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Comment by vzaliva | Hacker News Reader

Some people lament the decline of Silicon Vally companies like Tesla and Oracle moving out. I argue it could be a good thing. These giant enterprises are not really a pinnacle of entrepreneurship and innovation anymore. Let them move elsewhere and keep the Bay Area nurturing new entrepreneurs and startups. It is huge cubicle farms vs. garages and coworking places kind of distinction.

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I don't think Tesla and Oracle belong in the same category. Tesla, for all its foibles, is still innovation driven and seems to be an active part of the tech ecosystem. Oracle seems more of the consulting/cubicle farm/enterprise driven company you describe.

There's still no support for Apple Carplay or Android Auto in any Tesla. So I very much doubt they're part of the tech ecosystem.

That’s an interesting conclusion to draw from that.

But a valid one. Sadly, people don't like to hear this at all.

I'm going to go ahead and say Tesla is in the same boat as Oracle or HP, as a company where its biggest innovations are in its past. It will likely join Oracle in moving to Texas as a way to save money but not attempt to make further innovations.

Another consideration is that non-competes are not valid in CA but are valid in TX. I believe moonlighting is also protected under CA but not TX law.

This is one of the reasons I'm staying in CA. It is a rude awakening when you get the employee contract and it claims ownership of all your ideas and output produced at home. Good luck making a startup in those conditions.

Drawing experienced personnel from established firms has, as I understand it, long been a big driver for startups in the region. While some established firms leaving isn’t a problem, if it becomes too common, its a problem for entrepreneurship.

OTOH, a few established firms with large campuses leaving also means a lot of space without the usual problems involved available for other established firms that get into lots of conflicts with other local constituencies when they try to expand.

While this is true, there's also a good side to the bigger tech companies leaving, even if it is a lot of them: less wage competition.

If I'm a SV startup I already have problems with office rent, taxes, cost of living, etc. It's expensive to be in the Bay Area. And on top of that, most of the engineers I hire will either be of worse quality than FAANG or I'm going to have to pay them more than FAANG. While this is great for the employees, it's really hard to fit into the budget for many startups and the tradeoff becomes existential when the cost of your engineers starts adding up but you haven't found market fit yet. And the ever-increasing wages being used to draw people from one company to another just keeps making the Bay Area more and more unaffordable so the problem keeps compounding.

It works nicely when there's just one or two big companies to draw employees from, but there's just so many big SV companies now with billions of dollars in their pockets, I don't see how any true startup could possibly compete. If you don't like Google, you go to Uber. Or Facebook. Or Splunk. Or Airbnb. Or Yelp. Or Twitter. Or Facebook. Or Salesforce. Or Workday. Or Juniper. Or Autodesk. Or Nvidia. Or Palo Alto Networks. Or...

There's just too much competition from the billion-dollar companies. Sure innovation and entrepreneurship still happens in SV, but I'd argue it would be better for the area if it were easier for smaller startups to compete.

Haven't heard of many startups founded by ex-Oracle employees (ex-Google, ex-Facebook is a different story). I doubt this will improve when Oracle moves.

Snowflake ($120bn)

I interned on their SQL engine team and maybe half of the long-time employees were ex-Oracle, including two of the three co-founders (Thierry and Benoit).

Ah I forgot about that database in the cloud

Salesforce ($205bn)

Have you ever tried to "draw" somebody who spent last 20 years working for HP into startup? In most cases these people are not flexible enough, stuck in a ways things have been done at their previous job and having difficulty adjusting. I recall hiring one such engineer for then 5 person startup and he asked who will be the IT guy to set up his computer! Disclaimer: of course there are exceptions.

I worked with folks that worked and both HP and Oracle... As large companies, they have a large contigent of H-1Bs, some of which are very good engineers, who prefer to stay in a large company (and put up with it) until they get their green card...

after they get their green card, they fan out to smaller companies/startups....

so, yeah, it is a loss.... (albeit small) for the bay area

Start up or large corporate I see that same behavior in certain technology segments. The difference is more a factor of leadership than size or establishment.

Tesla and Oracle have no similarity in this regard.

HP?

When companies cannot innovate, cost-cutting becomes important

Exactly. No one was starting companies in the Bay Area because of how inexpensive it was.

Except nobody can afford a garage anymore. And even if you could, regulations make it pretty hard to build anything in that garage.

Tesla didn't move. Elon Musk moved, the company didn't.

True. The concern is that new development will no longer be in California.

Job openings are still aplenty for Palo Alto based location, so what would these new + all the existing employees in HQ do?

That is a static snapshot of the world. Over time, I would expect job openings in Austin to go up and for them to go down in the Bay Area. Those new + existing employees in Austin would be doing the jobs of the former employees in the Bay Area.

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