Texas will continue to collect the worthless husks of silicon valley zombie companies like HPE while companies who value their employees, because those employees are educated, experienced, skilled, and profitable, will not be interested in that move. Putting your company in Texas narrows your labor market considerably.
Public health and safety are greater needs than people whining about fake free-dumb concerns. You live in this free society because countless others have dealt with the minor inconveniences like sanitation and vaccination. Grow a pair, stop being a leech on society and get vaccinated.
Homes in Texas are cheap, if you relocate to a higher cost of living area the equivalent house you get for the money will be a downgrade. So most people won’t take the offer, and thus Salesforce doesn’t spend any resources on moving employees but gets to reap the benefit of good PR.
Gee. Mediocre COVID response. Mediocre treatment of women. Mediocre treatment of non-white folks. Mediocre view of the democratic process. Hot as blazes. Mediocre electrical grid. Some risk of catastrophic weather events.
Some people might find these as undesirable aspects of living in Texas.
0 state income tax. Low housing cost, and low cost of living in general. Culturally diverse (Asians, Hispanics), with large urban centers (Dallas, Houston, Austin).
Average property tax in Texas is 1.69%. It seems in my area the nice areas are around 2%. I'm not sure where you're getting 3% from.
Also, our house in TX is almost half the price of our house in CA (and much nicer), so even though the rate is double the actual tax amount is the same.
Socal, at least, covers the cultural diversity and large urban as specified. Gobs of people and a mixture containing both Asians and Hispanics along with other things. Fully agree on the $$ issue.
It's been near or above 100F s lot this summer and we're making it nearly impossible to br homeless here. Makes sense to though. When low earners are losing jobs in retail and service industries and people from CA are driving up housing prices, forcing poor people to live in tents, making this place even less hospitable is the only neighborly thing to do.
I'm selling a 3400 sqft house for $750k, just outside Austin. My property taxes are insane and I have to fight every year to not let the county reassess my home value the maximum legal amount. I've seen a black person in my neighborhood enough times to know he's a resident and there are two Indian families but the place white as hell. Crime is going up, we're nationally ranked near or at the top for DWI (except during the first half of COVID, where we traded in for spousal abuse... also drunk, probably). Every 21+ can now open carry, as long as they have a pulse and no recent violent convictions. The power grid is constantly teetering on the edge of collapse (generator sales are way up this year though, so that's cool). There are so many new subdivisions going up that we can't build enough schools fast enough to fit all the kids and the roads have slowed to a crawl. The state government seems to actively be trying to kill people, while disenfranchising minorities and stripping rights from women, while effectively turning every slack jawed bubba into a part time bounty hunter.
To each their own. Personally, I'm giving TX the finger and taking my cash elsewhere. Abbot can roll of a cliff, for all I care.
I just moved to Texas from California where there is: horrific levels of crime, homelessness, and drug use in my area, outrageous cost-of-living, bad public schools, bad housing, and people are generally just incredibly unfriendly to each other. I also worry the lack of water and annual fires will tank the biggest industry in the state (agriculture), and who is going to pick up the tab?
Texas has problems, but they're not as bad for me. Personally it's the lack of nature that's been the worst drawback so far. Most of them can be mitigated by purchasing a nice house with good A/C and a standby generator—which is affordable.
From Austin here. It’s about $16k for a natural gas, 22kW (hey gotta run that decent, Texas sized a/c, right?) generator. That’s all up, installed with all the permits for electric and gas and city included and it will take about 4 months to install.
Compared to my cost of living in the bay that's absolutely pennies. And good luck getting anything installed permits or otherwise because finding contractors (especially decent ones) is nearly impossible without a healthy population of tradesmen.
I was also affected by blackouts in CA so it wasn't like I had power there either. Only difference is the weather is very livable without HVAC.
Yeah some famous tv guy in LA waited years to get his solar panels installed. I feel like I’d be earning way more in California for the crap I do though.
Shop for labor in Austin right now. If it's work requiring a permit, the backlogs are long. If it's not, prices are inflated AND backlogs are long. I've been trying to find contactors to finish my outbuilding for over a year. I ended up doing a lot of it myself or paying friends because not being new construction in a subdivision puts me at the back of every line and at rates I'm not willing to pay. If you want to build a new house in a subdivision, picked from a catalog and you're willing to pay top dollar though, you're fine. (I can't even call in ga it's from GCs I know because they're just too busy building the thousands of new houses already delayed in Austin metro.)
I tried to get someone to lay down a few bags of mulch in SF and he wanted to charge me $7000. No, I did not miss a digit. I did it myself in about 2 hours including driving to Home Depot.
I was quoted an AC install for $36k. We already had central heat so this was a relatively easy install. I did manage to find someone that did it for $15k but even that took a lot of searching.
As far as permitted work? We didn't even attempt any of that except a rather big electrical job. It was prohibitively expensive, took months, and they didn't finish a ton of the work as we found out selling the home. This was after I got 7 estimates and went with who I thought was the "best".
I didn't move to Austin and I'm sure it's bad there, but I can't imagine it's worse than the bay. Actually this specific problem is the biggest reason we decided not to pick Austin.
The manor difference is that you can find people to do the work. I stared at a cement pad for six months, waiting for a building to start going up. Then it was another four months for framing. You can't find anyone to do the work out here any more, they're all building new for CA expats. When I sold my house in th not h bay, it needed a new deck. $18k and a week later it was done and the house sold before there was a sign in the front. Over a year to get a fancy shed (that's how you classify it to avoid permits) and it's still not done. Trade-offs.
Ok, so apparently one needs to account for inrush current (aka "locked rotor current"), the head space needed for that put me over the second smallest generator power output. The next one up from that isn't made any more and the one up from that one (16kW) has a 12 month lead time. Popular choice apparently. That's how I ended up with 22kW. On the plus side, it's plenty to run everything simultaneously with room for adding a freezer later and some other thing later. Admittedly that's pretty comfy, but I needed something quick and decent to run family member's life support systems.
since it's mostly labor and installation cost (presumably those are about the same cost no matter the size), I feel it makes a lot of sense to go a little bit bigger than you need
Our COVID response has been fantastic, no curb-stomping of human rights.
What kind of mediocre treatment of women? Banning the murder of babies?
No idea what you mean by the treatment of non-white folks, everyone here is pretty friendly.
Voter ID is a basic requirement for any functional democratic system, so honestly we respect the process more than many states.
Our electrical grid works just fine, the February storm was a once in a lifetime event, and most of the issues were with things like power lines simply never having been built with prolonged sub-zero degree conditions in mind - which, given your comment about it being "hot as blazes" is a pretty reasonable assumption to make when constructing the grid.
Other people have mentioned it as a "conspiracy theory", but I actually think it's pretty straightforward, and there is no conspiracy about it. Current Texas government is definitely worried about the numbers of people moving here who don't share their politics, and while many of these items have been GOP priorities for a while, I think Texas pushing so hard now on things like the abortion law, voting restrictions, constitutional carry, social media restrictions, etc. is basically at attempt to convince liberal people not to come here, and it's having an effect.
Interesting idea. They may very well see that as an added benefit but I suspect the reason for the big push now is due to the conservative supermajority in the supreme court.
Texas is not worried about Californian Liberals moving the needle, the political needle is moved by migrants from the South, who will not be encumbered by these kinds of laws.
It's hard to fathom the motivation for this kind of law politically, but I think we shouldn't doubt that it's made in 'good faith' by a lot of the people pushing it.
Salesforce/Benioff thing is mostly an issue of PR and branding though it might actually be beneficial for a very small number of people. This is the guy who has 'Religious People' (Monks) living in his home and virtue signals about it. A bunch of the Pied Piper gags are about him. That said, I think it's also probably in mostly good faith as well, I'm sure he's personally upset by the law.
Edit: I should say that it's not beyond reason that politicians might be thinking this even if it's really irrational, they do all sorts of wacky things. By and large I think Texas likes the ingress and the people ingressing there I think have some idea of what Texas is.
Yes, it is. Austin is responsible for a disproportionate amount of the state's economy, and certainly well over-represented in areas like tech and VC funding [1]. I'd argue that for tech-specific entrepreneurship Austin is basically right after Bay Area and Seattle (Boston and NY are also obviously up there but a lot of their funding/new company formation is around the huge builtin base in those cities in finance and biotech).
How would that disprove a conspiracy is going on exactly? I don't personally believe this is anything more than republicans being republicans but what do the numbers have to disprove it?
The Texas restrictions on voting, I do believe are an attempt to increase vote share for that party, I don't think that's conspiratorial because the effects are direct.
But the numbers in the last election show a shift in voter sentiment, that's all.
That Texas politicians would enact an 'abortion law' specifically to 'want fewer newcomers from California' isn't something demonstrated in that data.
I don't hold politicians in high regard, but generally they are good at populism, this approach wouldn't make any sense either pragmatically or politically.
A corporation should be able to economically punish any entity they choose (as long the punishment is within economic boundaries, and they have some sort of business/employment relation with that entity )
The stronger the message the better, why do it in small pieces. Why not stop doing business (eg Sales/support) in the state of TX.
Whether it is a customer, an employee, a state or even a country.
Corporations should be able to participate in political discourse when they want to and as long as they stay with the boundaries of economic punishment -- it should be celebrated.
TX people love freedom, so freedom of corporations to punish economically -- should be one of those freedoms
Perhaps some powerfull entities can economically retaliate, although I am not sure how. Salesforce is dominant in their industry and pretty powerful.
There are about 900 employees of salesforce situated in TX.
It would, perhaps, send a stronger message of Salesforce position on the matter, if they stop selling to any business located in TX,
also in Poland (that has even stronger abortion law). [1]
Basically do not sell or do not hire anybody located in jurisdictions with a strong anti-abortion law.
Overall affect of corporate political activism should not be selective, and show maximum punishment to the jurisdictions that go opposite of the view of the corporation.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadHomes in Texas are cheap, if you relocate to a higher cost of living area the equivalent house you get for the money will be a downgrade. So most people won’t take the offer, and thus Salesforce doesn’t spend any resources on moving employees but gets to reap the benefit of good PR.
Some people might find these as undesirable aspects of living in Texas.
0 state income tax. Low housing cost, and low cost of living in general. Culturally diverse (Asians, Hispanics), with large urban centers (Dallas, Houston, Austin).
To each their own.
Also, our house in TX is almost half the price of our house in CA (and much nicer), so even though the rate is double the actual tax amount is the same.
I don't live in Texas currently, and don't plan on ever returning, but did live in Austin for a few years. I can see the appeal.
To each their own. Personally, I'm giving TX the finger and taking my cash elsewhere. Abbot can roll of a cliff, for all I care.
Texas has problems, but they're not as bad for me. Personally it's the lack of nature that's been the worst drawback so far. Most of them can be mitigated by purchasing a nice house with good A/C and a standby generator—which is affordable.
From Austin here. It’s about $16k for a natural gas, 22kW (hey gotta run that decent, Texas sized a/c, right?) generator. That’s all up, installed with all the permits for electric and gas and city included and it will take about 4 months to install.
PS: I’d rather live in San Diego any day
I was also affected by blackouts in CA so it wasn't like I had power there either. Only difference is the weather is very livable without HVAC.
Also San Diego is nice, but damn has traffic gotten horrible in the last 20 years. And the house prices. Don’t even get me started.
I was quoted an AC install for $36k. We already had central heat so this was a relatively easy install. I did manage to find someone that did it for $15k but even that took a lot of searching.
As far as permitted work? We didn't even attempt any of that except a rather big electrical job. It was prohibitively expensive, took months, and they didn't finish a ton of the work as we found out selling the home. This was after I got 7 estimates and went with who I thought was the "best".
I didn't move to Austin and I'm sure it's bad there, but I can't imagine it's worse than the bay. Actually this specific problem is the biggest reason we decided not to pick Austin.
What kind of mediocre treatment of women? Banning the murder of babies?
No idea what you mean by the treatment of non-white folks, everyone here is pretty friendly.
Voter ID is a basic requirement for any functional democratic system, so honestly we respect the process more than many states.
Our electrical grid works just fine, the February storm was a once in a lifetime event, and most of the issues were with things like power lines simply never having been built with prolonged sub-zero degree conditions in mind - which, given your comment about it being "hot as blazes" is a pretty reasonable assumption to make when constructing the grid.
Texas is not worried about Californian Liberals moving the needle, the political needle is moved by migrants from the South, who will not be encumbered by these kinds of laws.
It's hard to fathom the motivation for this kind of law politically, but I think we shouldn't doubt that it's made in 'good faith' by a lot of the people pushing it.
Salesforce/Benioff thing is mostly an issue of PR and branding though it might actually be beneficial for a very small number of people. This is the guy who has 'Religious People' (Monks) living in his home and virtue signals about it. A bunch of the Pied Piper gags are about him. That said, I think it's also probably in mostly good faith as well, I'm sure he's personally upset by the law.
Edit: I should say that it's not beyond reason that politicians might be thinking this even if it's really irrational, they do all sorts of wacky things. By and large I think Texas likes the ingress and the people ingressing there I think have some idea of what Texas is.
https://apnews.com/article/texas-business-census-2020-scienc...
[1] https://news.crunchbase.com/news/austin-reaches-top-10-in-us...
But the numbers in the last election show a shift in voter sentiment, that's all.
That Texas politicians would enact an 'abortion law' specifically to 'want fewer newcomers from California' isn't something demonstrated in that data.
I don't hold politicians in high regard, but generally they are good at populism, this approach wouldn't make any sense either pragmatically or politically.
* In cities, access to high quality, diverse food in stores and restaurants
* No state income tax
* Cheap land outside cities. Fertile land in the Eastern half of the state
* Plenty of jobs of all kinds
* Decent schools
* Mostly friendly people
* Low overall cost of living
* People are generally skeptical of the government (I count this as a perk)
* Accommodates a lot of different lifestyles and perspectives, depending on where you choose to live
A corporation should be able to economically punish any entity they choose (as long the punishment is within economic boundaries, and they have some sort of business/employment relation with that entity )
The stronger the message the better, why do it in small pieces. Why not stop doing business (eg Sales/support) in the state of TX.
Whether it is a customer, an employee, a state or even a country.
Corporations should be able to participate in political discourse when they want to and as long as they stay with the boundaries of economic punishment -- it should be celebrated.
TX people love freedom, so freedom of corporations to punish economically -- should be one of those freedoms
Perhaps some powerfull entities can economically retaliate, although I am not sure how. Salesforce is dominant in their industry and pretty powerful.
It would, perhaps, send a stronger message of Salesforce position on the matter, if they stop selling to any business located in TX, also in Poland (that has even stronger abortion law). [1]
Basically do not sell or do not hire anybody located in jurisdictions with a strong anti-abortion law.
Overall affect of corporate political activism should not be selective, and show maximum punishment to the jurisdictions that go opposite of the view of the corporation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Poland#Legal_abort...