New York’s office market is home to the most tech workers: CBRE report
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Bay Area does not have much industry outside of tech. New York City is a hub for banking, investing, insurance, government, healthcare, consulting, real estate, fashion, law and more. All of these are now increasingly hiring tech workers directly and also retraining and transitioning their existing workforce to be more technical.
So just by numbers alone Bay Area will never maintain a monopoly on tech jobs, especially considering the NYC employment market is several times the size. However if you just filter to the tech sector the numbers will be very different.
The three-year negative growth for San Francisco (-6%) seems to be the reason here. Obviously, with Hacker News being so heavily populated itself by people living there who love to complain, we're going to see all the comments we're already starting to see citing housing costs as the reason, but San Francisco has had high housing costs for a long time now, and its negative growth is nowhere near the worst on this list. Milwaukee, Columbus, Phoenix all had even greater losses. Do those places have similar housing crises? Seattle is just as bad as San Francisco, isn't it? Yet it saw 13.1% positive growth, one of the largest numbers for an already large city. Toronto is expensive as hell, isn't it? They saw 26.5% growth.
What other explanations are possible? Recent layoffs have affected web tech more than other tech, which is highly concentrated in the Bay? They've affected startups more than well-established Fortune 500s, also highly concentrated in the Bay?
If you're talking about programmers working at non-tech companies? Maybe. If you're talking about people excited about technology, then no.
I lived in NYC for a decade. NYC is media and finance. And while I liked the people "in tech" that I met in NYC, the passion for the work just wasn't there enmasse.
Housing it a lot more reasonable (nowhere near cheap, but feasible) in the actual Silicon Valley.
It used to be better, remote I feel is better in Seattle but the hidden costs of being in the Seattle region involve possible commute, car purchase and the general RTA, fragmented neighborhoods, public transit is improving but nothing near what is nyc. Housing… I feel is cheaper in nyc, food across the board is much more inexpensive in much. Hotels are varied and more inexpensive in nyc.
One thing I have enjoyed is time zone differences. 3 hours difference is a lot and if you can balance that you can have a wonderful Seattle afternoon.
Problem is winter sucks in PNW.
The food didn't feel super expensive, but it definitely wasn't great. San Francisco and NYC are so much better. I have been consistently disappointed with the food in Seattle.
The one issue I see with Seattle is that they have a 30% or so vacancy rate for office buildings in downtown. A lot of companies have left, or will be moving. Many to Bellevue. The city decided to target businesses to fund more progressive policies, but with remote work, the businesses just moved across Lake Washington. Or to other states (like Starbucks). I don't see that changing. So now they have a budget deficit, lots of office vacancies, and the looming threat of more companies leaving. Not sure if that'll change it's standing or anything, but its not great.
And that number hasn't budged in decades. It is a completely ossified community. There's the folks who bought their houses 20-30 years ago and stayed put thanks to prop 17, their adult children living with them waiting for them to die, the young single tech workers willing to fork out $3k for a studio or live with roommates, the nepotized $300k+ earning public service employees, and the rest of the non-tech workers resigned to the crime-ridden pockets of the east/south bay that can still be afforded with an entire family's income. That's basically the entire population.
The current rate for a two bedroom in most of SF is approaching $6000/month right now. Apartments at $5000 have lines of applicants. My partner and I are paying about half that for our apartment... and we haven't lived here that long.
If we were trying to move here for work now, we absolutely wouldn't be able to afford it.
You are literally describing a place people live and are living in.
Yes. Couples with two incomes and successful careers can build a life here. The question is how normal, single people build a life here.
I actually think Ingleside is pretty doable, but it's a very long commute for the price. I'm not going to live in the Tenderloin, and you're probably not going to either.
I'm counting 7 apartments (arguably 8) outside of those neighborhoods, and half of those don't list the square footage (a 600sqft "two bedroom" is not a two bedroom).
By the way, the Bay is bigger than SF. People commute from Milbrae, Daly City, Richmond into SF every day by train and it takes less than an hour.
>current rate for a two bedroom in most of SF
for a reason. Yes, you can get a cheaper place if you live in a place you don't want to live, but my point is that you don't want to live there. This entire thread is about how tech is moving to NYC, exactly because it's difficult to build a good life in SF. I'm saying, yes the prices have increased to the point where you can't build a good life in SF.
If you want to live in the Tenderloin or a dorm at SF State University... by all means go for it, and good luck to you. I'd much rather pack up and move to NYC than live like that.
This is referring to SF, not "the Bay." SF has a population of "nearly a million." The Bay Area has a population of 8 million.
And the thing about that "two bedroom" is that it probably would have been classified as a one bedroom ~fifteen years ago. Much-to-most of the time, an "N-bedroom" apartment gives you N bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and -if you're lucky- a small amount of closet space. Living room? Study? Get fucked, those are for owners, or folks who started renting 10->20+ years ago.
Studios all within 1 hour of SF by BART cost at most 2,500 but usually around 2000, cheaper if you're in Oakland/Daly city. 2000*12 is 24000, so if you're take home salary is at least 73,000 you're making a healthy multiple over rent. Just making 120k in the Bay area you're taking home 84,000 per year.
So if you're making 200k you're taking home $10,700 per month, so you can afford a 3,500 rent at most, which could easily get you a nice 2 bedroom within 30 minutes of downtown SF.
30% of income to go right back to rent in the Bay Area for the privilege of living in a studio is…
For most people, including me, not worth it.
“Oh but this is nationally average numbers” yes and no.
Plus your numbers are gross not net.
$73,000 to live in a studio, let’s be generous and say under 300sq ft, commute over an hour daily..
For what? The privilege to work in Bay Area?
> The privilege to work in the Bay Area?
In the bay area you have mild climate all year, high quality public transport, culture, food. I do agree that rents are too high given a lack of development, but for many people that is worth it. The bay area is one of the few places in the world that pays fresh college graduates 120k+, so naturally there will be high rents, and to be in that environment is a privilege especially in growing a network.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. You could rent a 1/2br in SF proper with that salary. You could easily live within 40 minutes of SF in East Bay/Daly City comfortably at 120k.
2 hour commute is a huge distance, so this is nowhere near true.
2 hours east is roughly Grass Valley, or anything in between (including Sacramento).
2 hours north is roughly Boonville, or anything in between.
2 hours south, depends which way you go, but could be Soledad, or anything in between.
(commute times from google maps)
That's a huge range, and all of those towns are far cheaper than anything in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley.
Tell me you've never lived in the Bay...
2 hours is Antioch/Pittsburgh in an average rush hour.
I guess I'm a newcomer, only lived in Silicon Valley for ~30 years (will be 30 in a few months).
NYC is around 8.8 million and the Bay is around 7.8 million.
By that definition they use, the leader in "tech" employment is simply the metro with the most employees.
You can't out-build yourself out of high living costs.
The only way to fix this is to start taxing dense office space as if it's toxic waste sites. And promote remote work to re-invigorate smaller cities.
Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones?
> Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones?
Dense offices in downtowns.