
Is It Time for the US to Drag Jobs Out of Silicon Valley and into the Heartland? - teklaperry
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/innovation/is-it-time-for-the-us-government-to-drag-tech-jobs-out-of-silicon-valley-and-into-the-heartland
======
alex_young
Silicon Valley is a place where you have lots of smart people because the
smart people all go there because that's where the other smart people are. You
can get them in a room and they can figure out amazing things.

It's kind of like Los Alamos for nuclear physics. Sure, you can put a team
together elsewhere, but it's never going to be quite the same because those
happenstance conversations won't have the right people in them.

Let's say for a minute that you could break this thing up into dispirate
groups. What's the advantage? You'll be splitting up the best team ever
created and hoping they somehow reconstitute. Sounds dangerous to me.

~~~
munificent
_> What's the advantage?_

More affordability for the people in those groups, and thus less separation of
tech people from members of other sectors and socio-economic levels.

It's good to have _enough_ people concentrated in one region to form great
teams and give people options and mobility. But, beyond that, it starts
becoming a negative to tech people and non-tech people.

SF and Seattle are _insanely_ expensive. Most of my friends here in Seattle
are in tech, and over the past few years, I've watched most of my non-tech
friends get priced out and be forced to leave the area.

I don't think it's good for individuals or humanity as a whole for people to
spend all of their time in a bubble surrounded only by people like themselves.

------
kindatrue
Some long time Silicon Valley residents would be thrilled with this - like the
Cupertino planning commissioner who opposes building more housing for Apple
employees because those engineers will turn high schoolers into prostitutes.

[https://twitter.com/HousingValley/status/1154781703262498816](https://twitter.com/HousingValley/status/1154781703262498816)

You can't make this stuff up.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Wow just Wow where some of these apple engineers be "coloured gentlemen"

------
vmchale
I'm curious how discrimination economics affects the relative lack of
investment in some of these areas. Particularly for transgender people and
immigrants (a larger group).

If immigrants/engineers are getting murdered in hate crimes in your city, why
should the whole country pay to subsidize the fact that your city is an
unpleasant place to work and live?

------
kevin_thibedeau
There is a pay problem. In the heartland there are lots of employers that
think $75K is too much for a senior engineer. My junior engineer starting
salary was $55K in 2000 which would be _more_ after inflation adjustment than
what many will offer. Lower cost of living doesn't make up for being short
changed.

~~~
yesimahuman
Salaries in “the heartland” have gone up quite a bit in recent years. Have
seen this first hand as a startup hiring locally in a smaller college town in
this region. I think remote work has had a big impact on forcing local
companies to be competitive. It’s a net positive

------
satya71
We do have a "boomlet"-ing tech scene in St Louis, MO and metro areas in the
surrounding states. The thing that crimps the growth is access to risk
capital. Companies here had to list with a bay area address, just to get a
look from the VCs.

What the govt can do is fill the role of VCs and make good returns in pure
financial terms as well. Missouri has a small fund that's been very
successful, but the new GOP governor cut funding as soon as he got in.

~~~
Apocryphon
Silicon Valley is risk adverse and unwilling to invest in firms outside of its
own geographical and cultural bubble. So perhaps that's what the article
should have mentioned, one angle that could involve government funding.

------
Apocryphon
It doesn't seem like anyone has actually RTFA. The Brookings contenders for
the next Silicon Valley aren't random farming towns in the Great Plains. If
you look at the chart at the bottom they include Madison, Minneapolis, Albany,
Portland, Nashville, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Charlotte. A lot of these
cities are already up and coming to the point of rapidly escalating rents.

~~~
alexhutcheson
Their criteria unintentionally selected for metros with a restricted housing
supply, by including "only those that saw population or real GDP growth slower
than the nation as a whole". That can indicate a slow-growing economy, but can
also indicate that you're not building enough new housing for population to
grow at or above the national rate. Portland and Nashville are obvious
examples here - nobody who has been there recently believes that they are
struggling, but they've been adding population slowly because they're not
building enough housing to meet demand.

~~~
Apocryphon
You're not wrong, but my overall point is that it seems like a lot of people
in this thread are arguing against the prospect of moving to intolerant
backwater villages, whereas most of the ones that Brookings listed are already
hot secondary destinations. And many of them aren't even located in the
Midwest! Guess IEEE was referring to basically everywhere not on the coast
when they say "the Heartland".

------
rb808
Its relevant that the US DoD contracts helped build Silicon Valley in the
first place. It makes sense for the government to encourage firms to other
regions. [https://steveblank.com/secret-
history/](https://steveblank.com/secret-history/)

------
rolltiide
The crux of this argument is that federal funding should be involved, which is
what got Silicon Valley started so it can have some merit.

Silicon Valley's culture is hard to replicate, and by culture its just the
consolidation of venture capital firms and the aspirations of liquid wealthy
people who want to play angel investor themselves. Would newly wealthy tech
aficionados in the midwest really stay in opioid land with its extremes of
temperatures, or would they just get the condo in south beach Miami and
disappear?

Having one local Warren Buffett means only insurance and real estate plays get
funded, as an example. Having only a couple Warren Buffetts means you get some
people that "only invest in what they know" and aren't willing to learn
anything.

You really need a market of venture capital, run by people that got rich
there. So pumping an area with federal funding is a much better step than just
slapping a "Silicon" label on the nearest geographic formation.

~~~
jrs95
I live in Ohio, and I would stay here. I’d rather contribute to my community
than abandon it.

~~~
rolltiide
The only reason this article is trying to get the federal government is
involved is because more economic outliers say that then actually do

------
brenden2
PG's essay from 2007 seems relevant:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html)

------
cgy1
I feel like these places outside of Silicon Valley would run into many of the
same problems if a bunch of high paying tech jobs were dropped into these
places, such as steep increases in housing prices (although still cheaper than
the SF Bay Area) and resistance of current residents to change/new housing.
You take a look at places receiving an influx of new well-paid residents, like
Boise, and you can see that these problems are also cropping up there.

------
jrs95
The “eligibility index” here is kind of a bullshit number. R&D per capita
doesn’t make sense as a measurement to begin with, and even if it did it
doesn’t account of population density and the artificial nature of the borders
of some of these places. Some cities have more or less of their suburbs within
their borders, which is going to drastically affect those R&D per capita
numbers.

Overall though I think the concept is very good.

------
auiya
Smart company leaders are already doing this by hiring remote worker teams.
They don't need to "drag" anyone. FAANG are woefully behind the curve in this
regard and would rather waste money building office empires in big cities.
Nobody wants to relocate their entire life across the country away from
family/friends just for some BS tech job that could just as easily be done
from home.

~~~
kamarg
The "office empires" make perfect sense at the size of FAANGs. When you need
to hire that many people every year, many of them who have never worked in
"the real world" before, how do you do the best to ensure they all have access
to knowledge, resources, support, and oversight? Not everyone is good at self
directed work from home. That doesn't mean they can't be an outstanding
employee. Hiring is expensive and if you can avoid having major churn in
employees you'll save quite a bit of money.

On top of that, being a major employer in a city gives your company sizable
clout when it comes to lobbying the local government. Don't like the new tax
plan? It will probably work out in your favor to let the city know that it
would really hurt hiring and salaries at the biggest employer in the city.
Heck if it hurts enough, you might even have to move to that nearby competitor
city who is offering all those sweet tax breaks. You don't want to but it's
the only responsible thing to do for all of your employees. It would be a
shame to see a bunch of those employees leave the city and cause housing
prices to drop for all the rest of the citizens. What's that? You're
reconsidering that tax bill? I knew you'd make the right choice for your
constituents.

------
ldoughty
The government shouldn't invest billions in proping up existing or new
cities.. it should spend time reversing ISP regional monopolies and giving
citizens choice on internet access.

The barrier to entry of a high tech job sector is primarily internet
connectivity. You can't run a web server out of your house if your ISP doesn't
allow it.. or if the top speed is 3Mbps. Sure, you could push stuff to a third
party, but that increases development costs (in dollars and knowledge). And if
you're doing a lot of data pushes, a 256Kb upload speed will be painful if
you're pushing a 90MB container up to the cloud.

IT people flock to areas that have internet. It was a requirement both times I
moved that there's >25Mbps high-cap wired internet. I would NEVER move to a
place with less. I would be eager to move to a place that offers gigabit fiber
that I could run a server behind (I mostly do cloud work, but I do enjoy
having some at-home services).

~~~
varikin
You do realize we have internet in the rest of the country, right? I get over
150 Mbps regularly at my house with Comcast. Upload is around 3Mbps. But I
could change to Comcast business to get symetric at my house. Or I could
colocate in any number of DCs in my area. Or I could move to another
neighborhood and get USI Fiber[1] for about $100/mo. I don't because I don't
want to move from the current neighborhood I am in.

Internet access may suck in many places, but not everywhere. Don't assume that
you need to be in SF to get good internet. Most metropolitian areas in the US
have good internet.

[1] [https://usinternet.com/fiber/coverage-
map/](https://usinternet.com/fiber/coverage-map/)

~~~
Lammy
This happens even within the Bay Area. After going from Comcast Business cable
to Sonic gigabit fiber in San Francisco I can never go back. It’s like going
from an HDD to an SSD for the first time. They both technically do the same
thing, people argue online if the speed difference really matters, but it’s
the _latency_ difference that makes it so amazing. I get 2ms pings now. It
makes the network mentally invisible in a way that’s hard to describe without
experiencing.

~~~
varikin
Don't get me wrong, I would love fiber. USI has been laying down fiber across
Minneapolis at a very fast rate over the last 10 years. I think almost half
the city is covered now. But I really like my neighborhood and I don't want to
move. I am sure USI will get to me eventually, but it will take time and my
road will be expensive due to being on a hill above the street level.

~~~
Lammy
Absolutely, and that’s why good access shouldn’t be so concentrated. My
comparison to San Francisco was in the sense that it’s difficult to find good
and equitable and affordable residential access in the country’s tech capital
much less across the vast rural areas inland.

------
alexhutcheson
The criteria the Brookings paper used to determine eligibility doesn't make
sense. Specifically this bit:

"Looking next at the remaining top 20 metro areas with the most innovation
sector jobs, only those that saw population or real GDP growth slower than the
nation as a whole since 2010 are considered eligible to become designated
growth centers. By dint of that, cities such as Raleigh, N.C., Boston, San
Francisco, Seattle, Austin are set aside because they are already self-
sustaining superstars. They are safe bets for any new tech graduate looking
for a job or any tech firm looking at add a few hundred jobs somewhere.
Allowing these places to be eligible would simply reinforce existing spatial
imbalances."

This decision disqualifies growing Sun Belt metros including Austin, Houston,
Dallas, and Atlanta from inclusion, _specifically because they are already
growing_. The result is a list that is biased towards metros in the northeast
and midwest, which are shrinking for a variety of reasons, not strictly due to
job opportunities.

This has two problems:

1\. It sets the program up for failure: Targeting shrinking metros means that
the policy intervention needs to offset existing decline before it can
demonstrate any positive growth. This is not easy! There are lots of public
programs already targeting these metro areas (particularly state-level
programs), and they are still shrinking.

2\. It makes it very unlikely that the program would develop a new "superstar"
tech city comparable to NYC, because you've already excluded the most probable
candidates.

Adding some regional balance for fairness and (valid) political concerns is a
good idea, but a program that proposes to subsidize growth in Chicago and
Minneapolis while excluding Atlanta, Dallas, and Raleigh-Durham seems neither
fair nor sensible.

------
hamhand
Keep piling big budget infrastructure like subways into existing cities seems
like a dead end, you push the living cost ever higher, concentrating workers
ever more into city centers, congestion, then more big budget infrastructure,
this is just a vicious cycle.

If electric vehicles are the future, young people shouldn't be afraid to creat
their own new cities with scattered companies and minimum infrastructure
investment, you only need roads and charging stations. Cheap land make for
cheap houses and low living cost, in fact, isn't this what their fathers did
to achieve the American dream life young people nowadays so pine for?

This seem to be the only way the American dream can still be realized.

~~~
blt
Cars require too much land area per person. Two dedicated parking spaces is
only scratching the surface. There's gas stations, repair shops, dealers, and
of course the actual roads. By the time you carve out enough space for these,
sprawl is necessary, and horrible traffic is unavoidable.

Personal cars are a failed experiment and a total aberration from historically
successful modes of human development.

------
martianfeeder
Many great comments on this thread but I, a sikh immigrant who wears a turban,
would rather leave the US than live anywhere except for the valley or NYC.
Comments on this thread address everything from internet speed to "gov
intervention is bad" but fail to miss a very important point - US tech
workforce has a lot of immigrants and cities outside the list mentioned in the
article are actively hostile to immigrants.

It would be very difficult to build tech hubs without making them friendlier
towards an immigrant workforce.

I spent 6 days in Houston visiting a friend, here's what I remember from the
trip:

\- Random airport check in a private room (check) \- Called random names more
times in 6 days than in my entire life (check) \- Stared down actively in
every bar I went to (check)

Imagine being on an evening out, people staring at you trying to figure out
"what" you are and knowing that they may be carrying a gun on them. Silicon
valley (and NYC) is a place where its okay to be whoever you are, and that is
something government intervention can't inject no matter how hard they try.

I hope my comment doesn't come off as offensive, just trying to provide an
important perspective which I believe the article misses.

~~~
rayiner
This is an important issue, though I’d like to present the opposite
experience. Only a small fraction of the country lives in New York or SF, but
the US is among the top countries in the world for inclusive attitudes:
[https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...](https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-06/the-
inclusiveness-of-nationalities-ipsos-global-advisor.pdf). For inclusiveness of
naturalized citizens, it’s #1 by a large margin. (This is based on surveys
asking people like whether they would consider a naturalized citizen a "real
American" or "real German" or whatever. For that question, 76% of Americans
answered "yes" versus 13% answering "no." In Italy, it was 41% "yes" to 36%
"no." Incidentally, also do pretty well on LGBT inclusiveness, having a higher
net “yes” score than Spain, Italy, Germany, or the U.K.—which together
comprise more than half the EU.)

That’s consistent with my experience as a Bangladeshi immigrant. I grew up in
a DC suburb in the early 1990s, before that area became diverse. A few remarks
aside, I’ve always felt welcome, including in rural parts of Virginia,
Illinois, Georgia, etc. I was on a plane to Dallas a few months ago. My seat
mate was delicately trying to figure out my ethnicity. I explained I was
Bangladeshi, and he didn’t know what that was. Then we had a very good
conversation about how had really gotten into Indian food, and had put
together a tandoor. Speaking for myself, I’d rather live in Houston or Kansas
City or Pittsburgh than anywhere in the coasts.

Also, where would I go, besides back to Bangladesh? You think the Berlin tech
scene is more welcoming than the Salt Lake City tech scene? Maybe people will
not say anything uncomfortable or offensive. But a Bangladeshi immigrant can
become American, and people will recognize that as substantive and not merely
a euphemism. But he’ll never become German, or Japanese, or French. The United
States elected a son of an immigrant President. Not just New York and
California, but Wisconsin and Michigan and Iowa. That’s never happened in
Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, or Italy, or any EU country that
I’m aware of.

I don’t say this to diminish anyone’s experience. But I think to the extent
that people on the coasts are wondering what the rest of America is like, they
get a balanced picture.

~~~
Apocryphon
And even in the conservative South, you see Desis getting elected to governor.

> That’s never happened in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, or
> Italy, or any EU country that I’m aware of.

Ireland.

~~~
selimthegrim
Bobby Jindal never identified that way nor did Haley.

~~~
rayiner
I agree that neither identify as "desi" but it's worth unpacking that a bit.
Both are the children of immigrants. (Jindal's mother was pregnant with him in
India before coming to the U.S. Both had two wedding ceremonies (Catholic and
Hindu for Jindal, Sikh and Methodist for Hailey.) Both have discussed their
parents' immigrant background publicly. Obviously, neither presents as white.

In fact, they have a very common and very American immigration story. Even as
children of first-generation immigrants living in the south, it was so easy
for them to assimilate that they grew up identifying as "American" more than
"Indian-American." This is the story of _many_ children of immigrants. My dad,
for example, hates the labels of "hyphenated American." So my brother and I
grew up identifying as just "American." But this isn't possible most
places.[1] Its not just about how you identify yourself, but how other people
identify you. In most countries, society forces immigrants to identify with
the country they left or their ethnicity. There are only a handful of
countries that are so welcoming that the children of immigrants can _choose_
to identify with nothing other than their new homeland.

[1] Ironically, as I've gotten older, I've started to identify as Asian more
than before. But I'd chalk that up to the balkanization of American culture
and the drift away from what I can easily reconcile with my Asian immigrant
values.

~~~
selimthegrim
Yes, Jindal likes to call it his mother’s “preexisting condition”

To some extent I have as well, but I think in my case it is more to stick it
to Pakistanis who think I don’t have any rights on the first part of the
hyphen

------
vonnik
A lot of Silicon Valley tech companies are actively trying to hire remote
engineers all over the US and the world. Market forces are doing the job
better than a government initiative could.

------
thorwasdfasdf
This is literally the best idea idea I've seen in print all year long: "They
argue that the federal government should create eight to 10 regional “growth
centers” in the U.S. heartland."

New cities, we desperately need. The entire housing fiasco is caused by an
imbalance between the number of jobs and the amount of housing. all the jobs
are, ironically, in places that really don't want to grow. so the logical
thing to do, is to move those jobs to new places that do want to grow.

This could really ignite the economy in a way that's not zero sum (like most
other solutions). There's so much free wealth out there for the taking (land
that's not being used for any productive capacity ~ you could literally create
wealth out of thin air).

~~~
1over137
New cities we desperately don't need. There are plenty of small cities than
can be grown instead of destroying more wild nature, which we are fast running
out of.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
You know those hen farm houses where hens are squeezed together by the 1000s
into a tiny area with poop all over the place. Some people think that's not
nice to do to a chicken. I think it's not nice to do that to human beings. And
yet that's exactly what we're doing to the people in SF, Poop included.

If you don't create new cities, the people still need to end up somewhere. You
can move jobs to smaller cities or create new ones, whatever. the point is,
you need to move jobs to areas that want to grow.

Have you seen the new neighborhoods that are being built in places like CA?
Every single tree gets chopped down, ever last one. That's because developers
are forced to build with density because the cost of land is so high. if you
want to prevent the slaughtering of trees, you'll need specifically create
minimum distance regs or reduce the # of trees that can be cut down legally.
at the current rate, there's no nature for anyone to enjoy in the
neighborhoods that are currently being built.

~~~
fluxic
Show me the chicken that's unhappy in a $750/mo 750sqft apartment? The only
reason that doesn't exist in CA is because of NIMBYs and their ridiculous
zoning policies.

~~~
maxsilver
> Show me the chicken that's unhappy in a $750/mo 750sqft apartment?

There's a lot of chickens unhappy about $1600/month 200sqft apartments. (a
real example from SF -
[https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...](https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/micro-
apartments-making-160-square-feet-livable-san-francisco/1038601/) )

Because that's the dystopian nightmare in SF, and to move jobs out of silicon
valley to elsewhere, would be to export that same dystopia to more places.

We already see this in _Michigan_ of all places. You can make a SF salary and
pay $1600/month for a micro-apartment. Or you can take a 50% pay cut, to pay
$800/month for ~200sqft micro-apartment. They are equally ridiculous and
equally unaffordable, once you account for the currency/wage differences,
despite the fact that we have no zoning restrictions in this town.

We obviously need more housing, and need to build more housing, but housing is
inherently pollution-heavy. You can not build your way into affordability
alone, because the act of new construction inherently _generates_ more
unaffordability. It alone can never solve it.

> The only reason (cheap apartments) doesn't exist in CA is because of NIMBYs
> and their ridiculous zoning policies.

No, that's only a tiny part. Zoning is a small reason, but not the primary
one. The biggest reason CA apartments are expensive, is the financial
pollution generated by the companies there.

If you built a brand new city in an empty cornfield somewhere, with no laws or
zoning of any kind, it would be somewhat cheaper than San Francisco, but every
single apartment would still cost ~$1100-$1600/month. Because _most_ of that
price is due to the financial pollution from the companies, not the zoning.

~~~
baddox
> You can make a SF salary and pay $1600/month for a micro-apartment. Or you
> can take a 50% pay cut, to pay $800/month for ~200sqft micro-apartment. They
> are equally ridiculous and equally unaffordable, once you account for the
> currency/wage differences, despite the fact that we have no zoning
> restrictions in this town.

They’re not equal. You almost certainly end up with significantly more
disposable income in SF.

~~~
maxsilver
Agreed. And that kind of makes the whole situation worse.

------
nullbull
Is it time for the government to drag financial sector jobs out of New York?
Is it time for the US to drag credit card companies out of Delaware, or
agribusiness out of the heartland and toward the coasts?

No. It isn't.

Funny the regionally exclusive monopolies that we seem to have tolerated for
literally decades and the ones we suddenly, for some reason, don't.

Or maybe it isn't funny at all. Maybe it's a totally predictable outcome of a
system that is highly tolerant of calcified, politically-connected regional
monopolies. A system that is intolerant of disruptive, politically-indifferent
or unestablished regional monopolies.

In other words, this isn't about economic efficiency or anti-trust law. It's
about political sour grapes first. Everything else second.

~~~
anm89
This gets at the heart of this. This isn't t part of some consistent political
philosophy or legal framework. This is policy based on angry people wanting to
get revenge on a specific topic.

Unfortunately I think the tide is moving in the direction of this being an
acceptable way to govern and while people may get individual things they want
out of it I think the end result is a net loss for everyone.

------
blackflame
The Government has no business in picking and choosing which cities to
promote. The free market will take care of that. The government should instead
focus on why everyone is leaving the heartland because it's not just because
of the beach.

------
mumblemumble
I'd directly benefit from this, but still, I'm inclined to say no.

For starters, when it comes to this sort of thing, the government is
inevitably running toward where the ball just was instead of where it's going
to be. That's just the nature of the game - legislation is (or at least should
be) a slow process. Second, these kinds of interventions inevitably result in
rent-seeking behavior. I don't want the kinds of games that agricorps played
with the dairy subsidy being related to how far you are from Eau Claire, WI
getting imported into the tech industry. And finally, capitalism: If it's
really most economically efficient for tech to hyper-concentrate in silicon
valley, then fighting that will probably produce a whole lot of deadweight
loss. If it isn't, then market forces will guide the situation toward a
natural resolution.

(Perhaps only after the eventual dissipation of the reality distortion field
being fueled by a certain generation of techies' determination to heat their
own backyards by burning the money that fell into their laps during previous
tech bubble. But still.)

~~~
vharuck
I'd also benefit from this, but I'm for the idea so may be biased.

>And finally, capitalism: If it's really most economically efficient for tech
to hyper-concentrate in silicon valley, then fighting that will probably
produce a whole lot of deadweight loss. If it isn't, then market forces will
guide the situation toward a natural resolution.

Capitalism trends toward more efficient usage of resources. But it doesn't
care about humans and their quality of life. It works with that (people spend
resources on their healthcare for themselves and their families), but it's
perfectly "efficient" for some people to stay impoverished.

The government is a great entity to cover this gap. And Brookings' proposal
isn't so bad: fixed 10-year duration, cities chosen by RFP instead of by
politicians, and funds focusing on R&D instead of "make money now" projects.
Most R&D moves as slowly as the government, so it's not a bad target.

------
excalibur
No. We don't need government intervention to bring tech jobs to the large
cities listed, they already have them. I could have my pick of jobs if I were
willing to relocate or commute to one.

It's a singular failure of Silicon Valley that so many tech jobs still need to
be done in person. All physical infrastructure is going to need a contingent
of warm bodies onsite (or at least on-call locally), but there's no reason in
2020 that the vast majority of tech positions can't be remote.

~~~
lettergram
My team regularly designs systems on white boards, we discuss, refer to the
board as we write docs, and implement.

I’ve attempted the same thing remote.

Unfortunately, there is nothing more creative / better than having those in
person sessions. I hope one day VR can replace this, but today there just
isn’t anything there.

I should note, we are an internal research and consulting group inside a large
corporation. So it is specialized, arguably most full-stack jobs can be done
remote.

My personal suggestion is to build teams in cities (5 people per team). These
teams can be setup in a small office and maybe you get 3-4 teams per office.
That’s how my group is currently setup and it works fairly well. The only
issue is ensuring facilities are decent and backfilling team members because
it can be a challenge to backfill and often attrition snowballs

~~~
aantix
For remote collaboration, have you tried something like the Meeting Owl to
bridge that gap? [https://www.owllabs.com/meeting-
owl](https://www.owllabs.com/meeting-owl)

~~~
lettergram
I haven’t but we have done a camera on a whiteboard. It just doesn’t work
super well. I think a lot of it has to do with just being stuck in a room
together without distractions from personal stuff.

------
mc32
I think companies will be incentivized to do this for two reasons. Cost and
echo chamber. If they geodiversify they lower costs and the workforce is less
of an echo chamber.

------
cvaidya1986
Yes.

------
purplezooey
We seem to be incapable of challenging entrenched city councils and fixing our
housing problem, so we may deserve it.

------
duxup
I think it would be a good policy to incentivize it.

I often tell my anecdotal story about working for a valley company who was
'forced' to hire some midwesterners and there was a serious bias towards
valley hires for jobs that really could be done elsewhere. TL;DR Valley
company thought tech support HAD to be in the valley / required some high spec
resumes ... it very much did not.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21746219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21746219)

I do wonder if those POVs towards the existing tech centers would make any
government incentives irrelevant.

------
fortran77
Amazon wanted to open an office in New York--not exactly the heartland, but it
does spread out the jobs a bit. But there was resistance and they cancelled
the plan.

How can you "drag jobs" out? Government ordered migrations of people? Massive
subsidies?

~~~
jorts
Amazon is opening a new office in NY by 2021, just without the huge tax breaks
that they were originally pushing for. The tax breaks were the main reason
that folks like AOC were pushing back against them opening a new headquarters
in NY.

~~~
corporateslave5
1500 people versus 25k. A huge loss for nyc. Also lost tax revenue for nyc and
the state.

~~~
poulsbohemian
If Amazon believes it is in their best interest to be in NYC, then they will
eventually grow to that 25K number regardless. There's a long track record
across the country of companies demanding concessions in promise of jobs, only
to have the jobs never materialize. In many cases, companies are going to do
what they want, so there isn't any real incentive for governments to play
along.

