Even if they spent 150k per engineer in relocation costs (1 time fee), it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t make that up in terms of cheaper real estate and lower salaries.
There were obviously some benefits in choosing New York City (and I realize it’s an expansion technically), but still, it’s so......unimaginative.
Would have been a great contrast to Amazon’s bait and switch yesterday.
Are you suggest that elite talent wants lower salaries in the Midwest or Florida as long as they can get a one time relocation payout?
Google might save support staff salaries, but I don't think they'll save engineer salaries with your plan, they might even have to boost them.
I can actually afford a house. My dog has a yard to play in. I haven't been mugged since I left! No one uses my doorstep as a bathroom. My neighbors actually come say hi to me and are invested in forming relationships knowing I won't just up in move in the next year due to housing costs. We have decent enough restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, pool halls, movie theater, mall, etc, and if I really want to, I am within driving distance of the city (edit: for a day trip, no way in hell would it work for me as a commute). Yet, I haven't been back since I left.
I think it's more nuanced than your comment indicates. You might be surprised how many people might take up an offer from Google to move to the boonies (I'm at least one).
A train which sometimes get you there in 45 minutes, sometimes in 60 minutes, sometimes gets cancelled because of (Amtrak signal problems | disabled Amtrak equipment in the Hudson tunnel | overhead wire damage | $ PROBLEM_OF_THE_DAY).
He says while crammed in to an NJTransit train.
Not to be a ass, but where? And please don't just point out a home with no pictures you just found on Zillow, but a place where you've actually been to which has decent property taxes, decent schools, and is safe? And actually a 45 minute commute, not 45 minutes if you ignore the 20+ minutes it takes to drive your car from home to a train station and pay $50+/month to park for a reserved spot.
I ask this because I used to live in a NYC area highrise and always used to think over the about the seemingly fantastic deals in the suburbs. Then I started looking and realized real-estate websites and Google Maps commuting are a far cry from reality.
Here's a great example. 36 Ball Ter, Maplewood. $550K, ~2200 sqft, interior looks newly renovated, looks really nice in pictures. $15.5K(!!) in taxes. With 20% down you're still looking at $3.5K/Month(includes property taxes) on a 30 year mortgage.
If you look at the price history on Zillow or Trulia, it looks like it was flipped (I think that's when the interior renovation was done) late 2017/early 2018, and the price went up to $750k and has plummeted since then. So the property tax assessment is probably on the pre-renovated value, not the renovated value. So whomever purchases this house can expect a fat tax increase when the town reassess the value.
Also, look at the prices between the East and West side of Maplewood. The East side is fairly close to areas that lots of people would prefer not to live in due to safety concerns.
Again, I'm not trying to be an ass or attack you. I'm just trying to present some real numbers so people have a realistic view when they think the greater NYC area is a place you can escape to when you want access to NYC with a medium CoL. NYC is a very high CoL area and moving to the suburbs can hurt (e.g. terrible commute) in unexpected ways, and you still have a high CoL compared to the majority of country.
3.5k a month is affordable to people who make 130k+ a year, which is less than a new grad makes at Google, where this is absolutely cheaper than anything within a comparable commute to google offices in the bay area at all, or around Seattle in school districts of similar quality.
New York Metro is in no way cheap, and I was never trying to make that argument, just that it can be substantially cheaper than the existing major tech hubs.
My comment is that in less desirable locations people need to be paid more to be there if they don't have to be. The cost of living is not really relevant.
In particular, if one anticipates returning to a pricey location later in life (e.g. needing to take care of elderly relatives there), one has to save for retirement at a higher level than if one can stay in the cheaper place forever.
Cost of living comparisons used to justify salary reductions rarely account for such scenarios.
With that said, the numbers can still work out to make it a good financial deal, it's just less automatically true.
If you live in a high cost of living area, but are okay living with roommates you can save a ton of money. More than enough to make up the difference compared to living in a low cost of living area.
You also get better quality of life and a lot more opportunities - meeting people for work/friends/dating. It's also better to have a high salary in order to more easily keep a high salary.
I think you also learn more faster from increased exposure to talented people. I grew up in Buffalo which is a nice and very cheap place, but there was nobody to learn from.
Maybe it will be different in my thirties and forties but right now I want to either live in a (cool) city to work on exiting projects or be travelling. It may sound pretentious to some, but it's what I want.
I would imagine quite a few people feel similarly. In that way a campus in New York City makes sense I believe.
But it's not for lots of people who can afford positive savings in both locations, unless the absolute pay difference is less than the absolute difference in CoL at the level they would maintain in each place; even people who would prefer the lifestyle and environment of a cheaper (often rural) place often spend most of their working life in an area with a more robust economy and higher pay and CoL to increase savings, and then retire to the cheaper place. (A lot of the net domestic migration out from CA is, I suspect, that, as people executing that strategy reach retirement.) And that's not to say anything of how that utilities balance for people who actually prefer the lifestyle and environment of the more expensive location.
Network effects are real.
Des Moines favors people that want to settle down and have a quiet, comfortable suburban life. It is a nice, clean, orderly place with lots of new infrastructure. The landscape is pristine and beautiful. It has all the creature comforts you need. Nothing wrong with that--if anything, Des Moines is a hot real-estate market right now, including surrounding areas like Ankeny--but by definition that doesn't attract ambitious people.
You can have a good career in Des Moines working for big insurance companies etc. (and many do). But it is not a hot house for the upper end of tech talent. You're looking at a different range of talent there.
I'm 24, but that is definitely what appeals to me. The mere thought of working in NYC or other tech hubs is nauseating. I'd feel totally out of place culturally.
But the old IBM campuses outside of NYC are actually like this. They are usually one or two hours from NYC, in really leafy forested areas...basically country side. People commuting from the city to those places (eg Yorktown in West Chester) are the first ones google attracted with their In-City office, they were extremely successful just because they were in the city and IBM wasn’t.
Of course I accept that not everyone wants to live in a city. The point is, though, that you have to make serious sacrifices if that's your first priority -- you need to either accept a long miserable commute, or acknowledge that you're limiting your ability to grow into the top tier of your chosen profession. Cities have very real beneficial network effects for businesses.
I as a white brit enjoyed working (London UK) for an Arab company which was incredibly diverse - just with I had take a language class at night school.
Don't underestimate how much your culture can change, particularly if you're young and go into life with an open mind. It's one thing if you have no desire for whatever might bring you to a big city, but if you do have that desire but are stopped because of the nauseating feeling of how your lifestyle & culture might change, that feeling does pass.
Where in nostrademons' comment did they the parents culture and feelings "wrong"?
The likes of NY, Boston are my perfect city. Everything I need is by my doorstep, don't need to own a car (or use it regularly) and can find not-unreasonable rents if I have roommates and don't stay in cheaper locations. (eg. Allston in Boston)
I work in a Boston suburb and can't imagine staying in such a drab place, unless I had a family, kids and all. Almost everyone there is older than me and almost entirely invested in family living. Everything from conversations to activities lack any sense of freshness and feel routine. Don't get me wrong, people seem to be happy there. But, a lot of it hinges on their family and social relationships built with people over many years.
I don't see myself having either of those things at least till I am in my mid 30s. Even then, I would probably live in a condo where human density is larger, rather than suburban sprawls.
In my experience, suburban living comes at the turning point of the exploration-exploitation curve. People who want to explore, will stay in urban locations and see out new experiences .... Until they start feeling good about a certain local optima and "settle down" on it.
My hypothesis is that tech workers usually slog it out in till they get a job (usually in their early-mid twenties) and then start the exploration phase, that may have come sooner for other majors. As a result they prefer staying in cities for longer and till an older age than other majors.
I have noticed this among my peers, but of course it is anecdotal and have no idea how well it will generalize.
There are several cities I'd be willing to reloc to -- Florida and the Midwest are not in that list (not even Chicago, due to the winter weather). SF, Seattle, Portland, NYC, Boston are at the top of the list. Maybe San Diego or Austin or the DC area.
The real problem is that Google is choosing to expand in the neighborhood they are currently in, where the same applies to Amazon should the Long Island City rumors be true. Regional transportation infrastructure already prioritizes midtown and the financial district, and there are tons of distressed areas regionally, that still certainly do benefit from a growing economy all around.