> If you believe housing prices are a core problem to the growth of your business why continue to grow in the bay area rather than try and move to a less expensive region of the country?

We also do that! Stripe is hiring engineers in both Seattle and Dublin, and for other roles in many other cities. Please apply :-). https://stripe.com/jobs

That said... this issue isn't just (or primarily) a Stripe issue. It's a broader social and economic problem. Even if Stripe is okay, we want to help fix the larger issue around us.

Do you see any value in a bunch of companies of different specialities planting a flag somewhere and building heir own infrastructure (university, town, housing)? It feels like it could be cheaper and better for everyone’s quality of life.

The history of corporate funded cities (or even government planned ones) is not good. It takes far too long to generate a real community / cultural center vs. the time spans corporations want to work in. Also, the city governments would be highly inclined to align with the interests of the companies, not the residents, which is not a recipe for a fun place to live.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia

I’m definitely aware of the history! I’m wondering if there can be mitigation’s put in place for handle them

I don't think anyone's come up with a great substitute for the decades of organic growth and iteration necessary to make a compelling city. Setting aside a deliberate corporate sponsor, how many compelling new cities really started in the last 30-40 years, even by accident? E.g. below 25K population at the start, over 250K at the end.

E.g. I looked through this list, and at least at quick glance it seems like they were all fairly major cities 100 years ago. http://www.businessinsider.com/us-news-best-places-to-live-i...

Much of SE Washington was built around government projects. A tech town with smart people, but low cost of living? Tbh I think it would go well, and possibly positively impact any existing communities near them.

Let's play this out. You create a city of say, 100K, composed of employees from Google, FB, Salesforce, etc. Where do they eat? How much will housing cost given your average income will be several times that of a "normal" city? Do you spread them all out in single family homes (and have massive traffic) or do you force them to live in high-rises?

Where do the restaurants, and arts, and culture they need come from? Who works at those institutions, and how do they afford to live in that city? (Or do they commute from somewhere else?) How do you fund the international airport that's going to be a must-have?

I think it's possible, but I'm unclear how it would actually lead to a low cost of living. It sounds like most company towns - sprawling, lacking the kind of culture that people want from a city... reminds me of Plano, TX, where JC Penny moved in the 80s, or Bentonville, AR, or Sidney, NE (where Cabela's is HQed).

Companies would have a really hard time hiring highly-educated, high demand workers to move there vs being able to live in say, NYC, London or SF. It's not enough to just offer cheap housing - you have to offer a high quality of life, plus jobs for spouses, and good schools for their kids.

You’re probably right. I’m wondering now if something smaller scale can happen in an established city but with lots of room to grow. If you need “critical mass” of talent on an area, send people there! Build things that keep educated people around.

That's really the problem, at least here in SF. The tech industry needs highly skilled employees, rather than local residents. So wherever they land, they bring in a bunch of new people who also need housing (and have high incomes.) I don't think that's inherently bad - but if your city has a bounded housing supply like SF, it's inevitably going to lead to rising rents and displacement of existing lower income residents.

(Contrast that with say, auto manufacturers, who would maybe bring in some managers when opening a plant but would also employ tens of thousands of locals, raising the incomes of the existing resident more than bringing in new transplants.)

Places in the UK that come to mind are railway towns -- Crewe, Swindon, Doncaster, Ashford. They all tend to be doing fine now, despite starting off as a town built around a single employer.

Seattle isn't too far behind SF with regards to housing (according to recent press at least). I've been wondering for years: could the larger employers in SF do more to coordinate which cities are expanded to? I'd be willing to change locations if my (tech) employer gave me the option, but others might have concerns about putting 'their eggs in one basket'. If 10 SF based companies all opened an office in the same city, would more people consider the move? My hunch is yes and I'd love to see this theory tested :)

Rents in Seattle have stayed relatively constant over the past several years despite adding tens of thousands of residents because many new apartment buildings have been built.

However, home prices (including condos) have risen drastically because of the limited supply. There's no new space for single family homes, and because of a Washington law which increases liability for developers, few new condominium buildings are built.

> less expensive region of the country

I don't live in CA, but I get why people want to. Where would you propose? Where else has a strong economy, good universities, nice weather, a well educated/talented work force, legal frameworks amenable to tech, good food, and interesting culture? There just aren't a lot of candidates, and if everyone moves hypothetically and never grapples with NIMBY policy, they'll just bring the problem with them.

> a well educated/talented work force

This one is the only part that's not really possible at this time. However, if a company is willing to invest directly in growing the housing supply in the bay area, they should be willing to make the effort to try and grow talent in other parts of the country.

And there are tons of other places that have some combinations of good universities, nice weather, good food and interesting cultures. Namely large parts of sunbelt region in addition to other cities which may not have as nice weather, but make up for it in business friendliness and cost of living. It's also important to remember that virtually all urban areas are liberal and diverse, even in conservative states such as Texas.

> This one is the only part that's not really possible at this time. However, if a company is willing to invest directly in growing the housing supply in the bay area, they should be willing to make the effort to try and grow talent in other parts of the country.

I don't know how to reliably "grow talent", and I'm not sure most companies would either. Building housing and attracting talent are solved problems, so why not try that first?

I'm not saying companies shouldn't be in Austin or Huston, far from it. However, SF and NYC are titanic economic engines that could be even more dynamic if they had more housing. There is an obvious solution to the not enough housing problem, difficult though it may be, it's probably worth solving.

You're ignoring the consequences that come from building large amounts of new housing at once, I should preface this by saying I'm very much in favor of new housing just we need to be careful about it.

First you grow talent the same way it grew in the bay area, by letting people work on challenging software products decade over decade.

Second, population growth leads to strains on civic infrastructure which in the bay area is way under invested in. Additionally, there is a very limited amount of infil available to build new housing on, so it would require that other housing get torn down in order to build said new housing. In areas with small lots, this is harder to do because you need to buy up a bunch of surrounding properties to build a larger building.

This often contributes to increased displacement as developers are buying up properties, using laws such as the ellis act to evict and redevelop properties. Oddly enough, the restricted zoning which keeps prices high, also reduces the amount of redevelopment that happens which keeps land values lower and maintains rent control that would not be allowed for new buildings under costa hawkins.

Additionally, the political infeasibility of San Francisco should not be overlooked. This is a city with a long history of anti-capitalist activity and capitalists should recognize this fact and go to places that will be more accepting of their investments.

I think your criticism is perfectly valid. I'm not suggesting that someone wave a wand and double supply tomorrow. I'm proposing that people should support increases in supply, changes to laws that make housing less affordable, and infrastructure spending to support new housing. You're right, it won't be easy, but I believe that moving the problem elsewhere, just moves the problem elsewhere. If everyone in tech goes to Austin for example without some plan for density, you'll either get an affordability crisis, or sprawl which is terrible in myriad other ways. Maybe SF is a lost cause, I don't really know.

Nashville, TN, Research Triangle Park in NC, Austin/San Antonio, TX with Tampa/Orlando, FL coming in as runner up as growing tech hubs.

I'm from near Research Triangle Park in NC and have to say that the weather is miserable all summer, just horrible. The traffic is abysmal, and everything is strip malls and McMansions. You can top that off with the insane gerrymandering in NC that prevents the most populace areas from having any political power. Locals are quite hostile to new-comers, and the government keeps trying to tell people which bathrooms to use which is just bizarre. Yeah, BBQ is great, the schools are good, and low taxes are nice, but NC really misses the mark for me in a lot of ways. Having grown up in the area, I am not a fan.

I don't know too much about the other places.

> everything is strip malls and McMansions

Say what? I visited Durham recently and had a blast -- lots of cool local businesses (Fullsteam Brewery was an amazing find) and neat old warehouses and charming old houses and such. Carrboro was also great, people biking everywhere and local hippie markets and stuff.

Yes, Durham is very nice (and Fullsteam is pretty great), but the part you visited is very small and not representative of the rest of the region at all. Raleigh also has a tiny, and nice downtown. However, the region is still a snarl of highways and unsustainable suburban sprawl.

A quick googling of `${city} housing crisis`:

https://www.nashville.gov/Portals/0/SiteContent/Human%20Real...

https://www.wral.com/officials-describe-wake-county-as-affor...

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2018-02-02/whose-afford...

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2018/03/15/orla...

Unless (in America) we start approaching housing differently, we'll see the same problem happen over and over again, until the whole economy is choked by housing costs and wealth is transferred from productive uses to land owners seeking rents.

Nashville, TN just voted down an important public transit initiative.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/what-went-wro...

Minneapolis if you ignore the weather for 6 months..

I currently live in the Bay Area. I would never even consider any of the places you just listed, due to the weather alone.

This is very HN-centric thinking (rational but not scalable). People move to Silicon Valley to "move to Silicon Valley". They're chasing a dream and they want to be in the thick of it.

Sure you might find a couple good job opportunities in Nashville or Tampa, but its hard to compare that to being in the thick of tech industry where you're right in the middle of the world's top companies, surrounded by lots of talent to push you further.

Invest in technologies and processes to make remote work a reality so you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to work there.

Agreed. Imagine what might be possible if SV employers were willing to spend $15k per employee annually on making remote teams awesome, as opposed to paying (I'm just guessing) $25k/year in salary and rent to keep them in SV.

I don't know what a real solution would cost, but it's a question worth asking IMO.

Remote work is fine, and should be more available, but agglomeration effects are real. Putting a lot of smart interesting people in a few dense places just makes sense.

The technology isn't the problem. It's the companies.

While that will always exist, the majority of people moving to the bay area are moving to work for a company like Facebook or Google rather than to work on their own startup.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two places: Raleigh, NC and Austin, TX.

they're both undergoing a housing crises right now

Fine. Maybe the Bay Area is the best place for those types of people. Your illustration demonstrates why it should be more expensive to live there.

> should be more expensive to live there

I didn't say anything about should or shouldn't. I was putting forth the idea that it is uniquely attractive to companies and workers. If housing were a normal market, supply would rise to meet demand, and the market could arrive at some sort of equilibrium. The present situation only serves rent seeking interests, and I believe that as a matter of public policy we should prioritize a broader set of stakeholder needs. On a macro level, prioritizing the interests of rent seekers is economically sub optimal, and transfers wealth from workers, companies, and consumers to land owners.

More expensive, yes; exponentially more expensive, no. Those market forces alone don’t account for the cost of living; that’s entirely down to zoning laws preventing high- or even medium-rises.

Cleveland, OH meets at least most of those criteria.

This problem is bigger than just Stripe's business. It hurts many Americans and the whole American economy when unemployment is 2% in San Francisco, 8% in Detroit, and yet the rent is so much more expensive in San Francisco, many people will stay jobless in a cheaper city rather than move there.

source for my stats:

https://www.google.com/search?q=detroit+unemployment+rate

https://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+unemployment+r...

Yes Detroit has a high unemployment rate, but it is in the best interest of companies to go to detroit, and bring their work forces with them which they are refusing to do due to the belief that you can only find talent in the bay area.

I believe that this is just a self fulfilling prophecy, if companies invested in new cities, it would lead to more and more tech workers choosing to live in those places rather than in California.

> bring their work forces with them

You can't just shackle them up and put them on a train though. Plenty of people don't want to live in Detroit, and have other opportunities in the Bay Area or elsewhere. Perhaps they prefer the climate in CA, or perhaps they want to be someplace where there are plenty of other opportunities if the one job doesn't work out.

I wonder what fraction of Bay Area tech workers want to live there?

If every major tech company in the Bay Area switched to remote work, allowing employees to work from anywhere they wanted to as long as they stayed on the same schedule as those who remained in the Bay Area offices, my guess is that there would be a large exodus.

If I weren't constrained by work, I'd be looking for some place where • houses are far enough apart that I rarely hear my neighbors and they can't hear me if I decide to watch an action movie or listen to music at a good volume in the middle of the night, • there are enough trees, bushes, wild plants, and lawns in my neighborhood that plenty of wild critters hang out and are visible from my living room window, • it is not a long drive to reach some place with dark skies, • it is warmer than where I now am (Western Washington, west side of Puget Sound).

I currently have the first two (sonic isolation, wild critters). Here's the view out my living room window from my computer desk [1].

[1] https://imgur.com/LVna5KN

> If every major tech company in the Bay Area switched to remote work, allowing employees to work from anywhere they wanted to as long as they stayed on the same schedule as those who remained in the Bay Area offices, my guess is that there would be a large exodus.

Yes, but the problem is that many companies have found that remote work is significantly less efficient.

So if you need to cluster your work force somewhere, the Bay Area is probably where you'll have to given the desires of your top people to live there.

If it's climate, access to outdoor activities, diverse population, downtown hipster living, near by university, maybe Sacramento, CA would be a good fit:

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-sac...

https://www.selectsacramento.com

Close to Tahoe, Sonoma Coast and Silicon Valley VCs.

Sacramento is really, really hot in the summer. This is one of the big reasons the population in CA clusters on the coast.

True, but its a pretty close approximation to Pleasanton, Dublin, Antioch, Concord, Brentwood, etc. I'd imagine its not that much hotter than anywhere in Texas, Arizona and not as dreary as the Pacific Northwest and not simultaneously extremely cold in the winters and extremely hot in the summer like the proposals for Minnesota/Detroit/Northeast. Plus solar panels can provide low cost HVAC when its really hot.

Some lively discussion: http://www.city-data.com/forum/city-vs-city/991635-austin-vs...

I'm not saying everyone would need to move, but if you polled your work force, and asked them if they wanted to start a new office in a new city, who would be interested in moving to which cities from a list. I'm sure you'd find enough people to start a new engineering office with at least one team.

From there you can grow. This is sort of the logic I'm going by here.

Some of that is bound to happen, sure, but there are a lot of forces that push people to stay in a place that's already successful too. We should let both happen.

Sure, I'm also not saying that companies shouldn't keep what they have in the bay area, I'm just suggesting that they should target future growth in other regions instead.

Yes, SF has physical limitations related to the geography being surrounded by water on three sides and mountains on the fourth side.

Starting a 2nd Stripe Headquarters in Downtown San Jose near the proposed Didiron Transit Village like Google is would be huge [1]. Those without kids will be able to live in Downtown San Jose which is going through a mild renaissance (i.e. area around San Pedro Market) and those with kids will be able to commute in from Morgan Hill/Gilroy in 20 minutes, and Modesto in 20 minutes once HSR arrives. Execs/VCs could take Caltrain or an easy non-rush hour drive on 280 to shuttle between SF and SJ.

Downtown Sacramento is also pretty happening downtown these days with a mix of trendy historical areas that could easily go hipster. And has UC Davis providing a strong student inflow to the area.

[1] https://www.curbed.com/2017/12/5/16738120/google-san-jose-ca...

This really blows my mind. It really can't be some sort of pretension or cliquish type of instinctual herding impulse ... can it ???

I've never understood the whole concentration of the tech industry in such dense clusters, it's quite literally not only the opposite of what all the wise men predicted technology and the internet would do and is also totally contrary to some fundamental technology concepts. Talk about putting all your eggs in a basket.

On the other hand, I also don't understand how other cities seem to be unable to attract a kind of threshold level of tech people to incubate something similar elsewhere.

It feels like it is seriously way past due that the big tech companies get broken up and their monopolies shattered in order to allow for competition and diversification of the market.