Solution: remote work
Honestly...160k salaries for some sw roles are silly. But there is need for them because the costs of living are so high. That's plain bs.
Concentrate your tech workers in a area that isn't hostile to expanding the housing supply when needed.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/construction-in-new-york-city-go...
Chattanooga is good, Nashville is good (but getting pricey), lots of space and smart people in North Carolina (Asheville or Raleigh Durham Research Triangle Park). I've heard good things about Des Moines (not a fan of the cold though).
At this point, its just masochistic for SF startups to require their tech staff to live in the area, and throw away so much of their income to landlords.
Having sampled a fair number of places, I can safely say quality of life in Houston and San Antonio is far better than people on HN believe.
Unless you have a family. Texas schools are absolutely terrible.
I spent two years in a California high school and two years in a Texas high school. I have seen first hand how terrible schools can be in CA and, conversely, how fantastic they can be in Texas.
For reference, I'm comparing Benicia HS in the North Bay with Seven Lakes HS in suburban Houston.
In California, teachers were restricted to six pieces of copier paper per student per year. One security guard for 1500 students. Ancient textbooks and the most antagonistic administration you can imagine. AP classes? Gone. School buses? Discontinued. Arts and music? Better hope your parents can pay for it.
Between my sophomore and junior years I moved to Texas. Seven Lakes was the most expensive school ever built. We didn't just have a computer science class, we had a computer science department. Our AP US History teacher had more students score 4 or 5 on the AP exam than any other US history teacher in the country.
To Benicia's credit, their band was actually quite a bit better.
And just to underline the difference in affordability, the average home price in Benicia at the time was $629k. Katy's average was $161k.
Safe to say I have no regrets about having left California.
"Texas earns C-minus, ranks 39th in nation on education ranking"
* 52 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds in the state are not in school.
* Hispanics had the lowest rate of 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool at 39 percent. Meanwhile about half of black, white and Asian 4-year-olds were enrolled.
* 64 percent of of 3- and 4-year-olds in households earning at least $100,000 or more attend preschool compared to 40 percent of those living in households earning less than $20,000.
* About 44 percent of those enrolled in Texas preschool attended a private school.
http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2015/01/texas-earns-c-mi...
California ranked 42nd in the same report with a score of D+. [1]
I'm obviously not arguing that every school in Texas is good. There are some utterly terrible districts in that state.
I don't think anyone would that point.
But there are also some great schools. The existence of some (even many) bad schools shouldn't necessarily deter someone from moving to a community in Texas with good schools.
All of that applies equally to California—there are some horrible schools there too.
[1] http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2015/state-highlights/2015/01/08...
Sure, you can try that.
But if the place doesn't offer the environmental features that make the Bay Area attractive, your going to have to offer them a premium to live there; lower housing costs may cover some of that so that you are only paying the same, but may not.
The Bay Area is expensive, more than anything else, because people want to live there.
When you think about the value that a single SWE can create it's not that crazy
The amount of choice in employer I have as an individual is also much greater here.
Still, I'll probably head back to one of those "small" towns soon. Not really worth it here for me personally, despite the employer-choice and the $.
You only have to spend 50% if you want to live in a hipster/trendy area of SF.
(rhetorical, trying to imply you might make quite a bit more than me)
Now I feel bad for spending 50% of my income and still not living anywhere hip.
Assuming that elsewhere you would do 30/30/40 % split on rent/savings/spend, then as long as you're making 40%+ more income (than elsewhere) you're okay to spend 50% on rent because you can save just as much or more.
It's also much harder on the employers: if you think finding one good job is hard, try hiring an entire team of decent employees at once.
Ultimately, it's worth the extra cost of staying where the tech is, prefixing your city name ala 'Silicon xxx' not withstanding.
At some point, costs will reach a tipping point where people will start to look elsewhere(I don't mean 1% of people and I don't mean the Easy Bay, but actual significant people moving away from the Bay Area).
I think that the tech frenzy is great enough that people are fighting over tech folks in other areas--maybe not as violently as in SF, but still fighting.
Each client did end up hiring, but it was a slog.
Sure, maybe you would be better off somewhere where the competition isn't as hard, and the living costs aren't as high.
That's a chicken-and-egg problem. Companies choose to set up shop there so employees will feel more comfortable taking risks because of the demand for developers. However, the demand for developers exists because companies tend to set up shop there.
Framing it that way doesn't make it any easier to resolve.
In my experience, this is not going to be the case in almost every major city and in some areas not near a major city. Places where I've found/been recruited for jobs easily: Seattle, Portland, Austin, Philadelphia, Central NJ, NYC, San Diego, Atlanta, Dallas, DC. And those are just the places I was looking into at the time. Sure, if you're looking for a very specialized niche, the bay area is a better choice, but for most engineers that just isn't the case.
Uptown is getting busier, and this just happened: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201...
When a company becomes controlled by PE, cost-cutting is the number 1 priority. Layoffs happen, the company slow-pays its suppliers and is constantly on credit hold, pay gets cut, benefits are cut, schedules become completely unrealistic, and misconceived products are launched which fail.
I've seen this all happen in the last company I worked for.
if you working for a company and it gets bought by PE, leave ASAP.
SFBA companies! Get it together! Learn to be remote teams. It makes you a better company in the end.
EDIT: And you're not slaving your employees by forcing them to spend so much of their income on the unnecessary expense of SFBA housing.
Does it? I hear everyone on here say that more work should be remote but I haven't seen any studies that show that workers can be just as productive when not in the office. I would assume they would be.
But for engineering talent, it doesn't work. I don't know the exact reason but it seems to be some combination of the ability to poach from each other, herd mentality, and the concentration of VC money.
Take a look at the remote engineering jobs on WWR. Most of them aren't in SF. To me that screams "We opened an office in an affordable city but we still can't get people to come here"
I'm so biased.
If you want startups, Boulder or downtown Denver are pretty good, or if you want more established tech companies, Interlocken or the Tech center are where it's at.
However, as soon as my employer opens up an office in Berlin, I'm out of the US. Even denser, even cooler and way better public transit.
Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami would all like a word with you.
> SF has all the 99% of the good tech jobs
Boston would really like a word with you, now...