeing technological advances originating from other countries while no longer able to sprout them at the scale that today's tech giants have been able to in the past.
52 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 77.5 ms ] threadAs a person in tech, I can work remotely from anywhere. Why would I want to move back to SF.
Company may ask you to.
When going out, you could easily meet people working for those, and get a foot in the door, as you may have made already a positive initial impression in a casual environment.
Remotely, you will compete with a much larger pool of people.
It's not just that, you actually can't avoid them. If you write software and are walking someplace in a commercial part of San Francisco, basically every conversation you overhear is one you could immediately join in on.
Breaking up the clump is probably healthy for everyone involved.
Prop 13 is over $30B per year -- that's 4x the NSF and 7B more than NASA. California could have it's own NASA!
You're confusing CA with TX.
I used to live in Anza Valley (Riverside County), where the local co-op lost power at least once per month.
California do not have reliable power. California utilities have been charged with various felonies. California utilities had previously been allowed, by the state government, to increase rates without requiring routine maintenance to power and gas infrastructure.
I even personally know some people who worked on the grid. They told me the regulations keep them replacing decades old part designs because they’re the only ones approved.
The reality is California’s government is both incompetent and corrupt. Businesses are owned by the politicians in many cases, so you can’t really distinguish.
Convicted of federal felonies, in at least PG&Es case, both in the San Bruno gas explosion and the more recent fires.
Maybe you should make it an Ask HN.
Still, it is very pretty here.
What an interesting website...
"Resources & Editorial Information We’re incredibly selective with where we draw our information in developing stories and when to make assertive points while providing perspective. The contents on this site are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, accounting, or legal advice, and in no way is promoting or an endorsing any investment and business decisions or strategies. By using this site, you agree that Brookfield Brief is without fault for any financial loss, or otherwise, that could occur from actions taken due to information published by Brookfield Brief. If we provide perspective regarding market movements, that perspective is grounded by data and heuristics from the following sources or reflects the perspective of subject matter experts.
Our news sources include but are not limited to: The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, TheFinancial Times, Barron’s, Reuters, CNBC, PitchBook, New York Times, Axios, Vox-ReCode,TechCrunch, Hacker News, The Information, Vice News, Crunchbase News,Associated Press, McKinsey Insights, GS Insights, JPM Insights, A16Z, HBR, IBR,MIT Sloan, and MIT Technology Review."
So to be objective, they just ingest a lot of other subjective news and do their own research but then don't post their own research? I'm a bit confused.
Has its homeless and high tax issues as well, but at least there is lots of room and nimby's have lost their tight grip preventing development.
I wrote "uncertainty" because things may change very soon.
But the overall trend is very disturbing. Crime may be old news, but the rate is higher than it has been in a while, and going up.
Housing is down recently from all-time highs, but still very high in absolute terms.
So none of this is new, but the Covid shock to the system has created the opportunity for people to leave in the way that there wasn't before.
San Francisco will be OK, wave after wave of rise and decline has been its way since the gold rush.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/San-Francisco-s-cr...
My hope is we'll start seeing the next wave soon-- I'm seeing a lot of potential SFBA groundwork relating to CRISPR and genetics, neural links with AR+AI, and biopharma coupled with human potential advancements.
I hope you're right!
> If there is less deep poverty in San Francisco than in New York, is it not because San Francisco is yet behind new York in all that both cities are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point where New York now is, who can doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets?
In our current system, poverty advances alongside progress. Landlords are the only beneficiaries in a system without Land Value Tax, everyone else is at best doomed to face the trade-offs of going to less productive cities.
Now if they bought at an extremely high price and are highly leveraged, they might now feel that way, but the net effect either way is the same. The people who own homes lobby against pro growth policies that would bring down housing costs, while the people who don’t aren’t driven out and unable to vote to make the necessary changes.
https://blog.simonsays.ai/a-good-walk-spoiled-with-malcolm-g...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/15/google-ca...
On top of that it's passed down between generations so anyone who's bloodline has a landowning Native Son of the Golden West gets a cut. CA tax policy might as well be game of thrones.
But what about "poor old grandma who's house is now worth 2M"? She has the CA Tax Postponment Program that will guarantee her stability until the day she dies. Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary.
But when 13 was passed it wasn't about grandma. Jerry Brown put together 1978 Prop 8 for that. Howard Jarvis convinced voters that the state was taxing their money away for no reason and demanded big cuts as a vengeful "revolt".
https://teachingmalinche.com/2018/08/26/the-summer-that-elvi...
It's gross down to the core. Look at the kind of things Jarvis was saying:
> The public school system is second to none in waste, incompetence, and zero results. I think the public school system is a cancer on this society. The only difference between the public schools and the Mafia is that the public schools steal more money.
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/howard-ja...
[1]https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020915/what-country...
And the US is dead near the bottom in social spending. As a result American schools are asked to do a hell of a lot more than other nations.
American teacher salaries are higher than overseas but, by US standards, teachers aren't paid very much. In the US salaries are high but social safety nets are non-existent. In California it's even more extreme because the cost of living is out of control (arguably because of Prop 13).
> little to show for it in terms of results.
Curious why you think that.
The UCs are the envy of the planet and, before Jarvis, they were free. People bust their ass at IIT, Tsingua, or ETH Zurich then fly over here for grad school at UCLA where they ultimately land jobs at American companies. Why you'd want to defund this process I have no idea. Seems like the kind of thing we should be aggressively expanding.
For K-12, unlike most of the world, US schools have been educating more and more people from different ethnic backgrounds. It's no secret that blacks and hispanics do worse on standardized math tests and when you mix them in with the rest of course average scores go down. But when you slice by ethnicity both groups individually have been improving.
> someone, may be at the administrative levels, is obviously profiting.
"obviously" you should be able to point to who it is
The refusal of 3 American cities to grow has made us all substantially poorer (New York, San Jose, and San Francisco): https://www.econlib.org/a-correction-on-housing-regulation/
> revitalize the American heartland while moving America toward a greener, high-tech future
Every time someone moves from the suburbs to a transit connected apartment building in SF their carbon emissions are cut in half.
Our housing stupidity could easily wreck our national economy
> Every time someone moves from the suburbs to a transit connected apartment building in SF their carbon emissions are cut in half.
I kind of agree, but if these people are truly shifting to remote work, commutes won't be quite as big a deal. (but there are of course a laundry list of other reasons why suburbs are unsustainable)
* specifically the share of income spent on rent
Living in SF is a different thing.
The traffic really sucks and the public transportation is inadequate.
During major conferences the city gets completely saturated with people and transportation sucks even more.
Commuting from outside the city is a via crucis that will destroy your spirit.
Public works take fucking forever to complete, blocking streets for years.
Air quality is nice, except during wildfire season. You will need to seal your windows, doors, AC, buy air filters and masks. It sucks.
The cost of living is fucking absurd. The will keep raising your rent every goddamn year.
The homelessness situation is pretty bad, and since the city has not installed public bathrooms, they have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars removing poop from the streets.
And needles. Fucking used needles everywhere.
I saw a video recently about the Ogallala Aquifer (a large body of water that feeds the agricultural belt in central US). It argued that because state lines were drawn in a nearly arbitrary fashion, states are incentivized to compete against each other to develop/maintain their agricultural industries, even if that means draining the water unsustainably. It argues that a hypothetical megastate whose area encompasses the entirety of the aquifer would see that it's in its own interest to manage the aquifer efficiently and sustainably, rather than fight against neighbouring states in a tragedy of the commons.
`s/water/VC money + talent/` and I think you can see where we're going with this. Could the next Apple be born in Denver? Could the next Google be born in Miami? You could arguably look at Toronto, Canada as an example of what sort of level of innovation one could reasonably expect from a local growing hub. But if hypothetically, the SF tech scene were to actually die (or be irreparably crippled by the tech exodus), I'd think the US as a whole would lose a major economic/technological edge, especially compared to places like China.
Is that "good for the US"? Perhaps so for the folks that can ride the growth in the local hubs. Perhaps their locals will also come to loathe techies. But alas, perhaps it won't be so good after all, if it means the existing tech giants will never again see worthy competition/disruption, and if it means that the US starts seeing technological advances originating from other countries while no longer able to sprout them at the scale that today's tech giants have been able to in the past.