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A better way would be build a campus in a cheapper place and offer benefits for works to move to this places.

Continental US is full of dying cities that need a stead source of income that big companies like Apple, google could supply. In the day and age of remote work and comunication, there`s no more escuses to concentrate resources in places like California, NY, etc.




The main reason that resources are concentrated in those places is because they're nicer places to live.

You would have to pay me an absurd amount of money to move back to the midwest.

Not everyone has the same priorities as me, but I think it's a mistake to think people are only moving to those places because of jobs.


There are millions of people who would prefer to live in the Midwest if they could. It takes all kinds.


Yes but the cross-section of people who prefer to live in the midwest and talented engineers is much smaller and the main reason why it's difficult to do that.


Chicago and Milwaukee. Madison Detroit. There are plenty of tech hubs throughout the country.

Sv isn't special anymore. You might not want to live in the Midwest. But plenty of talented people do. I would want a 7 figure salary to live in sv for many obvious reasons


And yet as one of the people you describe, you can't find a single tech job in the midwest.


Sure you can.

Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Twitter all have offices in the Detroit metro area.

Any medium sized city will have at least a few insurance companies looking for developers. Not to mention other random tech jobs and startups, especially if it's a college town. I worked in Lansing MI for 3 years after college and it was one of my favorite jobs I've ever had.

Madison Wisconsin, Omaha Nebraska, Minneapolis Minnesota, St. Louis Missouri, are all places in the Midwest that are going to have plenty of tech jobs.

Then of course, there's Chicago, which is a bit less affordable than the rest of the Midwest, but still better than San Francisco or NYC. They have a huge tech scene.


That’s an absurd claim. “Niceness of place” is far from the only criterion people use to choose where to live. It’s probably not even in the top 5 actually.

Proximity to jobs, proximity to family, cost of living, whether you can legally work there, and safety all trump “niceness of place” for a majority of buyers/renters.


> The main reason that resources are concentrated in those places is because they're nicer places to live.

They are not the only nice places to live though? Theres plenty of other states that have nice areas and probably a lower crime rate altogether.

> You would have to pay me an absurd amount of money to move back to the midwest.

Or you benefit from the talen pools elsewhere... You can recruit local and not necessarily just people from one state. Lots of very capable developers across the country.


> In the day and age of remote work and comunication, there`s no more escuses to concentrate resources in places like California, NY, etc.

What about infrastructure and clients?


Google is providing internet using ballons. My guess is that extending fiber optic networks would be a cheapper option.

Infrastructure can always be build, and cities are willing ti give fat tax cut to companies that bring this kind of infra and jobs to it.

Lets be honest: is cheapper to build an data center in a more distant citie than spend time, money and energie trying to covince San Francisco buroucrats to change its zonning laws.


Balloons are a cockamame scheme that never made sense. In the US if you have the need it's always cheaper to just run a cable, in the great scheme of things it's not that hard to do, we have millions of miles of cables everywhere.


> My guess is that extending fiber optic networks

Google tried that: Google Fiber. Apparently it wasn't economical.

> In October 2016, all expansion plans were put on hold and some jobs were cut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber


It's not that running fiber wasn't economical.

It's that overbuilding a fiber network when there's already a telco and a cable network isn't very economical. It is a pretty good way to convince the incumbents to upgrade to gigabit available speeds though, which makes overbuilding even less economical, but does solve the original problem of slow last mile connections.


Yes, its almost like those cash strapped, barely profitable telcos have to save all their pinched pennies for they day they need to out compete a legitimate, newcoming competitor's build out. Clearly the free market is working wonders for the totally competitive telecom industry. I mean Verizon and Comcast are just neck and neck! look at em go!

I can't stop remembering all those dark fiber stories from a bunch of years ago... All these dotcom dark fiber bundles must have just worn out from throwing off all that competitive white light/white heat in the last 20 years.


I'm honestly not sure if you're agreeing with me or not. There's really too much sarcasm in that post. I think you and I agree that the local telco/cableco duopoly is not usually meaningfully competitive among themselves, but does effectively prevent new entrants in most markets.

Dark fiber is great, but it solves long distance access issues, not last mile residential access issues. Long distance networking is actually subject to pretty healthy competition, if you can get to your local internet exchange, you'll have a wide variety of carriers that can get you anywhere else.


Oops, sorry about that. I forgot to make an affirmative point, which is yes I agree with you.

Telco talk makes me grouchy and of course I cannot resist :)

You're right about that dark fiber doing nothing for connecting end users, as you mentioned. As soon as a WISP or municipality lights up the fiber, out come the steep conversion discounts and carpet-bombing PR and if at all possible, the lawyers.

Thanks again, I'll try to ensure I'm not wasting time with grousing in the future.


Or it was started to improve their bargaining position against ISPs, and was dropped in return for additional concessions.


There's plenty of infrastructure where I am in a suburb of St Louis. We could also use some liberal SV people to help tip the politics the right way in my county. We have a few clients here too, they are not all on the coasts. Many mid-market companies have left California because their margins can't sustain the cost of operations.


It would actually be the wrong way to tip the politics. California is not unaffordable because of an absence of deeply leftist sentiment.


You seem to assume public sentiment actually becomes existing public policy. That would be great because at least then the democratic will of the people would finally be enacted. But right now all you’ll ever see will be mostly industry-captured and/or anti-public-housing, specifically neoliberal policy designed to commoditize housing even more deeply.


Well, public sentiment affects the conditions of survival for politicians. It’s not the same thing as what you’re talking about but it does have an influence.

In California today, we have a crusading mentality, trying to save the world from itself but neglecting administration of our own affairs, and our politicians reflect that. For example, consider that PG&E has been left unsupervised to a point where their neglect is burning down the state, while California politicians have vigorously maintained separate emissions standards for cars — something which ends up affecting the whole country — for decades. This outward, crusading focus is also reflected in actions like the SF city council’s recent declaration of the NRA as a terrorist organization.


Nah, that sounds like a false dichotomy you’re creating for the purpose of pushing your implicit political agenda.


I have a feeling that once liberals of the coast go to the inner country they will problably start being more conservative. Small cities have a bigger sense of comunity, form bigger families, and that tends to lean to conservative spectrum.

Also the lower cost of living will problably incentive liberals couples to have more children and maay tip the tendency and help ewnew american population.


That is why liberals of the coast all move together to Austin, and recreate the high housing prices, homelessness and strangely obstructive building situation.


Colorado [0] and Idaho have this going on as well in conjunction with miniature tech booms. Although probably not to the same extent as Austin.

[0] https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2017/12/15/colorado-has...


$2.5 billion could begin to address that...


> A better way would be build a campus in a cheapper place and offer benefits for works to move to this places.

I would support that, but however, there is a vocal minority that complains that it's 'gentrification', since it has the side effect of raising the cost of living.


That’s why we have high housing prices in the Bay Area to begin with.


Absolutely! I wish those companies would get this more. It's time to move those jobs to places that appreciate growth, places that want growth and deserve growth.


Once they get growth the same kind of people crop up trying to stop it. Look at other areas getting new growth you see the same stuff as the bay area its just not 40 years old.


Agreed. As someone who has lived in CA all thier life, I'm afraid of leaving, because of lack of opportunity elsewhere, but the cost of living here is absurd. My rent constitutes 75%(!!) of my monthly expenses.


I think most companies are no longer expanding much in the bay area, but if you already have a lot of employees there it's pretty hard to convince them to move. Once you have a house and a family it doesn't make much sense to move away. And since there are so many people who have a life in the bay area, it makes sense to maintain a presence so you have access to that local talent which isn't willing to leave.


I don't understand why you say Apple and Google could supply such, because I am guessing (sadly) that even their deep coffers are tiny in comparison to how much money it would take to fund such fixes.


Like Stripe is doing!


Bring back serfdoms!


Yes because Apply offering housing to their engineers making 20x the average American's salary is just like serfdom...

If McDonalds starts doing it then maybe I'll feel a bit more outraged.


The formalization started in the connection between lords and their retainers. Gradually every other kind of tenancy was subsumed by it. It didn’t happen all at once — the high value relationships were, naturally, the ones that got formalized first.




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