Talent May Be Shifting Away from Superstar Cities: Study
citylab.com
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I’ve now lived in a much smaller city for the past 5 years. My company hires both senior developers tired of the mercenary treadmill as well as many recent grads that stay for longer than three years since we invest in their career growth and provide much more mentorship. Also the biking distance commute to work are a big selling point.
I loved living in a big city in my 20s but don’t regret moving away in my 30s. my quality of life and financial freedom is immeasurably improved. This regularly surprises my acquaintances that stayed.
1. The offers I got were abysmally small and out of touch with the market even when adjusting for my experience and local cost of living.
2. Most places were either extremely poorly reviewed on glassdoor, or were not hiring junior/midlevel developers.
3. Places I interviewed at were using ancient software stacks from 2000-era that would have hampered my professional growth.
Until all these things are fixed and accounted for there is no way brain drain is going to stop. I literally spent 4 months interviewing, fully willing to relocate in the general Midwest to stay in a smaller more affordable town within reasonable driving distance of my family. If people want to keep smart people around, give them reasonable offers in line with the global market, and take risks on junior developers.
How about no. I think there is a big divide between people who do project maintenance and those tornadoes. Most new hotness people want to put on their resume will bite you in the ass 2 or 3 years down the line. But the super hero tornado will already be 4 companies out of sight so they'll never see what the things they started ended being. And when they stumble upon an old project started by another different team of tornadoes they'll complain.
I've been living up in Northern Sweden for a bit, which is obviously a smallish market.
I was getting offers for less than a third of what I made in London, and mostly for old enterprise tech stuff. At that point there's no reason to even bother negotiating. I went back to remote.
Living costs aren't realistically that much cheaper aside from housing.
The only people you're going to hire for the long term are locals that are staying in the town for reasons unrelated to work. Which is fine and describes many people - but it's definitely a huge limiter on access to top talent.
I have not worked in London but a quick search says the rates are pretty similar.
One of the bigger software companies, Qualtrics (acquired this year by SAP for $8B) eventually gave up fining enough local engineers and opened a Seattle office.
The other problem with my city in particular was everyone seemed to be locked into the same tech stack (C#\.net) that I was not interested in
Starting your career in the Midwest at their typical salary levels and given the kinds of problems many of these companies or their IT departments are solving is a very short sighted approach. I say that having been there.
I pivoted my career. My first 6 months I had more impact and learned way more than in working 4 years in the Midwest.
This comparison makes sense only if your salary is spent on literally nothing else but housing.
Some very expensive places like nyc allow you to factor out automobile expenses making the rent burden manageable.
Food is a bit more, going out is the same if you figure out where to go, and day to day expenses aren’t too far off either.
I’d say it’s about 20% more overall all things considered.
Pre-tax savings and having more to set aside after tax as well as faster appreciating real estate equity is the winning path in today’s economy.
If you make 400k / year (typical for a FAANG senior engineer, which plenty of people people reach in their mid-to-late 20s) your expenses might break down as:
- 160k taxes
- 50k housing (luxury 1 bedroom in SF or Palo Alto)
- 10k food (eat at work on weekdays for free, $200 a weekend to eat out at nice restaurants)
- 10k transportation (Tesla Model 3 like everyone else)
= 230k total
So you end up with ~170k a year of disposable income while living very well. If you were willing to cut expenses to the bone (roommates is the big one, cook for yourself, old car) you'd probably end up at around 200k of disposable income. 170k-200k is more than most software engineers can hope to make in gross income in the Midwest. Sure, you might not want to buy a house for $2M, but with just two years of savings you can move to the Midwest and buy a house outright. After 10 years (remember, most of these people would be in their late thirties) you could easily save ~$2M before investment returns and retire to a low cost of living area.
For people who are not tech workers and live in the Bay Area making <$100k / year, there is definitely a great argument that the cost of living is way too high. For software engineers, it's worth remembering the cost of living is so high only because software engineers get paid so much.
Not doubting it, it's just fucking nuts. I do wonder though what percentage of engineers are making that type of money though? How typical is it really?
Overall, I'd guesstimate 40% make 400k or more, with most senior engineers making that much. Not at all atypical, particularly if you've been at one for a couple years.
As to how many engineers are liquidating at vest? It’s honestly the most sensible option to diversify quickly since you don’t want your investment, savings and income all tied up in one company.
Go look at the 2-year or 5-year stock charts of any of the FAANG companies and you'll see why.
An engineer who started working at a FAANG company several years ago got some RSU grants, and the value of the unvested shares grew a lot since then. On top of that, refresher grants every year or two are pretty common. Total compensation really ramps up after a few years even if you don't get promoted.
Nobody knows what will happen when the inevitable finally happens.
Maybe the companies will step in and make employees mostly whole. Maybe they will have to in order to keep their best people.
Or maybe the gravy train will end.
L
All anyone can tell you for sure is that the companies will continue to pay what is required to get the people they need, and no more.
Using FB as an example, engineers are expected to make it to E5 within a set time period (~5 years) or they're fired. So anyone still employed after that time is at least an E5. The E5 comp target is 330-400k. So yes, anyone still employed after 5/6 years is making at least that much.
Its not expected nor required to go beyond that, so that will be the career top for many. E6 is a 500-600k range, and I've no clue about E7-9.
Google is similar, and there are equivalent levels at Uber, Lyft, etc.
And then there's Netflix which only hires senior engineers and has a single level with a huge comp range. Pretty much 100% of Netflix enginners are making 300k+, most 400k+. But, Netflix is also an all cash shop - need to pay for benefits out of pocket, buy stock out of pocket, etc; so not 1:1 comparable to others.
LOTS of grads do not make it to the $500K land. The FAANG companies have also been around a bit, so now google / facebook etc just have a fair number of more senior folks who are making good money. So pay is out of control but these companies make so much gross revenue (check out apple / google financials) that they can afford it.
Totally annoying if you are not in tech! And sometime you are like, do you really need to be spending x billion on comp to run y website?
Even granting that I'm not very good as a salary negotiator, I suspect an awful lot of software engineers, even out here, are making around $150-200K for their base pay, and are not getting another $100K+ annually in benefits and stock options.
Of that, maybe 60% is salary, and the rest is bonus/stock/etc. The breakdown varies by company, and the non-salary comp is somewhat highly variable.
A senior new hire will be more like $250k
More junior folks will naturally make less.
But I also make more than basically all of my friends / family, and manage to save 30-40% of my income each year, so I have to say I can't complain.
And I'd wager COL here is also higher than Iowa.
There is a market if you're willing to play the game.
Did have a large transformation under my belt and critical national infrastructure as feathers in my hat.
The intention isn't to brag, it's just to point out there is a market here that can be tapped even if you can't travel to SoCal.
He took a 35% pay cut, and he tells me that cost of living in London is much higher than what he left behind in California.
It made sense for him, because he had personal reasons both to be in Europe and to take the specific open position he took that he wouldn't have been able to get on California, but he was much richer in California.
It does take a few years of being at senior for pay to ratchet up to the $350k range that is typical of long-tenured senior engineers at FAANG companies. A newly-minted senior engineer will be more in the $300k range
Also, I was under the impression that those 400K FAANG salaries were not that common in the bay area, i could be wrong.
This is my experience, having lived most of my life in small places (ranging from a monastery to a city with 25k people) while listening to people in big cities complain about their commutes.
Now I live in a city that isn't exactly small but not huge either. I'm already suffering the consequences of traffic and longer distances. Moving out of small cities is when I started to actually need a car... of course having more people and congestion doesn't show up in traffic only; it's also in the grocery store queues, restaurants packed full, parcels not delivered to home because they're too busy to deal with everyone personally, etc.
The thing with smaller places is that you can generally get like 80% of what you need locally, but on occasion you have to go a few towns over or into the nearest city to get that 20%. So you can easily live in a city w/o a car, but it's substantially harder to do so in smaller places.
Also, my experience is that the 20% is more like 1-2% (when I lived in smaller cities, I needed to visit other towns or bigger cities a few times a year).
Like I said, I started needing my car only after I moved out. As a matter of fact, I only got a car a year before moving out, and I only got it because it was given to me for free.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you, but I'm swallowing some pretty bitter pills here having just crossed the 30 year mark and watching my company hire in people at my level for 20-50% more.
Remember also that remote work is becoming much more normal.
(and not just top engineers; just about everyone benefits from competing offers. If you haven't gotten a competing offer in the last year or two, you have no idea what you could be getting, and you are probably underpaid.)
This, I think, is one of the major advantages of silicon valley; I can walk from my house to tens of big name employers; hundreds of smaller ones. I can switch jobs and I don't have to move. I can pretty easily still get drinks with the same people after work (if that's what we all want) - and the culture is such that it's okay to go work somewhere else for a few years and then to come back. it's not even a little weird.
When I was in my late 20's someone gave me a real kick in the butt to go the distance -> which paid off in hindsight big time.
Assuming that you meant you just turned 30, I am 31 and managed to get myself a 50% raise this past year by getting the offer from a different company in town and then negotiating to stay in my current role for the same pay as the offer.
To get better pay, you need to force your employer to acknowledge that someone else out there is willing to pay you more. That requires you to do most of the legwork, and to actually be willing to switch jobs.
I would never have confidence in my job security after negotiating a 50% raise with a competing offer.
I have negotiated some large increases in compensation in short period of times due to changing output and expectations from a role, but I feel like bringing a competing offer is inviting being replaced or made redundant, because companies don't want everyone to hold that level of negotiation over them just by saying "I could leave you know?"
Also, in my head, if they were underpaying me by 50%, I'd assume a big part of my value proposition was I cost 50% less than market rates.
And maybe this is even more paranoia, but I'd imagine a laser pointed at me and my performance afterwards, which ironically might end up affecting my performance (or at least my enjoyment of work)
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Also for context, I just accepted an offer from what will be my first company in a "superstar" city last week, even the signing + relocation bonus almost felt like life changing money compared to what I've made at other companies.
One big problem is companies are moving to "up and coming" cities then paying less based on cost of living... but the cost of living on those cities is rapidly rising due to their "up and coming" status, as more and more "superstars" move into the area.
So COL ends up rising faster than your salary unless you're on a seriously fast moving career path.
The company I work for is very small (~10 people), so the negotiating dynamics were probably different than they would have been somewhere larger.
Plus, even if I did get "made redundant", that just means the next time around I have a larger base salary to negotiate from.
Who knows.
when interviewing, tell the prospective employer you already have the base you want, and that you're only looking for a small pay bump, or retaining the same pay. New employer is now forced to evaluate your pay on an "absolute" basis (Are they really worth X?), rather than a relative one (am I willing to give them a pay increase of Y?). This eases tensions a lot. Don't let anyone hold you back because your previous employer underpaid you.
Yes, someone in HR might find out when they process your tax slip (P45 in the UK), but:
a) the salary person almost definitely won't be looking out for that, they have no interest in screwing you out of a job, unless it's a very, very small company, and the CEO is also the HR guy and the team lead.
b) they're probably not allowed to tell your manager, legally speaking.
c) they simply won't care.
If they really do find out and kick up a fuzz, who cares? you have a legally binding contract. besides, screw those people, if they thought you were worth the money before, what changed? Nothing, that's what. Besides, you now have proof you're worth that money, so someone else will think that too.
What I more-so meant was since I pulled it off once, I'd be more confident the next time I went to interview to ask for even more.
The people you _should_ tell your salary to are colleagues at similar levels, especially those from often-underpaid groups (immigrants, women, etc.).
It just happened that $X was a 50% increase from what I was previously making.
A company cannot assume that someone is "willing to settle" just because they accepted an offer. Good companies try to proactively keep people, and part of that is making sure their compensation roughly keeps Pace with the market. By the time a company gets the signal that the "maintenance rate" isn't it's too late to do anything about it.
Be careful, though - there’s some cartelization/collusion going on. If you change jobs too many times, that’ll be used as a strike against you, and a reason to offer you lower pay.
The people of Austin once had traffic free commutes and the people of Denver could once easily afford housing. Then other people became aware of those things, showed up in droves and those good things went away.
If you want to keep your perks in the long term you should probably not be telling everyone how great it is.
I know everyone is gonna read this and thing "I would never do that" but as they say, a person is smart but people are stupid.
^not that that isn't a consideration but in an urban setting "plan, build, assess, mitigate any impacts" is a better workflow than "never building anything because there's always one person who isn't yet satisfied with the proposed environmental impact".
definitely not why recent grads stay. wet behind the ears folks don’t know any better so don’t know how good they have it. they stay for either the reason they are there in the first place: quality of life; or out out of inertia; or from lack of thinking big. NOT because they realize they’ve got it good.
It's part of the benefit of a big city. By virtue of being big, there's bound to be people like you.
There are for sure way fewer bars, but the few that are here are always packed on weekends. The scene is also less centralized, so I don't think I meet as many LGBTQ people randomly as I would in say SF.
On the other hand, I would say that a good percentage of my friends are LGBTQ. I also my met my husband here, gone to our Pride events many times, have seen a bunch of live drag, and generally feel comfortable being out.
If someone's thinking of moving to a smaller city and the perceived lack of gay culture was the only thing holding them back, I would say just go for it.
(An actually rural area along the lines of my old college town is another matter. Driving half an hour on freeways to get "anywhere" is intolerable in a way that bicycling through Nature for half an hour is not.)
So yeah, between one thing and another, there would need to be a pretty strong incentive for me to ever move to "the burbs" or "the middle". Give me a city, give me a village or kibbutz, but don't give me that rubbish people put in the middle!
I found a job here and love being closer to so many people I can share my favorite hobby with.
He told me that he mostly loves the triangle area, and there's lots of culture in the sense that there are constant events happening and multiple bars and dance venues that cater to the LGBT community. But he also says that after a few years of dating, he's pretty much exhausted the local pool of guys on grindr.
That said, he makes great money and pays so little to live here it's not an easy switch to make. For a while, his strategy was to use the extra discretionary money to travel more and maybe meet people that way. But he's always talking about how great it must be to live in "gay mecca", so I think he'll probably make the move eventually. Even if is just a "grass is greener" thing, I definitely understand the appeal.
In any noisy metric small samples tends to be overrepresented at the extremes. Emsi (the company behind this article) should note this where appropriate.
[1]: https://dataremixed.com/2015/01/avoiding-data-pitfalls-part-...
[2]: https://caroljacoby.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/are-small-schoo...
All of these (except the last, which is an ambiguous indicator) are based on flows, not stocks. Beyond that, as far as the reason the report names the top big county in the country as Jacksonville's...
Duval County is the heart of the Jacksonville metro, a rising economic powerhouse that is consistently attracting new residents and growing its talent base. Its population increased 7% from 2014 to 2018. Jobs were up 11% over the same time, nearly twice the national rate.
Notably, the largest industries in Duval County are restaurants and hospitals—the kind of industries that exist everywhere, and which do not usually involve the big manufacturing centers we tend to think of as job drivers. But over the past two years, the presence of both Wayfair and Amazon distribution centers has spurred 242% growth in the electronic shopping industry, an addition of over 5,000 more jobs than expected given national trends.
I'd love to see a report that analyzed trends around changes in talent (the "Creative Class" jobs that Richard Florida identified back in the day), because I'd love to get more bang for buck than I do in one of the Superstar Cities. But this report is mis-advertised. Show me surprising or up-and-coming places where most people have college degrees or advanced degrees from good schools, cultural events, and the potential for high wages doing interesting work.
The main issues I had with Charlotte are: - The banker culture downtown is too formal - The live music scene is in a bad spot (the gentrification of the southend area + NoDa killed off the best venues) - Calling any neighborhood "Walkable" is kind of a stretch. It would be hard to live in Charlotte without a car. Even downtown is littered with huge blocks of parking lots. It really kind of terrible to walk down those blocks in the summer due to the heat and lack of shade.
But it's still a pretty solid place with lots of opportunity, even if it's not everyone's scene. Also, the light rail has been a great addition to the city and the walkability issue around rail stations is definitely improving.
I hate the Triangle and am already leaving. A particularly nasty type of sprawl here, out of control real-estate market, serious crime problems, no proper "downtown" where you can live and walk to everything you need, hours away from mountains or beaches.
The crime is what really angers me, maybe Raleigh is better off, but both Durham and Charlotte manage to be less safe than the worst parts of most cities, which is incredible to me considering just how many people seem to be selling the area as great for families and "settling down".
I actually considered Charlotte for having more of a "downtown", but decided to leave the South.
The weather is marginally better than where I came the Northeast, the heat is worse and I feel more oppressive.
And sure my tax burden is reduced... but so is my salary.
There's tons of traffic in both places, but in CT a lot of my daily traffic was to one of the most incredible cities in the world, and here it's traffic between multiple clusters of suburban sprawl caused by underinvestment in infrastructure.
The culture outside the triangle is lukewarm at best, I'm black and enjoy visiting the mountains, but the number of confederate flags seems to have a very strong correlation to the elevation I'm at...
I don't know, maybe I'm just salty I fell for the hype, but I really see no redeeming value for coming to this part of the country.
I live in downtown Raleigh, and it is seriously one of the safest places I've ever experienced. Even though Seattle was mostly safe on paper, there were so many homeless people who would yell death threats at random people, assault people, and engage in straight up harassing behavior in public places like buses, I soon became uncomfortable walking alone even in the day time hours. I don't feel that way about Raleigh or Charlotte.
The crime in Charlotte really didn't seem that bad to me. I lived in a affordable part of north Charlotte, but the worst things we had in 18 years were 2 car break-ins and someone stealing a grill from the backyard. A neighbor got burglarized when they were out of town once. I never experienced or even witnessed physical violence or threats, never knew a person who has been attacked or robbed with a weapon, though it happened especially to people dealing drugs or doing other illicit stuff.
If you like CT that's great, but I definitely think Charlotte and Raleigh are nice places to live and are good alternatives to west coast cities for the cost. Sorry that your experience didn't match up to your high expectations.
Charlotte on the other hand was one of the US's most deadly cities a couple of years back, and this year is one of the most violent in over a decade so it is really bad.
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But yeah... I wouldn't say it's fair to write it off as a case of high expectations, every city is a balancing act.
I've lived in cities that had comparable crime to Durham that did not leave me unhappy, the problem is enduring that crime should have some benefit, maybe there's great natural resources nearby, or salaries are very high and you can afford to live in a "good neighborhood" or some strong cultural richness.
This area has none of that. If you're looking for a 1sq mile downtown, there are so many options, if you're looking for suburban sprawl as far as the eye can see, there's tons of options for that too.
So I ask myself, why is this specific area of the country experiencing a massive influx of people along with matching insane real-estate hikes, and worsening traffic? What culture is there? What special entertainment? What natural attractions?
And I come up empty.
Durham especially just boggles the mind, it's growing like it has none of these glaring issues. At least other cities I lived in had "good" areas, this is like a warzone: https://i.imgur.com/dfEPqgi.png
Maybe you can argue Raleigh is inoffensive enough to get a pass, but it's not just Raleigh seeing all these people, Durham and Charlotte are too.
My comment wasn't about how much I love CT, if I loved it so much I wouldn't have left. But its about what else is out there.
Cities like Austin and Miami have a lot of the pains this area of the country has... but way more culture at least, more entertainment, more options for people who prefer living in a "real" downtown. Some actual justifications for the very real problems they have.
I'm kinda regretting it tbh, because at the least moving to Charlotte would have exposed me to the Finance industry which I could bounce off of to land myself in pretty high paying roles later in life, but I think my next job search I'm going to leave the south altogether.
I think the early 2000s burned a lot of companies for trying to cheap out on dev costs by offshoring - offshoring is a valid choice in some situations and will probably become more and more competitive as time goes on... but there still is quite a lot of value in hiring out of the four year uni grad pool.
I imagine there is a correlation between novel/interesting ideas that generate new revenue and being immersed in an environment of peers that you collaborate/chat with.
However remotely I am basically never off. A common thing that comes up with remote work is you have a hard time just turning off, but I don't mind as I'm not mentally exhausted by interruptions and can actually enjoy the work I'm doing.
But I'm sure its a person to person thing, type of environment, industry, etc.
Then the cutting edge work seems to be rather myopically focused on advertising, surveillance, yuppie culture products or developer tools.
Plenty of arguments for talent to look away from the Bay Area.
Sure, the absolute top paying jobs still require you to live and work in a few, select cities. However, there are many companies that are competing with SF/NYC companies regardless of talent location.
There are a couple of good tools for searching.
I've had an extremely good response rate from the HN jobs. It seems to have a lot more motivated listings.
Weworkremotely.com is my go to for remote specific jobs. There are dozens of spin-offs, but they essentially scrape the same underlying data.
Weworkremotely seems to have less desirable/less motivated roles, but I have had some good conversations. You will notice a handful of companies that seem to be endlessly posting on those sites.
Why? Humans converge on cities for many, many reasons. Even if remote work is ubiquitous there are many other reasons why living in a big city is advantageous. Even now the cities that people are moving to are those that can provide similar services to the larger cities, and with enough time those cities will become just like their larger counterparts with all the issues of a modern city.
That's not what this article is about. The key word is "superstar".
The trend its describing is how different cities (though still certainly cities, with 1M+ metro areas) are now the most attractive to talented workers.
Currently too many people would want to live in a smaller city but are forced to live in megalopolis because that's where the jobs are.
Also as a single person housing is flexible for most. If you rent a room in a house in SF (most apartments are houses) you’d most likely be spending less than if you rented a 1 bedroom in LA.
And the houses are (slightly) cheaper, even in Burbank, than in the SF Bay Area.
I have a 2 bedroom place in a very nice part of Los Angeles for less than my brother pays for a 1 bedroom studio apartment in a okay part of Silicon Valley. My commute is the same distance as his, but mine only takes an hour (rail + walking) while his takes 1.5 hours or more each way (driving). I don't need a car in LA to get to most of the major destinations; he can't travel around the Bay Area without one.
The city works if you are able-bodied without kids. In that case, you walk as far as 11 miles but usually just a few miles. It also sort of works for the people with $2,000,000 single-family homes, because driving to a distant supermarket (with parking) becomes an option.
Totally agreed that there's no place to park btw, yet another difficult thing about that city.
When I lived in the Sunset, I took the train, and that was worse than the bus - overcrowded trains meant that they sometimes skipped stops. So I usually biked instead.
The city is just not that big, most places are within walking distance if you're not going to/from far-flung areas of the city -- you can walk from the Marina to the Financial District in under an hour. (but the 30X made it a tolerable commute, usually under 30 minutes)
I'm just comparing the walkability to other major cities. I find SF to be pretty unwalkable all things considered. Especially compared to European cities or NY.
LA has a very good bus network within the city proper--one of the biggest in the world. It's possible to get within 1 mile of any publicly-accessible address by bus, and to neighboring cities (i.e., Santa Monica, Long Beach) and enveloped cities (i.e., Beverly Hills, Inglewood) as well.
LA's rail also enables car-free travel between Santa Monica, Culver City, Long Beach, North Hollywood, Hollywood, Pasadena, and Downtown. Including regional rail (i.e., the BART equivalent), it's possible to get as far out as Ventura County to the north, San Bernardino and Riverside to the east, and Disneyland/Orange County and San Diego County to the south.
Really depends where in the bay you are -- there are definitely areas outside of San Francisco you can do without a car. I lived in Berkeley and later Oakland without a car (probably four years total), and honestly it was pretty damn nice not having to deal with one. Menlo Park on the other hand? You'll probably need a car.
It's also surprisingly bikeable. Could there be more bike lanes? Of course. More are always coming at least. But when an artery is backed up (which it usually is), you can slither along the side, and with the grids there are usually residential routes that you can just fly along.
I'd count true high-tech among them personally (Waymo, for example), but would not count adtech (Google, Facebook) or employers known to be unpleasant to work for (Amazon, Netflix).
Also, it may be that the workers moving away from places like SF are just not people who define themselves by the name brand of their employer and just want better overall quality of life.
Unless you are one of the lucky few that has struck it really rich, a lot of people who turn late 20s/early 30s, get married, and have or want kids cannot afford to stay in the Bay Area even if they make a well above average income.
This monopoly may fade as younger angels, VCs, and other forms of investors who are comfortable with telework and therefore with tele-investing take over. I've already seen a bit of that, but it's still far easier to raise money in e.g. San Francisco / SV.
Of course if you do raise money in the Bay you're just going to spend it all on real estate. VCs there should skip the middleman and cut checks directly to property owners.
Denton=hydraulic fracturing
Cameron County=LNG facilities new builds and expansion. A few poly plants
Pecos= hydraulic fracturing and some wind and solar
Ohio= PTTGC plant plant being built within the next 2 years still in planning.
Talent is shifting to 2-5 year energy/EPC related projects but will most likely only retain a few people for over 10 year.
Talent will erupt from the energy market in particular Houston as the hydraulic fracturing boom comes to end. As profitability is not being met and PE money is drying up. 27 bankruptcies so far this year. Retaining top engineers at some of the largest service and oil and gas companies. The cities you have cited will not be on your report in 2 years. With more than enough reserves in the world for LNG and crude and the cost of extracting either LNG or crude. Countries like Mozambique, Guyana, our pals in the Middle East... This shift will be smaller intl countries vs cities
It has been the most productive year of my career and I owe it to my companies remote first structure.
I work remotely for a medium-big tech-related company, based out of one, and had to visit HQ for a few days. The weather was much nicer than where I live this time of year, but otherwise was not my cup of tea.
The pay is good for the areas, the work is incredibly challenging and interesting, and the quality of living can be much much better than squeezing out living in a box in the Bay Area or NYC.
In fact, Amazon HQ1 is in a more or less underserved city (Seattle) and Portland, OR ain't bad if you're on the West Coast.
I think it's an open question. My recollection is that Moretti's research still shows people being pushed towards cities.
Just gotta stand the heat.
As someone who has been primarily remote for the past four years, part of this seems like an unnecessary argument. On the other hand my roles are largely short term contracts. So when ever my contract ends I think about moving to another city.
But I'm only looking at a very minor pay bump in the range of 10 to 20k. While rent doubles at the lowest option, and regular expenses increase by ~15%.
The other trend I'm seeing is the rise of reverse commuting. Due to the aforementioned tax issue in my area. A lot of companies are moving out to the suburbs. I've seen really interesting job opportunities. But the distance/travel is an issue. I'm not traveling four hours a day to job, and having to walk several miles along an interstate to get to work.
As someone who can't drive for medical reasons. I feel I have a very limited number of cities in America I can live in. I prefer walking, and transit. Going out several times a week. I'd love to live in NYC. But fiscally it doesn't make sense right to me. Only 10k more than my current role, but double the rent and higher cost of living.
Of the cities with transit. NYC hands down wins in regards to better opportunities to my current city. But at the cost of work life balance, and fiscal independence.
So I can see this. I know a number of old co-workers who have moved to a more rural environment. From a big city environment to reduce cost of living, or stress of city living. Or move outside the city to a nearby suburb.
Being a general short term contractor. I've worked in a few of these super star cities on site. Trying to help boot strap a new team. They have an issue finding "talent", paying well below market rate with really hard work and long hours. I try and sell them on partial remote, or full remote. Which isn't a stretch because they have a full staff-aug team in another time zone. But the hire has to be on site.
I also know a number of co-workers adhering to fatFIRE. There are a number of people who are tired of this rat race, and just want to be done with it. It's something that needs to be addressed, but there isn't an easy solution.
http://money.com/money/5241566/vicki-robin-financial-indepen...
What’s up here?