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Politicians and economists lament that certain alpha regions — SF, LA, NYC, Boston, Toronto, London, Paris — attract all the best jobs while becoming repellently expensive, reducing economic mobility and contributing to further bifurcation between haves and have-nots. But why don't the best jobs move elsewhere?
Of course, many of them can't. The average financier in NYC or London (until Brexit annihilates London's banking industry, of course...) would be laughed out of the office, and not invited back, if they told their boss they wanted to henceforth work from Chiang Mai.
But this isn't true of (much of) the software field. The average web/app developer might have such a request declined; but they would not be laughed at, or fired. The demand for good developers greatly outstrips supply, and in this era of Skype and Slack, there's nothing about software development that requires meatspace interactions.
[...]Some people will tell you that remote teams are inherently less effective and productive than localized ones, or that "serendipitous collisions" are so important that every employee must be forced to the same physical location every day so that these collisions can be manufactured. These people are wrong, as long as the team in question is small — on the order of handfuls, dozens or scores, rather than hundreds or thousands — and flexible.
Because the feedlot isn't hiring for Ruby?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:16AM (2 children)
I've a better question. Why is it that any city with a growing tech sector can't keep up with the demand for housing? It's like they purposely restrict housing to drive up prices, to gouge engineers, because they know engineers are well paid. I hear San Francisco is especially bad at allowing any more housing to be built.
But then, it seems most developers go along with it, let themselves be gouged because they have other things on their minds, don't see the debt trap so many employers set for their employees. Be a real shame you didn't give 110% and work late every night, so your employer went out of business and now you can't afford to live in such an expensive area and your car gets repossessed and you get kicked out of your home. That's the part that baffles me, these really smart people being so blind, clueless, and naive about such employer dealings.
I really think that's a big part why age discrimination is so rampant in IT. Employers prefer the young and naive who can be tricked into believing endless death marches for very junior pay are normal.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:46AM
Why is it that any city with a growing tech sector can't keep up with the demand for housing? It's like they purposely restrict housing to drive up prices, to gouge engineers, because they know engineers are well paid.
Because zoning is a local function. So the people who already live there are the ones who vote in zoning board elections. Thus the zoning boards have an inherent bias for supporting current property valuations by denying zoning requests for new construction. Nearly all major cities suffer from the same problem, it isn't unique to SF. The solution is to move zoning control to the state level. Yet another example where local control produces perverse results. Or they could eliminate zoning like in Houston.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday April 05 2017, @04:01AM
Because space is finite, even vertical space, and there comes a point when people will no longer tolerate runaway growth for any price. The Bay Area is a good example, there certainly is enough housing, but its expensive as fuck so people who work there keep being pushed further and further away, so now public transportation isn't an option -- they must drive, and Bay Area Traffic is a fucking nightmare and proof enough and the infrastructure is overburdened.
And you want more traffic-jams, more 3-4 hour daily communtes, more rising utility rates, pollution -- and the important thing, the more assholes move into a city, the higher rents jump...because landlords can.
San Francisco all typical White liberal hypocrites anyway. They claim to care about the poor and social justice and affordable housing, but bitch and moan everytime their inner NIMBY gets triggered. At best they'll reserve a 50-unit place in the bad part of Oakland for poor jiggaboos and pat themselves on the back for being so progressive.
Cities like New York and San Francisco are going to implode as a result of income inequality and ridiculously inflated housing costs, and the sooner they do implode, the better. You can already see it with the few news articles about rampant vacancies on commercial space in NYC. And the landlords are doing what Jew landlords in big cities typically do, they raise the rents 75% year after year and then try to "sweeten the deal" with a $500 carpet and drape job as concessions to keep you from leaving.