This is probably a big reason why gigantic cities are continuing to grow everywhere. The best way to reduce the stress of being laid off is to move somewhere with as many employers as possible.
There are a grand total of 2 employers in her field in the whole city. It’s simply not possible to reliably grow her career there.
In the end we stayed in our expensive city; in 4 years she got promoted twice, then had multiple competing offers for a new job when her employer went under. Career growth, top wages, and a plethora of jobs are available here. The only reason not to stay is because a decent condo starts at a million, but we got in at 3% interest rate so even that turned out okay.
This job was on-site, so there was no choice but to live here. And by "here" I mean a 60- to 90- minute commute, both ways.
Now? My job is 100% remote, and any job I would consider would have to be 100% remote. Assuming this trend continues, I think we'll see an exodus from high cost of living areas to (slightly) smaller towns.
People are still going to want to live in places that have services, entertainment, and so on, so this isn't going to gut cities, but it will make living in the sticks more plausible.
The mass exodus already happened.
Everybody who wanted to leave what they thought was overpriced pretty much already did.
We might see some continuation - but given that companies are trying to claw back as much remote work as possible - I'm skeptical.
South Carolina is too choice of a place to live.
What we save on living in a HCOL locale, we can spend on traveling several months out of the year while I work remote.
Over the years I occasionally toyed with buying a small city place but, in addition to the increasing real estate prices, I always came back to the fact that I can always get a hotel or whatever in that or any other city if I want to spend some time in an urban location.
The problem is that if you lose your job this plan will crumble on first contact with the enemy. I'm job hunting right now, and between 'ghost jobs', bad recruiters, low ballers, take-homes with unstated requirements, leetcode grinding, system design studying, optimization for "best talent, lowest salary", and the fact that workers have absolutely no power means you don't have a choice how you work at some point.
Once savings start to dry up, you'll work in person. You'll move if they ask, you'll take a lower salary and a worse position... after all, do you want to eat?
It makes more sense to focus on the capital-intensive and oligopolistic parts, e.g. cloud computing, social media and advertising. Tech, broadly, maintains a threat of new entrants.
In the technology sector, our income and share of remote work is actually pretty good. For example, most of us (in the U.S., in technology) are in or close to the top 10% of individual incomes in the United States.
Problem is waking up everyday at 6:30 am so I can be in office by 9 is a huge mental and physical stress. Moving closer isn't an option because I own my house. Right now my thinking is do I want to spend an extra 4-5 hours per day on my career just to work in a shitty cubicle for only 30k more? I'm honestly leaning towards putting up with less money and waiting for another opportunity to cross my path.
If shit really hits the fan I can sell my California house and buy a whole house outright in another part of the country and sustain myself easily. I'm just choosing to stay here but I really don't have to.
I read that Jamie Dimon's office is a fully decked out apartment on Park Ave (NYC) so for all his griping about remote work, he essentially works from home full time.
Fully remote work doesn't eliminate the risk of layoffs throwing a wrench into your life. It's only viable for senior/staff level devs who have much higher job mobility compared to everyone else in the tech sector.
"Why would I move? This is Boston: if there are high-tech jobs at all there will be something here."
For some, +$20,000 to their current salary is an offer they can't refuse, for others, they would need to double their existing six figure salary to even consider moving to another hub.
But for realistic wages in my field, I doubt there is anywhere that would pay me enough to move. Short of moving into management (which I have little experience with) the most I could expect for making a move would be about an extra $40-60k/year moving to the Bay area which would basically cover the difference in cost of living and maybe a little extra pocket change.
That's not really worth it for me.
But, of course, I didn't literally mean that. Offer me a few million a year guaranteed and I could put up with a lot for life-changing money for a bit. But realistically not going to happen.
Once the basics and some future security are there, more money just means a bigger resource footprint. That's still nice to have, people certainly continue preferring wealth over poverty, but it would be crazy if trade-off thresholds between modesty and ambition didn't shift a little due to awareness of environmental impact.
Not 1.2 or 1.4 birds in the bush
But for a lot of people the answer is "I want to live somewhere else." I relocated away from a really nice job with challenging work and interesting co-workers simply because I didn't like where I was living. I suspect that I'm not the only one.
The first tier cities are getting more and more expensive (partially or perhaps primarily do to employment opportunities - i.e. safety) and instead of moving "away from a city", people are moving to other less expensive cities with employment opportunities which, as they grow, become more expensive and repeat the process. And also you have to compare to trends over time.
For example, high value manufacturing in the Bay Area (eg. chiplets, electronics) got priced out to San Joaquin Valley and helped lead to the growth of Sacramento; Bay Area tech new grad salaries got so inflated that internships, new grad, and H1B roles in Sales, Professional Services, and SWE started relocating to Austin and Dallas in the 2010s; and back office roles in Accounting+Finance began moving from NYC to Charlotte in the late 2010s as salaries for those roles began breaching the 100k mark in NYC.
If I'm someone specialized in Solutions Engineering or Back Office work, I'd probably find a comparable amount of job opportunities in Austin or Charlotte as I would in the Bay or NYC, with the added benefit of affordability.
As you correctly point out, there's an equilibrium between cost of living and the advantages large cities are offering. Here in Berlin we are starting to feel the pressure hard, but it is still much cheaper than the other big European cities, and thus growing by 200k a year.
Berlin's is probably the only major example I can think of a city growing due to actual growth opportunities, but then again Germany is also a much healthier economy than most of Europe.
The US on the other hand doesn't have a primary city in the same manner that most of Europe has - the US economy is pretty decentralized across multiple hub cities (Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle) the same way Germany is (Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg)
This is a MASSIVE assumption to have. The language barrier you brought up has a massive impact for example, along with other smaller intricacies (eg. Taxes, Drivers License, Immigration depending on your nationality, bureaucratic experience, etc). Moving from Paris to Berlin or Oulu to Varna isn't some walk in the park.
And several states don't have primary city effect either (eg. CA, TX, OH, FL, NC), and bureaucratic norms in most cases within the 50 states are normalized for individual cases.
> Substantial population loss in some of the nation’s largest and most vibrant cities was the primary reason 2021 was the slowest year of population growth in U.S. history, new Census data shows.
> Although some of the fastest growing regions in the country continued to boom, the gains were nearly erased by stark losses last year in counties that encompass the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas.
> The pandemic played a role, as the number of people dying rose substantially and many Americans left cities for smaller places. But experts say that skyrocketing housing costs were also to blame, and that some of the changes are a continuation of fundamental shifts in American demographics that began before the pandemic, such as the steadily falling birthrate and steep drop in immigration.
I'd rather work for less money in a cheaper neighbourhood.
I can reliably find decent work here, without paying too much to get by. We're slowly approaching the limit, though
Mostly paranoia at this stage. Last time I moved away I got laid off... meaning I moved back
Not sure if these conditions will remain but it's just nuts atm. Entry/Mid level engineers out-earning local principal engineers with 30+ years experience.
Paradoxically if you build more housing, population increases, opportunities increase, and housing prices increase.