Why Some Cities Get All the Good Jobs (chicagotribune.com)

New submitter Ericmesrr writes with a link to a Bloomberg story (as carried by the ChicagoTribune) about geographic trends in job creation in the U.S, from which he excerpts this quote from U.C Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti: "A handful of cities with the 'right' industries and a solid base of human capital keep attracting good employers and offering high wages, while those at the other extreme, cities with the 'wrong' industries and a limited human capital base, are stuck with dead-end jobs and low average wages. This divide I will call it the Great Divergence has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education. Cities with many college-educated workers started attracting even more, and cities with a less educated workforce started losing ground."

Comments

Technology Paradox

[monkeyxpress]

I find this trend quite strange as well. In the late 90s everyone was going on about how technology would allow us to work from anywhere so we could spread out around the country. Things like cramming into an urban area, and flying to conferences were going to become unnecessary.

Instead what I've observed is that the rise of 'thinking' jobs, which only require a desk, have made it more and more viable for people to live in concentrated urban centres. Contrast this with industrial jobs where you needed large amounts of land for a factory which naturally led to suburban developments. Similarly the rise of cheap air travel has raised the expectation that you'll just turn up at a conference, so I find I have to attend more now.

I think this trend will continue until driverless cars are ubiquitous. These will open up huge amounts of land around urban centres (it will be like adding tube lines everywhere), and will probably cause a significant decline in central city density as people are freed from existing rent/transport monopolies.

Re:Technology Paradox

[hibiki_r]

The thing is, unless a company is paying very differently depending on your location, they'd rather have you work where everyone else is, unless the company has no office whatsoever. Thinking jobs are remote sometimes, but they really are remote when there's scarcity, and that's not at the beginning of careers. And after you start your career somewhere, to work 'out there' you have to want to move.

I for one am working remote for a Bay area company, but that's because I have skills in demand, a lot of experience programming (15+ years), and it's far better for me to live in a place where a good house costs 200K than one where it'd be two million. It's an interesting situation: A lot of the very experienced people with big names are working remote, but you'd be hard pressed to find a remote employee in this place that isn't awesome.

Re:Technology Paradox

[DigiShaman]

No it wont. Politics. Every facet of American politics revolve around a battle between rural vs urban. It's all about the votes.

Re:Technology Paradox

[knightghost]

Remote does not offer the communication bandwidth that being on site does. An experienced person can get around this because a lot of context has already been built up and they often don't require as much chit chat. Newbies though? Another story.

Re:Technology Paradox

[hey!]

I'm pretty much on the same page as you; the idea that we'd all be contractors telecommuting from any old place ignored a lot of things about people and organizations, including the fact that people have a life outside of work that makes a big difference inside of work. It ignores things like job and investor networking, which of course can be done on social media and LinkedIn, but the fact that so many people are doing that only makes face time that much more of a competitive advantage. Do not underestimate the social power of lunch. Or (shudder) *golf*. Those things sure as hell beats posting on someone's wall as form of social connection.

But the "everyone will be a telecommuter thing" still might happen. The toughest thing in technology often isn't predicting what will happen, but when. It was pretty clear to many of us that tablets were the future, but Microsoft jumped the gun in 2001 with it's tablet PC initiative; you needed several things to make tablets work: batteries that could deliver sufficient energy without weight; power efficient processors with the performance to support new innovations in UI design with enough responsiveness to create a "direct manipulation" UX.

If the everyone-is-a-telecommuter scenario is in our future, it'll be because of something we're missing now that we have no idea we're missing.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

But I think you sort of contradicted yourself. Companies *do* pay very differently depending on where you work. My company has locations in texas, california, and more rural areas, and the starting pay is such that the rest of us never seem to catch up with cali

They pay according to the cost of living in each area. Those people in Cali make considerably more but they have to as their rent/mortgage, food, utilities, and everything else cost so much more than it does in Texas (or those rural areas especially.)

We had a guy stationed at a site in California, the company was paying for his car and apartment. He was trying to get a job directly with the client but found that once he had to pay for his own rent and utilities and lose the company car he would in effect be taking a large pay cut instead.

Re:Technology Paradox

[cyberspittle]

That is correct. My team in CA was laid off last year, but location in GA and Bangalore were kept. These latter 2 locations were new. While there were no new positions in CA, new positions were created in GA and Bangalore. This was a bit demoralizing as you knew what was going on, even when management/upper management did not reveal their plans. They did not want us to leave while we cross-trained new team members in the 2 locations. The important thing is to be aware of things around you and to stay ahead of the game.

Re:Technology Paradox

[tomhath]

The problem with "work from anywhere" is that only a small percentage of the workforce can be effective working remotely. Many (probably most) aren't able to communicate and stay focused when working remotely, so management insists on having everyone in the cubical farm together.

Having a skilled workforce and jobs in an urban center helps both the employer find staff and the employee find jobs. I don't see that going away anytime soon. Driverless cars won't have any impact, it really doesn't matter to most people if they hire a taxi/Uber cab or if the car is driverless. The projections of driverless cars that are both very cheap and always available are a pipe dream.

Re:Technology Paradox

[swb]

I find this trend quite strange as well. In the late 90s everyone was going on about how technology would allow us to work from anywhere so we could spread out around the country. Things like cramming into an urban area, and flying to conferences were going to become unnecessary.

This happened, except that instead of the jobs going to Kearney, Nebraska, they went to Bangalore, India, when management sorted out they could amplify the savings by hiring even cheaper workers in even cheaper locations.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead what I've observed is that the rise of 'thinking' jobs, which only require a desk, have made it more and more viable for people to live in concentrated urban centres. ...Similarly the rise of cheap air travel has raised the expectation that you'll just turn up at a conference, so I find I have to attend more now.

The trends you are observing have less to to with technology and more to do with the shift away from skills and towards "networking".

With the rise of corruption and financial misallocation of resources, the "slow and steady" strategy of gaining skills, building a portfolio of work, gaining reputation through merit, etc, has become secondary to essentially shallow dress-to-impress, buzzword bingo, winner take it all or nothing strategy. People need tiny desks in big cities because they don't get a lto of "work" done, but do need to work at being close to where they will get noticed. People attend conferences not to present their "work" (what little they may actually have) but to develop effectively corrupt connections with like minded people, in a effort to skim off the last of the cheap money flowing towards various sectors. People who do work, diligently, resourcefully, well, are simply left behind in such an enviornment and a feedback loop begins.

Status, networking, cheap credit. These are the hallmarks of the modern economy. When the money dries up and this system falls apart, entire industries will have been hollowed out of actually productive work practices and employees experienced with getting the job done instead of advancing a "career". We can only pray the collapse comes quickly rather than being dragged out by the desperate, yet politically networked, corrupt class that have infected everywhere else.

Re:Technology Paradox

[JackieBrown]

My company has locations in texas, california, and more rural areas, and the starting pay is such that the rest of us never seem to catch up with cali

As another poster mentioned, the difference is the cost of living. I can have a pretty good life in San Antonio making 50 +

Re:Technology Paradox

[drinkypoo]

I think this trend will continue until driverless cars are ubiquitous. These will open up huge amounts of land around urban centres (it will be like adding tube lines everywhere),

What? No, no it will not. Trains have massively higher densities than automobiles. They only work economically when you have lots of passengers, but when you do, they transport them far more efficiently than do cars.

and will probably cause a significant decline in central city density as people are freed from existing rent/transport monopolies.

It will be nice to let the car commute for you, but it's no substitute for not having a commute.

Re:Technology Paradox

[mark_reh]

You seem to be under the impression that people's votes have some influence on who rules over us. Money is power, and those who have it get what they want (more), and the rest of us are screwed. Elections are held periodically to perpetuate the illusion of democracy. No one's vote that is unaccompanied by a check is worth the paper it's marked on.

Re:Technology Paradox

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

This.

The job postings for a company will show you most of what you need to know. Are they hiring for Project X? Then they actually believe in Project X. Are they hiring in GA? Then that's where they plan to be. The job postings reveal the truth.

Re:Technology Paradox

[RabidReindeer]

The problem with "work from anywhere" is that only a small percentage of the workforce can be effective working remotely. Many (probably most) aren't able to communicate and stay focused when working remotely, so management insists on having everyone in the cubical farm together.

Statistics, please?

Re:Technology Paradox

[Sir_Eptishous]

You nailed it.

I remember when there was a "buzz" about how the internet would allow technology workers to work from anywhere, etc; And yes, I've known devs who have worked from their rural locations far from urban areas. In my experience however, the only time its ok for someone to work remotely is if they are in a country with a significantly reduced payscale than the US...

However, as you say, what has come to pass is the concentration of tech workers in a few urban hotspots.
Sad, but ultimately this too will pass.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Bengie]

Need better tools for telecommuting, primarily group level brainstorming.

10 minutes bouncing back and forth on an IM
5 minutes talking on the phone
Walk over to their cube and in 10 seconds fully understand the issue.

There is a lot of information that is lost when not in person.

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

Those people in Cali make considerably more but they have to as their rent/mortgage, food, utilities, and everything else cost so much more than it does in Texas (or those rural areas especially.)

I live and work in Silicon Valley, making $50,000+ a year. This is only possible by living a modest lifestyle that doesn't include a big house, brand new cars, and designer jeans. I gave up on the American Dream of having it all and learned how to be content with what I have. Some people consider me to be "poor" because I'm not spending money on the outward appearance of wealth.

Re:Technology Paradox

[RabidReindeer]

Well, int the 60s, everyone was going on about how the increased productivity automation brought us was going to have us all working 3-hour work days.

Productivity went up, the work week went up, the profits from increased productivity went into someone else's pockets.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Sir_Eptishous]

but Apple jumped the gun in 1993 with it's tablet

FTFY

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

I can have a pretty good life in San Antonio making 50 +

I make a good life in Silicon Valley on $50,000 per year. But some people consider me "poor" because I'm not competing with them for outward wealth. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that neighbors of a lottery jackpot winner are more likely to go bankrupt because they're going into debt to keep up outward appearances.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/02/16/why-you-might-go-bankrupt-if-your-next-door-neighbor-wins-the-lottery/

Re:Technology Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

And the urban progressives have won. Look at the successes in the war against industry. We sent jobs overseas to make rich city people richer, Now we're destroying the legal ability to have any industry, destroying jobs, and forcing big city insurance costs onto small towns in the country. But remember, it wasn't a genocidal reference when someone said "clinging to their guns and their religion"; it's just ignorance about there being different cultures that have different values.

Re:Technology Paradox

[redmid17]

Wouldn't surprise me if it were true, but I doubt someone who doesn't spell cubicle properly is going to or is willing to produce them

Re:Technology Paradox

[Grishnakh]

Similarly the rise of cheap air travel has raised the expectation that you'll just turn up at a conference, so I find I have to attend more now.

That's strange, I've seen the exact opposite. I used to get sent to a bunch of conferences right around 2000, before the dot-com implosion. After that bubble burst, I never got sent to another conference.

Air travel cost isn't the problem, it's the cost of the conference itself. I remember the tickets for those conferences costing $2500 each, back in 2000. Throw in airfare, hotel, and rental car and other expenses and you're looking at a bunch of money to send an engineer to one of these things to walk around and ogle at the booth babes. But those were the days when stocks were flying high, and big companies were happy to throw tons of money at stuff for no good reason. After the bubble burst, that all changed and they became miserly: they stopped spending on things that were seen as unnecessary, and trade shows and conferences were quickly axed.

I think maybe you just happen to be in a job that values conference attendance more, or it's more useful for your industry.

Your other points I completely agree with, except the driverless car thing; that's a bunch of crap, sorry. Driverless cars aren't going to improve things that much, except reducing the accident rate a lot. They're not going to get you any place any faster than before, in fact they'll be slower because they'll follow all the traffic rules, namely speed limits. It's not going to "free" people at all, unless you're in one of those few shitty cities where Uber doesn't operate. Uber has already broken the taxi cartels, so driverless cars are only going to make it so your Uber car has no driver, and there'll probably be a small handful of competitors (like "GM/Lyft"). I suppose it will make a big different with inner-city parking congestion though.

If you want a real revolution in transport, you need to build SkyTran PRT. That'll actually get you from point to point far faster than a driverless car, and it'll do so with far less energy.

Re:Technology Paradox

[OrangeTide]

It hard to finance even a fixer-upper on $50k/yr when the vacant lots are going for $250k+ in the area. I've seen a few dilapitated buildings going for more than $400k in santa clara county. That's not to say there aren't deals to be had, but it's going to be a challenge.

Renting isn't so bad, but $2k/month is going to be a pretty big chunk of your take home pay. (more than 50% of it). So you'll probably need a roommate or a partner that works.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Grishnakh]

That's why, as soon as you see signs of this, you update your resume and start looking for a new job pronto. The best time to get a new job is while you are still employed; employers don't want to hire someone who's unemployed for some odd reason. So don't wait around until your present employer cans you; jump off the sinking ship as soon as you see a small leak.

Re:Technology Paradox

[King_TJ]

Yeah.... What I've found is in many cases, a company feels compelled to justify the money it's shelling out on leasing its office space. EG. Where I work now, they have a pretty "prime" street address in a major city and I don't think they want to give that up, since it helps from a marketing standpoint. (People see the physical address and know we must at least be somewhat successful....)

But upper management seems to find it painful to let too many people work from home (even though 90% of the time you can do so just fine here). They just can't seem to reconcile paying that high a rent and seeing a bunch of empty offices and desks. So they try to apply a little bit of pressure to get people to come in, even if it's nothing more than holding a video-conference session where they make it clear they "prefer you attend in person, in the main meeting room" and offer a company paid lunch afterwards as a bribe. Or as often happens to me, working in computer and network support -- management demands in person assistance with something you can fix just as easily via remote control.

I used to think this was going to change over time as technology enabled companies to do away with some of the brick and mortar presence. But now I'm not so sure? I think there's a pervasive mindset that successful businesses own nice real-estate that customers or would-be customers can see as they drive by.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotally, I find working with people who work remotely to be extremely time consuming and frustrating. Its difficult to collaborate with them on anything, and they aren't exposed to any of the informal communication of the office so they don't understand what is going on or what needs to be prioritized.

It just isn't worth it.

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

Renting isn't so bad, but $2k/month is going to be a pretty big chunk of your take home pay. (more than 50% of it).

Rent and utilities is 40% of my monthly pay for a studio apartment. I'm socking away 20% for savings and retirement, and living off the rest. Some people consider me "poor" because I don't want a big house, fancy cars or designer jeans.

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

Silicon valley is not the center of the universe.

I was born and raised in Silicon Valley. This is my home. People are always surprised that there are natives still left in the area.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

a big house, fancy cars or designer jeans.

Just so you know, even very nice jeans cost less than a house or a car.

Re:Technology Paradox

[FunkSoulBrother]

I don't think cheap and available driverless cars are apipe dream, but I do think it will not be available in any Slashdotter's working lifetime so its a bit of a moot point unless we want to pontificate on life more than 50 years from now.

Re:Technology Paradox

[FunkSoulBrother]

Have you been to Kearney, Nebraska? I think I'd choose Bangalore on food alone.

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

Just so you know, even very nice jeans cost less than a house or a car.

I pay $20 for jeans and wear a pair for five years. My older brother pays $200 for designer jeans and buys a new pair every year. In a five year period, I would have spent $20 on jeans and he would have spent $1,000 on designer jeans.

Re:Technology Paradox

[wyHunter]

I'm sure Bangalore is a nice place, but so is Kearney, Nebraska - and YES I have been there, a number of times. (Kearney, not Bangalore).

Re:Technology Paradox

[fatboy]

Silicon valley is not the center of the universe.

I was born and raised in Silicon Valley. This is my home. People are always surprised that there are natives still left in the area.

I am one of the few native Nashvillians. People are always surprised there are natives still here as well. They always want to know where I am "from".

Sounds like you have achieved the American Dream to me, contentment.

Re:Technology Paradox

[ranton]

Just so you know, even very nice jeans cost less than a house or a car.

I pay $20 for jeans and wear a pair for five years. My older brother pays $200 for designer jeans and buys a new pair every year. In a five year period, I would have spent $20 on jeans and he would have spent $1,000 on designer jeans.

To be fair, the same criticism you are giving to spending $200 per year on jeans could be given to someone living in an area where a studio apartments costs $1300 per month. I lived one zip code away from a large group of affluent Chicago suburbs for $700 monthly rent in 2010, which would have allowed me to buy 2-3 designer jeans per month for the cost of rent in your area.

I'm not saying you are living too lavish of a lifestyle, but you seem to harbor some resentment for people "wasting" money on luxuries. All the while you are "wasting" money on high rents because what you desire the luxury of living in the same area you grew up in.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Mars Saxman]

That makes it sound like driverless cars will be a disaster. We will have a nightmare ahead of us already when it comes time to clean up after the last century of suburban sprawl - why on earth would we want to double down on disaster by encouraging even more of it?

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm not saying you are living too lavish of a lifestyle, but you seem to harbor some resentment for people "wasting" money on luxuries.

There are two sides in my family, both responding to the Great Depression and World War II. One side lives a modest lifestyle, including the proverbial three-foot ball of aluminum foil saved during the war. The other side lives an luxurious lifestyle, spending every paycheck and going into debt. My father and I are quite content to live modest lifestyles, and could care less about the what the world thinks. My mother and older brother were never happy with their luxurious lifestyles, as someone else always had it much better than them.

All the while you are "wasting" money on high rents because what you desire the luxury of living in the same area you grew up in.

The alternative is move out to Sacramento or the Central Valley for cheaper housing, but spend the difference of my "high rents" on gas and time to commute from the boonies. I rather enjoy the "luxury" of picking up the express bus from my front door step, read the Wall Street Journal, and be in Palo Alto within an hour.

Re:Technology Paradox

[micahraleigh]

What? Did you hear about the primary where Eric Cantor got voted out of office despite outspending his opponent by an order of magnitude?

And no one really hated that guy all that much either.

Sort of parallels the mistaken view people have that their unhappiness is related to their lack of access to resources and money ... which makes explaining how you have a higher chance of going bankrupt when you win the lottery hard to explain.

Re:Technology Paradox

[WrongMonkey]

You're just using cynicism as an excuse for laziness. The topic here is cities, so state and local votes certainly make a difference. Especially in states where ballot initiatives and voter referendums are an active part of the political process.

Re:Technology Paradox

[plopez]

I get a good 60 to 70 pct more than that and I live outside of Silly Valley. Which means a lower cost of living. I have a great life style which includes a short work commute.

Re:Technology Paradox

[plopez]

It turns out there is a large amount of slippage when people work remotely. Nothing is more efficient than face-to-face communications. Direct communications is a central tenant of the Agile processes, which why I do not think it ever really works with large far-flung projects.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Grishnakh]

If the rural folks didn't cling to religion so much, and insist on their "right" to discriminate against blacks and gays because it says so in the Bible, then maybe our elections would turn out differently.

Also, those rural people happily vote for Republican politicians who push "free trade" which results in their jobs going overseas. So they really only have themselves to blame.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Grishnakh]

He doesn't need to provide statistics to back that assertion, and it doesn't even need to be true.

The only thing that matters is that companies have been shying away from remote work (rather than adopting or allowing more of it). So even if their reasoning is faulty or the underlying premise (that too many people are unable to communicate and stay focused) is incorrect, it's irrelevant: perception is the only thing that matters, not reality.

Re:Technology Paradox

[lgw]

You seem to be under the impression that people's votes have some influence on who rules over us. Money is power, and those who have it get what they want (more), and the rest of us are screwed. Elections are held periodically to perpetuate the illusion of democracy. No one's vote that is unaccompanied by a check is worth the paper it's marked on.

Lets see what happens in this primary. If you ignore the primaries, you allow the wealthy to choose the candidates on both "sides", so of course you're screwed. But Bernie is doing well, and Trump is doing well (he may be rich himself, and his sanity is dubious, but he's not at all aligned with the current DC/donor establishment).

American democracy is all about the primaries.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Harvey Manfrenjenson]

I lived one zip code away from a large group of affluent Chicago suburbs for $700 monthly rent in 2010, which would have allowed me to buy 2-3 designer jeans per month for the cost of rent in your area

In Chicago, you can be living "one zip code away from an affluent neighborhood" and still be living in one of the worst f*cking ghettos in the US. (e.g. Austin, Woodlawn...) Rents may be cheap but it's hardly a bargain...

Re:Technology Paradox

[gymell]

Don't know about the job market or food scene there, but I've been to the area several times to view and photograph sandhill crane migration. I'd choose Kearney for the birdwatching alone... ;)

Re:Technology Paradox

[ranton]

I lived one zip code away from a large group of affluent Chicago suburbs for $700 monthly rent in 2010, which would have allowed me to buy 2-3 designer jeans per month for the cost of rent in your area

In Chicago, you can be living "one zip code away from an affluent neighborhood" and still be living in one of the worst f*cking ghettos in the US. (e.g. Austin, Woodlawn...) Rents may be cheap but it's hardly a bargain...

It was the suburbs not the city, where being one zip code away only means the schools suck, not that they are ghettos.

Re:Technology Paradox

[TheSync]

I make a good life in Silicon Valley on $50,000 per year.

How much do you pay for your kids' school?

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

People see the physical address and know we must at least be somewhat successful.

A law firm moved into a new office building with high visibility from the freeway in East Palo Alto (i.e., the ghetto of Silicon Valley). The people in East Palo Alto were proud of this development that could improve the city's reputation and fortunes. Until they discovered that the law firm listed Palo Alto (i.e., the rich city next door) on the building and in advertisements. Not sure if that ever gotten straighten out.

Re:Technology Paradox

[hey!]

I know this well because I developed for the Newton, and am familiar with a number of tablet-like solutions that go back even further.

The Newton was ahead of its time, but not that far ahead of its time; it was a text-centric device like a Palm Pilot -- no watching movies or playing MP3s. And for certain kinds of stuff (e.g. the kind of field data collection stuff I was working on) the Newton (with its AA batteries, low power consumption monochrome screen and PCMCIA card interfaces) was actually a pretty practical solution. It just fell far, far short of the "personal digital assistant" vision. Primarily it just didn't have the right form factor for something you would carry on your person all the time.

Re:Technology Paradox

[TheCastro1689]

That's what happens when you give up, you become content with what you have, you settle. If that's the new American Dream, I'm off to achieve something better.

Re:Technology Paradox

[hey!]

No, we know what we're missing (at least in 'Murica), but no one wants to make the Telcos deliver it: nationwide broadband that isn't a joke.

There are still some places in the US where 768K DSL is considered "high speed". You can't telework on that.

I agree that the broadband situation in America is ridiculous, but you don't really need high speed Internet to telecommute. You need to high speed to stream several different video feeds to different devices in your house. Or you need high speed to support an office full of workers -- but that's the scenario we're specifically NOT talking about. We're talking about one or two telecommuters doing office work in the middle of the boonies. To support a single telecommuter you can get by on 768K DSL for most jobs, although you might not be entirely happy with that for other reasons.

Or given the prices differences between a place like San Francisco and, say, the rural Midwest, you can easily take some of the $3000-$4000 you're saving in rent per month and put it into business class Internet services. If you actually had the opportunity to work either in an expensive metro area or telecommute from the cheap boonies you could make it work, if it were something you were really motivated to do. If you say, "gee all they got out there is telco DSL" and throw up your hands, you're not that motivated.

No, the reason we aren't all working from our cabins in the mountains is that it isn't really that attractive a thing to do, as much as we like it in theory.

Re:Technology Paradox

[fatboy]

Contentment is not settling. He wants to live within his means and he wants to live in Silicon Valley. He appears to be happy with that. Contentment.

Re:Technology Paradox

[RavenLrD20k]

What if I told you that in Middle Georgia you could be making $50-75k / year, have a fair sized apartment (1-2 bedroom w/ Kitchen & Living Room) for about $500-$800/month with a commute time of less than 10 minutes from your employer, or have a 3bath/br house to rent for about the same price if you're willing to spend 15-20 minutes on the road with a leisurely commute of 13 miles? Studios in Middle Georgia start at <$400 and go up based on area values (Note...this is not Atlanta. Atl income for the same position would be in the neighborhood of $120k and rents would be on the order of $2000-$3000 for the same size1-2 bedroom apt; not studio. Want a studio in Atl? Those are closer to the 1.5k range).

The downside (if you see it as one)...politics are a whole lot more on the conservative side than out in Silly Valley.

Re:Technology Paradox

[Medievalist]

Well, int the 60s, everyone was going on about how the increased productivity automation brought us was going to have us all working 3-hour work days.

Productivity went up, the work week went up, the profits from increased productivity went into someone else's pockets.

Yeah, but if we hadn't done that, it'd be SOCIALISM!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO BE VERY SCARED VERY VERY SCARED

(And if you aren't frightened enough to vote for Trump yet, let me just say TERRORISM!!! NINE_ELEVEN! NINE_ELEVEN! NINE_ELEVEN!!!)

Re:Technology Paradox

[wyattstorch516]

How do you live without designer jeans? Don't the cool kids at the mall make fun of your?

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

What if I told you that in [...]

I can get all that in Sacramento, except the for the job. Housing is cheap there because the jobs and the workers disappeared after the air force base shut down in 2001. While the local government is renovating the base as a future tech development, I haven't seen it take off.

The downside (if you see it as one)...politics are a whole lot more on the conservative side than out in Silly Valley.

If I want to get into lily white politics, I'll move to the Central Valley.

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

How do you live without designer jeans? Don't the cool kids at the mall make fun of your?

Simple. I never have $200 for designer jeans. As for the cool kids, so what?

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

If that's the new American Dream, I'm off to achieve something better.

The American Dream is to have it all no matter what the cost. I've chosen to ignore it by dealing with life on my own terms. Some people think I'm settling for less, other people think I'm poor. So what?

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

How much do you pay for your kids' school?

Public schools were free the last time I checked.

Re:Technology Paradox

[TheSync]

Public schools were free the last time I checked.

Oh yes, like Santa Clara High School where only 31% of the students are proficient in mathematics....

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

Oh yes, like Santa Clara High School where only 31% of the students are proficient in mathematics....

That's nothing. I was diagnosed as mentally retarded from an undiagnosed hearing lost, routinely blew out the annual evaluations on the genius side (those were "statistical flukes"), and got treated like a useful idiot for eight years. I skipped high school, enrolled at the community college, and got my associate degree in four years (two years for accelerated remedial classes and two years for regular coursework).

Re:Technology Paradox

[OrangeTide]

I can work in "Silly Valley" and have a lot of options if I want to switch employers. I also have the option to try a start-up but I can still fall back to another job if that doesn't work out. Of course such a strategy really only works for tech workers in particular tech hubs. But it does help explain why the rents are so high here.

Re:Technology Paradox

[sumdumass]

What jeans are you buying? I spend about the same but generally get less than a year. I'm not loyal to any specific brands, just whatever is on sale or in the $20 range.

Re:Technology Paradox

[ottothecow]

People consider you poor because it takes 40% of your income to pay for some tiny studio apartment.

I hate to break it to you...but where you live, you are poor. Nobody said you couldn't be happy and poor, but you're poor all the same.

There are all sorts of places where you wouldn't be poor on 50k, You don't even have to live in bumfuck nowhere...you wouldn't be poor in Nashville.

Re:Technology Paradox

[drinkypoo]

I agree that the broadband situation in America is ridiculous, but you don't really need high speed Internet to telecommute.

Not coincidentally, low-speed internet is also not reliable enough to use for telecommuting. Most of your typical high-speed connections have very good uptime. But if you have slow speeds, it's probably because you're at the end of the [DSL] line or you are using a crappy third-rate WISP like I am. I've had a week now of crap service. They are dropping my packets left and right. I couldn't get work done on this if I tried.

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

People consider you poor because it takes 40% of your income to pay for some tiny studio apartment.

My older brother must be rich. He and his wife make $100,000 per year. They own a three-bedroom home with an underwater mortgage, a car and two trucks, and a closet full of $200 designer jeans. About 50% of their income goes to the mortgage and paying back the loan for the down payment from the wife's retirement account. They can't retire because they can't refinance the mortgage. If my brother stops working and takes Social Security this year, they will have to file for bankruptcy.

Nobody said you couldn't be happy and poor, but you're poor all the same.

If I'm considered to be poor even though I'm putting 20% away in savings and retirement, I guess the minimum wage workers who ride the express bus — their company provide $140 bus pass for free as part of a county-wide transit program — are screwed.

Re:Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

I spend about the same but generally get less than a year.

Whatever Target has on sale. I where dress slacks at work and shorts on the weekend. So my jeans don't see that much in daily wear.

Re:Technology Paradox

[sumdumass]

That must be it. I give mine considerably more wear time and even get rough in them crawling under the electric cattle fence or working on machinery and crap.

I do think they lasted longer 20 years ago but it may just be selected memory.

Re:Technology Paradox

[RabidReindeer]

Waterboards for everyone!

Re: Technology Paradox

[__aaclcg7560]

Clearly your brother has made himself poor too.

I know many guys like my older brother working in Silicon Valley. They're always one paycheck away from going broke because they have to live the American Dream and keep up with the Joneses in the outward appearance of wealth.

Trendy is fickle, but...

[rmdingler]

The author's (Moretti) own most dramatic example of a few people in a key moment completely transforming a metropolis was when two local boys Paul and Bill) moved their startup from Albuquerque to Seattle in 1979. Today, the tech hub that is Seattle is well known, and Albuquerque is topping lists like this.

It's pretty straight forward. Places with established infrastructure in related industries tend to attract start ups and industry leaders alike.

Major industries rely on scores of subcontractors and ancillary manufacturers to do their thing. It's difficult to top the advantage of having everything you need nearby.

Re:Trendy is fickle, but...

[Big Hairy Ian]

This has been going on for centuries ask the steel workers of Sheffield (What's left of them), the tailors of Savel Row or the Glass workers of Venice. Strangely nowhere is synonymous with the quality of it's Lawyers. Funny that.

Re:Trendy is fickle, but...

[rmdingler]

Heh heh. I suppose culling the best lawyers would be an exercise not unlike voting in most elections nowadays.

Re:Trendy is fickle, but...

[mrchaotica]

Strangely nowhere is synonymous with the quality of it's Lawyers. Funny that.

Washington DC.

(New York City would be a candidate too, but it's got too many other things to be famous for.)

Re:Trendy is fickle, but...

[Big Hairy Ian]

Imagine a world without lawyers https://www.google.co.uk/url?s...

Re:Trendy is fickle, but...

[__aaclcg7560]

Places with established infrastructure in related industries tend to attract start ups and industry leaders alike.

The only reason that Microsoft got started in Albuquerque is that the company owner of the Altair computer insisted that Paul and Bill come from Harvard to work on Microsoft Basic under his supervision. The two local boys were from Seattle. When the contract was over, they went home and built out their company. Seattle didn't become a tech hub until after Microsoft became big enough to affect the local economy.

Kids

[BitZtream]

Awe, thats cute.

You've just discovered something thats been happening since civilization started.

Cities rise and fall based on their usefulness at the time, not your nostalgic feelings about them.

The universe does not play favorites and isn't a fanboy, it doesn't artificially prop up things that should cease to exist, like worthless cities.

Its not just American cities, its all cities, across the entire world.

Re: Kids

[jofas]

You beat me to it. Trains were supposed be the great equalizers of work opportunities and look how that turned out.

Re: Kids

[Anonymous Coward]

Trains were supposed be the great equalizers of work opportunities and look how that turned out.

In the US? Great. The west coast is of similar economic power to the east coast. Back in 1800 or so, California wasn't nearly as strong as it is today!

Re: Kids

[cyberspittle]

Trains have not evolved. Too much is wasted on high speed trains, like we see overseas in Japan and Europe, but what the US needs is high speed freight trains. We have too many people driving trucks across the country. Trucks should be more local ... local to the train hub end point. Big rigs also tear up the road, which is expensive to maintain. Hyperloop would also be good. Not sure if hyperloop is better for people or freight or both.

Re:Kids

[khallow]

Cities rise and fall based on their usefulness at the time, not your nostalgic feelings about them.

I bet Paris has profited considerably from nostalgic feelings over the last couple of centuries.

Re: Kids

[DriveDog]

I think there is too much focus on a few high-speed passenger trains, yes, at the expense of speeding up all passenger trains. But every little bit you speed up Northeast passenger service, you cut back on airline congestion. The bigger problems in the US are that, outside of a few areas like the Northeast, freights and passenger trains share tracks. Passenger trains are then delayed, delayed, and delayed. What we need are separate tracks for slow and fast trains almost everywhere. Oh, and speeding up all freights makes no sense. No, combine high value-to-volume and value-to-mass freight with relatively fast (120mph+) passenger service and leave the bulky (and often hazardous) stuff on slow freights trundling along at 45mph.

Re: Kids

[drinkypoo]

You beat me to it. Trains were supposed be the great equalizers of work opportunities and look how that turned out.

How that turned out is that auto companies bought up profitable public transportation systems and shut them down in order to increase demand for automobiles. They also did the same thing with some freight lines! Of course, they didn't interfere with the freight lines which fed the auto plants...

Re:Kids

[netsavior]

I bet Paris has profited considerably from nostalgic feelings over the last couple of centuries.

That is kind of hilarious. Paris has been a city/encampment since around 9800 BC. It was nostalgia before nostalgia was a thing.

Re: Kids

[NormalVisual]

The bigger problems in the US are that, outside of a few areas like the Northeast, freights and passenger trains share tracks. Passenger trains are then delayed, delayed, and delayed.

Exactly. Amtrak's schedule effectively is "whatever the freight railroad that owns the tracks decides it will be", because the freight carriers really could not care less if they delay an Amtrak train. It's not uncommon to have waits of several hours as the passenger train sits on a siding waiting for a freight to pass, or for whatever other reason the railroad decides.

Re:Kids

[DavidHumus]

Except that cities have higher productivity than non-urban areas and it seems mostly proportional to size and density: http://www.citylab.com/work/20... . Not to mention that many of us enjoy the quality of life found in cities compared to suburban or rural areas - YMMV.

Re:Kids

[ooloorie]

Cities rise and fall based on their usefulness at the time, not your nostalgic feelings about them.

It's not just their usefulness, but also their political power and ability to engage in rent seeking. That is, a large part of the wealth of cities is not due to their contributions to society and the economy, but their ability to impose costs on the rest of the country and create trade barriers and monopolies protecting their interests. That's also nothing new; Adam Smith already discusses these mechanisms in detail.

Re: Kids

[__aaclcg7560]

[...] but what the US needs is high speed freight trains

There's a box car shortage as many are near the end of their 50-year lifecycle and newer boxcars are so expensive that they're not economical for the railroads to put into service.

The number of boxcars in service in North America fell by 41% in the past decade to just under 125,000 last year as 101,600 cars were scrapped and only about 13,800 replacement were added. That downsizing accelerated a decadeslong shift by railroads to more specialized railcars and intermodal carriers that allow shipping containers to hop from trucks to trains.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/shortage-of-railroad-boxcars-has-shippers-fuming-2015-06-21

Re:Kids

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Tourism is a kind of usefulness, otherwise Disneyland would still be a Florida swamp.
Hell of a trick to move Anaheim from Cali to Florida. Disneyworld is located in Florida.

Re: Kids

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is doing much better in that regard than Europe: the US has by far the largest rail system in the world, both in absolute terms and relative to population and area. And the US rail system is used at nearly 100% capacity for freight.

European rail system are inefficiently utilized for passengers, that's why European highways are clogged with huge trucks hauling large loads long distance.

Re: Kids

[__aaclcg7560]

It's not uncommon to have waits of several hours as the passenger train sits on a siding waiting for a freight to pass, or for whatever other reason the railroad decides.

I once spent most of the day before Thanksgiving Day stuck on an Amtrak train to Sacramento. Repairs on the track initially caused the four-hour delay. When the repairs were done, the train couldn't move because the engineers and conductors have finished their shift for the day, and, under federal law, couldn't finish the 30 minute trip to Sacramento. It took three hours to get a new crew to drive out from Sacramento and find the access road to the train that was outside of Davis.

Re:Kids

[netsavior]

that's true I probably would have said it was a city/encampment instead of just saying city if I had read my post at all.

Re: Kids

[luis_a_espinal]

You beat me to it. Trains were supposed be the great equalizers of work opportunities and look how that turned out.

That's a US-specific problem. It worked well in Japan.

Re:Kids

[khallow]

But it hasn't had significant tourism for most of that period. I think the earliest mass tourism was when Paris was part of the European Grand Tour starting from about the mid-17th century.

Re: Kids

[beastofburdon]

The cars that can be carried on trucks and trains are probably the best idea in that market, especially since they can also be stacked just fine on cargo ships. You can take it directly from the ship to the train, then from the train to the truck for local delivery. You see trucks pulling trailers similar to this near most large ports, but I do not know if they also fit on trains, but if they don't it would be trivial to set that part up on the train.

Remote

[fluffernutter]

An even better question is why things seem to work so well working remotely from India, yet no one can work remotely from across the country.

Re:Remote

[frank_adrian314159]

Maybe it's non-Euclidan geometry?

No, the real issue is that no employer wants their employees remote - communication still just isn't that good. But if the board says outsource, you outsource. And you keep the few you can still see around you in an even tighter grip.

Re:Remote

[110010001000]

Remote working from India doesn't work well. The end result is a disaster in quality of the product. But it is a CHEAP disaster. MBA types like cheap (except for themselves).

Re:Remote

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

The execs see the remote workers still worth the 1/10 to 1/100 salary in India worth the remote. They don't think "remote workers" in the US, who still cost almost as much, worth it. If remote workers in the USA would work for the average India-based software engineer wage of around 11K USD then IBM would hire here in the US again LOL. All we have to do in the USA is be willing to work for $6-$7 an hour!

Re:Remote

[110010001000]

Large data pipe? You mean like a $50 month Internet connection?

Re:Remote

[Anonymous Coward]

An even better question is why things seem to work so well working remotely from India, yet no one can work remotely from across the country.

Because those people in India are cheaper. The unintended consequence of telecommuting has been that if your job can be done by someone a hundred miles away from the office then it can be done by someone a several thousand miles away as well, especially if they are cheaper employees in a country with low standards of living.

Although oftentimes I wonder just how cheap can these people possibly be, at the numbers I'm often quoted it does not make economic sense when management has us send work to a foreign office, where a few people take two weeks to do what one of us does in a few days, and we then have to spend a couple days fixing the half-assed work that we received back.

Re:Remote

[AHuxley]

That is really what the end game for "work remotely from across the country" is going to be for the factory owners. They still need humans for now and want the cheapest workers who can be replaced if they get expensive.
Its about low cost, union free, interchangeable workers until robotics can be used for more and more in any nation.
What needs to be kept in the USA? A few people with security clearances for the no bid contracts or US only paperwork, lawyers and public relations.
If a product needs to be made in the US for the gov or mil, knock-down kits seem to allow for very distant and cheap supply chains with lots of local paperwork and contractor "oversight".
A few select jobs still need to be done in the US, the rest can be given to workers or other nations for tax and wage reasons.
Another trick to induce "tech" sector hardship and then enjoy US tax cuts and fly in endless numbers of workers who have to do what they are told.
Finding a way to "work remotely from across the country" would block the workers flowing in and US jobs flowing out.
Its not a telco issue, its showing a need for low cost workers as the skill sets just dont exist in the US. The big brand looked "locally" and found it needed skills from other nations to grow.
Finding good, skilled US workers at any price is the last thing US brands want to do when they can shop for lower cost skills and tax systems globally.

Re:Remote

[cyberspittle]

Well said.

Re:Remote

[110010001000]

OK, $150 a month. We aren't talking huge expense here.

Re:Remote

[invid]

Remote working from India doesn't work well. The end result is a disaster in quality of the product. But it is a CHEAP disaster. MBA types like cheap (except for themselves).

I've had friends who sent software projects to India that were complete loses, years spent on software that turned out to be completely unusable. Since it was relatively cheap it didn't break their companies, but it would have been better if they had spent more locally and got working products.

Re:Remote

[Anonymous Coward]

Remote working from India doesn't work well. The end result is a disaster in quality of the product. But it is a CHEAP disaster. MBA types like cheap (except for themselves).

I've had friends who sent software projects to India that were complete loses, years spent on software that turned out to be completely unusable. Since it was relatively cheap it didn't break their companies, but it would have been better if they had spent more locally and got working products.

lol. You two are obviously ignorant tards. If you had an MBA, like me, you'd know why the cheaper option was the better option. I don't need a "working product" to get a big raise. I only need a good press release and numbers in the black on the day the press release comes out. As a wise man once said "Delivery has nothing to do with the delivery business. Image, people, image! Scope out this new ad." If you had an MBA, which you don't, you'd know that business isn't about selling things to consumers only to investors. Investors don't want products they want performance no matter how short term. Once the investment bucks come in scoop up a bunch for yourself and blame any losses on American workers. If the company goes under you're fine, because the laws of incorporation will prevent anyone going after your private assets, but you can still justify your huge salary by saying you take the most risk in leading the company.

I mean, get a job hippies!

Re:Remote

[fluffernutter]

So instead they try to hire people where you need $100K/year for a comfortable living, rather than hire where you need $50K/year, and complain how expensive people are.

Re:Remote

[RabidReindeer]

No, people might actually do that.

In India, $5/hr is a decent salary for a software engineer.

Re:Remote

[NormalVisual]

If you had an MBA, like me, you'd know why the cheaper option was the better option. I don't need a "working product" to get a big raise. I only need a good press release and numbers in the black on the day the press release comes out. As a wise man once said "Delivery has nothing to do with the delivery business. Image, people, image! Scope out this new ad."

This actually is the way things work at a lot of places. I remember a couple of years ago when I was talking with one of the front-office folks about a new release, and she was so excited about it and couldn't figure out why those of us in Development weren't equally excited. I explained to her that while a new release might be a big deal to the management and marketing droids, from our perspective it wasn't anything more than a specific changeset in the VCS that happened to get through QA without any reported issues, and that our work continued right on with the next scheduled feature set without any acknowledgement or fanfare other than dropping a new maintenance branch for the release set. People who sell the product have a much different view of things than those that actually create it.

Re:Remote

[110010001000]

100% correct. And so many of the end results don't really need to work anyway, because they are for government subcontracts or other projects that actually don't have to work, except for billing hours.

Re:Remote

[Tablizer]

Indeed. Co's that rely heavily on outsourced labor are generally dysfunctional in my experience. But they survive by being cheap. If you are constantly reworking your own foul-ups, then you might as well rework the foul-ups cheaply.

Think of Comcast: they don't care about quality and don't seem to mind sucking (being an oligopoly with thin competition). But if they can suck cheap enough, they make a profit.

It's kind of comparable to throw-away consumerism: you don't repair anything, you just toss it out and buy a new one because the cost of buying a new one is on par with repair. But it feels quite wasteful. You know something is out of balance, but live with it because you are powerless to change it.

Re:Remote

[Grishnakh]

You must live in some kind of shithole.

I live in a tiny village (not even an incorporated town, the USPS says my "city" is actually the county seat, a small town over 10 miles away), and the nearest metro area is about 1 hour away. There's a super Walmart, a Food Lion, some gas stations, two auto-parts stores, and a handful of crappy fast-food restaurants here and that's about it. I pay about $50/month for cable internet with Metrocast, probably 20MB/sec. Works great too.

If you can only get 1.5DSL for $50/month, when I can get great cable internet service here in this backwards little dump, then there's something really wrong with your location.

Re:Remote

[ceoyoyo]

The real reason is that no employer wants their employees remote: managers just like to feel that there are real people under them, not e-mail addresses.

Re:Remote

[228e2]

Oh wow . . . I've never seen going rates for an software engineer in India (not sarcasm, i am genuinely shocked).

Seeing it in black and white really helps paint the picture.

Tendencies can be broken

[info6568]

You have the "factory", as the huge ones in China, where a total population lives around their working place. So big level doesn't exist in any other place.

Here, in Costa Rica, we have the "artificial" tendency where some industrial areas are being devoted more and more to the services instead of the direct construction of physical goods. And as the people has terrible problems to arrive to the office because an almost collapsed infrastructure, some decide to move to neighborhoods located around these industrial zones (in enclosed environments with similar houses, a pool and some social infrastructure).

However, the living environment is better far from those zones, with better access to water, clean air and nature, and a healthier place for children to grow. And for "services", that are replacing the other richness production sources, to have a remote job using the Internet is making a very important impact in the living distribution of the people breaking that "some cities" tendency. Then, better communication produces better virtual relationships and a ticket for you to live wherever it is better for you.

Local resources

[nycsubway]

Most American cities were established based on a local resource: mining, hydro-power, farming, railroad junctions, or a harbor. So many northeast cities declined when the manufacturing tied to those resources moved on. The same thing with the midwest steel towns, and the further midwest railroad towns. Look at some of the boomtowns of the last 30 years. What local resources do most cities in Texas have, or Las Vegas, or Silicon Valley? They basically have nice climates, and the ability to quickly support a new population of people.

The American economy is much less based on manufacturing now, so the jobs can go anywhere. Even a large manufacturer no longer needs 5000 people working in one valley because the river provided the power, the mines provided the ore, and the railroad provided the transportation. They can move that factory to New Mexico because trucks and rail can bring it all in and out. The tech companies can go absolutely anywhere. The only resource they are tied to is the educated workforce, which I agree with the article is a self-manifesting destiny. Success brings more success, and the opposite happens at less fortunate cities.

Re:Local resources

[Grishnakh]

What local resources do most cities in Texas have, or Las Vegas, or Silicon Valley? They basically have nice climates, and the ability to quickly support a new population of people.

Wrong. You've obviously never spent a summer in Las Vegas (or Phoenix, which has basically the same climate). 120F is not a "nice climate".

The only thing Las Vegas has going for it is gambling: before the Indian reservations got involved in gambling, Vegas was the nearest place people from Los Angeles could go to go gambling. So everything about Vegas now is based on that past inertia, nothing more. The city's economy is entirely based on gambling, both from the casinos, and the various industries which support them (like all the companies that build gaming machines).

Most cities are like this: they started out somehow, by an accident of history or presence of resources, and gained a lot of inertia from that over time. Silicon Valley survives because it has so many skilled people there.

Outsource management to AI

[cyberspittle]

Eventually, people will outsmart themselves. This will likely affect management roles first, as management is currently based on employee metrics. With current technology, people working remote, working flexible hours, etc. Workers are less likely to interact with management, so management has had to rely on metrics to judge employee productivity. Hence AI will likely replace managers first. This would correlate to robots replacing physical work done by people. Soon, people will be primarily working where robots and AI are ineffective.

Re:Outsource management to AI

[110010001000]

Soon? When is this "AI" going to come? So far we haven't seen anything close to AI, even though we have been working on it for decades.

Re:Outsource management to AI

[Joe_Dragon]

so then I just need to login and space out at my desk and be ranked as a good worker and not have to deal with the 6 bosses.

Re:Outsource management to AI

[CMU_Ken]

Enjoy. https://www.newscientist.com/a...

Re:Outsource management to AI

[Nidi62]

Eventually, people will outsmart themselves. This will likely affect management roles first, as management is currently based on employee metrics. With current technology, people working remote, working flexible hours, etc. Workers are less likely to interact with management, so management has had to rely on metrics to judge employee productivity. Hence AI will likely replace managers first.

Only middle management, if at all. Low level management will still be needed to interface with employees and basic customer (internal or external) contact. Middle management would be replaced by the AI which sends the reporting and metrics straight to the upper management, who will of course have their own AI to interpret these metrics for them so they can spend more time on "business" golf outings and "working lunches".

Re:Outsource management to AI

[PPH]

With current technology, people working remote, working flexible hours, etc. Workers are less likely to interact with management,

So how does management know that they are real workers? Perhaps they are a few instances of code writing AI hosted on some cloud service. Each with its own phony name and social security number, cranking out code and collecting a salary.

Re:Outsource management to AI

[__aaclcg7560]

So how does management know that they are real workers?

Some idiot got caught working from home for a half-dozen companies and outsourcing his work Chinese workers. One company became suspicious when they noticed in the log files that he was logging in from China while browsing the Internet from his cubicle when he came into work.

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/01/16/verizon-finds-developer-outsourced-his-work-to-china-so-he-could-surf-reddit-and-watch-cat-videos/

Re:Outsource management to AI

[PPH]

This is why you set up a VPN server at your home for your Chinese subcontractors to work through.

Re:Outsource management to AI

[cyberspittle]

I can see that. It will need to be at some level first. The good thing is how much money companies will save when they outsource management to an AI. Here is my favorite AI: The Jolly Roger Telephone Co

Re:Let me guess

[GLMDesigns]

You mean like urban centers? I live in Bklyn. There are a fair amount of minorities here. /sarc

Being around like people.

[Anonymous Coward]

I will try boil it all down into a Slashdot post ....

We are social animals. And regardless of how independent one thinks we are, we pick up on a lot by being physically around people. The web/Internet is great for research but social media - like Slashdot - is not substitute to be able to hang out at a coffee shop or hackers meeting and BS - more than once a week or so.

Sure I have meetups about 20 miles away from me that meet once a month. But it's no substitute for a dynamic and engaged informal group that is on constant contact.

Here's another example of the difference. Where I live, folks business ideas are pretty much retail or landscaping. When someone suggests starting a business here it's, "there are store front openings in the strip mall down the street. Or have you thought of being a contractor? Website! That's what you need!" Everyone with a pickup truck and a lawnmower seems to be a landscaper around here.

Mention a business idea of going into space, and folks look at you like there's something really wrong with you - even with Musk being in the news.

I don't know how else to put it. When I go back out to the Bay area to visit family and come back, I feel like I stepped back into some backwater. I'd move back but housing is just so obscene and since I was never part of the tech community out there (moved out before college), I can't seem to break into the tech crowd out there - I'm also 50, so there's that.

Re:Being around like people.

[wyHunter]

Funny, I live very remote and work from home 100% of the time. Yet I'm on phone, IM, online conferences with coworkers constantly. I don't feel the slightest bit out of touch.

Re:Being around like people.

[luis_a_espinal]

I will try boil it all down into a Slashdot post ....

We are social animals. And regardless of how independent one thinks we are, we pick up on a lot by being physically around people. The web/Internet is great for research but social media - like Slashdot - is not substitute to be able to hang out at a coffee shop or hackers meeting and BS - more than once a week or so.

Sure I have meetups about 20 miles away from me that meet once a month. But it's no substitute for a dynamic and engaged informal group that is on constant contact.

Here's another example of the difference. Where I live, folks business ideas are pretty much retail or landscaping. When someone suggests starting a business here it's, "there are store front openings in the strip mall down the street. Or have you thought of being a contractor? Website! That's what you need!" Everyone with a pickup truck and a lawnmower seems to be a landscaper around here.

Mention a business idea of going into space, and folks look at you like there's something really wrong with you - even with Musk being in the news.

I don't know how else to put it. When I go back out to the Bay area to visit family and come back, I feel like I stepped back into some backwater. I'd move back but housing is just so obscene and since I was never part of the tech community out there (moved out before college), I can't seem to break into the tech crowd out there - I'm also 50, so there's that.

I'm on the same boat as you (clocking 46 with two little kids). South Florida is a tech backwater, and to break out into the tech scene in the valley at this stage in life is near impossible. It is one of my life regrets that I never left to where the action was when I was young.

Here, the notion of a business is pretty much retail, services, or strip clubs. Anything remotely tech is unknown. Hell, we had these "e-merge" conferences about how to bootstrap the "innovation" sector, and all they had were VPs and rappers for speakers. Quite sad actually.

With that said, there are other places other than SV where there is tech action. Seattle is one of them. Amazon regularly recruits across the country (including South Florida). Denver and Dallas are other areas to consider.

cities don't hate people

[known_coward_69]

start ups need people of different backgrounds to work together. in a lot of places people hate anyone of a different color, name, nationality, who they have sex with, etc. only a small number of people are "normal". so all the mutants left to the cities to make money

Re:cities don't hate people

[liquid_schwartz]

start ups need people of different backgrounds to work together. in a lot of places people hate anyone of a different color, name, nationality, who they have sex with, etc. only a small number of people are "normal". so all the mutants left to the cities to make money

Did you start your day with diversity training ;-) I'd love to see the citations behind your reasoning

Re:cities don't hate people

[wyHunter]

What? I live in the middle of the bible belt and I don't see this. Of course, I live in an area of the country where multi ethnic people, mostly men, came for decades prior to the railroads arriving. So maybe that's it. And what is your point to make?

Re:You can partly thank NAFTA for this

[N1AK]

Given that the colonisation of America and much of its rise came from doing exactly the same thing to the old world it seems more than a little hypocritical to complain about it; even if it was true that this process of globalisation was actually doing more harm than good.

Underestimate Value of Skill Concentration

[Koreantoast]

I think you greatly underestimate the value of creating large pools of talent in a single location. It is true that an individual can succeed on his own, working virtually in support of a company or himself. However, when you live in a community of similar talent, there's a sharpening effect - people coming together, sharing ideas, supporting one another, and ultimately, creating new businesses together. It's not impossible for this to happen virtually, but it is much easier when people are close to one another, able to do this informally whether over coffee, dinner, drink or just hanging out - essentially living life together. Proximity allows for much more rapid and deeper networking so that when those new ideas emerge, it's much easier to find and recruit the talent you need. Finally, when you have concentrated pools like this, you begin to develop secondary infrastructure that makes doing business in that area all that much more attractive - venture capital all the way down to better coffee.

I get you on the whole driverless car and hyperloop thing, but people really are very localized, and unless you can make both so fast that the thought of going to another city for drinks is no different a time and energy commitment than going to the bar a couple blocks away, it's not going to really work.

Re:Underestimate Value of Skill Concentration

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not impossible for this to happen virtually, but it is much easier when people are close to one another, able to do this informally whether over coffee, dinner, drink or just hanging out - essentially living life together. Proximity allows for much more rapid and deeper networking so that when those new ideas emerge,

The foundation fo the digital age, the software and protocols and toolsets which we daily rely on, were built by massively distributed groups of programmers who communicated via usenet, email, irc, and commit messages. How many linux kernel programmers have even met more than 4 others IRL? How many need to? The cafe-late brigade might be able to make apps and slower web pages, but when it comes to truly revolutionary software, text based communication and quiet contemplation are the way to go.

Re:US states

[mrchaotica]

... cities with a less educated workforce started losing ground."

Alabama rates 45th in education outcomes (2014) and is 5th in welfare dependence (2011).

California rates 42nd in education outcomes (2015) and is 1st in welfare dependence (2011).

What part of the word "cities" do you not understand? The correct comparison would be Silicon Valley vs. Huntsville (i.e., good city to good city) or Fresno* to Birmingham* (bad city to bad city).

(* I'm guessing; I'm not familiar enough with either California or Alabama to know which parts suck the most.)

Job diversity?

[RogueWarrior65]

So, should some businesses be forced to move to other cities to even things out?

Cost of living is a real factor

[OrangeTide]

Median rent for a 1 bedroom in silicon valley is $2200/mo. (and literally half are paying more than that)
Rents in SF are have moved to around $3800/mo.

The people who make out like bandits are the folks who already have a home in the area and are paying a relatively small mortgage payment, not counting the principal.

Re:Cost of living is a real factor

[edmudama]

don't forget prop 13 and your unsustainably low property taxes

i'm guessing about half the homeowners in california cannot afford to move within the same county

Re:Cost of living is a real factor

[lgw]

Median rent for a 1 bedroom in silicon valley is $2200/mo

Depends on what commute you want - that sounds quite high, unless you're close to SF, or in one of the fancy neighborhoods. A few years back I had a 2-bedroom with garage for ~$1800/month in Fremont, which isn't a terrible commute to much of Silly Valley. There were reasonable 2-bedrooms near work for ~$2300 (unfashionable parts of town, no doubt, not that I cared).

SF is nuts, but I've never understood why anyone would want to live there.

Re:Cost of living is a real factor

[__aaclcg7560]

Depends on what commute you want - that sounds quite high, unless you're close to SF, or in one of the fancy neighborhoods.

Luxury apartments are quite popular in Silicon Valley. My apartment complex was built in the late 1960's and looked like a 1960's housing project when I moved in ten years ago. The original owner put the complex up for sale eight years ago. Since then we had four corporate owners trying to turn the complex into "luxury" apartments. This often meant a coat paint on the buildings and new landscaping. The current corporate owner is renovating the apartments to justify the higher rents.

SF is nuts, but I've never understood why anyone would want to live there.

I'm told that the clubbing scene for the young and the restless hipsters is much better in San Francisco.

Re:Cost of living is a real factor

[OrangeTide]

A about 4 years ago I had a 1bd place in San Jose for $1100, and it was a decent little place with a nice pool and convenient access to 280, 17 and Diridon station. But if you check the most recent rates in the South Bay, they have all gone way up. $2200/mo was what I looked up for median of a 1 bedroom in SJ (as of Dec2015). It gets worse for Santa Clara and Sunnyvale and easier for Milpitas and Fremont, as you move closer to the East Bay.

Young adults want to live in SF as it has the urban life. Entertainment, parties, and like minded peers. That's the draw of the City. For those of us that mainly go home after work or do outdoor activities like hiking on the weekends, there isn't much that SF has to offer.

Re:US states

[Willuz]

Huntsville is actually a perfect example of why this trend is independent of education level and has more to do with specialization. Here's an article about why Curse gaming moved a large portion of it's workforce from Huntsville to Irvine, CA.

http://www.al.com/business/ind...

Curse wanted to be closer to their customers and have access to more employment candidates. Huntsville is a great place for government related technology but there are numerous places in CA that are better for consumer technology. Putting more money into education doesn't fix this, it's just the nature of specialized industries.

Coolness is a factor.

[formfeed]

In the past it was access to waterways, trade routes, location relative to other important places, etc. While these fixed factors are still a part of what makes and brakes a city, the tech factor is variable and can be artificially increased.

How "cool" a city is, livability, determines whether it can keep recent grads even if some other place offers a slightly higher salary.

Counter Intuative - Raise Taxes To Grow Locally

[MountainLogic]

If you want to grow the economy in your town simply raise taxes and improve services, especially schools. Better schools, roads, concert halls, etc attracts those who are willing/able to pay more for those amenities. These tend to be those who can drive an economy due to higher incomes. This is not new: kids have been leaving the farm for opportunities/higher wages in the city for centuries. Now the economy is a broad thing and how that effects individuals is very uneven. If you have less competitive skills, i.e., education, you will likely be left behind and the rising cost of living will force you out. We definitely do need to educate everyone so that they can make a respectable living. We also need to compensate equitably those who do important work such as teachers so that they can afford to live in the communities that employ them. If you want to tank your local economy just cut taxes/services and all those who are wiling/able to make higher incomes will flee the area for someplace nice. If you cut taxes, sure you may get a few bottom feeder call centers or manufactures move in for a few years until they leave the country, but you are in a race to bankruptcy. Look at Wisconsin and Michigan that are very low services states while California and Washington are higher services states. Where would you make a long term investment in real-estate: Flint/Milwaukie or San Jose/Seattle?

Re:Counter Intuative - Raise Taxes To Grow Locally

[wyHunter]

Yet Michigan is a high tax state.

Unenforceable Non-competition in California

[hashish16]

Why does California have all the tech job? It is because non-compete clause are difficult to impose which allows talented individuals to roam around the industry. NAFTA took away the manufacturing jobs, but the high tech jobs are all still here, and they are concentrated in California mainly because of one piece of legislation: Edwards v. Arthur Andersen.

Re:You can partly thank NAFTA for this

[Nidi62]

The level at which minimum wage would need to be set to allow people to enjoy a life outside of poverty (I would say $25/hr)

I was living quite comfortably on half that. In fact, I now make just over that and am living a decidedly middle class life while still living within my means and saving money. You don't need $50k a year to enjoy life outside of poverty. In fact it can be done in many places for under $30k. You just have to be smart and not take out a $300+ lease on a new car, insist on buying a 2500 sq ft house, or live in a 2 bedroom apartment at $1300 a month rent.

Re:US states

[__aaclcg7560]

Detroit had the 'right' industries until Asia started making steel better and cheaper than the USA.

The reason why Henry Ford set up shop in Detroit was because land was cheaper as it was rocky and unsuitable for farming than other parts of the East Coast and Midwest. If the price of steel was a major factor, the Big Three should have built smaller cars with less steel. But that wasn't the issue. Like the rest of America, they sat on their fat asses and built bigger cars.

Network Effect (Re:Technology Paradox)

[Tablizer]

I believe it's mostly caused by the fact that any job that is remote-able is also off-shore-able. What remains are jobs that involve lots of collaboration, where hand and facial gestures make a competitive difference.

Being in the "right" city also means you can poach needed talent from competitors. It's the network effect: You need enough talent to be the "right" city, but the talent only goes to the right city, creating a catch-22 that makes it hard for other cities to catch up.

But for the most part, "raw" production will increasingly come from machines and 3rd-world labor. I see more openings for administrative and process coordinators than for those who do "heads-down" creation of product or code. You need domain experience, people/communication skills, and a memory for lots of details flying in from different directions. The problem is that not everybody is cut out for that.

really, this is a question?

[recharged95]

Why Some Cities Get All the Good Jobs

Follow the money...

(then.... follow the weather)

Mandatory College Education

[dfn5]

This divide — I will call it the Great Divergence — has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education.

Mandatory high school is great, but is not enough. College should be mandatory.

Re:Mandatory College Education

[Anonymous Coward]

This divide — I will call it the Great Divergence — has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education.

Mandatory high school is great, but is not enough. College should be mandatory.

High school isn't mandatory. It is effectively required for many jobs, but not mandatory.

Frog-marching people through "education" isn't a solution. It is actually part of the problem. It used to be that only people who were motivated by a desire to be educated completed college. It is no surprise that such people went on to be successful.

The response has been to interpret a college degree as the cause of success. Thus, people who are motivated by the desire to make money go to college, regardless of their desire to be educated. This itself has perverted the market for education by raising the cost of pursuing the "investment" in future earning power. It has also crowded the education system with incurious people merely interested in credentials and job training.

Re:Mandatory College Education

[Anonymous Coward]

This divide — I will call it the Great Divergence — has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education.

Mandatory high school is great, but is not enough. College should be mandatory.

I'm in favor of people broadening their horizons, but, really, does a garbage collector, I mean, "sanitation engineer," need a college degree? Does the lawn care guy need a college degree? Does the pornstar need a college degree? No. All it serves to do is inflate the importance (and cost) of attending college.

Re:Mandatory College Education

[ceoyoyo]

Perhaps if those people had college degrees Trump wouldn't be as likely to become your next president?

Does a janitor need a college degree for his work? Probably not. Would a college degree improve his life and his functioning as a member of a modern democracy? Probably.

Garbage

[whitroth]

And what about the politics of buying legislators? Primo example: Boeing moving its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, and based on media reports, it was pretty openly about getting tax breaks from the city council.

And how about the companies that move to break their unions? Hell, the steel plant my father worked at in the fifties ran away to the South for just that reason, along with cheaper labor.

                  mark

How much of it is local politics?

[dyslexicbunny]

It's cheap as hell to live in Mississippi and other parts of the Southeast. What's stopping any company from setting up shop there? You'd think that you could lure a number of folks there with solid salaries compared to the cost of living and compared to what you're paying in San Fran, New York, and Boston. I guess the question is what's stopping companies from wanting to do it. Is it cause there's nothing there to keep employees entertained? Socially conservative politics turns off top talent? Poor schools comparatively? Passively accepted racism? Strong religious prevalence? Poor infrastructure?

Re:How much of it is local politics?

[TheSync]

My industry is 90% based in Los Angeles and New York. If I moved to a city in Mississippi, that would be fine for now, but if I lost that job I'd need to relocate, along with those costs.

Thus those cities never get a critical mass of jobs in my industry.

Poor schools are not the problem. Los Angeles and most of the Bay Area have horrible public schools in general. People either cherry pick the few quality independent school districts in expensive areas of town (like Beverly Hills) or send their kids to private schools.

Most important issue: Development limitations

[TheSync]

The best line of the article is:

"If that's true, then one of the most important public-policy challenges is figuring out how to enable more people to move to where the good jobs are. Lack of affordable housing in already crowded boomtowns is a problem. Moretti co-wrote a paper last year contending that reducing regulatory constraints on housing construction in San Jose, San Francisco and New York could increase U.S. gross domestic product by 9.5 percent."

Major cities should have no limits to density of development. They should have brand new 60 story apartment buildings with a bit of green space between them. Instead, SF is full of three story buildings built between 1930 and 1950, most of which will get flattened when the next big quake comes.

Data?

[Tony Isaac]

It would have been nice to see some data or graphs, or better yet, a map, showing this trend. What was offered were anecdotes. San Francisco may attract a lot of tech talent, but is $150K in SF really a middle-class salary? Houston may not attract such large numbers of tech workers, but you can actually live on $70K.

Cities always grow / shrink based on the desires o

[nachtelfjeiu]

One era it's proximity to fresh water and food. Then it's proximity to the sea and roads. Now it's a highly educated demographic that drives the growing and shrinking of cities. Maybe in 30 years few jobs are location dependant and it's fresh air and proximity to beautiful nature that drives a city's growth.

work environment

[Lead Butthead]

"A lot of information can be had from things you heard over the cube walls."