How Mormons built a startup ecosystem in Utah
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Unfortunately, there's also bad pollution. The valley makes SLC prone to pollution and especially inversion layers in the winter and ozone in summer. You'd expect mountain air and you get that sometimes, but other times it's as bad as or worse than major cities elsewhere.
One of the downsides of being a red state is less will to address environmental concerns like this. It's been slowly getting better due to car emissions standards (which Utah has no active involvement in), but there's still a lot of pollution sources that need addressing. There's an active refinery in town, at least one big mine across the valley, tons of trucks and trains passing through the region, and the airport is being expanded.
Given the air is also extremely dry in the winter, I can't see myself moving there, despite it hitting a lot of my criteria for places to live. Were they to get their environmental house in order I'd say it's one of the best places to live. I hope someday SLC realizes its just not geographically destined to be an industrial hub, and makes responsible choices to shift away from that.
http://www.stateoftheair.org/city-rankings/states/utah/salt-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quality_in_Utah
https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2020/01/28/salt-lake...
I had no idea about this, wow. What causes it? Just the fact that it's in a valley? I've been to SLC only once to visit some friends, but I guess I didn't really notice (was only driving through).
Ogden and Provo are some of the worst offenders for per household air pollution emissions. Like many western cities they have longish commutes (everywhere) in large cars (trucks / suv's) with a high number of cars / household and almost non-functional public transport system. For the Salt Lake Metro area, per capita carbon emissions doubled between 1980 and 2015 because of increasing sprawl. Air regulations here are spotty for personal vehicles and I'm guessing almost non-existent for commercial vehicles. Oh and the state governments solution to this is to push a publicly subsidized "inland port" that will bring increased truck and rail traffic to the valley. The leaders of these tech companies are starting to point out that terrible air pollution for parts of the year is hurting recruitment so it seems like as the money flows into this sector maybe there will be political will on the state and local side to address some of these issues.
It’s the complete opposite of the two other examples in that list.
My understanding is it’s a layer of cold air that sits over warmer air on the ground.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/afghanistanair-polluti...
Kabul’s geography resembles an elevated bowl much like Oregon’s Crater Lake. Just like the SLC area Kabul’s air pollution problem is magnified during the winter.
This is patently false. Some of the most beautiful states in the country are home to "red" policies, and there isn't any evidence to the contrary that being "blue" makes anything better, considering some of the most polluted states in the country are blue.
California, for example, you might think has beautiful parts because of "being blue", but California wasn't always "blue", and it wasn't until the 90s where it started consistently going blue...which means the majority of it's natural beauty was designed and led under "red" leadership. Same for Colorado.
There is plenty of "red" environmental think tanks these days. Mostly everyone agrees the environment is worth protecting, just disagree the ways of going about it. Check out the American Conservative Coalition, for example, which argues for a more reasoned approach to tackling climate change, one that many here would find agreeable, such as including natural gas as a transitional energy source off oil and coal, and utilizing nuclear power. https://www.acc.eco/
SLC is in a red state that generally follows GOP talking points on these issues and has not acted strongly to protect air quality in the area. Polling in the state suggests people do support climate science though. If the city took action like LA/CA to improve emissions standards, implement better public transit to replace commuter cars, and pressed local companies and industry to limit emissions it could get an early start and a rising taxable population to fund these programs.
The sad reality is, if you are a republican with deep convictions that anthropomorphic climate change is the top existential threat in our world, you cannot talk about this publicly (Just like if you are a Democrat with deep convictions about the sanctity of life, you better keep that shit to yourself). Moderates have been booted out of each party.
What they say, and what they do are usually (99.9% of the time) two entirely distinct realities.
Not at all true. It's true California used to be a Republican Presidential stronghold that flipped very quickly to the Democrats in the 90s, without much competitive period in between. But it has had Democratic state legislative majorities consistently since the 1950s (with Republicans holding the Assembly speakership less than 5 years and the Senate Presidency Pro Tem less than 2 years since 1957.) Democrats have also dominated most statewide Constitutional offices besides the Governorship since about the 1970s, with the Governor's office not seeing the same kind of of super-long-term one-party domination.
That's exactly what I said?
Either case, let's not forget, even with how "blue" we think California is, there is still more registered republicans in California than Texas, obviously due to California's sheer size in population. That would mean regardless of specific outcomes, republicans were very much involved at all levels of government.
I lived in SLC for a few years and it’s ok. In fact, I know of no other cities with 24 hour coffee shops, which is great when you want to code and write all night. But I have no feeling to return, it’s nice but kind of boring.
That’s due to high elevation. There’s no need for higher octane. I’m at the same elevation as Denver and my car requires 93 but the highest I’ll find is 91 which is just fine.
Winter in SLC and Utah County brings an inversion layer that traps polluted air from the ground up to about 8000 feet above sea level. That pollution causes all sorts of respiratory issues. Speaking from experience - it’s awful. No lotion in the world fixes it.
Practically speaking... what would you expect that they do about it?
As a California native, I've seen just how bad short-sighted environmental regulation can be. And it's not like pollution isn't an issue in Los Angeles or the Central Valley, both of which enjoy a strong geographic advantage compared to SLC.
So, what sort of regulation could the state pass that would mitigate the problem? Given the geographical and economic constraints.
LA is definitely not geographically advantaged when it comes to pollution, given it is a big basin. I'm not sure who wins the geographically disadvantaged olympics, but SLC and LA are more alike than not in this department.
Utah could adopt CARB's stricter air quality standards for one. They could also shutdown or limit pollution sources, including those from home heating. And they could reduce the growing sprawl by encouraging density and public transportation. I'm not a regulatory expert so I can't give you more specifics than that, but it's not like these things aren't possible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Air_Resources_Board
So, Utah has already effectively adopted CARB standards, and the rest of your suggestions fit in the same category -- I don't see them making a difference, or being feasible.
[1] https://www.iqair.com/usa/california/los-angeles [2] https://www.iqair.com/usa/utah/salt-lake-city
(On an unrelated note, I like your site -- mine is less populated, but is also a love letter to a less complicated Web.) :)
Ya LA is still struggling mightily, especially inland. SLC metro area is a tenth of LA (1.2mm vs 13mm) and growing faster, so these forces may even out. Geographic destiny is hard to overcome.
(Thanks! I wish we could go back to those simpler times) :)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/climate/zero-emissions-tr...
Being inclusive is, however, something I consider right and, for some, doing the right thing is more important than maximizing profits.
True, and deplorable. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). It seems the LDS church was rather late in getting the memo.
Still... that was 42 years ago. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that that's why there are so few blacks in Utah today. (And even pre-1978, you could live in Utah without being LDS.)
> Combined with governmental policies like redlining of majority black neighborhoods, I think it's fair to say that the lack of diversity in Utah isn't the natural state of affairs
Redlining is also deplorable. But did it happen in Utah? I ask because I'm not sure Utah has any majority-black neighborhoods.
And even then, for there to be redlining, the blacks have to already be here. If they came here, they couldn't buy a home because of redlining? As opposed to anywhere else, where they... also couldn't buy a home because of redlining? Or is the claim that Utah had redlining later than everywhere else?
I don't see the logic for your redlining claim to have any relevance to the question of why Utah is not diverse.
Does it? Because to me it doesn't seem like much of a stretch at all to suspect that being entirely unwelcoming to black people would discourage black people from moving there (and encourage black people already there to leave at the earliest opportunity).
There were Black people in Utah before the LDS church. There were Black slaves owned by members of the LDS church until slavery was made illegal, and there are and were Black Mormons since the time of Brigham Young. Per the below link, there might have been more that came or stayed on in Utah, if the area had been more welcoming, but discrimination in housing, work opportunity, and arguably in the LDS faith had an impact.
As best I can tell, Utah never had a particularly big Black population, and many many racist policies kept it that way. I suppose you could argue that that's natural, but I don't see it.
Redlining Maps: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining
Utah and African Americans (1994) https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/a/African_Amer...
100 Year History of Racist Housing Policy: https://www.shareable.net/timeline-of-100-years-of-racist-ho...
I haven't seen any sign of any of these tech companies "shutting down minorities". From what I've seen, if the right candidate is a minority, they'll hire them without blinking.
That's a very good point. Lack of diversity is completely invisible if the surrounding context also lacks it.
Hire good people, don't deny them on the basis of their immutable qualities. Don't pick someone because they look a certain way, but because they can do the work.
I'm not joking.
I have tried multiple times to hire a friend, who is black, because he is good (and not because he's black), and have failed every time because his cultural support structure is simply not there. That's not his problem, and honestly, it's not the Valley's problem, it's just a factr.
It took me a long time to understand this, but I realized, there's lots of places I wouldn't move, either, even for a good opportunity, because my expectations about the culture is some places and not others.
There is a rate of migration now and then, but honestly, there is a serious geo problem. Some people go where the jobs are (born here, but grew up out east), some won't, and there's nothing wrong with that.
That said, Japan, China and others have been very successful without having to import much external talent. And there are places with more social diversity than the US such have not done well, though there are examples of very diverse places that do extremely well too (Singapore and to a lesser degree Malaysia). So success is probably more aligned with economic policies and other policies weigh less.
It's not really comparable to the US (or the UK or commonwealth countries or much of Europe) in that way.
How are you expected to add thousands of jobs if Asians, Indians need not apply?
Economic growth in the US over the same period was mediocre, with declining productivity, and in Europe, it was anemic.
There is just no evidence that nations which focus on diversity in and of themselves have had better economic outcomes.
Now it does make sense that if you are in a large multi-ethnic society then you will be at a disadvantage if you only hire from one group, since good people are hard to find, so why limit yourself to just a small subset of the population. This is less important for a small company than a large company that really needs to cast a wide net. So not intentionally excluding subgroups of your population makes economic sense.
But I'm not aware of any evidence that being more diverse than your population will improve outcomes.
This is not true. In the case of Japan, so long as an employer there is willing to sponsor your visa, you'll have no problems immigrating there or becoming a permanent resident.
Hungary has successfully created incentives to raise their birth rates for example. The Hungarian government doesn't want to rely on mass immigration to sustain the country's population it seems. You don't need imported diversity for more jobs - you can just create very "un-diverse" people yourselves, which will work those jobs once they've grown up.
If other Western nations like the US would seriously get behind an idea like this, with all the power of the media and various propaganda outlets, they, too, would quickly see a cultural shift towards rising birth rates. Unfortunately the people in control don't want this to happen.
Whether ever-continuing growth to chase the 0.3% higher GDP each year is desirable, is another topic though.
This is one of the arguments given, and it makes a whole lot of sense, so much so, it's hard to negate. But in my years of business experience, I don't believe it's true.
Having Engineers of 'XYZ Heritage' will not really in any way help you 'think differently' vis-a-vis the XYZ market. It just doesn't work that way.
Now - having Engineers 'born and raised' in a certain part of the world - yes, that can possibly make a difference. It's no surprise that Vancouver has a lot of 'ties' to APAC.
Paradoxically, when you start a business, generally you want to hit the very narrow segment of your best possible followers, in which case, diversity may be the opposite of important: you want to nail a demo, that may or may not be related to diversity.
The primary advantage, I believe, of diversity, actually has nothing to do with diversity. I have mostly come to believe that most of it doesn't matter materially - what matters - is that companies and individuals have an opportunity to connect with one another. A young, white, CEO may simply be unwilling to look beyond his network and local horizons to find, for example, a lot of women. It's the issue of gender that will help the company, rather massive talent pools overlooked.
So having internal biases agains 'certain types' results in just missing out on talent, not so much on some 'special thing' that those candidates bring. Mostly.
Notably, institutions like academia and media increasingly consider viewpoint homogeneity something akin to moral purity, and consequently they end up with lots of racial and gender diversity but minimal viewpoint diversity (of course the degree of homogeneity is not uniform across these institutions, but this doesn’t detract from my point).
I know studies have shown this at the organizational level, but has there been much work teasing apart cause and effect? You can make a case that organizations welcoming of different viewpoints outperform for that reason, and they attract and retain diverse people for the same reason.
Since then it's been perverted into being about superficial immutable physical characteristics like sex and skin color, which is now, ironically, contributing to more racial discrimination and less meritocracy than before. It's a clear example of the "road to hell being paved with good intentions".
By focusing on diversity like this you are elevating these immutable characteristics beyond the importance of individuality, pre-judging what people will bring to a team based on things like skin color or gender. It seems like racism has just gone full circle. I'm sure I will get downvoted to hell as this is a very unpopular take.
First there’s the pressure of “we have to do something now and it has to be externally apparent”, the choice to go with the most outwardly visible change, then other organizations following suit, and soon it becomes mandatory with everyone convinced they are working on resolving the underlying problem.
However, even if the underlying causes behind socio-psychological dynamics that fuel discrimination and xenophobia are unlikely to be best addressed through eliminating the symptoms of it by enforcing diversity via the very mechanism of discrimination by external in-born traits, that action may still help address some adjacent core problems (for example, somewhat reducing the income gap correlating with certain such traits).
In the mean time what do you think happens?
Lot of blundering about. If you focus too much on the blundering most cancer hospitals will get shut down.
Of course, to reiterate, in this case the ‘treatment’ is likely addressing the root causes of adjacent problems, and in dire circumstances even a temporary relief could be worth it, so I would not call against it.
My worry is that as one particular way of addressing discrimination (through applying discrimination, no less) becomes the default, it’s cargo-culted and there is very little incentive to understand and fix the underlying issues that said discrimination is a symptom of—which (underlying issues) may well fester until they manifest themselves as a new, possibly worse symptom.
No, it's not. It's about social justice and corporate citizenship. Viewpoint heterogenity and other arguments of private benefit have always been secondary arguments.
> Notably, institutions like academia and media increasingly consider viewpoint homogeneity something akin to moral purity
AFAICT this isn't increasingly true of either, though it's perhaps slightly increasingly true (with different favored viewpoints) within individual media firms rather than the media as a whole. The argument that it is increasingly true tends to come from supporters of what was, until recently, the dominant ideology in those institutions and all of society, and is more about that viewpoint no longer being as strongly favored than increasing homogeneity.
it's more akin to a sales tactic
compare the shift in preeminence from "free software" to "open source." the pioneers make a moral/ideological argument why doing such-and-such thing is an imperative, get visibility and carve out a niche, but don't achieve mass adoption. bit later, the strivers show up and argue such-and-such actually just makes good business sense, and this proves interesting and palatable enough to get fully institutionalized
or, say, the shift from "gay liberation" to "gay rights." the argument in the 60s and 70s was that we're inherently subversive entities whose lifestyles by their very nature go against the status quo. by the 00s the dominant line is if only we had these and those legal rights, the final obstacles to our complete willing assimilation into the status quo!
as "diversity" continues its transition from ideal championed by believers to administrative function served by a professional class, it will continue to mutate in a way that benefits those who implement it
Diversity as being good for capitalism is red herring.
https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-t...
Ironically, this is the 'Coastal Writers' being guilty of not respecting diversity (!) in that, not every place is like NYC or LA.
That doesn't mean Utah is off the hook for not being fair, or for concerns about systematic issues, but Utah is literally less than 2% Black. So that's a starting point.
I'm pretty empathetic to issues of unfairness or discrimination, but I lose interest when I see a ham-fisted or lack of contextual elements on the part of writers.
Someone noted that Utah has a highly educated workforce - a lot of places do, that's not enough to make a 'Valley'.
I think that such places will be great for Tier2 tech, by that I mean, tech that is an end product, not tech used by other techies.
Shopfiy in Ottawa, is an example. Ottawa has 'great schools' super B+ competent work force, the most safe and stable place in North America. But not nearly the depth needed to make a Google or MS. Wix. Survey Monkey. I can see Stripe maybe happening out of the Valley. Though I often wonder what the difference would be - maybe Shopify needed to 'start' elsewhere but if it was now a fully SF company I wonder where they would be.
But the 'centres' of social networks I think will remain in the big cosmo areas, and 'core tech' will mostly remain in the valley, other than little dots here and there, that usually get eaten up anyhow.
Non-Mormon whites are treated quit differently in SLC. You don't even have to be brown.
Both of them stem from teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ( of which I am a member) the first is the emphasis on families. A commonly heard refrain is "no success can compensate for failure in the home", this emphasis on family doesn't always meld well with eh working 80-100 hours a week, FAANG obsession mentality that is caricatured as part of being an SV startup.
The second is also another teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that counsels it's memebers to avoid excessive debt. Whereas the entire SV startup mentality is get as much VC as you can and blow through it as quick as you can to fuel growth hopong you can claw your way out later. As data point on this until a while back I was working at ones of Utah's biggest, hottest most profitable startups as one of the first employees. The CEO didn't take out a bunch of business loans or get VC, he had owned quite a bit of property and liquidated it all to start the company.
Now the objection will be that everyone in Utah isn't a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, however the culture still is pretty pervasive.
That being said there are exceptions to every rule and things are changing. But most importantly.
There are too dang many of you coming to Utah and filling up my mountains and desert stay out find somewhere else live.
I think you're missing a "not" there.
This problem is actually the main reason I haven't moved to SLC yet. So much of the draw there is about being able to get up into (and out of) the mountains quickly, and during ski season (as you know but other readers might not) it can get really terrible. Like worse than I-70 west of Denver terrible
I have tried the ski bus approach, but had a frightening experience of being on one of the last buses down on a crowded day when LCC went into an interlodge event. I have heard a lot of proposals for solving the problem, from gondola to restricting car access and pushing people toward the buses, but so far I think there is no end in sight?
Curious by your username: are you from Venezia, Italy, and/or are Italian?
(I am Italian, living in San Francisco)
If only we could figure out a way to work out a technology/innovation culture that lets people work with laser-like focus on a productive 40 hour work week, have lots of time with their friends/familiar/hobbies, but without the religious part. And without a huge percentage of community social activities revolving around one particular religious ideology.
There is certainly plenty of people that live up there, seemingly just as many as live in Utah County. Is it that there is a dearth of them that have the skills tech companies are looking for? Are there governmental/policy reasons keeping companies away? Is it because BYU is in Utah County and WSU/USU are that much worse at providing potential hires than BYU/UVU are?
I don't know the reason but it does seem weird to me that there is so much push into Utah County and seemingly nothing to the north.
But I'd also say that "be present for your family" and "don't amass personal debt" should be universally seen as good, and at least in theory they are, certainly by most religions or other broad groupings of humans.
I wonder instead: why not take more risk if you have a massive community to back you up in case it doesn't work out?
I mean, maybe you don't want to take that risk on "selling personal data to advertisers" because the community might not want to back you up, but if you're doing something basically moral, wouldn't a strong community be able to subsidize positive risk and thus yield better results on average?
> There are too dang many of you coming [...] and filling up my mountains
I'm from rural Northern California and I say the same thing a lot. Especially in the last 20 years. :-)
1. Big pay differential. This is probably why it only hires locals for the most part.
2. Mormonism is ascendant, and the tech industry is mostly non-religious. You hear stories about it can stifle your social life your not mormon or don't wish to participate in mormonism. Like if your kid marries a mormon and your not mormon, well you're not going into the temple to participate in the marriage ceremony levels of soft social exclusion.
I've lived in the bay area, startup to big co. And 80-100 hour weeks are fairly uncommon in practice unless your working in a very small startup fighting for its life. Along with having a family being anything much of a real problem.
Overall I find it unfortunate that equity financing is looked at as debt, vs the joint venture with the rich that it's more like. Nothing wrong with bootstrapping, but it's obviously limiting as you pointed out.
Would you or your congregation welcome more Mormons to town?
Would you or your congregation welcome more non-Mormons to town?
Eventually I realized: Maybe it was just because I was a nerd. Maybe it wasn't the fault of the Mormon Church at all.
As a non-Mormon, I haven't been unwelcome anywhere, ever. There still is a bit of a feeling of being an outsider, but it's not like "no promotions for you" or anything. I've been treated fairly everywhere I've been. (Disclaimer: I'm male, white, straight, and cis. I don't know enough to speak for the experience of those who are not.)
1.
> but Mormon families still tend to be very large
I think you'd be surprised. Mormon families are still larger than average, but there are plenty of Mormon families with just one or two kids. Not to mention that there are going to be plenty of "pre-kid" adults, or empty nesters around, and they need homes too. What reason is there to make most of the land exclusively single-family homes on big lots?
2. You can still have access to a backyard with multi-family housing. Where I live now in Munich, you have lots of small (or large) apartment complexes with shared backyards that kids play in all the time.
3. There's all kinds of ranges of housing in between "single family home with large front and back yards" and "massive apartment block surrounded by sea of asphalt". Duplexes, 4-plexes, and townhomes all make for increased density.
In any case, why not loosen the regulations and let the market decide? If there really isn't demand for apartment buildings, then developers won't build them, since they like money and all.
And yes, there are other valleys. Summit County isn't great, though, partly because it's very expensive (ski resort country), and partly because the valleys are very small. There's Tooele Valley to the west, but access is a problem (the valley is west of the Salt Lake Valley, and runs north-south, but the only connection is at the north end). There's the valley Nephi is in, south of Provo. (Maybe 10 years ago I considered buying some land on the northern side of this valley, on the idea that it would eventually become subdivisions.) I wouldn't want to live there and work anywhere north of Provo, though. And Utah doesn't (yet) have the mindset to accept two-hour commutes.
So yes, you're right. And yet... it's going to take either zoning changes or long commute times, and I'm not sure what the appetite here is for either.
Depends on what dimension you're measuring. Technically? Easy, at one point most of the US didn't have strict zoning, and most peer nations have nothing like this, it's hardly necessary. And usually these cities allow for apartments somewhere in the city, even if it's a small strip of land, it's not some unknown concept.
Politically? Hoo boy, that's a hard one. Because most Americans who live in these areas hate anything other than super low housing density.
If SLC is trying to be the next SV, there's no reason to emulate cities which tried and failed to be tech hubs. Model against the winners.
Look at the tech hubs currently. Other than SV proper, you have SF, Boston, NYC, Seattle. The sprawlier, housing cheaper major cities like Phoenix or Atlanta aren't really in there.
It's unfortunate that this has lead to zoning where a population density in Salt Lake is 700 people per square km and in Boise is 1,000. Meridian, ID the rapidly growing outer burb of Boise has a density of 1.3K.
[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/a...
The only thing that concerns me is that the Great Salt Lake is slowly going the way [1] of the Aral Sea [2]. One of the things that makes SLC a bit more interesting and hospitable than the surrounding desert is the snowy mountains all around it and the moderating effect of the big nearby lake. Replace that lake with a dust bowl and you end up with something less compelling.
[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/utah-s-great-salt-la...
[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141001-aral-...
Also, as far north as American Fork, you can still find patches of open fields that have not yet been developed. The entire town of Vineyard barely existed a few years ago, and still has space to grow. The towns south of Provo are slowly getting more high density housing, and updating their master plans to accommodate more apartments and townhomes.
The space for new housing will max out someday, but we are not there yet.
It's amazing how many cities in the US have a conversation that's roughly like:
Help, housing prices are too high! Demand is outstripping our supply!
Have you considered changing your local rules to allow for more supply?
gasp
We regularly brought cookies for Christmas to everyone on the street. When seeing surrounding houses shoveling snow, we would offer to use our snowblower to help. But when my mother fell on the driveway while struggling with two garbage bins and shouting for help, not one neighbor came out - not even the very pious bishop's family next door. She laid there in filth, and no one came.
My mother is an engineer. Her experience in Utah tech was a constant drain on her mental faculties (read: suggestive comments from her male colleagues, pointed questions about the welfare of her children, etc.). Coming from the country we did, she was used to it, but I still found it amazing to see in America. In a very large Utah company, a line was crossed and she filed an HR complaint about an individual. This individual had little technical ability, but was known to be very religious and ingratiating to superiors. On the very same day he took a higher position, he laid my mother off - that's after ten years with the company, and every year her performance was commended with a raise, even when many other employees in the company started seeing years without raises! She was a stellar employee, but this individual's first action as manager was retaliation against the only female on the team for one HR complaint.
Eventually, we could not take it and all left the state - I left as soon as I turned 18, my mother in now an engineer in a different state. After more than 8 years, we were still treated like strangers in our own neighborhood.
The cultural shift doesn't feel too jarring on a visit - it's barely perceptible. But years of it starts to feel like social shunning.
However... the company had a really bad nepotism problem that resulted in protection and favoritism for mormons, and it was a cancer. I worked for the core part of the company, but they had multiple business units. There was an entire business unit that was falling apart because it was absolutely infested with incompetent LDS nepotism hires mostly in the management chain. It had apparently been a problem on and off for a decade+ but had recently started going really wrong when certain people had gotten into positions of authority. Within a few years, the company was effectively dead and had given up a bunch of its lines of business. All of the really good people I knew personally fled and went on to really amazing careers - and a lot left SLC due to the experience.
Now.. the company might have died anyway. There were a lot of transitions at the time that took out the early high flyers. Certainly there were clouds on the horizon. But the immediate cause of death seems pretty clear.
This was in the 90s, SLC was nice then as a place to live but is even nicer now - bike lanes downtown, etc. The air quality in the valley leaves a lot to be desired, the state government could easily clean that up if they wanted, and that's a problem. What stops me from moving back is the risk of social isolation for non-mormons and the nepotism. SLC proper is just under 50%, now, I think, but Utah county is 86% and the state as a whole 68%. It's a concern for them - they worry, "what if I get sick and need hospital care?" and wonder if they'll get the same level of treatment, they wonder if they'll ever be a tier-1 friend with half the population, etc.
There was no shortage of talent at BYU, but the lack of diversity on every front in the engineering programs was stark. Engineering programs were almost entirely composed of white men. In the hallways and labs of the Clyde Building, I heard a lot of sexist jokes. For example, "I'm dating someone who's going for her EE -- Elementary Education!"
Looking back, I now realize it was really quite hostile toward female students. They often weren't taken seriously since the graduation rate for women at BYU was (and still is) horrible, and they were constantly asked out on dates by their classmates. Saying "no" too often would get them a "reputation," and I know of at least a couple who got a talking to by their bishops (male Mormon religious leaders) about the importance of dating so they could get married and start a family.
Of course BYU itself is almost entirely Mormon. The only engineering students I knew who weren't Mormon were graduate students from oversees who probably didn't fully understand what kind of environment they were getting into when they accepted their scholarship for whatever program they were getting into.
Since I visit Salt Lake fairly often I have a few contacts in the area who, shall we say, don't quite "fit the mold" for the kind of people you usually see there. It's really a chronic challenge for them to always be hit with microaggressions, both personally and professionally. You don't even have to look really that different for it to happen. A male wearing an earring, a visible tattoo, or something a bit flamboyant about your clothing can impact your ability to be included. And gods help you if you aren't religious and find yourself in a company primarily headed by active Mormon leadership. You can expect to be courted and invited to join at first, but once you make it clear that you aren't gonna convert, you're going to have an uphill battle in the inclusion front from that point on.
That said, when I'm ready to start a tech business of my own, I'd really really like to be able to do it in the Salt Lake area. The problem is that I'd want a healthy amount of diversity among my co-workers, and the easiest way to go about doing that is to hire at a place where the diversity already exists.
Perhaps I'm comparing Apples to Oranges but I've just always been surprised by the relative interest in SLC compared to the Denver area, at least by HN metrics.
To put $1 billion into perspective, it's more VC than these countries have per year:
Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland, Portugal, Denmark, Belgium, Russia, Norway, Austria.
And it nearly matches Sweden. Utah raises more venture capital than Italy and Russia combined. Utah has three million people.
They'll never have the population to challenge densely populated California. Can they get to $2-$3 billion in annual VC in the coming decade? Yep.
* California: #17, 251/sq mile
* Utah: #46, 36/sq mile
I sort of doubt California's population density is the decisive thing here, but I agree that Utah's performance is impressive. Especially regarding VC, it would be fascinating to know how much of the money invested in Utah is from Utahns who made it big outside of Utah. In that it might (I randomly speculate) be more like some other countries than like other parts of the USA.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
I’ve lived numerous places domestic and abroad, and haven’t seen anything quite like the accessibility to adventure as is found in SLC. Trail/mountain running, numerous ski resorts, Park City (of Winter Olympics fame), rock climbing, mountaineering and backcountry skiing, etc. All within 20 minutes drive.
It’s surprisingly amazing how close to the city you can be and yet feel so far away. You can get ~6,000 feet above the valley within a few hours run/hike and see moose, mountain goats, porcupine, etc.
Also interesting is the number of outdoor gear companies that have offices here. Petzl, Black Diamond, Backcountry, etc.
The rest of Utah is lily white though, and the tech scene (its centroid is somewhere between SLC and Provo) still feels heavily white and Mormon. I didn't used to mind as much because we would travel to CA once a month, but with the COVID travel moratorium I'm really missing diversity of all kinds.
But I do love it here
California has been working very hard to kill it's golden goose for a long time. Reasonable people are going to other states.
"Deseret was proposed as a name for the U.S. state of Utah. Brigham Young—governor of Utah Territory from 1850 to 1858 and president of the LDS Church from 1847 to 1877—favored the name as a symbol of industry. Young taught his followers that they should be productive and self-sufficient, a trait he had perceived in honeybees."[1]
People have been saying that sort of thing since the '90s, if not earlier. If California has been working so hard for so long to ruin things, why are we still talking about places being the next Silicon Valley, and not the next Austin or the next Research Triangle?
It’s not all peaches and cream in this fast growing city though. The tremendous growth results in colossal strain on traffic and infrastructure, but ownership of a large house with a yard is available to most people. That’s not such a big deal when you’re single, but it’s huge when you have kids. The demand for increased economic security likewise dramatically increases when you have kids.
California is growing in population though, but very slowly and without equivalent growth in wealth per capita. That is largely a result in personal wealth primarily tied to home ownership and home ownership declining generationally in California.
I take from your comment that you are less concerned with raw numbers and more concerned with vanity labels and trends. If you are a well funded founder perhaps California remains the place to be, but the numbers indicate it’s no longer the epicenter of economic growth that it certainly was in prior decades.
I don’t personally think it’s taxes, or any particular brand of politics (per se, as I know this is a political issue, I just mean relative to this), but that, in essence, that is destroying California slowly from the inside. Both Oregon and Washington are similar politically and Oregon is very close in taxes but they aren’t seeing any population outflows like this. I firmly believe it’s due to the issue of housing before any other factor.
I’m trying to gather more data to back my assertion but all personal experiences of people I know and others I’ve met who have moved have cited this as one of the major or the single biggest reason for having moved
Prop 13 is killing California, repealing it and replacing it with a Land Value Tax, in my opinion, would fix it.
In this context, I care about trends that happen over the course of decades and labels that become popular in recognition of those trends. I don't know why you're bringing up "vanity".
Not to detract from your overall comment, but that's only just under 2% year on year growth - that's pretty low for a city? (Not trying to imply that faster growth is good, just that you've framed it as rapid growth - a big exodus - and it's.. Not ?)
There are only 37 cities in the US greater than half a million people and only a tiny fraction of those grew by more than 20% over the last decade. The largest two of those are both in Texas and none are in California.
If a city is able to consistently grow at 2% per year it will only take 20 years and a few months to be 50% larger due to compound interest and only 35 years to double in size.
Yes, exactly. I collect vanity labels and make little stickers out of them for my fridge. What a completely useless thing to say. You have no idea what my thoughts are based on one sentence and a half so keep your ad hominems to yourself please.
All you are saying is that California is way too expensive thus people are leaving. Yes, we all know that. Now, why are people unable to live in California? And how should it be fixed? Those are the real questions. And there are reasonable arguments to make for many different theories, which was my point above.
And yet:
> California is growing in population
So, N people move to California each year, and M move away for M < N, and of those T move to Texas for T < M, and this is "bleeding?"
I'm not a demographer but this makes no sense.
Could you please explain what you mean here?
That’s an assumption not directly based on numbers. Yes, the net in migration to California is largely from non-domestic people. That could be due to exactly the reason you provided, or it could also be the result of less movement freedom tied to visa sponsorship, or a variety of other factors. Many of my tech coworkers in Texas are non-citizens under visa sponsorship who, given the choice, have stated they prefer the Midwest due to a variety of economic conditions (not just cost of living).
Speaking of unsupported anecdotes, it makes sense that the people you meet in the middle of the country express a preference for being there. That's pure selection bias. In terms of revealed preference, the states that are getting more than their per-capita share of California out-migrants are Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington.
And it's happening: people are fleeing the state.
"California likely to lose congressional seat for first time in history after 2020 Census. Californians moving out lead to cut in Golden State’s political clout."
"other states like Texas are expected to gain as many as three new seats"
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/03/california-lose-congr...
Poor people are leaving to other parts of the USA slower than rich people are moving in from other parts of the world; California has net in-migration despite net domestic out-migration. This is bad in terms of domestic political power, of course, but it's directly a consequence of economic success.
It has lower net growth than many other parts of the country, but that is not just a matter of migration but also the lower natural growth rate that usually accompanies greater wealth. And it's not one of the places actually shrinking because people are actually fleeing, not being displaced by richer people—there are a number of states where that is true, but CA isn't one of them.
I'm familiar with the statistics, the issue gets raised here every couple months or so. You and your friends from. Google aren’t the whole universe. Sure, some well-off people leave and some less well-off people move in, but that's not what is dominating the aggregate statistics.
People with similar belief than you about "value" (really, only money) creation and regulations/taxes are going to other states.
This has nothing to do with being reasonable. Someone perfectly reasonable could think better safety nets and less inequality is a worthy trade-off for less growth.
Except California also has among the highest levels of income inequality and highest cost-of-living adjusted poverty rates in the entire country: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...
It's not just about potentially different priorities about growth versus safety nets. It's also a question of whether you believe that you should double down on the policies that have made California and New York among the hardest places to live for the middle and lower middle class.
In places like California and York, so much money meant to go to "better safety nets and less inequality" actually goes to providing secure middle class lifestyles for college educated white people. California, for example, is drowning in teacher pension debt despite having some of the highest state taxes in the country. But over 60% of California teachers are white, in a state where just 23% of schoolchildren are white. So when people look at white-hispanic test score gaps (California having among the largest gaps in the country), and vote for more education funding, the actual impact on reducing inequity is extremely attenuated. Likewise, on housing policy, people act very concerned about it in New York and California, but how much money and legislative effort goes to actually providing housing for people who need it, versus paying salaries for college-educated administrators and bureaucrats, versus propping up housing prices in middle/upper middle class racially segregated neighborhoods?
I'll note that LA teachers are demanding that as a condition for schools reopening, charter schools be shut down: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-26/citing-c.... Charter schools are, of course, a policy that's supported by the majority of the black and hispanic people that actually have kids in the school districts. (White Democrats are the only group where a majority oppose charter schools and vouchers.) This is a really telling illustration of what the real priorities are.
If, for the taxes Californians and New Yorkers pay, they actually got a robust safety net, good schools, and good transit, I imagine that a lot fewer people would leave.
See: Canada and Sweden, both of which have soundly demonstrated the combination of a safety net and growth over the last 40 years.
California is 47th.
Moving from Utah to California is moving from one of the worst states for equality to the best. There is no trade-off needed regarding inequality, and I doubt there is one needed for safety nets either, Utah is unsurprisingly progressive in that area.
California turned me off, because it just seems like it has reached max capacity, there's just too many people living there. Utah lost to Seattle for other reasons.
I guess my point is, I think all I cared about was the geography and temperature profile, and the lifestyle the place would bring me. The actual company I'd work for came after these.
So in my opinion, Utah is doing well because of its geography, same for California. People just like it there.
This approach/reasoning is too often overlooked. Smart and capable people get to pick and choose where they want to live.
Housing isn't an issue that goes away with value creation.
I'd bet Utah would suffer the same way if a storage container starts costing more than $2000 a month.
Edit: perhaps not "free" education but as-near-as, for any American. That free education was only available to Mormons.
Alan continued to teach at BYU, so he was in a perfect position to recruit BYU's best computer science students. He was a tough grader, and anyone getting an A in one of his classes was a candidate for a job offer. When Alan found students with exceptional talent, he and Bruce would offer them part- time jobs and put them to work on one of the programming projects. By the time they graduated, their work had helped the company grow to the point where we could afford to offer them good salaries. Eventually we used Alan's old grade sheets to search for good programmers who had already graduated.
40 years ago Mormons were making startups in Utah.
It’s like always astonishing to see how unapologetic/aware Americans are of their ignorance of the world and other cultures.
It may seem like minutia, but Saints (of whom I am one of them) worship Christ. Mormon, on the other hand, is one of many mortal prophets from ancient Americas and also the editor/compiler of the Book of Mormon.
If you know just that alone, it'll probably score you points with the Saints that you meet. :)
(In fact, it has multiple long-standing meanings, of which that is not one.)
I'm not saying you aren't entitled to call yourself that: of course you are. But you shouldn't expect other people to go along with it, any more than if you decided to call yourselves "Good People" or "Scientists" or "Turks".
Of course this problem occurs over and over, because groups of people love to give themselves self-congratulatory names. Sometimes they succeed: consider "Democrat[ic]" (in US politics) and "Orthodox" (in Christianity and in Judaism), for instance. But it makes me sad every time.
> When referring to Church members, the terms "members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," "Latter-day Saints,” "members of the Church of Jesus Christ" and "members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ" are preferred. We ask that the term "Mormons" and "LDS" not be used.
... so in fact "Latter-Day Saints" is apparently perfectly OK, and "Saints" simpliciter isn't even one of the options they mention.
(But of course this is a guide for those associated with the CoJCoLDS, not an attempt to legislate what language others should use. I don't think you're likely to have much luck getting anyone else to refer to the doctrine and practices of the CoJCoLDS as "the restored gospel of Jesus Christ", for instance.)
For me, this makes it a hard pass.
It’s not even about the benefits of diversity, as I’m a white male and would fit right in as long as I kept my mouth shut. It’s about the huge downsides to a culture that values conformity and enforces unwritten, arbitrary rules to ensure future conformity.
Conformity and homogeneity is gross.
Culturally, Mormons are a bit like the conservative south, except remove alcohol, add a higher respect for formal education, and crank up that 'protestant work ethic' to 11. Not that southern conservatives are lazy, but I think there is more of a culture of enjoying some downtime with iced tea in the shade in the South than there is among Mormons. There's also a bit of a culture of natural distrust of authority figures in the south - especially highly educated 'Ivy Leaguers.' There's less of that in Mormonism. Mormons pride themselves on being highly successful outside the church, whether in politics, business or academia. This can create huge problems for people who don't feel like they measure up, especially for women who are expected to be perfect housewives and homemakers while also supporting their husbands careers and doing valuable, secular community work. Often while their husbands work full time and then spend their off days (and all of their disposable cash) doing an MLM side hustle. Although, as the article notes, Mormon women are highly involved (dare I say preyed on) by MLMs as well - There are MLMs for everything from cleaning products to beauty products to sex toys, all aimed directly at women.[2]
The Mormon church does a pretty good job of teaching it's younger members (mostly just the boys, unfortunately) some basics of leadership and organizing group work efforts. These leadership rolls are mostly 'on the rails' - the church provides careful instruction of how to organize and lead to make these responsibilities approachable for the novice. Members are expected to speak in front of large and small groups from an early age, for example, and to preside over small groups of others near their own age in youth programs. For that reason lots of business efforts in Utah can just kind of coast on those same learned principles. There's already a shared cultural subconscious understanding of how groups of people 'should' work together, which overall makes things easier to get off the ground than trying to build these organizational structures from scratch.
The obvious downside (at least for me, I think some people experience this as a positive) is that every day at work feels a bit like a day at church. The people look like same, are often dressed the same, the meetings run in basically the same format, it's all very homogeneous.
I recently spent three years working for a company based in San Francisco. For me this was a breath of fresh air - the company was quite diverse among races, genders, sexual orientation and identity, etc. I didn't feel like I was sitting in Elder's Quorum meeting during daily standup[1]. I'm back at a Utah company now and while I don't have any problems with the company overall the feeling like I'm looking in the mirror at everyone I work with is stifling.
Since stepping away from full activity in the church I've started to realize that these social structures are the main reason why a lot of people stay in the church. Somehow that had never really occurred to me, although it seems obvious now. For whatever reason in my personal life my social circle, educational and professional prospects, even romantic prospects were never really rooted in the church. But for many (most?) people who grow up in the church this is not the case - if they left the church they'd be losing not only a huge part of their own identity, but severing social ties and souring important life opportunities. For many people this is the glue that holds their lives together. I suspect this is true for most religious communities. (Or even non-religious ones, like the tech community in general, which has many of it's own problems - and yet we stay!)
The other even more surprising thing I've learned since leaving is that a lot of people - both those currently in the church and some who have left - say that one of the main things they enjoy(ed) / value(d) about church attendance is the music. This is honestly weird to me because the music is about the most boring, generic, church organ+out of tune singing you can imagine. Even as a very young child the hymns were among my least favorite parts of church service. To each their own.
[1] An in-joke for the other Mormons reading this. Elder's Quorum is the men's group in the Mormon church. This group meets every Sunday during church service (except during the pandemic, service is still mostly suspended world-wide). This group is specifically for men aged 18 through ~retirement age, which in the most populated parts of Utah overlaps with the group of men who are mostly employed at tech companies. This group is also specifically tasked with helping others in the community as needed, like helping people move or helping elderly folks with yardwork, etc. Overall these meetings end up feeling a lot like corporate meetings and vice-versa IME. The corresponding women's group is called the Relief Society.
[2] See also the other currently trending article here about Mormons and MLMs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882026
This might be purely due to humidity differences between the Wasatch Front and the South. ;-)
Yeah, a huge reason why I didn't question church teachings earlier in life was fear of losing those social connections. I knew that to a huge percentage of my deeper social network, leaving the church would mean becoming one of the lost, the fallen, the apostate. And the church is very good at getting you to police your own thoughts, especially if you're a people pleaser on some level.
Historically Mormons are Yankees. If you look at an ethnic map of the US Utah is one of the few places that still has a plurality of people of British descent. I think Utah is sort of a time capsule of how the northern states were like before the waves of immigration that arrived after the Civil War.