Tech Workers Think Silicon Valley and Startups Are Losing Their Luster (qz.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: The job site Indeed.com found Silicon Valley's hold on tech workers is slipping as opportunities, and the cost of living, changes the equation for living and working in one of the priciest places in the country. "There is more opportunity for tech professionals in more places than ever before," wrote Terence Chiu, vice president of Indeed Prime by email, citing cities such as Austin, Boston, Seattle, and New York City. "Obviously the San Francisco Bay remains the largest tech hub [but] what has made it so attractive has also made it expensive." Indeed's most recent survey of professional tech workers found more than 66% of tech workers say living and working in Silicon Valley is either "not that important" or "not at all important" for a career in technology. Just 12% consider it "very important." Opinions were split on generational lines. About half of millennial tech workers say it's important (26.5%) or very important (19%), but the number declined to 10.2% among the Boomer generation. "Seasoned talent is often searching for opportunity elsewhere," stated the report. New employees may see the high cost of living as an acceptable tradeoff for building up a reputation and experience in the Bay Area, but that seems to fade over time.Recently, Google co-founder Sergey Brin advised people to not come to Silicon Valley to start a business for the very same reasons.

Comments

Cost of Living Tradeoffs

[Fire_Wraith]

When you're fresh out of college, cost of living really isn't on your mind, or at least it wasn't for me. I wanted to live in the area where I knew there were all the things I wanted, from food to entertainment to job opportunities. Fast forward a bit, and I realized that the area I was in was ridiculously expensive for no good reason, had insane traffic that would never get better, and that I could get 90-95% of the things I wanted in a far, far cheaper area, cutting my housing costs all but in half.

It should be no surprise that the older people get, the less they're willing to put up with the kind of things you have to suffer through in the SF Bay area. Living 4 to an apartment is fine in your early 20s, but when you get older, you want a place of your own, nevermind the space to have a family.

Re:Cost of Living Tradeoffs

[drinkypoo]

Thing is, these companies don't want to hire anyone over thirty anyway. So really, it makes sense for them to stay in expensive places that adults want to move away from.

Re:Cost of Living Tradeoffs

[Drethon]

Thing is, these companies don't want to hire anyone over thirty anyway. So really, it makes sense for them to stay in expensive places that adults want to move away from.

Probably explains why so many startups struggle to profit. Their workers don't have the experience to tell the non-technical entrepreneur they are an idiot.

Re:Cost of Living Tradeoffs

[TheGratefulNet]

no one listens to 'workers'. the execs are full of ego and can do no wrong.

what they all have gotton used to: hiring a bunch of chair-warmers who are almost universally from south east asia, h1b mostly, and all are young. the exact formula for 'dont make waves, dont challenge the boss'.

the bosses are not used to hearing anyone voice opinions! we have the worst engineering now, walking the hallways of cisco, intel, you name it. they hire 'to a price' and you get monkeys if you pay peanuts.

they go out of their way to hire 'diversity' but that means NOT hiring the real minority, the US-born person who is over 35 and HAS the experience.

silicon valley is a sweatshop, becoming more like what we had 100 years ago when the US finally got fed up and 'did the union thing'. that changed history. things got better for a while.

now, they're back to being company-owned - the world, that is. people don't matter. companies do. and you just better do what you are told. there are 1000 more indians waiting to take your job, here or elsewhere, if you dare say 'no' to a boss.

similarly, raise issues of safety or product design and you won't be continuing there much longer (personal experience on that one).

fuck sillicon valley. it stopped being a place of innovation when it became a place to concentrate chair-sitters from across the world. quantity is all that matters. do we have 'body count'? did we save a lot on it? then we're good (that's how they think).

if you are young, sure, come here. but you won't be able to stay long-term. just be aware of that. and be aware of the fact that companies laugh behind your back when you are gullible enough to believe this 'loyalty' shit they want you to swallow. don't believe it, though. eventually YOU will be replace by someone even cheaper. my years are numbered, but then again, so are yours.

no one is safe in the bay area, job-wise. it stinks here.

love the weather and the culture (well, the old culture, that some people still remember). but the days of the 'hp garage' is long gone. now, its stupid social bullshit, twits and disgracebook lead the pack. ie, no product at all, just hot air and advertising.

Re:Cost of Living Tradeoffs

[King_TJ]

Yep! I know this might come across as a "slam" against younger workers -- but I agree without meaning it that way.

Younger I.T. workers bring a lot of things to the table, but a rich experience working with older technologies is not typically one of them. I see a lot of "re-inventing the wheel" going on with new web-based services many startups keep trying to launch. Sometimes they're a success, but a lot of older people in I.T. look at the stuff and just shake our heads. We've seen other ways the same thing has been implemented before, and can't see why it's worth all that money to rehash it with a pretty new web front-end.

I deal with this all the time with supporting a lot of younger professionals in marketing and creative work. They're always struggling to figure out ways to get very large files transferred to clients, when the attachments are too big to email. They resort to paid web services that aren't all that reliable, and then we field dozens of support tickets asking why someone can't get a download to start when they click the link, or why they were never emailed the invite to get the file.... on and on. All along, we had a secure FTP server set up which gets the job done quickly and reliably. But it's a battle to convince them that the person on the other side really *can* install a free FTP client easily and successfully log in to grab the needed files.

Almost every time we get that process going though? Everyone involved loves it and there's no more heartburn about getting files to or from that client. Whaddya know? Sometimes the decades old solution still works the best!

Re:Cost of Living Tradeoffs

[drinkypoo]

The young complain that everyone wants experience. The old complain they only hire the young.

End result, they hire young liars.

The execs says nobody tells them anything and the workers say nobody listens to them.

Nobody wastes their time telling execs anything if they don't listen to workers. I've talked to an exec before and had good results. I've also talked to an exec and essentially been told to fuck off about six months before the company folded and proved me right — apparently he was in on the scam. He got his final paycheck, and I (along with most others) didn't, so that backs that up pretty solidly. I've been ignored more than listened to, though.

US workers say H1Bs are undercutting them. H1Bs says the enormous cost and complications of the H1Bs gets them stuck in undesirable low-paying jobs.

And yet, both things are true. There's no conflict there at all.

The white guys say minorities and women are being preferred for diversity. Minorities and women complain that they have no connections and no way to even get into jobs.

The truth is that those job requirements are designed to disqualify everyone who is not a H1B who can be treated like a slave.

My point is that it's hard for everyone and everyone faces unique challenges. Nobody has it easy. Let's figure out how to get what we want out of life rather than blaming everyone else for why we are not getting what we want.

The fact is that a tiny percentage of the population holds the vast majority of the wealth, and they are not spending it. If they were, the rest of us would have money, because it's the "little people" at the bottom who have to act in order to make things happen. We need to take steps to force them to spend their money, and not just by shuffling it around between corporations that they (or their cronies) control.

Telecommuting FTW

[DoofusOfDeath]

I've been telecommuting for the past two years, for a virtual company, and I hope I never need to give it up.

There are some things I miss, in particular (a) my wife not needing to keep our kids somewhat quiet during school vacations, and (b) having a ready-made social life due to being cooped up with coworkers.

But after working out some of the kinks, and with a just a little extra self-discipline, it's so, so worth it.

Even if an employer needs to pay and $5k/year to cover telecommute-specific costs (such as decent video conference equipment, etc.), it seems it must be a win-win for just about everyone involved. (At least for software development jobs. Not sure about other kinds.)

Re:Telecommuting FTW

[bzipitidoo]

I love telecommuting, saves a lot of time and hassle fighting rush hour traffic and maintain a car. Not to mention that it can be far away so one doesn't have to move, a very expensive and life disruptive process. I'm willing to accept quite a bit less pay for a telecommuting position. But it is against most employers' religion, even progressive seeming technology employers such as Google.

Many cling hard to the mindset that workers are lazy slackers who have to be closely monitored to ensure they're working instead of goofing off. Instead of leading and inspiring workers, they use the slave driver approach and push and prod workers. Much harder to push telecommuters, so they simply don't allow it. No doubt many workers would abuse the situation. But it wouldn't last. If the telecommuter doesn't do any work, this is going to be noticed pretty fast. Telecommuters can't get away with much more slacking than office workers, often even less because of the necessity to counter the higher levels of suspicion by working harder.

Then there are the managers who believe a work environment and the close communication it enables is necessary to be highly productive. And, yes there are environments, home environments especially, where doing any work is very difficult thanks to loud, needy family members. But it's hardly an insurmountable problem.

I don't blame them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the situation of a young college grad today; they're entering the workforce loaded on with $80,000+ dollars of debt, ...

You must go to "top" schools to get a job these days. Anecdotal:

At a July 4th party, and someone was complaining about how there is a shortage of CS grads and the bidding war over them. After having been at a recent graduation at a state uni and seeing half the class stand up when the college of computer science was called, I was a bit incredulous. So I asked.

The response was "we only recruit from top colleges."

"MIT, Stanford, ... ?"

"Georgia Tech."

So some really sharp hard working kid who commutes to say Kennesaw State to save money and get the most out of his HOPE Scholarship and not end up in debt for most of his life, will be passed over. I think SHE/HE's the goddamn genius!

Employers are fucking stupid.

I have another ancedote about my 60 year old neighbor who was fired because he didn't go to Stanford and he was "too old to be a programmer" - (lawyer said he couldn't prove it so no case.)

There's a lot of snobbery in this profession now. Even when I started in the 90s, if you didn't have a college degree you were discounted and not hired at many places.

Re:I don't blame them.

[ErichTheRed]

"There's a lot of snobbery in this profession now."

Agreed -- almost no one without a degree is even considered, and you might as well not even try getting hired at a Silicon Valley startup as a new grad unless you went to Stanford, MIT, etc. even if the work you're doing doesn't have anything to do with CS.

I do think that businesses are using the pedigree as more of a filter than anything else. Investment banks and white shoe management consulting firms hire almost exclusively from the Ivy League. A new lawyer has no chance of success unless they get hired by a big corporate law firm, and those jobs _only_ go to the top grads of the top 14 law schools in the country. As in, you've wasted your law school money if you can't get into the Top 14 and graduate at the top of your class. These more traditional professions use their filter to keep the old boys' (and girls') club going. Getting into one of these companies is a guaranteed ticket to riches for life. Tech companies? Probably not...I think they're just trying to beat off a massive pile resumes with a really short-sighted stick. The state university grad is smarter for not blowing their money on an overpriced private school degree, but state universities also graduate a range of students. Some skated through with barely any work, and some worked their asses off to make sure they mastered the material. It's stupid that firms pass on people just because of where they went to school, but when you have thousands of new grads looking for work, what else are they going to do? Interview them all?

It's Dotcom Bubble 2.0, everyone's ignoring it

[ErichTheRed]

The famous quote "those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it" is very applicable here. This exact scenario played out in the late 90s during the build-out of the Internet and the web. The things that are different this time are phones and social media are the primary focus, and the bubble is almost entirely in Silicon Valley this time. (Last time, New York City had a part in this because of the financial ties and the fact that traditional publishers and broadcasters were throwing money at the Internet.)

I think that people are starting to see the top of the bubble and opting not to join startups. Startup culture isn't for the young either; you really have to have the fraternity/sorority member personality type to work there so as people age they're less likely to trade salary for beer pong or free dinner. This will be the third recession that I've been on the sidelines doing "boring" work in old-school companies watching the startup mania from a distance. No one with a family or other responsibilities is going to do startup work as their first choice unless they have massive amounts of savings. Very few people (should be) willing to put up with the terrible commutes, traffic and real estate prices in the Bay Area. (That's coming from a New Yorker, we have the second-most insane housing market and I think it's crazy...$1 million+ for a tiny house a 2-hour one way drive to work? $4500 a month for a 2-bedroom hipster loft in San Francisco? Nope, sorry.)

I think, just like last time, it'll all come crashing down, we'll pick up the cool new stuff that came out of the last bubble (not much this time...), and it'll inflate all over again. I just hope something more useful than advertising algorithms comes out of the next bubble.

Re:corporate fanboyism

[LynnwoodRooster]

Fudge inflation numbers (artificially calculate them as low - like we're doing relative to the 1980 metric) and the GDP will rise. Inflation factors in to the nominal GDP, and understating inflation will cause the nominal GDP to overstated.

Treasure vs. Cruising

[Tablizer]

When you are young and don't yet have a family, you typically want to seek "fame and fortune" and be where the action is. Even if you don't strike it rich, it's where you get experience with the latest trends (or sometimes fads).

When you have a family, or just want stability and convenience, you are happier with something relatively mundane. You worked your ass off for a while, and want to settle into more of a cruise mode as you mature. Working long hours will burn you out eventually. You will have at least one of weight problems, marriage/relationship problems, and/or physical problems like back and hand issues, or just shear boredom from doing the same thing for so long.

The high churn-and-burn rate, and cost of living of the Bay Area and start-ups can wear one down.