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Comment by jstepka | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley / SF have had a stranglehold on the digital economy for the last 20-30 years -- nearly anything that touches electrics or software had a "tax" where some portion of that innovation flowed back as cash.

With covid / the great reset, I've seen so many leave the bay area now that they can work remote. It's occured to me that SV / SF will need to reinvent itself and be in a rough patch for a couple years. The benefit to the rest of the americans is that all those high paying jobs and new ways of doing business are being dispersed throughout the rest of the USA which is better for all of us in the end.

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There’s a fine line with this though — the advantage of hiring Americans in the Midwest versus hiring in Europe and Asia needs to be solidified somehow.

Timezones and the whole mess of laws and regulations around paying international employees tend to keep American companies hiring primarily American workers.

There are 2 advantages I see...

1. Many great workers either won't or don't want to live in SV. I've known a bunch of them, over the years. Moving more development to where these folks are brings them in to the fold.

2. The people in SV don't represent and aren't regularly interacting with most of America or the world. They are in a different bubble. The majority is part of the out group to them. Hiring people in distributed places means you hire people who are more likely to interact and relate to the majority. Relating to people that will use technology is useful when building solutions.

If you are hiring from a pool of candidates who, by nature of their skills and relative wealth, lie at the 90th percentile or higher in their communities, does it really make that much of a difference? Yes SV is a bubble, but hiring people living in a similar bubble in Omaha isn't going to move the needle that much IMO.

NYT exec editor Dean Bacquet famously said(ruefully) “we don’t understand the role of religion in people’s lives”, after the ‘16 election.

There is not a single soul in Omaha who would make that statement.

The people in Omaha would probably be more likely to understand the role of religion in people's lives than the NYT exec editor, after all.

> The people in Omaha would probably be more likely to understand the role of religion in people's lives

If by “people’s lives” you mean specifics “the lives of people in Omaha”, plausibly.

Otherwise, no, not really.

Several factors still favour Americans - stable, business-friendly laws, crazy high human development index, American work culture, predictable interpersonal experiences.

It’s going to be a rich continent for many generations to come.

I think the Californians are going to be first on the chopping block. They're expensive and what can they do that a bunch of midwesterners can't? I think international teams are a given in both cases.

I think the companies there will also need to reinvent themselves. I'm currently interviewing and both Apple and Facebook required in-person or based around a satellite office. I'm in Los Angeles so it shouldn't be a crazy ask. They lost out on a candidate and my labor will go to a business who lets me continue living my life.

Given thoughts like Individuals Matter [1], my speculation is that these companies are currently losing a lot of valuable individuals who can command more flexibility. There are plenty of remote first companies paying competitive salaries.

1. https://danluu.com/people-matter/

There is a downside to some places as well. You have people moving into areas with high paying jobs and expectations of high cost in housing. The locals who have lived there for years are priced out of their own community with the influx. This has happened around Austin TX, and from what I understand in Colorado.

They actually aren’t dispersed at all. You have more remote workers than you had before, that’s pretty much it. It really remains to be seen what happens when those remotes go to switch jobs.

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