A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

However, the job security is an interesting point. I suspect that Zapier gains huge leverage over it's relocated employees because they're now dependent on their Zapier job, another hard-to-find remote gig elsewhere, or funding their own move back to a tech hub. I don't know what Zapier's pay bands are like but I'll bet their employee churn is lower than industry average.

I used to live in an apartment on 55 9th St, San Francisco. The guy in the apartment across the hall also started a company at the same time as me. He introduced me to other founder friends in the apartment building.

The lobby has a coffee shop where I've made other founder, angel, and VC friends.

And I haven't even started enumerating all my other startup-y friends I made outside of my own apartment lobby.

I got very lucky, and your own mileage may vary, but if you're looking for helpful startup-y people, the Bay Area is still the world capital.

I can't help thinking that this move by Zapier is a way to reduce turnover. I have several friends who smugly relocated away from the bay area, who now hate their jobs and can't leave them because there are no local opportunities.

Working remotely may be different, but the problems of networking and finding new work still apply.

So yes -- the statements are true. But not the slightest bit profound.

It really is. It's why I cant bring myself to leave this place even with all it's warts. Knowing that you can just screw off and do whatever you want for a year then have a dozen interviews lined up for six figure jobs with nothing more than a few emails is really empowering, actually. I can't imagine the anxiety of living somewhere else and being dependent on a single good job no matter what the relocation bonus is.

If you have a desirable resume, skills to back it up and maybe a connection or two, it is beyond trivial to get a job here. It is still challenging to break into, but once you're in, I don't know anyone who is unemployed except by choice and even those people who want to be unemployed get unsolicited job offers.

I wouldn't know about starting your own company, but getting a job right now is absolutely as easy as people make it out to be. Finding a job you want might be a different story, of course.

Going north, you could head toward Rohnert Park/Sonoma. SamA and PG will just need to get in the car a bit more instead of taking Caltrain/BART.

I also noticed that there is a self-driving car company down there: http://velodynelidar.com Are there any other interesting tech companies down there?

Nice thing is that if you live near downtown you could take the Caltrain up to downtown MTV or PA.

There is also a cost to having everyone around you in the same line of business, both in terms of correlated economic risk, and also in terms of loss of perspective.

I remember when I was in semiconductor sales engineer I visited International Gaming Technology out there (video game slot machines). It was surprisingly not very desert like at all in the spring. The fields were covered in green grass.

Big companies in general are conservative. They've made it and don't want to take unnecessary risks. Trying to introduce remote culture into a company that isn't used to it/tooled for it is a HUGE risk.

The innovation in hiring is going to come from small companies who need to hire but can't afford Bay Area salaries. Mid-career folks here, not even particularly good ones, are routinely looking at 200k or more out the door from their employers. 400k seed rounds, hell even 800k seed rounds, don't go very far on that kind of money. So what has to happen is that (a) founders have to get comfortable giving up a lot more equity for more capital, (b) investors have to be comfortable paying much higher valuations for early-stage companies, (c) employees have to be willing to take more stock in lieu of cash, or (d) companies have to do more remote hiring. I see a mix of all four happening depending on the particular circumstances of each company (e.g. famous founders will be able to raise more at higher valuation)

It's all pretty simple. The landlords win and everyone else loses. The situation will only get better once remote work is more widely accepted, but I'm starting to think it might come to that, with how expensive things are here. A nothing-special sandwich in Oakland, CA where I live is almost $15, at some point you say enough is enough and go somewhere where such an obscene price level is a joke, not day-to-day reality.

I think it is lock-in. Not just because it makes it somewhat harder to get in front of other companies, but because making a Bay Area kind of salary in a place with a non-Bay-Area cost of living sounds like the kind of thing that could make an employee very comfortable and very unwilling to go looking for another job. If you're getting like an equivalent of +$30k (or more), even if another company says, "Oh, sure, we'll hire you for $20k over your current salary... but you'll need to move back to the Bay Area," that's an offer you're much less likely to take than if you were already in the Bay Area. And local companies in your new place-of-work are unlikely to be able to match your existing salary.

not in san fransisco https://www.mytrove.com/ca/san-francisco/cheddar/software-ap...

Have fun at your nice job, but I'm not coming home to roommates for $3k a month. The numbers don't really seem to work out, a lot of people are basically selling great living conditions for the chance to go work at companies that probably won't be there in a few years and really aren't doing anything interesting.

Also the "monoculture" dig applies to tech specifically: in terms of actual cultural diversity very few places are as interesting.

I feel like people who say this about any city haven't gotten out much in other cities.

Although there are some people that seem to only find enjoyment bitching about the weather which I find hilarious coming from the midwest where the temperature can swing 60 degrees in a day, summers are so hot that you sweat sitting down, and winters are so cold that you only see bundles of clothing walking around. I'll take mild temperatures, mountains, lakes/oceans, and a little bit of overcast over wild temperature swings, flat land, no water, and a bit more sun anyday.

The person you are replying to is highlighting the high cost of living and tax burden in the Bay Area (relative to other parts of the US). It is disingenuous to respond by claiming that a pro of living in the Bay Area is "Being rich AF".

See https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/a-major-... if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Heck, those 3 aren't even the only big tech companies in Seattle, there's Apple, Facebook, Oracle, Twitter, etc. etc. let alone all the other smaller ones. There's more tech companies here than you can shake a stick at.

If you're a new grad, however, expect to be out of work for a bit.

It is. Roads in the Bay Area are among the worst in the country, despite this region producing enormous corporate profits. Nearly all the companies here operate in an eternal tragedy of the commons, whereby nobody will pay local taxes because nobody else does. All the companies in California are actually Delaware companies, and the income inequality and quality-of-life disparity is a direct result of this kind of corruption.

Many states and some entire countries simply don't fund themselves by stealing from people's paycheck, but usually passively tax other kinds of transactions.

There are lots of opportunities using combinations of the 50 states, territories and non-US jurisdictions.

This comes across as another form of Zuckerberg-esque ageism.