
Tech’s Wealthy Enclaves Hurt the Country and Tech Itself - jgrahamc
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/techs-wealthy-enclaves-hurt-country-tech/
======
rdtsc
The sad thing really is that tech lives and breathes Internet. It sells cloud
stuff, digital collaboration tools, connectivity, yet when it comes to
employment it is stuck to 20th century factory mindset : you have to be in the
factory by the lathe to grind your piece out and drop it on the conveyor belt.

Even worse many even put people in large noisy factory-like rooms (open floor
plans) where they commute to in the morning, so they can sit there and be
distracted and unproductive, and then have them commute back at the evening.

There is a network effect as well, even if people work for companies which are
remote, and they could move to a different state to be with family they won't,
because most other companies are not fully remote so they stick to a tech hub
just not to have to move again if they switch jobs.

You'd think Google, Facebook and Microsoft would lead the effort for working
from home but that's not the case. If they switched you'd see very interesting
side effects: areas of the country that are stagnating might revitalize,
they'd be less traffic congestion, the whole IT work culture in US might
change.

~~~
FilterSweep
> you have to be in the factory by the lathe to grind your piece out and drop
> it on the conveyor belt.

This is the aggravating concept of "face time" which is pushed onto engineers
and people in areas who are not in direct sales or relationship roles.

It also harkens to the prioritization of Sales over Product.

At a prior job, a developer who worked with me had asked a director (non
technical) why he couldn't work remotely more. He had been chastised in the
past for it, despite the fact I could list his commits from our SVN. He was
more productive at home, having removed commute and additional costs going to
the office. This director could not provide a more ambiguous answer than "You
work at the company so you should be visible here."

And then, like you said, the 3 companies provide a luxury campus for employees
that are actually attractive. Any annoying little fledgling developer could
get dismissed with a pseudo-falsehood "Google developers go in to the office
every day - why can't you?"

~~~
galdosdi
> the 3 companies provide a luxury campus for employees that are actually
> attractive.

Sort of. They still use open-plan offices (at least, to some degree; I can't
know whether all 3 use them for all teams in all locations). All the free
gourmet food and trendy furniture in the world can't increase productivity
enough to make up for the effects of large open-plan offices.

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JBReefer
This doesn't mention a huge side effect of having so much of tech clustered in
3 regions - housing costs. It is so, so much cheaper to live in other places,
and at this point the bubble is such that most of my friends aren't aware of
the difference in magnitude. Rent on a 1 bed in a cool part of Kansas City is
$500 or so (actual rate my friend pays), my rent in Queens is 5 times that.
It's such a huge difference that completely changes my long term planning, job
choices, etc - it's crazy. SV has it even worse than we do, which is kind of
unbelievable. I don't really see how anyone can bootstrap here, whereas it
seems deeply doable in a low cost city, which is a critical part of the whole
tech narrative.

~~~
winestock
In terms of cash flow, the California tech industry is a means of moving money
from venture capitalists to San Francisco landlords.

That's right, for all the talk of disruption, innovation, and progressive
thinking, the broad outlines of the economic structure of California IT is
something that Hillaire Belloc or G.K. Chesterton would've recognized a
hundred years ago.

The posted article and the comments in this thread make allusions to President
Trump, so allow me to further scare you with this scenario.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by ~2.7 million votes in the previous
national election, but she won the state of California by 4 million votes. So
the entirety of Clinton's lead came from California. Imagine how the Trump
administration must think of "the Left Coast." Do you doubt that men like
Bannon, Pence, and Sessions have plans for California? Or are trying to get
ideas for plans?

Put yourself in their shoes. "How can we divide and conquer California's most
important power centers? Hmmm. The H-1B thing got us some votes. Yeah. What
else can we do to set those nerds against each other? Hey, there's the fact
that tech workers can barely afford rent even when they earn six figures.
Let's see…"

Don't forget. Donald Trump is/was a real estate developer. His grasp of issues
such as affordable housing must be non-trivial. It's his bread & butter, after
all. He made his pile in New York City real estate; not an easy venue. Think
of what he could do to the Bay Area with the talent and knowledge earned from
that front (plus the incidental help of a few executive orders).

The housing situation in tech centers must be dealt with. If we nerds don't do
it, then President Trump will do it for us.

EDIT: Upon re-reading, I see that my tone may seem a little snarky. I
apologize. I've given this problem a little thought and I needed to vent.

~~~
vinceguidry
I think this is comfortably a market problem and eventually the market will
find a collection of hacks and workarounds. AmaGooFaceSoft will open more and
more campuses outside of Silicon Valley and more startups will relocate.

Company culture will get more accepting of remote work and workers will be
able to choose where they want to live. Eventually the demand for housing will
drop to ordinary levels. Political initiatives will be dreamed up, but most
won't have any effect.

Fundamentally, the real estate and job markets aren't broken, they're just
responding to extreme circumstances. When markets work they tend to solve
problems like these on their own. The situation just propped up overnight,
relatively speaking, so it's taking awhile

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
The companies have no incentive to make those changes, though. What makes you
think they will?

~~~
vinceguidry
Ultimately, the customers, the source of demand. Markets work so long as
politics don't keep them from working. The real estate market in San Francisco
is _constrained_ by politics, keeping the supply from growing to meet demand,
but nobody is forced to want SF real estate. Prices find an equilibrium, and
everybody makes their choices about where they want to live and how. That's
how markets are supposed to work.

Facets of the tech job market bring a huge influx of tech workers to the SF
bay area, perhaps the workers would rather live somewhere else, but they make
the choice to work in SF. No political constraints here, just people's power
to choose at work.

The job market right now has a culture that keeps workers close to the
companies, but that culture is malleable, and the thing that shapes culture
the most is economic incentive. Other tech companies relocate,
AmaGooFaceSoft's employees express a preference for escaping the Bay area, and
eventually the incentives that created Silicon Valley will reverse.

The reality is the tech industry has gotten too big for SV.

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firstpost1234
it's certainly true that the tech enclaves lead to the techo chamber of
liberalism. (fwiw, i am liberal).

however, this belies the point that led to many citizens relocating to these
areas to begin with: the quality of life is better and the people aren't as
closed-minded.

i am from the US South and grew up with extreme racism and intolerance.

there are still people in this country that think it would be OK to lynch me.
that doesn't happen in the city where i live in California.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>people aren't as closed-minded.*

*in ways that I care about.

FTFY

~~~
Arizhel
So you think the OP should be OK with being lynched?

------
dsfyu404ed
Why would people of say, central Maine want to encourage tech industry to move
there. They can look to SoCal, Massaschusetts and see that that sort of
society is not compatible with their values.

The "tech industry" needs to divorce itself it's cultural baggage if it wants
to decentralize.

~~~
ef4
> Why would people of say, central Maine want to encourage tech industry to
> move there.

Because jobs, obviously.

Talk to any politician or civic leader from a place like central Maine and all
they can talk about is "good jobs". In the 21st century, good jobs _are_ tech
jobs, at least using an expansive definition of "tech" that encompass modern
manufacturing (heavily digitized), modern healthcare (heavily digitized), etc.

> They can look to SoCal, Massaschusetts and see that that sort of society is
> not compatible with their values.

As rural counties continue to sink further into social decay, this excuse is
wearing thin. There's practically no measure of social health where they
aren't worse than wealthy liberal cities -- divorce, suicide, crime, teen
pregnancy, drug abuse, lifespan, welfare dependency.

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pm24601
My prediction: this will go nowhere.

The best way to help out these communities is with tax dollars. Seriously.

For example,

* underinvesting in schools = poor employees.

* underinvesting in broadband = poor communication structure

* underinvesting in healthcare = lots of sick days.

* underinvesting in transportation = requires smart workers have enough money to buy a vehicle to get to the job.

* underinvesting in children's daycare = forces parents to turn down jobs

Yes it is nice to talk about private enterprise - however, only governments
can drop hundreds of millions into the basic social / infrastructure that is
needed to make it possible for a business to be successful.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
Tangentially related, here's a great article on regional inequality and its
increase in recent decades:
[http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-
and-...](http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-bust/)

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davidf18
This is an article written by acclaimed author Thomas Frank ("What's the
Matter with Kansas", "Listen, Liberal") in July 2016. The Democrats ignored
the message and Trump was elected as a result.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/reveng...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/revenge-
against-elites-americas-wake-up)

~~~
davidf18
There should be a rule for down voting that people should justify. The
information is factual is the reasons the Democrats lost a very winnable
election.

------
splitrocket
It's almost as if certain policies and politics result in increased innovation
and employment...

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
I see it differently. I see rich people going to rich cities because that's
where the money is, which increases the money in the area, which increases the
number of rich people going there, and so on and so forth. It seems to just be
a massive concentration of wealth and people who have benefited massively from
globalization. It turns out, though, that this massive inequality isn't so
conducive to a stable society or government.

~~~
splitrocket
Why hasn't this happened in conservative states?

Why does this virtuous circle (generally speaking, your point about wealth
distribution stands) only happen in liberal states?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Because both "conservative" and "liberal" states are deeply capitalist, but
they're favoring different sorts of industries. "Liberal" states are built off
treating skills and innovation as the source of productivity growth;
"conservative" states off treating resource extraction as productivity growth.
"Liberal" states implement policies designed to foster the productivity of
their professional-managerial class, "conservative" states to extract
resources with minimal labor costs.

They are in different lines of business.

------
rco8786
Tech is driven by investors, the best way to get an investor is still to be
introduced to one in person. Until that changes, tech enclaves will continue
to cluster around VC money.

------
CalChris
_Hillbilly Elegy_ this. Thiel that. We must be doing something right or we
wouldn't be crushing it so bad.

Yes, Wyoming has as much clout in the Senate as CA. And Wyoming, North and
South Dakota have as much as CA, NY and MA and still we're crushing it that
bad.

Perhaps the problem, such as it is, can be restated as instead of _what are we
doing wrong_ (that allows us to crush it so bad) to _what are we doing right_
(that allows us to crush it so bad that talented people and money want to come
here from all over the world). They can of course, take their talents and
Bitcoins to WY, ND and SD. It's a free country.

