I normally wouldn't respond to a post like this but when it comes to career advice, many of you who have not been in the workforce long should hear the counterpoint.
The Austin businesspeople are right: folks who want to make a lifestyle choice of going to Austin from California should get paid less to do it. On average, they'll earn more than most people in Austin, but less than their counterparts in Silicon Valley.
I see no problem with this. It's fair. You usually only get to choose where you want to live or where you want to work. The other one is a compromise. That's life. Compromises. Why would a businessperson not take advantage of this when someone wants to live in Austin? Maybe the OP doesn't want to live there but a lot of people do.
Working remotely is a compromise further: you will get paid less, you'll get promoted less, and you will be one of the first laid off.
The OP can rant all she wants about "[companies lacking] the tools to communicate remotely, [probably] can’t communicate at all", but the all of us who have done this can tell you that remote workers are almost never as productive. They only work for "guy who takes the app and ports it to Android because we don't care to do it here" type of projects. 1-3 person projects. Large projects are hard enough to manage with the people in the office, and going remote is a nightmare. I've even seen 10 year experts on the specific codebase try to work remotely and it be completely unproductive when they're remote.
There will be exceptions. The one guy who's amazing as a remote worker. Sales people are always an exception. And of course, all of this turns on its head when the company is not desirable. A crap company will pay you a lot to work remotely, then go out of business 6 months later. Generally though, what I've spelled out here is the way it is.
Here's a proposal, given that she's in Austin already, the OP should demand $150K from those companies or her current employer based on this blog post. Tell us what happens over the next 3 months, 6 months, 2 years.
I disagree. The original article is specifically about attracting good talent to Austin. Someone presently in the valley, who is worth attracting, generally has no reason to leave. You need to come up with good reasons for them to leave which outweigh the massive black hole of attraction for tech talent which is the valley. Offering a significant salary cut is not going to help your cause -- you cannot be losing on hygiene factors when you are selling from a weak position.
Trying to sell the candidate on the cost of living being lower is actually bogus anyway. At high salary levels you cannot look at cost of living as a percentage difference, you need to look at absolutes. A thirty percent pay cut on a 150k salary works out to about 2500-3000 per month after taxes. This is a lot more than the absolute value cost of living difference.
Making it even worse, you are asking candidates to move from an environment where they have a couple hundred interesting alternate employment options, all at that 30% higher salary, if the current job does not work out. They are moving to a, at best, tertiary market -- meaning there is a very good chance that they will have to move again for their next job.
"Someone presently in the valley, who is worth attracting, generally has no reason to leave" - I get your point but many people once they have families feel pressure to get out of SV probably due to long hours, cost, etc. Not everyone leaves but I've seen many good engineers leave to the more affordable tech hubs (Austin, Portland, Seattle, etc.) I have to admit that once I started visiting these places I can now understand why many people move.
why would you move your family to an area with less opportunity for them? Is their partner going to be able to find a "propper" job will their kids get a good education and have a wide choice of "propper" carrears (or will they join the army as thats the best choice on offer)
Its probably worth saying that there is a big difference between moving from SV/SF to Seattle, Portland, or Austin, and moving to a small town of 1000 people in the middle of nowhere.
Opportunity for career growth isn't the only factor in where a family moves - there are a number of other concerns like safety, values, closeness to family, and fresh air and water.
While it may be correct that "folks who want to make a lifestyle choice of going to Austin from California should get paid less to do it," that is not what this article is about. Instead, the author is talking about Austin companies trying to bring developers there that otherwise would be somewhere else (i.e. people who do not want to live in Austin). In that case, its a simple matter of value to the potential employee as to how much extra they need to be paid in order to relocate to somewhere that they had no intentions of living.
Agreed. If you're a developer looking to live in Austin, you may very well expect a lower salary; but, if someone is trying to recruit me to Austin, I'd actually expect a higher salary than in California, as I would much prefer San Francisco to Austin. (Quality of life considerations might come into it as well, as mentioned in the article; $150k will get you much farther in Austin than in San Francisco. But I only spend so much of my money locally; don't expect me to take a paycut to come out to live somewhere I have no particular interest in living.)
> The Austin businesspeople are right: folks who want to make a lifestyle choice of going to Austin from California should get paid less to do it.
"Should"? Huh?
Did you read the article? Austin companies are having a hard time finding talent. How they can improve their situation is simple economics. That's it. There is no "fair", whatever that means.
> but the all of us who have done this can tell you that remote workers are almost never as productive
> How they can improve their situation is simple economics. That's it.
Actually, 80% of the interesting comments in this thread are about how this statement is absolutely false. In the words of another commenter, quality of life is not fungible. Just about any decent developer can go work for Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia and get paid 2x what they make stateside. Go be a civilian contractor in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and get maybe 3x. Why doesn't everyone flock to these amazing opportunities, if it's all just simple economics?
Half of what those execs are doing is promotion. It's always shocking to me the number of people who think Austin is like every other redneck part of Texas. Dispelling those myths and getting the word out about the quality of life here is why they pay their dues to the Chamber of Commerce in the first place.
(Many people in the Northeast, for instance, can't even fathom what 300 warm, sunny days a year means. You really can't put a dollar figure on that.)
"Just about any decent developer can go work for Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia and get paid 2x what they make stateside. Go be a civilian contractor in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and get maybe 3x. "
As a thought experiment, what if this dev were to get paid a 100x or a 1000x what he could get stateside? Then would you spend a couple of years in Saudi Arabia?
It is about "simple economics", it is just that the price isn't perceived to be high enough, for most good devs stateside, to justify the move to Saudi Arabia. Increase the salary sufficiently to overcome the "climate premium" (and the alcohol premium and the lifestyle premium and the pretty women premium and .... and ...) and you'll see a flow the US to Saudi Arabia (or from California to Denver or whatever).
In other words all the factors that make the Valley a better place than Austin for good devs to migrate to, have a dollar cost. Match or exceed that and devs will go wherever. 2x isn't sufficient to overcome Saudi's perceived yuckiness. 10x or 20 x might work. Pay twice California salaries and Austin companies will have no problems hiring. Good developers are hard to come by in Austin at the price these dumb CEOs are willing to pay. Quelle Surprise!
Fwiw, I've visited Austin and worked in California. If I had to choose today, given two equally interesting jobs and roughly comparable pay (adjusted to cost of living even), I'd pick Austin any day. But that is just me.
"Equally interesting jobs" would be the tough part I think. Id Software is (or was) located in Austin and I doubt they have problems attracting good devs. If your company produces yet another boring businessy CRUD app or social network or Groupon clone or whatever, it might be more difficult.
Of course it's not all about money. I'll take it from your defensive tone that you live in Austin. I do too. I also moved here from San Francisco.
Austin is a great city, but the main thing that kept me happy is that I was able to keep working my job from San Francisco remotely (until I decided to leave). When I start looking again I highly doubt I will find work that is very interesting or pays very well. Plus, like Garann said, most jobs will come with long, boring commutes unless I want to move out to the suburbs (I don't).
I'd argue that many, many software developers in the bay area already know Austin is not "every other redneck part of Texas". All of my friends and coworkers from SF had either been to Austin and liked it or actively wanted to visit sometime. Most SF software devs are not natives, they're from places like Texas and many I've met would like to get out of the bay area, but what Austin is offering is not making it worthwhile.
I want to keep living here. The money and type of work are the only real things in question... and I think this is true of more people than you think. If the only response Austin wants to give is "well, you don't want to live here enough!" then I wish the city the best of luck retaining and finding talent. I'll keep working remote, or have to move back to the bay area, probably. This sucks because I like the town in all other ways.
Here's the opening of the article she referenced: "Austin's supply crunch for software developers was bad enough by September to prompt 25 Central Texas tech executives to fly to California in search of new talent."
Here's your argument: Maybe the OP doesn't want to live there but a lot of people do.
Apparently, 25 Central Texas tech executives think you are wrong.
So since we (well, everyone it appears but you) are talking about finding people who have not chosen to live in Texas, perhaps those companies might need to persuade people to move.
You'd have to pay me EXTRA to work in Austin, frankly.
No, 25 Central Texas tech executives just want to ignore the prevailing market forces on tech salaries.
You might not like Austin very much, but many, many bright tech folks here love it. Conversely, I know quite a few people that left the bay area because they couldn't stand the tech scene there. Different strokes for different folks, but the bottom line is that just as the Austin execs are wrong to ignore the upward trend on salaries, you are wrong to discount the dollar valuation of improvements in quality of life.
You want us to "buy your product", and you sincerely believe that if we make the switch, we'll be happier. You've gotten all the early adopters, and all the malcontents. How are you going to attract everyone else who is still living in SF?
This is basic fucking customer development 101. Apparently, your Tech Execs think the answer is:
1) Buy everyone a beer and a taco.
2) Offer less salary because our product is Awesome!
Note: cost of switching for us: Move 1500 miles. Miss friends. Make new friends. Break rent contracts. Find rent contracts. And if we, in fact, do not like your product, we have to switch back again. I don't like AT&T much, but you're asking me to break my contract with them, and sign a contract with you to pay more for the same service because it'll be better quality. And if I don't like it, I'll incur the same costs going back to AT&T.
If this is how you "bright tech folks" in Austin do customer development, well...
Whoa there. I don't not want to live in Austin. I wouldn't choose Austin if I were making the choice now, and that's for exactly the reason you provide: the work I want to do isn't here. As someone who's already here, I don't demand what I could get in the Bay Area, because I can't move there. Although I'm using my own experience in the post, this isn't about me - it's about the people Austin companies want to hire, who often need a reason to move here over SF, NYC, or any other place.
Fair enough, let me add to my counterpoint another piece of personal experience [I see another commenter ripped me for telling an anecdote -- what posted to HN is ever NOT anecdotal or opinion].
Have you ever worked at a company where they've brought in the "hotshot" from <name successful tech company here>? I have. I worked for a tech company in a non-hot-tech location that, once we got big enough, brought in hotshots from California. They almost all were:
1) Overpaid -- in our opinion because we were paid far less since we had lived and worked there for a long time.
2) Know-it-all A-holes.
3) Out within 6 months anyway because they realized it wasn't interesting compared to their last hot-shot job.
The people who came to our company because they actually wanted to live there ("move back", as it often was) and were making a sacrifice to do it... now those people were into it and stayed for years. I think this is what the Austin companies are looking for. They're out in the Bay trying to find the ex-UT, ex-Texas, maybe even just ex-Midwest people would like to contemplate moving back. I think that sounds reasonable before throwing lots of money at people who might not otherwise consider the move.
just because you had bad luck with "hotshots from California" doesn't mean that everyone of them is as you describe. As for trying to find ex-UT, ex-Texas, people, well, why don't they just ask for them?
>Working remotely is a compromise further: you will get paid less, you'll get promoted less, and you will be one of the first laid off.
Employers take heed: If you can't afford to pay $150K, if you can figure out how to communicate remotely, you quite often get a deep discount on wages (or a dramatic increase in employee satisfaction) if you find someone that wants remote work that can't find said remote work.
At my last full-time job, some of the best people there worked remote and came in once a month or so. It was fairly clear that these people worked remotely because they were so valuable, and working from home was the perk they demanded as compensation.
As far as I can tell, all people are aware that working from home is a big benefit to the employee; but from what I've seen? people who work from home because they are good enough that they get the working conditions they demand don't get laid off.
I mean, from what I've seen, the employer looks at it as compensation, too; so you might be right that if two people with the same skill and the same pay worked at the same company, one working from home and the other in the office, the one working from home might get let go of first. But if the work from home person is more skilled or is getting paid less (which is usually the case) then they are not more likely to get laid off.
(As a side note, personally I think that getting laid off in the first round is almost always the best outcome for an employee. In the first round, if it is a large company, there are usually severance packages. This package gets smaller in subsequent rounds. Also, if you don't get laid off? well, they reduced the number of workers, but not the amount of work that needs to be done. It's no fun.)
sorry.. counterexample here.. I work remotely...(very remotely).. get paid a shit ton, and get to live where I want, and work on what I want. No one needs to compromise
The Austin businesspeople are right: folks who want to make a lifestyle choice of going to Austin from California should get paid less to do it. On average, they'll earn more than most people in Austin, but less than their counterparts in Silicon Valley.
I see no problem with this. It's fair. You usually only get to choose where you want to live or where you want to work. The other one is a compromise. That's life. Compromises. Why would a businessperson not take advantage of this when someone wants to live in Austin? Maybe the OP doesn't want to live there but a lot of people do.
Working remotely is a compromise further: you will get paid less, you'll get promoted less, and you will be one of the first laid off.
The OP can rant all she wants about "[companies lacking] the tools to communicate remotely, [probably] can’t communicate at all", but the all of us who have done this can tell you that remote workers are almost never as productive. They only work for "guy who takes the app and ports it to Android because we don't care to do it here" type of projects. 1-3 person projects. Large projects are hard enough to manage with the people in the office, and going remote is a nightmare. I've even seen 10 year experts on the specific codebase try to work remotely and it be completely unproductive when they're remote.
There will be exceptions. The one guy who's amazing as a remote worker. Sales people are always an exception. And of course, all of this turns on its head when the company is not desirable. A crap company will pay you a lot to work remotely, then go out of business 6 months later. Generally though, what I've spelled out here is the way it is.
Here's a proposal, given that she's in Austin already, the OP should demand $150K from those companies or her current employer based on this blog post. Tell us what happens over the next 3 months, 6 months, 2 years.