MainStreet – $10k to Leave Bay Area
workonmainstreet.com
workonmainstreet.com
https://m.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-ca...
In Denver I went to a restaurant I overheard "why do I have to serve that spic". So okay no racism in America right? You idiot.
Discussing cultural factors and our perceptions of them are fair game, especially in this thread, because they affect the relocation thought process.
I invite people to weigh in on the degree of racism across regions and states. I would like to see if there are ways to get more specific with data, though I don’t demand it. There are many aspects of society that are not easy to measure. That lack of data does not mean we should not talk about our experiences and perceptions.
This is not to mention the personal connection to people with direct experiences (although perhaps availability bias).
If you’re a minority, in an interracial relationship, or are LGBT, living in a rural area can have serious quality of life issues that often aren’t mentioned.
Literally 100% of the time that anywhere in the US outside of the major tech cities gets brought up, the comments are full of people claiming that the inhabitants of those areas are racist, stupid, dangerous, unwelcoming, or otherwise bad and undesirable to be near.
The double-standards on this website are mind boggling, for how casually and openly people will believe negative stereotypes and repeat discriminatory beliefs when the 'out group' is rural, southern, or even just non-coastal.
In my daily sheltered life in the Bay Area, I hardly ever see overt racism. And when it happens, it bothers me.
If I’d see it happen on a daily basis, it would seriously impact my quality of life.
I see nothing wrong with saying: don’t move to this or that place because racism is rampant, even if 75% of inhabitants are not.
These kinds of comments scare me off...
Granted I googled Sylacauga and the first line on their website is
>Sylacauga (syl-a-cau-ga) is a progressive community where all the pieces fit.
So they're aware of the image which is a pretty good sign...
But I'm not doing these cities/towns that are "progressive" oases in vast deserts of backwards communities ever again.
At the end of the day, the people in backwards communities are still numerous. They still end up dominating state-level politics.
Instead of embracing change and the wealth that not being a backwards backwater can bring, they actively fight it and if anything become more emboldened in trying to band together against the "common enemy"... that is progressive people (read: non-white, non-straight and/or non-Christian).
In a more ideal world, the answer to these people would be exactly what Sylacauga seems to be, forcing them to co-exist with people who are in the 21st century, but I now feel like the answer is to let these areas wear themselves down. When the pie of wealth grows and these people are locked out for their views, they'll eventually lose the power they had.
> they'll eventually lose the power they had.
would do much to change the situation. Georgia, Virginia and Texas are states that are being fundamentally changed because of the influx of progressives from both rural areas and urban coasts. The fastest way to change seems to be to move to these places and use the democratic process to introduce real changes, and these folks will have no choice but to change their views or retreat to more rural areas of their states (usually its the latter).
The other aspect is that a lot of the southern states do actually have sizeable populations of African Americans...I really do hope that we don't just ignore them as successive generations seem to have done....
Why are progressives moving en mass so much that that are able to replace the local population and fundamentally alter voting patterns? What is happening to drive people out like that? I'm not an American for the record and likely am missing parts of the context here.
The advent of mass air conditioning made the climates much more bearable to live in, fueling economic expansion. Otherwise it’d be too hot and humid.
They are moving to affordable places that vote against taxes, regulations, and government services. Oddly they continue to vote for the policy that caused them to migrate, and so eventually they must migrate again.
But it's like a see-saw, injecting wealth while the ride is still tipped so strongly towards these backwards communities is counter-productive. It's adding more weight (money) to the other side than it is to the side of progressives and African-Americans already living there.
Especially when you consider even in these "progressive" oases, it's not uncommon for gentrification to disproportionately affect African Americans, and even end up destabilizing otherwise functional communities of black people.
I want to see us set up the progressives who live in those states for success with federal actions like fighting gerrymandering and national political movements before pouring money into those states.
The old guard losing power as wealth left their states has very much been a large part of why places like Virginia have been able to transform. You need the backwards incumbents to be weakened enough not to take your wealth generation and turn it back on the group you're trying to uplift.
I don't even want to imply there are no backwards communities right on the doorsteps of the major cities that everyone just kind of sweeps under the rug.
Name the last time you went to brunch. Now name the last time you were so upset at a brunch line that it inspired you to bitch about it online, let alone make it a part of your job-sites pitch...
By 1pm there was a wait, but for the first three hours that spot is open, no big deal at all.
It's not a problem. More another manufactured nuisance of the kind San Francisco seems to enjoy creating.
New Yorkers have brunch later, brunch boozier and--broadly speaking--brunch with a reservation. San Franciscans (or at least my friends in San Francisco) eat brunch at the crack of dawn at establishments that prefer lines out the door to taking reservations. (They may claim to take "reservations" at the door. Those aren't reservations. They're names on a wait list. Lots of waiting.)
It's a cultural factor loosely related to (a) recent population and affluence increases outstripping a locale's (b) ability to build new businesses in the midst of (c) a greater value placed on exclusivity than time. (It's also present in Brooklyn and parts of Los Angeles.)
> We are three former Googlers who are on a mission to help create jobs in rural and suburban cities around America.
Ok, yeah, that explains it
That, itself, tells you about the local culture.
A culture that responds positively to a line out of the door puts a lot of value on trendiness. This is (much of) San Francisco. (It's not true across the Bay Area.)
A culture that responds neutrally or negatively to a line out of the door either responds less aggressively to trend pressure and/or has fewer supply-side restrictions. This is New York. A line out of the door in New York tells me it's a new place that's still getting its act together, there's an event there that night, they're filming or it's a shitshow.
Instead, I can grab a coffee (or mimosa) while I stand outside chatting with my friends or wander around the neighborhood.
If you want convenience, there are plenty of places that take reservations or can take walk-ins immediately. Some of them are pretty damn good too.
Then leave for the smaller, but still not short, line at Waffle House instead because it turns out no matter where you are, meal-time rushes are a thing...
I'll grant the tiny apartments but I'll also observe that, in undergraduate, we had space for a sizable number of people in a shared kitchen area. If where you live once you start working in a tech job is a downgrade from college, personally I consider that a problem.
And do denizens of SF/SV eat brunch mid-week on a regular basis?
Here in DC, it's typically a Sunday late-morning thing, which aligns with the British origins of the term. Reservations suggested for swankier establishments.
(https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/what-are-eichler-homes/)
Eichlers are very common in Palo Alto, but not so common throughout the rest of the US.
(Edit: And yes, I left the Bay Area, and bought what most people living in the Bay Area would consider a mansion, in a high-cost-of-living state. I paid less then my Bay Area rent for a 1-bedroom with a loft.)
https://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/jobs-likeler-no-eichl...
"For the record: Steve Jobs wasn’t raised in an Eichler—but partner Steve Wozniak was."
I think this is more an issue of community. Of course if you are the only remote worker in a place with aging population is not fun. But if some start up would be able to build a community of remote workers in a specific location, wouldn't that make a lot of sense? Also once you have a bunch of highly skilled people in a specific location it gets easier for companies to hire there.
Personally if I were looking to move anywhere after leaving the bay I'd consider Raleigh or Nashville. Midsize-to-largeish cities are pretty cool.
Work anywhere near downtown? Live in one of our two most popular suburbs? 1.5 hours one way, so 3 hrs commuting a day.
Housing is also shooting up, we're very firmly MCOL. We're selling shacks that need to be torn down for 350-400k on tiny lots anywhere within 10 miles of downtown.
Our housing is more expensive than Atlanta, but unless you're working at the new Amazon office or remote your salary is going to go down to below Atlanta wages. Using Atlanta as it's an easy regional comparative.
On the other side the city is pretty cool, evidenced by the fact that you have to hunt high and low to find a 'Nashville-native' or even someone from Middle Tennessee. People move here in packs.
Name of the place or it didn't happen :)
You buy the house for 1 euro but then you have to fix it. So I guess you have to invest few thousands.
You're making the same error about opportunity cost as the classic "it's not worth Bill Gates' time to pick up a $100 bill" fallacy.
(Stoke-on-Trent is a former pottery manufacture town, and is halfway between the UK's second and third largest cities at roughly an hour and a half's drive or 40 miles per google maps)
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/one-dollar-home-sambu...
This is raising red flags, somehow.
If you can't fix your corporate culture, and you can't compete on comp, fake it until you make it.
105 North 1st Street #28, San Jose, CA 95113
I'm certainly not an expert, but Wikipedia claims that's in the Bay Area...
Are they paying their own team to quit?
Mostly joking, but I grew up in the Bay Area and live in SJ so it's not actually that uncommon to hear, especially from new folks to the area.
Rent in downtown Mountain View is higher than Manhattan.
But what is a "MainStreet Member" and how does one become one? What/where are "MainStreet offices"? So is it remote or not? You're working remotely for a customer out of one of their offices? Is one an employee of MainStreet and contracting with their customers? What happens when I give them my email address? Their site raises more questions than it answers.
Remote work has generally delivered on all its promised benefits for me. I make much more money than I would if I got a job in the city where I live, and my apartment is much nicer than what I could afford if I still lived in the Bay area. I had hoped to move somewhere with great access to the outdoors (this is what initially made me interested in remote work), but ultimately ended up moving for relationship reasons and had to give up the outdoor mecca dream for the time being.
Now, I'm thinking of going back to office life. Since taking the remote plunge I've struggled with loneliness and anxiety about career stasis, and haven't been able to find a critical mass of educated, ambitious, like-minded friends where I now live.
There's a tremendous opportunity for whoever can make it easier to build and find in-person communities of ambitious remote/satellite workers. Offices and cities are blunt instruments for matching people on ambition and education/intelligence. If it were easier to find and integrate into smaller (but equally ambitious) hubs, it would make remote work a more attractive option for many more people.
Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to speak more on this subject.
> help you find a job you love in a city you can afford
But the "About", "For Companies" and "How it works" pages are pretty focused on remote work:
> Companies are more ready than ever to utilize distributed workforces, and this is creating opportunities for workers everywhere to be part of the digital economy... MainStreet provides the community, communication, and career tools you need to be happy and successful as a remote employee.
> Interested in expanding your remote workforce? ...All our candidates have been evaluated for remote-readiness so they can hit the ground running from day one.
> The companies we work with pay us to help successfully recruit and retain remote talent.
Sounds like it's REALLY about setting up remote work, which is not what the home page implies, right?
Doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me. Ah right, the "About" page leads with:
> We are three former Googlers who are on a mission to help create jobs in rural and suburban cities around America.
OK, it's just the usual engineer-entrepeneurs trying to "get rich by doing good," with a plan that may or may not make sense either on the business or the pro-social end.
I suppose the employer's interest in paying them to help recruit and coordinate remote workers is... paying them less then they'd have to in the bay area? (plus less overhead compared to on-premises in the bay area, office rent etc).
They are making remote work easy for employees and employers, which enables you to work from cities other than coastal ones.
Is that really such a hard thing to understand? I Think most people connect the dots. It doesn't need a mini blog post to explain.
I came away thinking ... hmmm I'm interested in remote work. I'm really interested in convincing my current employer to use a program like this.
BUT, I'm not going to take the trouble to email people because I'm an engineer, and I'd prefer to just send a link to HR.
But this link has no information. So meh.
This is the software engineer making $80,000 a year who tries to live alone and has to spend half their paycheck on a studio.
This was not the Bay Area, rather New York, but the salaries are about the same in both areas.
The people that own homes in the Bay Area are Googlers that married each other. That is some good income. Enough for a shed in someone's backyard anyway!
e.g. some costs:
Studio in Lower Haight (water + trash included): $2100/month Utilities: $50 Monthly Muni: $81
Groceries are no more expensive than anywhere else. Eating out is similar vs other cities I've been to, and if anything the quality of the food is better here at the mid price range.
If I lived in a smaller or mid-sized city there's a good chance I would have to get a car, so any savings in terms of rent would just go to owning and maintaining a car.
- $850 for rent for a 2 bedroom 1200sqft apartment
- ~$70 for utilities (i have free heat so it's less in the winter and more in the summer)
and if i still had the car i previously had, my only expense would be gas (~$100/mo) and the minor maintenance it needed, which was less than $1000/yr (i tracked everything each year i had it). I bought a newer car recently and am financing it. I pay $350/mo on it and gas is closer to $200/mo for it but that's still well within the over $1000 difference in living costs.
I think you vastly understate just how insane $2100/mo for rent is, and overstate how much it costs to own a car. If $1k a month in savings isn't enough to own/maintain a car and that's a problem for you, you need a car that doesn't cost over $1k a month to own.
So you go from paying $2k/month with roommates to maybe $1.5k/month without. Not a huge difference.
Fuck having roommates.
Having a place of your own, shared only with desired family, is fundamental to being an independent adult. Ideally you should even own the land.
But I feel like if you have roommates for financial reasons, you generally don't get the choice.
I'm out of the bay area, at a government contractor, with an interesting job. I can afford a huge family, currently with 14 people in the household supported on one income. Life is just easier where the houses are affordable.
I don't know what you'd consider an interesting job or what you'd qualify for, but how seriously have you looked? People can have a bias that stops them: if you allow that the interesting jobs exist, then you have to seriously consider them and ultimately act by moving, but that is a lot to think about and a lot of bother, so therefore there aren't any interesting jobs elsewhere.
If you just want to work at the Big G then might as well move to Seattle with lower CoL and no state income tax.
The difference is the salary you can command in SF is well above the difference in cost.
LA, yes.
NYC, nope.
As for the cost of owning and maintaining a car, I recently calculated that mine is about 300 eur/month, assuming I keep it for 5 years and sell or scrap it for 1000 eur. I'm likely to keep it longer (and/or sell for more), however, and that will bring the cost down.
By contrast, I'm paying 1045 eur/month for a 3BR apartment with sauna :-).
Having just come off a trip to a handful of smaller European cities, if I lived there I would most likely just walk, bike, or maybe scooter everywhere.
Plus, that density makes it economical to support other alternatives besides car ownership or walking, like public transportation and delivery services. I once carried a foam mattress for 12km on the Brussels subway. In any small town I lived in, that would have required a car, even if the shop was half the distance away.
And small towns are more likely to be missing something entirely, which means you have to travel to another town, possibly much farther than crossing a big city.
Currently I live in a medium-sized city, 10m by train from a big one, and I find it to be a sweet spot :)
Transport does cost me more. I estimate my vehicle's ongoing TCO amounts to ~$250/month (purchase, registration, gas, repairs, insurance, etc.). (It's also worth noting that having a lower monthly TCO for a vehicle than me is possible. The math on an acquaintance's used vehicle brings TCO to ~ $150/month barring major repairs, with him driving more than me.) And of course if you have a fancier car it's more expensive.
So far as "housing costs" go, my total home costs (homeowners insurance, utilities, property taxes, internet, etc.) are less than half yours even treating my mortgage payment/home equity as a total loss. Which is to say cost of living is drastically more expensive in the Bay Area.
But more pertinent to your comment, car ownership is not cheap, but the difference in housing costs between SF and elsewhere is massively more than the cost of operating a vehicle.
Likewise, if I wanted a 2 Bed/ 2 Bath place like mine or a similar flat in SF, I think it'd be more like $4k/month.
So while I do agree it's possible to live in SF for maybe less than you'd expect, it's still very expensive.
That last time I did the math on it, supposedly ~$85k where I am in Arizona was about equivalent to ~$120k in the SF Bay Area, but the SF Bay Area seemed like it'd have lower quality of life. (Though maybe going carless would help more than I think with QoL.) And in general there's sort of a pattern, where at every pay level SF Bay Area has to increase pay by more to match elsewhere for less.
I call shenanigans on people who say the cost of food/eating out is similar in SF to other cities. Eating out in SF is much more expensive. While there is great food to be had there, there is just as much mediocre fare which you will still be charged an arm and a leg for. Also the lack of proper cooking space in a tiny apartment means that many will be tempted to eat out more often versus cooking for themselves.
Similarly, cost to run my vehicle is around ~$200 a month and provides me great freedom and flexibility to get around and take trips out of the city when I want to.
When comparing cost of housing, I notice people always compare the cost of a tiny apartment (usually with roommates) with the cost of a much nicer apartment/house to oneself in a LoC area. Rent a small studio or apartment with roommates and your rent cost in a LoC can get into the sub $300 range easily. I knew many people renting shared spaces for $100-150 while in college.
Live wherever you want (different strokes for different folks and all that) but I feel people in these discussions are often not being completely forthright in their comparisons.
I've crunched the numbers quite a few times, outside of a hotshot FAANG job it just doesn't make sense $$ wise compared to my salary/location now despite what many on HN insist. I'd have to downgrade my standard of living drastically for it to even begin to make sense.
Additionally: 2100 * 12 = $25200. The general rule of thumb is don't spend more than 30% of your take home on housing. That means you need to make at _least_ $84000 dollars per year in take home. That hardly seems overstated. Would love to be proven wrong since I love the SF area and would love to live there. However, I cannot justify the costs because I do not make $84000 in take home.
There are very real reasons why people move into the Bay Area - and put up with all the "problems". This is coming from a person that grew up in the South and would rather not move back.
Houses themselves aren't great for the climate (there's CO2 emission in materials productions, heavy machinery operation, etc), but they're necessary for human survival so it's hard to claim we have an alternative
The alternative is apartments, which use roughly half as much energy as single-family houses.
I guess every startup these days starts off with a fancy landing page who's goal is to get you to input your email, which they then use to gauge interest and decide whether or not to actually build out the product. Doesn't really tempt me to want to sign up.
Also I'm all in favor of promoting underdeveloped communities in America, but my #1 hesitation would be boredom. America seems extremely rural outside of the big cities and you need a car to do anything, and I'd imagine there isn't much of a sense of community. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and even that I found very boring. I'd love to be proven wrong, but in any case that's why I choose to work remotely from outside the U.S.
It's also unclear from the "how it works" page whether it's actually required that participants initially reside in the Bay Area to be eligible for the program.
"How it Works":
> A free remote-first office, designed specifically for the needs of remote workers
So what it is, is a we-work like space aggregator, positioning themselves somewhat above the value chain of just empty space.
I hope it continues to catch on! Major metros certainly have a lot to offer, but minor metros or rural America does too -- it's a little odd that all the online "tech" jobs land in the former. If you have a decent internet connection, you can do your work from anywhere.
Also a little odd is that they want to bring jobs to non-urban areas, but they're selling themselves as an escape for people in expensive urban areas, rather than an opportunity for people in non-urban areas who need jobs. And it also leaves aside less expensive urban areas that need jobs.