More like they're missing an opportunity to make a whole new network of friends and family. If you work at Garmin, you'll meet a lot of smart people, so you'll have smart friends.
Olathe is a much better place to raise children than San Francisco imo. Olathe is recognized as a pretty dope place; see http://www.olatheks.org/Council/Awards , notably "Money Magazine ranked Olathe as America's 11th Best Place to Live noting the city's growth and major employers."
I recognize that it's difficult to leave old friends and acquaintances, but it's also a great positive opportunity to make new, geographically-distributed networks. People relocate all the time. My family was brought to Kansas by a relocation from Florida and it was a very good thing for us, though of course when someone says "hey buddy why don't you come move to Kansas" it doesn't sound that attractive. Frankly, that's part of the reason it's important to go; these people have some prejudice against the place, but they haven't tried going there. It's a good place with just as many modern accouterments as any other. It's in one of the richest counties in the nation but has a pretty low cost of living. It is not the rural farm-town Kansas of lore.
Obviously some people have compelling personal reasons to stay in SF, and that's fine. But it's highly unlikely that all of them have such reasons, most are probably just Kansas haters. :(
I live in a town higher ranked than Olathe on those lists, and I've move to San Fran in a heartbeat. When your claim to fame is a list in a magazine somewhere, you are missing the point. Some people like living in a city. Some people like living near THE OCEAN. Some people have spouses with great jobs in the city they live in. There are more software jobs in San Fran to get, there is not San Fransisco in Olathe Kansas.
Right, people are free to enjoy living by the ocean. It's just kind of suspicious when a block of people balk at the concept of living in not California like this. Relocations are not that unusual in big corporate world, and most employees understand that their job could get relocated at any time. Most are willing to do that. It is unusual that a whole unit would refuse, and seems indicative to me of an unjustified prejudice. Maybe I'm just overly biased and they all have sick mothers in SF to care for.
And Olathe's claim to fame is not "a list in a magazine somewhere", that's distorting my point. I linked to a whole page of awards and emphasized the most recognizable. I used these awards, and that award specifically, to indicate to people that Olathe is a real modern place, not a podunk with four buildings like people seem to think when they hear "Kansas". I used them in conjunction with other anecdotes and data. You're distorting my argument to marginalize the place, again. I don't why there's so much disdain for not-California among people.
Some people like SF and that's fine. I don't want everyone from San Francisco to move to Olathe. But I don't like how there are just a handful of places that people consider "acceptable" and everything else is "flyover country". There is real life and existence, normal people, normal existence, normal cities with normal roads and normal stores, outside of California and New England. People disdainfully refer to everything else as "flyover country", and perhaps even refuse en masse to relocate to some place as humble as Kansas, surely not big enough to contain those people, and it's just really silly imo. There's nothing wrong with Olathe.
I'm all for people living where they want. I agree that Kansas isn't the right place for everyone. I am simply annoyed by the assumptions heretofore described, and that this group refuses to even give the place a try.
" Relocations are not that unusual in big corporate world, and most employees understand that their job could get relocated at any time."
That attitude comes from a different era. That "most employees understand" thing came from a time when there was something called "Job Security" so people understood that in return for moving, they had a reasonably good chance at keeping their jobs.
In this day and age, where you live in an at-will employment world, I know of _nobody_ in the bay-area technology scene who would relocate to kansas from California. Can you imagine what would happen if you relocated to Kansas and then were laid off? Olathe doesn't even have a Craigslist entry. The closest entry I could find was Kansas City, and the Bay area has about 15x to 20x the number of job listings.
I'm in absolute love with Vancouver, British Columbia, and one day, if I'm very lucky, hope to return there, (I visit about 4-5 times a year, my heart really is in that city) - but I couldn't rationally relocate my career out of the valley.
There is a different between being a wonderful place to work, and a wonderful place to live.
Problem #1 with that scenario, is I manage fairly Sr. Network Engineering groups. Should I lose my Job in the Greater Kansas City area, there is probably a grand total of a dozen companies who would be interested in hiring someone who deploys Cisco 6509s by the truckload. And, other than Sprint and the Military, I suspect there is nobody out there particularly interested in the deployment of IPv6.
Meanwhile, in Redwood City alone, within walking distance from my house, I can count about 20 companies who might reasonably employ me.
I'll agree there isn't as much competition, but, the high end positions are _very_ few and far between.
Actually there isn't as much competition as you think. There are more employers here in the Bay Area than there are available employees to hire. The only way to get employees for a new company here is to snipe employees from another company. The last time I attended a job fair here (approximately 2 months ago), I had no less than 15 job interviews thrown at me.
Also, it's great to have many "competitor" companies working within a few miles of each other. If you decided to leave a company like Playfish, all the competitor companies like Zynga, Rock You, and Playdom will want to snatch you up in a hurry.
It's a bit of an aside, but Vancouver is really coming into its own as a technology hub. Over even the last 2 years, the number of new startups seems to have grown exponentially. One day could be very soon; and if it is, feel free to get in touch @nickmolnar. We need more good engineers.
This is off-topic, but I've heard a surprising number of people in the valley say precisely that about Vancouver. I figure if you all just move there, at once, that the problem will solve itself. Actually coordinating that is impossible, of course, though setting up a #sfo2yvr mailing list might be a good idea...
But if we could coordinating all "just moving there", en masse, we could move to Detroit where the land is dirt cheap. I could buy a whole city block in Detroit for what I pay in one month's rent. If I brought along a few friends, we could buy up the city, start a technology hub, and become the modern-day Astors as the price of real estate shoots through the roof.
Except that then we'd have to deal with taxes, and corrupt city government (ok, SF isn't much better in that regard), and paying a private security force so we don't get shot, and fixing up houses that are in worse-than-teardown condition. And when I just want to write software - it's probably not worth the hassle. Organizing a mass relocation can be a pretty big drag.
I've relocated to "Middle of Nowhere, US" before for work. It's fine as long as you get a good salary and live in a city with a low cost of living, but you need to ask yourself a few questions first:
1. If you lose your job working for Megacorp, who else is willing to hire a senior software/hardware engineer in the state?
2. What kind of salary would you even get from the 1 or 2 tech companies in the area? These companies know they are the only shop in town and probably only pay $50-60K/yr. for senior level positions.
3. What type of quality of life are you going to have? Are there any artistic or cultural activities in the area?
If you can answer these questions positively, I say go for it. Personally, I'd rather live on either coast and make 6 figures than live in flyover country any day. If I want, I can work on the coast for 20 years and save enough money to live comfortably in flyover country the rest of my life.
It's irrelevant how awesome Olathe is. Relocation is a big deal for very personal reasons. The GC Team decided against it. What is most spectacular is the way they have dealt with the situation. They are blunt, but respectful. They are confident, but not arrogant. Anyone looking for a team to develop mobile devices would be drooling at their mouths over this.
And you're assuming a massive amount about these people. I don't live in California, in fact you'd probably find me dead before you'd find me living in most parts of California other than San Fran or San Diego (certainly not LA thats for sure). I'd probably rather live in Kansas than an equivalent city in California simply to avoid the horrible taxes and dysfunctional gov't.
But I do get the desire to live in a big city over a suburb. I've worked in a city for the last few years after growing up in a suburb, and waking up in the morning and walking through the energy of a city is just different than waking up, getting in your car, slogging through traffic to work, parking in a giant lot, and going into a corporate office park for the day. Just something like lunch is vastly different in a city vs. a suburb, and that kind of stuff matters.
Just like sexy people don't have to say they're sexy, great places to live don't have to send their PR people out to badger/bribe magazines into putting them into silly lists.
"If you work at Garmin, you'll meet a lot of smart people, so you'll have smart friends."
Indeed, I have no doubt that there are lots of technically smart people working at Garmin....but what is it about this company where they seemingly rest on their laurels like, forever, and google can come in, and with their first iteration of a product, make them look like little schoolchidlren...what were they doing in the meantime if they were so smart.
And by the way, I have a very expensive Garmin product sitting upstairs on my shelf if you suggest I should actually try it out before I criticize. Despite the behind the scenes software being very impresive, the UI looks like something done by a community college student who was drinking heavilt and has a deadline to meet.
"Most"? That's a strong claim. I'm sure Olathe is a great place, but the professional benefits of SF for these people are obvious to me.
I also think you're downplaying the social problems to moving, particularly away from a place like the Bay area. Personally, I'd just bristle at being told by my company to move half a continent away.
I don't know. I've done a lot of moving in my day. It's not a lot of fun, and there's things you miss about each place and each group, but personally I prefer the experience of living in new places and meeting new people.
I had a friend in high school who moved around a lot when he was growing up because of his dad's work (internationally, even), and he was totally fine with that. He told me that he was commonly asked "how do you deal with having to make different friends every 2 years?" and always answered "how do you deal with having the same friends for 10 years?"
As for myself, I couldn't do that. I moved twice when I was growing up, and I hated it. I'm a homebody. I need a psychological anchor. You may prefer the experience of new people and places, and I prefer having a constant home. It's just who I am. So while I understand where you're coming from, and your reasons for your preference are perfectly valid, in the end it's still just a preference. I wish you luck and happiness in your lifestyle. It's not for me, and apparently it's not for this team either.
There are a lot of software jobs in the area, yeah. Not many "hot startups", and it's not Silicon Valley, but there's a good market there imo. There are a lot of other big companies HQ'd in the area, including Sprint, which is probably most relevant to ex-Garminers what with GPS and mobile devices and all, Allied Signal, H&R Block, Hallmark, and many more. There are at least two military installations within a commuting distance. There's stuff out there and there's no need to assume the place is barren.
Heh, like I said, there's not a lot out there in the way of startups, but H&R Block, Hallmark, Cerner, and most other big companies need computers and programs too. There's a good contingent of hardware builders out there, too.
It is not a tech hotspot, don't get me wrong there. But the question isn't "Does KC rival Silicon Valley for tech jobs", just "Does KC have work for me if I get laid off from Garmin". I would say yes.
You say that, but you've only listed off a handful of companies. If I get laid off, I want more than a dozen companies as my only potential employers. What happens if none of those dozen companies needs someone with my skill set at the time I'm laid off?
I'm guessing most of the people working at Garmin Connect aren't there for "the job". They built this website just to demonstrate their ability to create new products. I moved from Atlanta to the Bay Area because I wanted more than just "a job that pays money". I wanted to do cool things and the Bay Area is the perfect place to meet the right set of companies that fill this void.
I'm just not sure that H&R Block or Hallmark likes to build cool new products like Garmin Connect. One could technically get "a job that pays money" at any city in the USA, so why move out to Kansas?
Keep in mind that these people built Garmin Connect, and have little to do with Garmin-the-company other than being employed by Garmin & using software interfaces from Garmin devices. Garmin probably decided to create a team to build Garmin Connect in the valley because of the talent available there. I don't think it would have been as easy to create such a talented team in Kansas.
I often wonder about these city rankings -- every year they change their ranking algorithm. Olathe wasn't even ranked in 2009.
If you're a geek, you'll probably hate Olathe though. One good simple measurement is counting the number of nearby hackerspaces. The SF/Bay Area has no less than 5 hackerspaces within a 20 mile radius of each other. Olathe only has 1 which is in Kansas City.
Olathe is a much better place to raise children than San Francisco imo. Olathe is recognized as a pretty dope place; see http://www.olatheks.org/Council/Awards , notably "Money Magazine ranked Olathe as America's 11th Best Place to Live noting the city's growth and major employers."
I recognize that it's difficult to leave old friends and acquaintances, but it's also a great positive opportunity to make new, geographically-distributed networks. People relocate all the time. My family was brought to Kansas by a relocation from Florida and it was a very good thing for us, though of course when someone says "hey buddy why don't you come move to Kansas" it doesn't sound that attractive. Frankly, that's part of the reason it's important to go; these people have some prejudice against the place, but they haven't tried going there. It's a good place with just as many modern accouterments as any other. It's in one of the richest counties in the nation but has a pretty low cost of living. It is not the rural farm-town Kansas of lore.
Obviously some people have compelling personal reasons to stay in SF, and that's fine. But it's highly unlikely that all of them have such reasons, most are probably just Kansas haters. :(