That's what makes it appealing to a lot of people who have been living around millions of other people. Soon many of these places will no longer be cheap and far away from other people. It'll be interesting to see how today's cultural conflicts play out when the more left-leaning, urban remote workers move en masse to smaller, more right-leaning, less urban places.

One thing worth remembering - thousands of current "Bay area tech workers" grew up in other parts of the country, and moved to silicon valley primarily for job opportunities, but may not otherwise share in the religious, political or social views that dominate that space.

So while in some cases there may be the conflict you're alluding to, for other people, they're just moving back home.

> thousands of current "Bay area tech workers" grew up in other parts of the country, and [...] may not otherwise share in the religious, political or social views that dominate that space.

I know a few, who grew up in rural Michigan, and Oregon, respectively. But from conversations with them, I get the impression that, while they carry some traces of their roots with them, they also have much that sets them apart from their background (putting a high value on formal education, cultural tolerance, etc).

And ultimately, Bay Area values WERE formed by the people who moved there. Janis Joplin? Texas. Nancy Pelosi? Maryland. Donald Knuth? Wisconsin.

I think you're both right, and it just goes to show you that (in spite of what it might feel like sometimes) we've all actually got a lot more in common than we think. I'm a mountain-states native who went to the Bay for work and is (at least for now) back in the mountains. I got along fine with folks in California, but it still never quite felt like home (tough to do in a 1BR). Still, I'm sure I've brought a little of the Bay back with me! At the very least a new Subaru with California plates. :)

That's precisely the math that people are weighing. Live in comparative squalor in the bay or nyc in your cramped apartment with no grass and no light and little opportunity for change as time goes by and your family potentially grows, or move back home and live like an absolute king in a legitimate mansion with yards on all sides with a three car garage, basketball hoop, and a pool in that rich rich neighborhood with better schools than SF. It's like giving yourself a massive raise.

Space in big cities comes at a premium, but tech workers living in SF have hardly been living in squalor. Most of SF is single family homes, and the vast Bay Area beyond even more so.

Also, having done the spreadsheet many times myself, it’s almost never a raise to move to a low-cost area.

The reason people make that move is that they’ve accumulated so much wealth in SF that they can basically retire so long as they move to a low cost area.

Some people want to do that, and retire very young. Some people don’t, so they stay around until they’re wealthy enough to even afford nice properties in the bay area.

The reason for this giant shift, however, is very simply that the vast majority of city life is either closed or greatly impeded at the moment. So the experience of city life has been significantly degraded, and thus many people are now shifting toward places that offer very little except for nice, cheap property, and thus make a good place to hole up and hide out the pandemic.

I’m not so sure - housing is so expensive in the Bay Area it’s more than just moving to retire.

I grew up in Buffalo where housing is quite inexpensive so it’s more dramatic for me, but a small house to raise a family is 2.3 million on the peninsula, super old, pretty small (1600sqft), and being a new buyer your property tax on that is 23k per year.

That’s insane even if you get a million dollars in an exit or in google shares.

People just want to be able to have a family and a place to live.

My friends mostly left in their 30s to have kids (mostly Colorado, some Texas).

Even SF is cheaper than the peninsula for a new construction apartment (which don’t really exist in Palo Alto through Cupertino).

You can’t even really escape to Santa Cruz anymore - you’d have to go to Sacramento. At that point you might as well move across the country.

Frustrating bit to me is how unnecessary this is - just people who bought first protected by prop13 keeping the supply down for others.

There’s an irony in seeing people with a Black Lives Matter sign on the lawn, and pushing for No on 22, but when it comes to the most important way to actually help the most people (increasing housing supply) - they instead repeatedly argue against building new or high density housing. And they do this while pretending they’re in favor of housing at the same time.

One of the Palo Alto city council members says there’s no housing crisis - you just need a good realtor (like her). See: https://twitter.com/lydia_kou

Kitty on the planning commission in Cupertino says if they build housing single devs will turn their high school daughters into prostitutes.

People complain about building everywhere, but the housing policy/cost is abnormally bad here.

I’m in Sacramento, been here a few years. There’s definitely been people moving from the Bay out here. For some people, you can buy a large enough house with a yard, but you have the option of driving in to the Bay if you need to go in to your office from time to time, while mostly working remotely. Certainly not the perfect option for everyone, but it works for some people.

I agree on the need for more multi-family housing. There’s been a boom of apartments and condos around Downtown and Midtown Sac, but they are all “luxury” units with the price tag to match. People not making a good salary don’t seem to be helped at all, so there needs to be more policy than just “build more rich people housing.”

But then again I was one renting a “luxury” apartment before I bought my condo in a gentrifying neighborhood, so maybe I’m part of the problem.

Increasing supply matters more than policy around what specific housing is built.

If you increase supply (even if all “luxury”) - older units become cheaper relative to new units. The supply is the most important bit.

Affordable housing policy is often pushed as a way to not really increase supply. They’ll build one price controlled housing unit that’s nearly impossible to get an apartment in and call it done.

Don't you see that this is the kind of framing that rubs people the wrong way? There's nothing wrong with having different preferences, but it's frustrating for Bay Area natives to constantly hear that it's a terrible place nobody could enjoy on its own terms.

How is it terrible? While I'd love to move to a cheaper place (our work is all remote now), I can't think of anywhere better and I've been looking hard.

Being near the ocean is a hard requirement. And weather that isn't terrible (bay area weather isn't actually very good, but it's also never terrible). Where else could one go?

Florida could be nice but it is low land being taken over by rising oceans so not a great strategy. Washington state coast sounds promising but there is snow up there, so a hard no. Oregon coast is pretty inhospitable for water sports. Southern California isn't particularly cheaper. Southern east coast (north of Florida) could work, but way too much racism so as a minority that's a pass.

SF Bay to Monterey Bay is a sweet spot in the USA that is hard to beat.

I mean sure, but eventually you come to a reckoning of what you truly get out of an area. Is it nice restaurants? Bars? Parks? You can have those elsewhere. Walkable neighborhoods with transit exist elsewhere too. Museums, art, plays, concerts, operas, orchestras, too.

At some point you have to square with the fact that your 2 million dollar home in the bay area is an order of magnitude more expensive than a comparable home in a dozen more or less comparable places, given that you'd be working from home at the same rate anyway (in this hypothetical). And then you'd have plenty of money left over to fly back to the bay whenever you'd like.

Can you give some examples of places that meet those criteria (good transit, walkable, major cultural venues, varied dining scene) with $200k houses?

I don’t think there are many places in America with good transit that are walkable so I think it’s going to be tough to find that for $200k. And if the solution is just to move somewhere so small you don’t need transit, then you lose out on the varied restaurants, cultural events, major airport, etc.

The better places for transit like NYC, SF, Chicago, and Denver are all major cities so you won’t find dirt cheap houses near the transit.

Chicago: the Red, Blue, Green, Orange, and Pink lines all run through neighborhoods with $200k houses. The Blue Line connects to O'Hare, the Orange line connects to Midway. The bus system has a line in a grid every mile, sometimes more often, with some diagonals.

Are the areas with the cheap houses walkable destinations in their own right or mainly residential communities with a subway stop that can get you to the action?

Chicago was the example that most came to mind as something with cheaper houses and transit, but without knowing it very well my sense from talking to people is that there is a lot of cheap housing in Chicago but living in the urban core isn't necessarily cheap.

Shaker Heights.

Ironically, people in "flyover country" have been hearing the same sorts of disses for decades

I used to cringe with the term “flyover country”. Now I embrace it. I even promote it. The less enticing I make my area seem to an outsider, the less likely they will try to move here and ruin it.

There's nothing to do here, you're isolated, there's no culture, it's completely boring, and the people are so intolerant. Stay on the coasts!

And don’t come to Louisiana either, WWOZ is on the Internet for a reason!

(just kidding, we need all of you we can get)

Absolutely, and I won't pretend that's something I've never been guilty of. But it's a very toxic habit and we need to do our best to fight against it.

I would consider it a personal problem if a bay area native dislikes hearing that some people don't like the bay area. Is it unreasonable to expect adults to have the emotional maturity to handle such things?

I like to flatter myself that the Bay Area has changed me from my rural roots; surely there is some of that happening too?

The biggest trick the media has played on the working class is framing everything in a "right vs left" lens.

There does not seem to be any resistance to this indoctrination.

It's not about left right. It's about rural vs urban and have money vs not. Everything that's terrible and soul crushing about a tourism economy is about to happen to random places that have thus far been spared that fate.

> It's not about left right. It's about rural vs urban and have money vs not.

There's a high correlation between population and political in the US:

> There's a decisive break between Democratic and Republican support at a population density of 800 persons/per square mile.

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-01/how-the-d...

See also Canada:

* https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/338canada-the-urban-...

Also, in recent years/decades there has been high correlation between education levels and political leanings. Piketty, in his most recent book Capital and Ideology, made an interesting observation: up until the 1980s blue collar works tended to vote for more-Left parties and white collar (more educated?) workers for more-Right parties. Then in the the 1980s and 1990s it swapped to the point that the more educated you are the more Left-ish you are likely to vote. And this phenomenon is true in basically all Western countries.

You can't reduce things to one dimension, I agree, but I disagree that left vs right is unimportant. When largely liberal city people migrate into largely conservative places, there's gonna be some conflict. Not to mention a lot of these tech workers are liberal and have money, so they'll be empowered to support changes that the locals may not be on board with but also may not have the means to combat effectively.

I agree with your first two sentences, then I think you loose your way.

SFO is a 'liberal' city, but the idea the tech people are majority liberal as well needs a strong does of supporting evidence. My own observation is that much like the rest of the rest of the populace, it's a spectrum. I have talked to many SFO folks looking to move out of there specifically because they want to be somewhere 'conservative', usually using more colorful language.

And I also have some doubts about the whole 'techies are going to come here and take over' trope. Sure, they will influence things (money always does), but entrenched political and social structures don't just melt away overnight. They know the rules of the game because they made them. I live in a pretty lefty area that's also pretty desirable to live in, and periodically you'll get an influx of individuals from other places that make noise about some aspect of the area that isn't conservative enough for them (taxation, commonly) and how they're going to change things. And the incumbent political actors spin up and work the system and it usually goes nowhere. I suspect you'll see much more of that than radical changes brought on by the arrival of tech money.

You only have to look at any slightly politically charged topic on HN to see that there are plenty of far far right wingers in tech.

Edit: see I'm even being downvoted by them now :D

Many techies are individualistic. That used to be considered left-leaning, but in the last years some people have been pushing the idea that is something from the right, instead.

We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.

Do these individualistic people wear masks or is that to collectivist?

That’s the dealbreaker question for me right now.

Point being, even individualists are part of a community.

Obviuosly. No one is an island. I should have said "individualistic-leaning".

Appreciate the response. Sadly not obvious to all these days : (.

The dispersal of bay area tech workers will be good for the country, if we can avoid breaking down in the immediate future.

SV had become a total thought bubble, with the average tech worker having either no conception or a very negative conception of how most of the country lives outside of the large urban areas.

Moving into areas with lots of moderates or conservatives will be a good learning experience. I don't expect people to change their ideology, but I do expect much more tolerance from them than what I've seen in recent years.

Of the US population 80% lives in urban areas. While bubbles are relative to experience it is fair to say the higher percentage is the one more representative.

Small cities and suburbs of large metro areas (which account for a large proportion of that %) are very different culturally.

Nearly all my colleagues and friends here in the Bay Area are from somewhere else.

So this idea of a totally isolated bubble is a fiction made up on few facts to sell a story.

And most people are fairly tolerant - except of the intolerable few who wish to destroy tolerance. Again more made up stories.

It's a pretty massive thought bubble, at least for the professional class. It has a massive number of highly paid, white, left-leaning people. Opinions outside of that bubble are met with "I didn't know people like you existed!".

If that's not a bubble, I don't know what is.

The Bay area and tech is not predominantly white. While hispanics and black people are underrepresented, Asians (both south and east) are dramatically overrepresented.

In addition, Bay area people are from all over the country and from diverse backgrounds.

In contrast, rural communities tend to be highly homogeneous both in terms of race and life experience.

An exception doesn't disprove the rule. Go walk around any upper income neighborhood in SF. It's mostly white. Sure, Asian make up a good percentage, but it's mostly white at the upper echelon.

And sure, people come from all over the country, but they gravitate here because the SF bubble aligns with their own views. And if your views don't align, you learn pretty quickly to keep your mouth shut.

And sure, rural communities have their own issues, but you can have a much more diverse perspective going to any number of "fly over country" cities in the US.

According to Wikipedia, the 2018 ACS estimated SF is 40% White, 5% Black, 34% Asian, 15% Hispanic, and 5% mixed race.[1]

Are you really surprised that sharing a party with white nationalists makes you an outcast in a city as diverse as San Francisco?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco#....

I grew up in an area with conservatives. I remember the slurs I was called quite clearly. I don't need to go back to that experience. Give me a break with a comment like this.

Another thing I'm curious about is what the distribution will be like. Smooth, across a wide range of places - anywhere with a decent internet connection - or will people follow previously trodden paths to places like Boulder or where I am in Bend, Oregon? There are plenty of towns with lots of outdoor access in Oregon that are cheap because the mill closed. But they are not 'hot' destinations.

if starlink comes online as scheduled then all bets are off. You'll see tech workers on the mountain tops of the Rockies i bet.

the right model for the rockies (and cascades and sierras) is to be found in Switzerland/Austria/France/Germany near the high Alps. In the long run it's not going be urban development all the way up to the summits, but I would expect the Rockies to have more of the same sort of human presence that the Alps do in about 1-200 years time. The big difference is precipitation ... the Rockies are on the low side compared to the Alps, and that may take things in a very different direction.

I'm not so sure. People like to be around other people, and like minded people. Sure, some will go to really out of the way places, but I'm not so sure about how many will stay, long term.

Wait till Asia's borders open. The fanout will go transpacific. Especially in Southeast Asia.

Except time zones

And salary changes and income taxes.

Even better. Play during the day, work at night. ~Most~ Many engineers prefer that.

So right now it's 5pm PST, end of the work day for many. It's 8AM in Saigon.

You really think people are going to work from midnight to 8am? And sometimes later in the morning depending on the situation? And this is going to be a massive trend?

Maybe not Saigon, but as a night owl, it's been a dream of mine to be able to slide my 9-5 EST jobs to being 2nd shift jobs, like say in Central or Eastern Europe.

People have different biological clocks, and being able to detach from geography and perfectly tailor your clock to the company's clock, frankly, sounds like good efficiency to me.

Lots of companies operate across two or more time zones. Yes, it has problems, but as long as you group them together in no more than three groups it generally doesn't get too complicated, and even allows you to not have to have people on call at odd hours.

If your company can operate on EST, yeah, the hours almost work out. Lines up even better on India Standard Time.

For PST, central Europe is perfect. 6pm-2am workday is pretty doable.

The GP said "Especially in Southeast Asia," not Europe.

6pm-2am is doable if you're a) a very late night person, and b) without kids. I don't think this generalizes to a large percentage of people, and it can easily go well past 2am. It's less unreasonable to think people may still be working or responding to something at 8/9 or even 10pm PST, but if that's now 4/5/6am for someone in Europe, that's pretty rough. You'll also not be able to line up your meals very easily.

Definitely not for a large percentage of people. Just a significant percentage of the IC engineering workforce. Especially the digital nomad types.

People with kids aren't going to relocate their family internationally unless they already had family roots there.

Anecdotally, the people I personally know that love SE Asia and would seriously consider or already did WFH from there were all in the 20-30s age group and had no problem maintaining US working times. The biggest draw of SE Asia other than the super low COL is that its beautiful outside. The outdoors is best enjoyed during daylight, so the timezone offset is a plus for them.

Where are you?

So...uh... whereabouts is that exactly? Asking for a friend.

I'm guessing from his twitter somewhere within range of Las Vegas.