I think it ultimately boils down to what future does Silicon Valley want for itself. The Silicon Valley may be ideal for the top 10% of developers, who benefit from compensation that is high enough to be able to afford to live in central locations in Silicon Valley. But what about the remaining 90%? What about those who don't work for FAANGs, unicorns, or VC-funded high-growth startups? They will eventually have to leave as they won't be able to keep up with the ever-rising cost of living here, but will Silicon Valley still be an innovative place in their absence? Will those remaining in Silicon Valley want to strike it out on their own, or will they play it safe in order for them to afford their housing costs? Will pushing out the other 90% of developers led to missed opportunities by VCs, who may turn down an unconventional business idea that may turn out to be the next huge, lucrative industry? That's why I believe Silicon Valley should address its housing problems; its engine of innovation may be threatened if large amounts of engineers leave for cheaper places where they can afford to take risks and where they can afford to work for other types of companies.
Re:I hate living in my tiny house
by derangedHorse on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:51AM
(#21191184)
There’s a lot of assumptions here on the things that you think would be able to fix the housing prices. Who’s to say any of those things would provide enough demand to make the area more affordable?
Also, it’s weird to say that with more people moving in it will lower the amount of competent people. That’s not necessarily true and there’s no evidence that the influx of people will affect the ratio of what it is now.
Being away from the valley has allowed me to recognize how odd most of the people there are and how much it’s affected my own thinking during my stay there. Elitist thinking like this runs rampant and when you move to other places you’ll see the people in the Bay Area aren’t all that elite after all.
That seems like a very inefficient mechanism even if it holds true. The supply and demand should grow over time in an absolute sense. It brings to mind stack ranking's flaws of needlessly discarding talent and discouraging cooperation.
As for salaries the point of Silicon Valley as a selling point is to try to pay for quality - a fixed housing SV would still be more expensive than generic office in a generic town or outsourcing to cheaper still.
Salaries will become lower because there will be too much supply, as dev people will flock in. Conversations will become a lot less interesting because S/N ratio will decrease.
There will be less benefit from living in the Valley if you are one of the very best (if you make a salary in top 10% of the dev jobs, you are not concerned with the rents now, it is you who DRIVE the rents to where they are), and more benefit if you aren't so good.
VC will also have a much higher pool of founders to pick from. Non-funded founders are poor, many can't go to the Valley now, they will. VCs will get picky, and deals will become worse for everyone. Valley will just get watered down.