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The Price Of Doing Business
8127972 writes: "It seems that a ton of high tech companies are leaving cities (like San Fran) with high costs of doing business for cheaper cities (Washington DC is mentioned due to new government spending) or even cities in Canada. Sounds like American high tech workers are going to have to learn to say the word "eh?" a lot."
I find it amazing that they are moving out of large US cities into Canda instead of just moving to the midwest or something. Chicago is quite a lot cheaper than the coastal cities, and it has all the usual big-city perks.
Of course there are also a lot of small citys that would kill for some high-tech company to move in. Seems like they could get some pretty good deals if they used that option.
Why do so many companies feel the need to be tied to a coast?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
There has been alot of commentary on this subject. The Gartner group put out this commentary about the "Tech Wreck" coming to the SF Bay area.
They claim that a city will do well if they install a broadband communications network that connects citizens, local businesses and the global marketplace.
I think that the obvious solution to this may be Telecomutting See this link for more info
Bad karma revisits landlords who threw out poor people for those who could handle higher rents! News at 11!
Useless opinions, worthless observations, and more!
Columbus, where I live, is a great place for this. We have a decent bus system, lots of shopping places, and lot's of office space. There are alot of call centers here and lots of 18-20 year old's because of Ohio State, Franklin University, DeVry, Keller Graduate School, Capital, Otterbien and Mount Vernon Nazerene College are here also. Columbus is also one of Ohio's most wired cities with a decent penetration of broadband (available almost city wide I believe.). Rent's for workers can range from cheap to exhorbitant. You can, if you can afford it, even buy a condo downtown in Miranova (starting aroun $300,000). Miranova is for that executive who doesn't like to put a lot of miles on thier Beamer (right downtown). In any case, Ohio in general is a good place for high tech (at least that's my feeling anyway!).
Gorkman
Oh yeah, for sure. We got the curling too, eh? And Tim Horton's. :)
Trust me, my fellow techies, if you ever move up here, get an apartment or house within two or three minutes walk of a Tim Horton's. You will not regret it.
San Francisco and Silicon Valley has an enormous critical mass of Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans people, and Nerds. The counter-culture continues to thrive here.
For techies - it means that you are respected and accepted everywhere, no matter what you look like.
It is the opposite of the nightmare world Jon Katz describes in "Voices from the Hellmouth". Nobody who has been dumped-on for being smart or diferent wants to go back out into the cold.
Attempts to replicate the Bay Area have to replicate this tolerance too - which often requires a massive, slow change in attitude.
-- Jamie
How many other places in the country can you place an ad for an esoteric vertical technology and reasonably expect 100 good resumes??
That is because Canada has roughly the same affluence as the poorest state in America.
That is highly doubtful. Canadians have always had a higher standard of living than Americans, and until just this year, the highest standard in the world (displaced by Denmark, I think). America is barely in the top ten.
Honestly, so many Canadians don't seem to know how well they have it!
* Detractors:
:). The only real detractor I would say is the hurricanes, but california has earthquakes, so pick your poison. However, if you go too far outside of the main cities, you have to deal with hicks and rednecks. Charleston is really pretty and the coast has some nice beaches, and I would say it's a pretty good place to live.
* Well, it is South Carolina
* Convincing your staff to move here
I've lived in South Carolina for most of my life and I wouldn't say it's a bad place to live and actually right now I'd much rather be there than here in colorado where it's -20 with the wind chill
On a side note, you will have to get used to a few cultural differences: "ya'll damn yankies better no be comin' don her and talk 'bout no 'civil war', ain't been no 'civil war', ya'll must mean da 'war o' nothern agression'!"
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
What could be harder than proving you have a college degree, can speak English, and a job offer? That's most of the "points" you need right then and there!
Especially compared to the 6-7 years of hoop-jumping with INS -- an agency that seems dedicated to the propostion that terrorists can get in just fine on student visas, but technology professionals have to stick with the same job for the better part of a decade and beg for permission from a state employment agency (3-6 months), the federal department of labor (another month), then back to the INS to ask for permission to apply for a green card (between 3 months to 1 year), and then another year or two after permission's granted, to actually get the green card. Get laid off or company reorgs? Get on the next plane back home and start from scratch.
If you've got half a brain and a degree, getting into Canada to do high-tech work is trivial.
INS incompetency has made it clear that high-tech workers are neither wanted nor valued in the States.
For anyone interested in San Francisco's rent situation, you might find these two articles, by Thomas Sowell, to be interesting: The Housing Farce and The Housing Farce, Part II.
The Home Fair calculator is wrong. All it does is multiply your salary by a fixed number and then it claims that those salaraies are equivalent in the two cities.
Homefair does not take into account the fact that many of our costs these days are interstate or not subject to local price limitations. The number for the "cheaper" state thus does not take into account that while local goods might be cheaper, vacations are not cheaper, mail-order computers are no cheaper, etc. In other words, a million dollars worth of caviar in Austin is probably about the same as a million dollars worth of caviar in New York.
Also, people's spending habits and the mix of luxury vs. normal, local vs. imported vs. domestic goods changes radically as income scales up and down. No single multiple can ever really reflect the difference in how far salary will go for a wide salary range.
Those who are going to argue about health care systems would do themselves justice reading Canada's Burning, an expose on the media lies that are being fed to us all.
You may well find that what you thought you knew to be true, isn't.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The exodus from SF is the beginning of a larger trend. India graduates nearly 40,000 highly qualified engineers *every year*. China, probably four times that, and climbing. The Law of Lowest Wages, combined with increasing commodification of technology will drive many companies out of the US entirely within the next dozen years. Roughly 46% of our working population works directly or indirectly with technology. Think about what boardroon executives probably already considering as they make plans for future capital and physical investment. Capital is 'on the wire'. Domestic fealty just doesn't cut it for public corporations; not in a world where profit is king. There will still be strong technology innovation coming out of the U.S. for many years to come. However, much of the implementation of that innovation will not necessarily have to be performed by people here in the States. We're facing the very beginning of a huge social displacement problem. Look at the San Francisco phenomenon as a micro-trend that will soon snowball. Our domestic planners (an oxymoron?) had better start preparing for this and look for ways to either keep people fully employed, or actively interested in a slowed-down version of the 'good life', or we're looking for real trouble down the road.