There’s a fundamental disconnect between how hard it is to relocate and how easy it is to lose your job.
The cost of moving is huge: uprooting your family, switching the kids’ school, losing your friends and local interests, re-learning a new community, getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services, legal fees and taxes, packing and unpacking your stuff, loading up on new risks…
Whereas your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind.
One of the most frustrating things I’ve seen during any period of layoffs including this one is seeing people that have just moved for a new position get laid off soon after. Especially so if they’ve moved overseas. Like you said, culturally we’ve decided that the newly laid off and relocated took the risk and it’s their fault for taking that risk. Companies apparently share no part in the burden even while trying to lure folks to work for them.
I had a boss who moved a guy from Russia to the US just so he could fire him. He was gone ten days after he arrived and all the paperwork was done. I guess that worker protections in Russia were really strong at the time, the guy was untouchable while he was there.
I agree we shouldn't stand for shitty employers. But, especially right now, it can be hard for a dev to find a job. Especially if the dev has dependents taking up time for take home tests etc. Or if they have a visa the employer needs to manage.
I suggest we should have something like an actor's guild instead, where a floor of basic protections are necessary but there's no ceiling on payment and benefits.
There isn't any. The Screen Actors Guild is a union that merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union to make what the grandparent comment is likely referring to as the "actor's guild". They are a traditional labor union and member of the AFL-CIO. They are also seemingly poised to go on strike at the end of next month.
Often times when someone criticizes the idea of unions, it is because they don't fully understand their purpose, flexibility, and flaws. For example, that comment could imply that unions somehow cap payments and benefits, but that isn't some universal truth of unions (that person also could just be using guild as a synonym for union, but that isn't necessarily true and it doesn't appear to be how they're using it). Unions negotiate on behalf of their members. If the union members don't want caps on compensation, the union can negotiate for no caps.
And it may be worth noting that "aspiring actor" is probably not considered the epitome of someone on a guaranteed safe and lucrative career path. But it does guarantee that if they can land a job, they're going to get paid scale (~$1k/day I believe).
The film and television unions are a tough nut to crack. On the west coast, that's almost all there is and if you're working you will be in the union easy. Unless you do youtube/streaming content and most of that is non-union.
On the east coast, you're going to be working probably for 10 years before you can get into your union and it's an uphill struggle the whole way.
And union or not, you're only going to get work if people like working with you. One day with a bad attitude and you can find yourself unable to get hired by anyone. Film and TV is long hours and a stressful environment and nobody wants to work with anyone who makes the day harder.
Is it realistically possible to be a actor or screen writer without joining this union? If not, then isn't the union itself a monopoly and a form of tyranny?
What if a group of distributed "mainstream" (not sure the right term?) writers are unhappy with the rules of their employment, including the rules of their union. Are they able to organize and collectively bargain with both their employers and their union? In other words, when it comes to these large unions that dominate an industry, are sub-groups within that union able to organize and collectively bargain, forming a sub-union of sorts? My understanding is that large unions make it harder for people within the union to organize and collectively bargain, which is, of course, quite ironic.
Unions are democratic entities. A subgroup in that union would need to either directly lobby union leadership or convince their peers. This can include running for union leadership positions themselves.
It works just like democracy does at larger scales. I can't just declare my property its own new state with me as governor just because I don't like the political opinions of the state's leadership. I can however leave that state or leave the country entirely just like a person can leave the union. However, there are obvious repercussions for that decision.
Exactly. I was criticized for using the word tyranny; a union is capable of tyranny to the same extent a democratic government is. Everyone can judge for themselves to what that extent is.
You say a small group can't just form their own country, or in this case, they cannot just form their own union, but they actually could if only the mega-union did not already exist. Thus, my claim that large unions prevent small groups from organizing and collectively bargaining is true. The small group could form their own union if the large union hadn't removed their ability to do so. I feel about large unions the same way I feel about any large group that prevents small groups from organizing.
>You say a small group can't just form their own country, or in this case, they cannot just form their own union, but they actually could if only the mega-union did not already exist. Thus, my claim that large unions prevent small groups from organizing and collectively bargaining is true. The small group could form their own union if the large union hadn't removed their ability to do so.
The small group can form their own union. They just won't be a part of the big union anymore. Like I said, they need to leave the union/state/country.
I don't understand what argument you are really making here. Even within your hypothetical small group, there can be an even smaller group. You effectively are arguing against any type of collective because there will always be some people who disagree.
> The small group can form their own union. They just won't be a part of the big union anymore. Like I said, they need to leave the union/state/country.
How is this different than, let's say, Amazon telling a group, "that's fine if you want to organize, but you'll have to find another company to do it at" and then firing the group. I believe it is illegal for a company to prevent a group from organizing, but apparently it is legal for a union to prevent a group from organizing.
I'm not sure what the solution is, I'm not that knowledgeable about unions beyond recognizing that people within a union lose their ability to form a union (because they're already in a union). I also recognize that once a union is large enough, sub-groups within that union might want to organize independently, but they cannot. Probably what I would argue for is making exclusive contracts with unions illegal.
>How is this different than, let's say, Amazon telling a group, "that's fine if you want to organize, but you'll have to find another company to do it at" and then firing the group. I believe it is illegal for a company to prevent a group from organizing, but apparently it is legal for a union to prevent a group from organizing.
Amazon is preventing the union from organizing. The larger union is not preventing another union from organizing, it is just saying you can't create a rival union while staying a member of another union. People are still free to create a smaller union, they just need to leave the big union.
The smaller union can negotiate with Amazon, the Hollywood studios, or whoever else. The bigger union is also free to negotiate on behalf of its members and get Amazon, the Hollywood studios, or whoever to not work with the smaller union. That is just a negotiation. The group with the more power will get a better deal. That is the whole point of a union. A smaller union has less power and therefore will inherently be less successful than a big union.
Unions often work to solidify power because that results in better deals for its members. That will include both mergers like the previously mentioned SAG-AFTRA merger and this type of behavior to squash rival unions. It all depends on what its members think is the best strategy.
>I'm not that knowledgeable about unions beyond recognizing that people within a union lose their ability to form a union (because they're already in a union).
I just don't understand why this is a flaw. What value do you think this second smaller union will bring to its members that the bigger union can't? If the smaller union wants its own seat at the negotiation table, then it no longer acting as part of the bigger union anyway in which case there is no restriction on the second union being created (unless the big union negotiates for this exclusivity which is within their rights).
There are lots of different unions with lots of different structures. This person is saying we should have a union with a structure similar to that union.
Yes. The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, is a good model for a programmer's union.[1] TAG represents animators at Disney, Sony, and some lesser studios. (Mostly Disney now, because Disney acquired everybody else.)
This is the current Master Agreement.[2] It specifies minimum wages, but not maximums. "Nothing in this Agreement shall prevent any individual from
negotiating and obtaining from the Producer better conditions
and terms of employment than those herein provided."
See section 5, "Hours". "Time worked on the employee's sixth workday of
the workweek shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly
rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on
the employee's seventh workday of the workweek shall be paid at two
(2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's
classification. Minimum call for the sixth and seventh days shall
be four (4) hours. ... All time worked in excess of fourteen (14) consecutive hours
(including meal periods) from the time of reporting to work shall be
Golden Hours and shall be paid at two (2) times the applicable hourly
rate provided herein for such employee's classification."
These are standard union terms in Hollywood. This is why film scheduling is a discipline but software development scheduling is a joke. Hollywood has crunches, and they hit the producer's budget hard. So planning goes into avoiding crunches.
Despite significant efforts, TAG has been unable to unionize game developers.
The hours bit gets interesting since that also states that animators are hourly rather than salaried.
If you work less than 40 hours in a week, your paycheck is likewise adjusted.
You won't be able to work a 9/80 schedule since the payroll week starts at midnight on Sunday morning. Nor would you necessarily be granted permission.
If you work 6 hours on one day because you were out for some reason rather than 8 hours, you will not necessarily be able to make it up on other days - or even be granted permission to work overtime (because that would be time and a half pay) to compensate.
As programmers we tend to take advantage of the "if all the work gets done we get paid." Get into work at 10 am, leave at 4 pm.
Under the hours provision in that agreement I suspect many programmers would chafe a bit. Under these (and similar) provisions people are butt in a seat for 40 hours a week if they want to be fully paid. Taking a sick child to the doctor on a day for 2 hours means you will only be paid 38 hours for that week.
A couple of friends and myself got laid off in Germany a short while ago - was really tough finding a new job. Very different compared to a year ago. Same for friends from the US and especially the UK.
As someone laid off from a smaller company, I’ve been competing for those jobs with the people laid off from the tech giants - for almost half a year now.
Same here. I think this month marks over 6months. What’s stranger is I don’t even see jobs in job boards anymore, at least not ones that don’t look shady. Most of what I see now on say… LinkedIn is spam postings from iffy looking recruiting firms and consultancies.
A lot of previous mega-corp SE's have unrealistic ideas of what normal salaries should be, leading to them being rejected based off salary demand, or rejecting offers themselves.
No, you aren't going to be paid $450k a year to work on our website... that is fantasy land.
There's so many tech jobs available at all sizes of companies, including mega-corps you've never heard of - they're just not as sexy as your FAANG's & co.
Fair, then you shouldn't have much trouble locating a decent job if you're in the tech and/or software field. Despite FAANG layoffs, the field is booming.
Plenty of insurance companies, restaurant conglomerates, car dealership conglomerates, banks, manufacturing companies, big-AG, medicine, commercial property management companies - not to mention all the consulting companies adjacent to nearly every industry imaginable. They all need tech...
Nobody is reaching out to me... and I don't even see job openings I can send my resume anymore.
For example if go to "who is hiring" and do a search for c++ I find almost nothing. The few c++ Jobs that do exist require you to already live nearby because they can't offer relocation assistance or VISA sponsorship.
Meanwhile same search years ago I would find plenty of cool openings to send my resume to.
I am not even getting recruiter spam anymore where people offer me jobs that are unrelated to my skillset.
I was looking for a job 2-3 months ago and the market wasn’t great, but I got solid leads for C++ dev positions at a number of companies. Ended up calling off further contact since I luckily secured a position fairly quickly, but if you’re interested shoot me an e-mail (address in profile) and I’d be happy to forward you the details of the companies/positions.
Are you implying that companies that grew by a factor of two during COVID laying off 10% of their staff means that software is no longer eating the world?
There are endless dev jobs, the market's a little softer for pay thanks to megacap collusion once again, but I see an endless list of jobs online...
If ExampleCo laid off 1000 javascript developers last week and is trying to hire 20 ML developers this week, then it's true to say they're hiring again, but it's also true that it can be hard for a dev to find a job.
just curious - is there a real world scenario where a company has 1k "javascript" developers and can also lay them off without crippling their position in a given market?
follow up - what market and which company(FAANG counts but must be a single org)?
edit: down votes. look i get the math but who laid off 1k js devs?
Could you please stop posting flamewar comments, including nationalistic flamewar comments, to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
It's not wimpiness, it's an essential acceptance of cruelty that is accepted as a neccessary part of the american psyche where not just individuals but businesses have that freedom.
"If I was the company owner or the boss, I might do that to in order to protect my money"
> American workers are the wimpiest creatures on the planet
American workers do put up with a lot. But the cruelty of having one’s health care access perfectly intertwined with employment probably explains much of their reluctance to engage in the sort of individual and collective action needed to address malignant employer behaviour.
This is starting to collapse with the shift towards high deductible plans and HSA accounts. Increasingly, employers are just providing a subsidy for something that partially covers you when you get cancer. You'll pay for everything else yourself.
I did. You should do it too, while also trying to grasp it. I said "essentially indentured servants", which is what most of the American workforce is (not just you and your couple of privileged friends).
They earn just enough money to cover their very very basic needs. That's essentially an indentured servant.
If you don't like it, work to change it. Don't hide from the fact trying to redefine it.
Indeed. The idea that software engineers could be in the top 85th percentile of American income and be identified as "indentured servants" is an absurd notion.
Seriously. Anyone only has to look for a second and see how many Americans are struggling day to day, paycheck by paycheck. Quick search says up to 78% of Americans do. That’s “essentially indentured servitude”.
They aren't indentured to another person, they're indentured to the laws of nature - needing to eat, find shelter, etc. When in human history has this not been the case?
Where are you living that you are getting free food and housing? Everyone I know is obligated to pay someone for those things. In that way people are "indentured" to those who can provide those things, as there is no reasonable way to procure them without money, which can only be earned by submitting oneself to another's will.
Which SOME employees benefit from. The poverty rate is too high, too many people in jail for such a rich country. What's the point of being rich when only a tiny percentage of the people benefit?
If we look at the income level of the poorest 10%, the United States ranks 16th—not as good, but still among the 10% best countries: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty (click on the Table tab)
Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers" and most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.
> Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers"
You only have to look at the definition in their link to see that US healthcare costs don't get adjusted for.
> most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.
Right, most people pay health insurance in a way that's indistinguishable from paying taxes in practice (although the US system also comes with significant out-of-pocket costs, so just including insurance costs wouldn't tell the full story). But that "disposable income" metric is defined in a way that considers US-style health insurance voluntary and therefore money spent on that is disposable income (even though it never actually hits someone's bank account in practice), whereas in a country with tax-funded healthcare or mandatory health insurance (unless it qualifies as "social insurance", but normally it doesn't) the costs of that aren't counted in that person's income.
You can expect people to have empathy and be self-aware. It doesn't mean your expectations will be met, but it's a sad world we live in where you dismiss this as unrealistic.
Well, at the very least the ones who die from exposure in the winter because they don't have a place to live, the ones who die because they can't afford medical care, and so on have a clue what real hardship is.
They don't? All the tech companies I hear about having unions are American. (They are also big I suppose, but when I worked at Arm in the UK there were frequently outsiders sort of 'protesting' for employees to join. I was never aware of anyone caring who worked there.)
It seems weird to me to have professional unions, doctors are an outlier there, where it's common, and (partly I suppose because) there isn't a professional institution (which overlap slightly) - it's split between unions and the GMC (licencing body, and as a doctor you'd whistle-blow to them for example).
I'd like to see more software engineers be professionally registered, and it be more worthwhile to. (Yes, quite chicken-and-egg I'm sure.) I'm a member of the IET, but to be honest their light on software-relevance. The chartership requirements for example seemed like they would require quite a bit of bullshitting (not lying exactly, just sort of business-speak style forcing something to fit the very specific irrelevant questions) to satisfy; I abandoned it, so far at least.
I think tech workers so far have been paid and treated well (at least where I work) and so haven't felt the need to unionize. But having a union would certainly protect against these kinds of problems. (Being relocated and then immediately laid off)
I was a member of three different unions before I ever switched careers to tech and being able to (and expected to) negotiate my own contracts was one of the biggest factors in me ending up in this industry. I have certainly made orders of magnitude more money and under substantially better conditions.
My experiences in unions were awful and I would never go back to that.
I actually think this is the core cause of a lot of current popular hate of capitalism - shitty managers (I'm thinking the /r/antiwork sort of sentiment). People conflate shitty managers with how the system intrinsically works, which is an over simplification.
Now there is an argument that operating in our 'capitalist' system introduces incentives to be a shitty manager (I think this is approximately Chomsky's perspective).
The problem that seems to expose to me, is why do we have so many (shitty) managers. Are managers just prone to be shitty?
Part of me thinks so. I think if you renamed every managers title to other titles like “clerk” and “facilitator” and basically reset what it means to be a manager, it feels like things would be different. At least for a while.
But then my theories swing back the other way. I have observed that many of my peers want to be “managed.” What they like about the arrangement is the feeling of isolated from responsibility and liability. Do as told. It’s sort of an “anti self reliance” thing. An attempt to be, as an adult, in a relationship that looks more like a subservient child-parent relationship.
> I have observed that many of my peers want to be “managed.” What they like about the arrangement is the feeling of isolated from responsibility and liability. Do as told. It’s sort of an “anti self reliance” thing. An attempt to be, as an adult, in a relationship that looks more like a subservient child-parent relationship.
What a bizarre take. I like programming, I don't like dealing with all the people stuff. I've run my own business and it involved focusing on all the things I find uninteresting and focusing very little on the things I find very interesting. So for me it's just a matter of not liking that position. This belief that everyone who isn't in management is some sort of troglodyte who can't pick their own nose is very childish.
Management is a skill like any other. Very few people are born competent managers but most people can be trained as such. The trouble is that most organizations promote their top individual contributors to management without giving them additional training. You'll see a lot of snarky comments on HN about MBA programs but the good ones do instill at least some basic level of competence.
Of course training alone is insufficient. The organizational culture and incentives also have to be aligned. The US military puts a major focus on training officers to be effective leaders, and yet the results have been mixed. Toxic leadership is one of the main problems driving their current retention crisis.
> You'll see a lot of snarky comments on HN about MBA programs but the good ones do instill at least some basic level of competence.
I strongly disagree with this. MBA programs are part of the problem in my opinion. They train people to be good "managers" for a company's interests which is often actively hostile to the people who report into that manager.
The MBA-ification of management and companies is to treat people like units of work not humans.
We just saw multiple banks collapse with zero financial penalty for those who were in charge when it happened, even as they were collecting tens of millions in bonuses.
When your compensation is structured in such a way that you can be a monumental failure at your job and you STILL make hundreds of times more than the rank and file employee, then the system is broken.
This is an ownership class problem, not manager class. The owners and their lackeys are the ones approving and justifying these insane compensation packages even as companies lay people off.
Note that reddit in general, those whose posts rise in particular and posts that rise to the top of that subreddit even more in particular, is extremely unrepresentative of actually common sentiment.
To get an a less biased view you can chat to people on public transport (in Europe) or talk to your neighbours (in the USA).
> Note that reddit in general, those whose posts rise in particular and posts that rise to the top of that subreddit even more in particular, is extremely unrepresentative of actually common sentiment.
A whole bunch of different effects, present on most forms of social media:
Evaporative cooling (if an environment appeals to people they'll join and if an environment gets more extreme those who least like that direction will leave). The presence of visible up votes and downvotes magnifies this effect.
Founder effects. Reddit in general and any given sub in particular was initially populated with people who are a bit unusual in some fashion. E.g. the initial reddit population was very techy. This effect also applies to any Internet forum (both in that Internet forums are used by somewhat odd people like us and that an Internet forum on Thing will pull people interested in Thing and interest in Thing very likely correlates with many other factors, such as socioeconomic status, culture, gender, subculture)
General interest in going online to talk about things. The vast majority of people do not go online to talk and argue with strangers, those who do are different along a number of axes (such as a lack of young kids or higher disagreeableness) which in turn correlate with other traits and beliefs.
In Reddit case there's also an element of active moderation, mostly due to founder effects, but also due to them being the only ones actually caring a lot (being activist) the main subs are policed by a bunch of supermoderators (who are mods in hundreds of subs) with similar views on issues such as trans rights and as a moral duty will actively attempt to remove people who express other viewpoints to keep the place tidy (without the viewpoints that are offensive and wrong).
Ah, so you interpreted my statement about "supermoderators (who are mods in hundreds of subs)" to be saying that they are mods of hundreds of the top hundred subs?
Not sure how relevant that list is tbh...
I'm also perplexed as to what criteria is used for "top sub" given that r/ContagiousLaughter (which has 6.7 million subs) and isn't on the list while r/EldenRing (which only has 1.9m) is.
Anyway, are you satisfied that I was not just parroting talking points and had checked myself?
> the main subs are policed by a bunch of supermoderators
This is a common talking point and you are backtracking. By 'main subs' you meant something which you are now trying to get out of on a technicality. You have not proven that what you initially meant was based on any fact checking and my contention is that you were spouting hearsay.
The main subs (e.g. the most popular ones) ARE policed by people who also police hundreds of other subs, right? That was what I meant (and indeed what I wrote). I'm not actually sure what you think I wrote any more...
Reddit has a severe astroturfing problem. Any subreddit that gets any attention (or ends up in /r/all) gets hammered with socket puppets and astroturf campaigns. Groups can very cheaply buy upvotes for pretty much anything.
Reddit has shown little appetite for combating this issue because their value is the number of eyeball-seconds they receive every day. They want to report huge eyeball numbers you investors and advertisers.
> When the system intrinsically works by producing shitty managers the problem is in the system, by definition.
Is bad management intrinsic though? Wouldn't that make the presence of good management surprising?
It seems to me that people work better when they enjoy their job and nobody likes working under a bad manager, so bad management is a sign of incompetence and degrades operations.
The presence of bad management is an opportunity to optimize operations; treating people well is generally good for the people and the business.
When your best talent leaves you without any recourse, and onboarding new talent takes 3-6+ months, they will definitely start to care. My last company is imploding due to this exact scenario. They didn't want to listen to their experts and are now reaping those particular rewards.
This only protects "your best talent". The company is free to mistreat all the rest of the people who don't have the unique skill set to guarantee themselves better treatment. That is capitalism working as intended.
America is built on the exploitation of undocumented workers for the food supply and of cheaper foreign labor held hostage by employers for tech. These are forms of coercion much as tying health insurance to employment. Tools of power to keep employees at a disadvantage.
There are undocumented workers in every industry, getting exploited in a hundred different little ways. Some political factions have done very well out of creating a caste of legal untouchables.
While the USA exploits undocumented workers in agriculture etc., its not like being documented is a huge step up either. In Canada, there's a whole (sub) class of legally imported labour under the "Temporary Foreign Worker" program that's exploited in a similar way.
A big difference is that a person working in the country legally can report labor code violations to the authorities without risking immediate deportation.
For tech, I think this is a win-win situation. Tech workers have the options to stay and work in their home country. It is not like tech workers do not have a choice they prefer it this alternative, even given the uncertainty or not having a permanent residency.
And Americans will do nothing about it, even as they suffer under it, because they see themselves not as an oppressed proletariat, but temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
If you are a homeowner it is almost insane to move. Most people I know could not afford their house if they were buying it today. Often by a huge margin. Moving would mean becoming a renter again and losing a much larger chunk of their paycheck every month to housing. It’s too late to start a whole new 30 year mortgage, even when you account for the proceeds from selling their existing house. Prices are insane. This is a natural consequence of home prices doubling or tripling over the past 10 years.
Renters are politically invisible in the United States due to the economic situation. Rent will continue to rise to unsustainable levels and nothing will done. As Charlie Munger (Berkshire Hathaway #2) says: "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."
However, they are a class that is relatively easy to disenfranchise. In fact many already are since minorities who live in cities are far more likely to rent than the average suburban or rural voter and we already have plenty of systems in place to disenfranchise them.
> they are a class that is relatively easy to disenfranchise
Correct. Dated, but related and a classic: "We find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain [people who have recently moved's] lower turnout. Instead, the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls. Since nearly one-third of the nation moves every two years, moving has a large impact on national turnout rates."
The authors suggested "linking the maintenance of registration to an action that is usually an intrinsic part of moving" such as the "change-of-address notice at a local post office." Interestingly, "holding elections on Sunday, making election day a holiday, or extending the hours that the polls are open...are designed to facilitate people who are registered" and would thus "do little to improve turnout."
> ~33% of the population is far from a invisible class
For a variety of reasons, "buying a home leads individuals to participate substantially more in local elections, on average" [1]. Outside New York City, which unsurprisingly has solid tenant protections, American renters do not vote as frequently.
One solution to this that’s being explored in several states is to move that policy to the state level, where the effect is less pronounced. (Participation rates are higher the higher-level an election is.)
People can't afford to move because higher interest rates decreased the value of their home, so especially if they bought recently, a lot of their down payment is gone.
This is actually advantageous to first-time buyers since higher interest rates (and lower prices) mean their down payments go further.
But that makes the assumption that the higher interest rates aren’t lowering supply by keeping homes off the market. I have a decently sized home (2300 sq ft) but had wanted to move onto something around 3500 sq ft and pay a new mortgage in proportion to the bigger home. Of course the interest rates increase would have been paying like 2.5 times what I’m currently paying so it is a no brained for me to stay put. On the other hand, no one in my neighborhood is moving anymore so nothing is available and prices remain pretty close to their peak. So at least where I am, we now have high purchase prices and even much higher monthly mortgages.
Speaking for myself, the primary draw of larger houses are more spaces dedicated to particular tasks/hobbies/etc. So it might not be square footage that's the goal but the higher number of rooms that usually comes with that.
For example my house is ~1800sqft which is very comfortable and a massive upgrade over the apartments I used to live in that were half as large, but as someone who works from home it'd be nice to have one more room than my house has to use exclusively as an office to maintain mental partitioning between work and downtime. Similarly it might be nice for my garage to be a bit bigger so I could better fit in a "workshop corner".
Is that sort of thing needed? Absolutely not and many get along just fine with far less, but it'd still be a welcome quality of life upgrade.
Generally, heating and cooling are a lot cheaper in USA (thank you cheap natgas, and solar if you can do it).
Cleaning… a lot of the space goes unused or just stores stuff so it doesn’t get too dirty or people don’t care as much outside core areas. Central HVAC helps keep the dust down a bit vs. dead air and radiators.
My home is 3300 sq ft/306 sqm on 2.5 acres or 10,000 sqm.
My kids each have their own space. My wife has her own space. I have an office/space for myself. We have a guest bedroom (well 2, if we pick up the playroom).
It keeps the kids clutter out of the common areas. Gives us each a place to escape to.
For example I play music a lot. That would be obnoxious in the living room all the time. Though I do play in common areas here and there.
Utilities cost about 200-300 USD month. Repairs we keep stashed away as they can cost more. For example our well pump died and it was 3k. Our ac died before that and it was 8k to replace. We live well below our means though and pay cash for stuff like that.
The smallest home my builder was building when we were looking was 3100 square feet. It was $335K in 2016.
As far as what a family did with a 5 bedroom 3.5 bath house. Bedroom for me and my wife, bedroom for my son, guest bedroom with a bath, office, and gym. There was another room that was converted to a dance studio for my wife.
We did downsize late last year and now we stay in a 1300 square foot condo.
What “maintenance” do you think is more for a 3000 square foot house than a 1500 square foot house?
I just mentioned it.
1. Master bedroom
2. Son’s bedroom
3. Gym with three pieces of cardio equipment and weights
4. Office
5. Guest bedroom
The 6th room was a dance studio for my wife. She taught online fitness classes during Covid.
It’s not like we paid millions of dollars. I qualified for it when I was only making $115K and put 3.5% down - less than $12K. In 2016.
It’s now worth twice that (we rent it out to our son and two of his friends at a discount).
My wife and I have since moved to a condo in a resort area where one fee ($650) pays all utilities, access to a decent gym, 3 pools, a running trail, three restaurants on site and a lake. It’s the same price that our house was in 2016.
> vacuum everything (including the skirting boards)
My house is mostly wood floors but I maybe Swiffer and vacuum once a week (probably a lot less) for about 15-20 minutes. I run Roomba once or twice a week to take care of the rest.
> mop the floors
I can count on one hand how many times I mop floors per year in any size house.
> dust everything else
I definitely don't do the blinds/baseboards/etc enough. Wife usually does the furniture once a week and the rest is on demand.
- most of the carpet is covered by “stuff” and doesn’t get vacuumed,
- it took maybe an hour to take care of the hardwood.
- having a larger house doesn’t mean you have more to wash. How much you have to wash is a function of how many people live there.
- you would have a kitchen either way
- one bathroom only got used when guests come, one was our sons (and his responsibility). That left only two - the one in attached to our room and the half bath.
The gym got sanitized with everything being wiped down and air freshener after every use.
It’s a kitchen with a stove, a sink, a microwave and a dishwasher. What does the size of the kitchen have to do with how hard is to clean? That’s a function of how much you cook and what you use to cook.
And the problem for that is most people can only have "wealth" if they have a home. Because the salaries have been stagnant since the 70s and the cost of living/existing has sky rocketed. So for most people they only way/dream they have to at least maintain the standard of living is to either inherit their parents home or sell it.
And all this is sponsored by the banks and governments because of interest payments and money from taxes.
It's absolutely ridiculous some 80yo shack costs half a million dollars/pounds/euros. There is no justification for it from a technical perspective.
A lot of the value is tied up in the land, because they aren’t really making any more of it, and location is everything. You could maybe move out to the middle of the desert surrounded by miles of nothing and get cheaper property, but then you have to figure out where you get the basics of life, like food, water, electric.
Remote work has disrupted countryside housing markets too, since workers moving in make much higher salaries than locals, who often lack the skills for picking up those jobs. A trickle out of metro areas in the millions is a tsunami for towns with population in the thousands.
I think you misunderstood my point, I was talking about most people barely keeping it together most months and not having income to ever afford buying a home and have a “comfortable” life. It’s not about investing in real estate but inheritance of a house when their parents die.
Investing into index funds regularly is pretty much always gonna be a better investment strategy with higher returns and lower risk than hoping for an inheritance.
Also, local zoning and permitting in most big cities in the US keeps the supply of new homes at a tiny trickle, so there's no chance for prices to go down from increased supply.
It is boiling over already in the form of newly emergent populism. Easy to ignore if you don't personally feel the pain, but many out there are very angry with the system.
We are in that boat now, Wife has an offer to move to San Diego area. We are homeowners in a 30 year fixed at 3.75% and moving back there is almost impossible due to rates being at > 6% and barely any houses on the market and prices which are close to what they were in 2022(we moved from that area in 2022). We are very close to saying F - it with her rescinding her offer, this economy and housing market is beyond bad.
If their 3.75% mortgage was originally for $1M and has 25 years left, just the cost of giving that up is about $250k. I don't think anyone's giving out a $250k sign-on bonus for a non-executive.
Signing a lease is a new, expensive obligation, and being a landlord is a second job. That approach might be right for some people, but it's definitely not the same as just selling your old house and buying a new one somewhere else.
Obviously this depends on the location and the management company. Mine takes 50% of the first month's rent for finding & qualifying a new tenant, then 8% of the following rent payments. So far they have done a decent enough job - I just have to prod them on repairs to not use the absolute cheapest approach (my theory is a nicer house can justify a higher rent, vs. all the ones in the market that are run by corporate landlords and look like it)
Can I just say -- you rock. I've been a renter my whole life (I prefer it that way), and I appreciate when the property owner steps in to keep property management companies from being total cheapskates with repairs. It makes sense -- it's the owner's investment, after all, and I don't mind paying a bit of a premium for a place that is well maintained.
It's common for property management companies to arrange for kickbacks with certain repair contractors. I'm not claiming that any particular management company is corrupt but I know of cases where this has happened and it's tough for absentee landlords to detect.
Holders of big mortgages taken out at low rates are trapped in them, so they will continue to suffer in quality of life, and the economy will continue to suffer sub-optimal output as they try to adapt to work in captivity.
While I’m sure it’s less than ideal, I would not describe the temporary inability to swap out a valuable asset for an equivalently valued asset as a tragedy.
"being a landlord is a second job" is something I hear a lot from renters, I've never heard this from an actual small time landlord who has two or less rental properties. And yeah, if you have 30%+ equity in your house you can generally have a property management company handle everything for perpetual 10% of the rent + first month's rent and come out even, in most competitive markets. Being a landlord in a low cost of living area, more than an hour from a major city is probably a losing proposition for most people under 50.
My parents, others in my family, and a couple former co-workers have had a rental unit or two at one time or another. Exactly one of those didn't strongly advise against it, and that one said his situation was good only because he'd been careful to buy units where they were almost certainly going to go to nursing school students, who are likely to be relatively-stable, stick around for at least a couple years, leave before long if they can't pay anymore for some reason, and extremely unlikely to trash the place or try to run a meth lab out of it or anything like that. In all other cases the complaints are similar: the return on time and money invested is just way, way too low to be worth the risk & frustration.
But, none of those engaged a property management company. Maybe that makes the difference.
My parents were landlords for almost 20 years. They owned a six family that we also lived in most of the time. It was a ton of work and they didn't make hardly anything after expenses. We had several cleanups that could be on the Hoarders TV show.
My grandparents were landlords for like 50 years. They said they wouldn't be worth it if their children weren't doing all the work for free.
The reason I don’t have rental property as investment is from seeing how much work it was for my parents to rent out half a duplex and, later, a 3 BR SFR. Both places were completely trashed at least once by tenants and even the “good” tenants were frequently late with the rent or had other drama for them to deal with.
The idea that a typical small landlord sits on their ass and cashes fat checks is not matched by what I’ve seen not anything I’ve heard from friends who wouldn’t take my advice to stay away.
I did exactly this. After a period of initial search I got some good tenants, and my only interaction with them is calling the plumber or something on their behalf every other month.
Rental prices in San Diego are almost as high as Fremont/San Jose (5th most expensive rental city in CA). Also, considering it has one of the highest electricity rates in the country, it makes renting even more expensive than just the monthly rate.
If your home you bought 10 years ago doubled or tripped, why can't you move? You pocket the difference, put that down on the next over priced house, bringing your mortgage principal back down to the small mortgage you were paying 10 years ago on a cheap house. Ya, the rate is higher... But if you just made $600k on your $300k house, that you've paid down to $200k hopefully atleast... And you move and buy a house for the same $900k you just sold yours for, you only have a mortgage on $200k. Yes at a higher rate. And yes with higher property taxes. But hey, that's life. Don't move if it's not worth it. But it's not as impossible as you make it seem.
that's incorrect. Generally speaking you don't pay capital gains on the first $250k ($500k if filing jointly) under IRS rules. You can also adjust the cost basis of your home by adding in any improvements you may have made to the house, so assuming you made any improvements at all, you can potentially make that exemption even higher.
> Moving would mean becoming a renter again and losing a much larger chunk of their paycheck every month to housing
The problem isn't that you're an existing homeowner. The problem is housing is exorbitant.
Everyone has to pay out of the nose for housing. The only difference is that you have an asset that has appreciated significantly, and in a way you're indirectly receiving dividends from it in the form of affordable mortgage payments.
But if you didn't have that house, you'd be in an even worse spot.
>If you are a homeowner it is almost insane to move.
I own a home and moved. I rent in the new city and let my mother live in the house I own, that way I don't have to sell it. If I ever want to go back I won't have any issues doing so.
Yes and that’s very anecdotal. I also moved a rented out my home to my son and two of his friends we trust. If he comes up on hard times for a month or two, I don’t have an emotional issue with covering his rent. If it was a stranger, I would.
If he gets to a point where he couldn’t pay rent because of a systemic problem, I trust him well enough to know that he wouldn’t make me go through a long eviction process. He would have to move. But we would help him find sone place cheaper. No for logistical reasons, he couldn’t stay with us.
But my wife and I said, that once they move, we are selling the house. We do not want to be landlords.
Guess it’s the culture divide, but it stood out to me that your description makes it sound like it’s second nature to charge immediate family rent on a property you own. Quite bizarre.
Why is that “bizarre”? I have a $2600 a month mortgage and another $3K-$4K a year of fixed expenses on it. Am I suppose to let family stay there for free and just spend $40K+ a year on a place where I am not living?
Yes, she's paying a small amount of rent every month to cover basics. As much as I'd like to just give her the house and have her live there for free, that's not in the cards right now given the state of Canadian salaries.
She doesn't mind as it's much, much better than the income assistance apartments she lived in before and I'm asking for a lot less than they did, which helps her too.
Ultimately I'd like to buy another house and let her have that one, because she'll never be able to afford a house again on her own, but that's an aspirational goal at the moment.
You should do a roadtrip! Dystopia US has some nice pockets. Affordable is all relative, of course.
It's pretty much impossible to "win" in housing unless you're investing major sweat equity, or factoring-in intangibles like satisfaction with a like-minded community or peace of mind.
I'm starting to realize housing is unwinnable. I'm lucky to have a house at all, given the US just decided "lets not build" was a good policy apparently. But like a lot of aging people I can't afford to keep it. So yeah a roadtrip is in my future, and maybe a yurt out there somewhere.
There's two sides to the coin of recognizing "un-winnability".
One is frustration, the other is a sense of peace that comes with recognizing that there's no marginal reward to trying so hard. Just avoid the obvious scams, which isn't too hard.
A third option to skirts the coin, is to really embed yourself in a local community, renting in the meanwhile. There actually are "winner" situations and good deals if you go this way, but they generally come on the back of who you know and are friendly with – variously referred to as cronyism and nepotism, but it's how humans work.
This is entirely dependent on which market you are moving from and to. Within the same market it's a wash on average. From a more expensive market to a cheaper market you are coming out ahead. Your conundrum really only applies when going from a cheaper market to a more expensive market.
> Most people I know could not afford their house if they were buying it today
How is that true if you moved to a place with an equivalent cost of living?
I had my house built in the suburbs of Atlanta for $350K in metro Atlanta. It’s now worth $650K. If I wanted to buy another house for $650K, I would sell my house. Get $300K in cash, use it for a down payment, and still have a $350K mortgage.
Of course I’m ignoring selling costs, interest rate differences etc.
I have a friend who located from Seattle to Atlanta. He also had a home in Seattle, he had $600K in equity that he was able to use to get a $900K house in Atlanta and have a $300K mortgage.
That’s just it. My friend from Seattle did move for a job.
The other poster said that because of rising home prices, someone who owned a home couldn’t afford an equivalent home. My argument is that their current home probably also went up in value and they could use the equity to pay a large down payment to make a new home affordable.
Alternatively, pocket the equity and rent instead of making a commitment to buy.
> becoming a renter again and losing a much larger chunk of their paycheck every month to housing
Except it is now cheaper to rent than to own[1].
If you have to move for a job, you rent for at least a year if not a few years as you get a feeling your job stability. Of course, the main point stands that you can be fired at any time, which is why you never buy a house when affordability is at an all-time low since the crash[2].
Real estate is entirely local, such that making broad generalizations like this is detrimental. In some markets it may be better to rent, in others it is better to buy. Regardless of the cost, availability is also a factor - in my market, you might as well buy if you are qualified, as the market for rental properties is even tighter than buying and rents have increased faster than home prices.
I've noticed that over the long haul (in my area, anyway), it's neither cheaper nor more expensive to rent vs own. In the short term, one can be more expensive than the other, though.
But the big difference is that you're building equity if you're buying, and you're not if you're renting. So which is better, financially speaking, depends a lot on what you're trying to accomplish.
You don’t start from scratch. You sell your existing house, which has benefited from inflation, then buy somewhere with the same mortgage payment over the same remaining duration you had if you choose not to trade up.
Yes there are significant transaction costs but it isn’t as though you are starting again with your housing equity.
Interest rates doubling over the past year change the math on this. For instance, to keep my same mortgage payment, even with significant equity, i could only afford what I paid for the house originally, which would be a significant downgrade in today's market.
Yep, and if you fell for one of your lender's incessant pitches on borrowing on your equity or refinancing and taking equity out, you're really locked in to your situation. I'm very convinced that most people doing home equity loans or refis with cash out don't understand how much they are backsliding when they do that.
I think that depends on what they did with the cash. If they invested it in the S&P 500, that was generally a very good trade. If they turned it into new cars and expensive vacations, well, that was hopefully something that they really enjoyed, because those are things that are even more expensive when financed.
That assumes you started your mortgage in roughly the last 10-15 years in the US or somewhere else with the same rate history. Average rates before then were consistently higher. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US
If you started your mortgage before then its a neutral to positive rate-wise.
agree, what really makes me upset is how housing prices in certain areas has not gone down at all given that rates are double what they were a year or 2 ago. The un-affordability is beyond reason.
Lots of people have made that point, but I’ll respond here.
Yes this is true, but only at this point in time when interest rates have shot up from historically low. Most of the time this won’t be the case, and soon this effect could work in the other way in that you could move to a house of similar value for a lower cost if interest rates come down.
And the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is unique to the US. Here in the UK, we only fix for 2-5 years typically.
It is actually pretty much the case for most US homeowners. Everyone I know refinanced their mortgages when interest rates were lower. I got a 2.874% 30 year fixed rate mortgage in 2021 which was a great deal, but now I am essentially stuck here. There's no way I can afford to move. Existing home sales volume is way down.
You are lucky to win the housing lottery. Congrats! Can you imagine being a young couple (20s 30s) trying to buy your first home the US right now? Hopeless. Wait a few years as an oppressed renter!
Yes, I am lucky in many ways. But the US home ownership rate is 65%, so it's hardly a lottery. Many young couples are buying homes in lower cost states like Utah, Minnesota, and Ohio. HN users focusing on California often have a distorted perspective on the situation out in the real world.
I am very symphathetic to this issue for UK borrowers. They face way too much interest rate volatility. There is a gambling effect in the UK about housing.
Are you aware that 30-fixed in the US is essentially gov't backed via three mega pseudo-gov't guaranteed orgs called Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie Mae? It is great for increasing home ownership and utterly oppressive to low income people renting. It is tough.
I cannot believe that more countries do not (politically) prioritise a similar system: Cheap, fixed 30-year'ish home mortgages. To be clear, I'm not saying this is economically ideal, but it is great for your political party!
Do people expect interest rates to lower again any time soon? Inflation just recently started trending down.
Right now US supply has shrunk so prices don’t seem to be declining enough to offset the rise in interest rates; the monthly payments for anything in the market are still eye-watering even factoring in price declines.
> You don’t start from scratch. You sell your existing house, which has benefited from inflation, then buy somewhere with the same mortgage payment over the same remaining duration you had if you choose not to trade up.
In California, Prop 13 means that property taxes are essentially fixed and nonincreasing at the time you purchase your house.
This is sometimes used as a defense of Prop 13, but all it really means is that any increase in total tax burden has to fall disproportionately (in fact, almost exclusively) on new purchasers and their tenants.
Forcing someone to relocate means giving up that privileged tax status and starting over "from scratch".
Wouldn't that be priced into the relocation package you negotiate? It is a problem but no different than buying a home in a flood plain, if it's something you have to do.
Or maybe not, I have never negotiated relocation and the only industry I have to base an example off of is oil and gas and they pay ridiculous amounts of money so you get a comparable house/mortgage to your old one
> Wouldn't that be priced into the relocation package you negotiate? It is a problem but no different than buying a home in a flood plain, if it's something you have to do.
I can't imagine a relocation package pricing in foregone tax benefits.
But even if it did, that's a one-time payment in exchange for giving up a benefit that exists in perpetuity. There are ways in accounting to discount the benefit of indefinite/perpetual annuities and compare them against current cash value, and in practice they almost always undervalue the former, often by limiting the future time window.
California is only one state, I would also be upset to lose my 3% interest rate. Oil and gas companies will price that in and goes 1-2% over what you would lose. So maybe I just have a skewed perspective of relocation packages since I only have o&g to compare to
There is one limited exception: once you’re 55, you can transfer your existing property tax base (but only if the county you’re moving to allows it), but only once.
This is a ridiculous system, and there really needs to be property tax reform in CA, but it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over existing property owners, which is really difficult.
> but it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over existing property owners
This is impossible. The current system is such an extreme and unsustainable transfer of wealth towards property owners that there's no way to create a sustainable (let alone equitable) system that doesn't involve current property owners giving something up.
End Prop 13 protections for all property purchases. Stop grandfathering in existing property when it's inherited. It'll really fuck over new buyers in the short-term. But it's one way to get less resistance from existing owners - who are largely voters. And the skyrocketing property taxes on new purchases might put a damper on prices.
One of the main reasons behind Proposition 13 was to constrain rapid growth of local government expenses, and it has been effective in that. We do need to reform it so that the tax burden is distributed more fairly, but I won't vote for ending it without some guarantees on limiting government spending.
How do places without something like Prop 13 constrain the rapid growth of local government expenses?
Why is limiting government expenditure a goal in and of itself? If the government is able to raise enough tax money to support that spending, and voters agree with it, why shouldn't the government spend more?
> You sell your existing house, which has benefited from inflation
Your new interest rate is going to absolutely demolish any inflation benefit your current house has. I don't think people really understand how bad higher interest rates are when there's a housing shortage.
- A $500k house at 3% is $2,100/month.
- A $500k house at 7.5% is $3,500/month
- That's a difference of nearly $17,000/year
The house that was $500k at 3% in 2021 is still $500k at 7.5% in 2023. Housing prices haven't budged. We'd need to see a 20-40% reduction in prices across the board to stabilize affordability, but that won't happen because there's too much demand.
If the prices have significantly risen since you purchased (as they have for most buyers) then moving even to the same quality of house makes you a net buyer because you need to take on more financing.
Remember, the day you buy a house, you are no richer. This is because the asset (house) is offset by the liability (the mortgage).
I buy a house with a $300k mortgage. The price rises to $500k. I then sell the house and buy another for $500k, rolling my $200k equity and $300k mortgage for no net change.
If you are trading up then yes, the more expensive house rose faster than your house. But that’s the case anytime you move and not unique to a job relocation.
In addition to the other great comment about rates affecting prices, don't forget deep cleaning the house, staging it, paying a 'licensed professional' to fix what the buyer inspection may find, then 6% in realtor fees, then taxes, potentially a lot if you haven't been there two years. In no event will you be rolling $200k equity over in that scenario.
What you're missing is that the after (optimistically) netting 200k from a 300k house, is that the next house is really a lateral move to another 300k house being sold for 500k, but with higher property taxes (At least in states like CA).
This would only theoretically work going from a HCOL area to a lower one, and then moving again becomes even harder.
Nope, there is a huge net change because interest rates have increased. Mortgage rates bottomed out in 2020 at about 2.65%, so the monthly payment on a $300K mortgage was only $1209. Now at 5.87% the payment would be $1774.
Why are you comparing to the absolute minimum? Didn't people use to have mortgages before 2020? My first house was close to $300K, mortgage was 6.5%. No one was crying about this back then.
I am comparing to the absolute minimum because most homeowners with decent credit ratings refinanced their loans a couple years ago near the minimum. Now they can't afford to sell their current homes and buy in a different area because the monthly payments would be unaffordable (unless they buy in a much cheaper area or a much smaller home).
I don't think anyone is crying about it but this is reducing labor mobility and slowing down economic growth. It's one of the unintended consequences of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates due to inflation.
Wait a second. They were able to pay that mortgage before they refinanced, right? And the rates 5 years ago were close to 5% (according to your chart). Suddenly rate get close to what was normal just five years ago and we are talking about most people not able to move.
I will not argue about someone's ability to buy a new house in the current environment. But in this thread discussion is focused on existing homeowners moving to a new house.
In your case (assuming $300K original house price) you will sell it for $600K, net $264K profits after commissions. Use profits plus $60K of original downpayment and any additional equity in the old house as a downpayment for a similar house at $600K. The new mortgage will be similar to one you had in 2007. Same rate and most likely smaller principal. Not a big difference.
All true (except multiply all those dollar figures by a factor of 4).
The problem is that I'd be taking on a new 30-year mortgage while being about 10 years away from retirement rather than ~26 years away from retirement, which has certain implications on my ability to afford that mortgage over its full term.
When you are retired you don't need to live at the same place. World is your oyster. The capital gains from your house ($1.2M already, more in 10 years) will allow you to pick new house almost anywhere without worrying about mortgagees. You won't care about schools or extra bedrooms for kids, for instance.
Statistically very few people stay at the same house for 30+ years, most move within eight.
Why didn't you refinance in 2020-2022 when interest rates were so much lower? If the prevailing rate is 3%, you're leaving money on the table by sticking with your original mortgage (unless it's almost paid off)
My point was that paying 6.5% on a $300K mortgage was a normal thing just 15 years ago. In fact it did not stop anyone from buying in the run to the great recession (aka "subprime mortgage crisis").
I don't have mortgage now, so no, I am not leaving money on the table.
You are generally right, but currently most homeowners have mortgage debt at rates far below market, so they could afford much less house than before (if they need financing).
> You sell your existing house, which has benefited from inflation, then buy somewhere with the same mortgage payment over the same remaining duration you had if you choose not to trade up
Are you living under a rock? Mortgage rates going up make that impossible.
This is probably a big reason why gigantic cities are continuing to grow everywhere. The best way to reduce the stress of being laid off is to move somewhere with as many employers as possible.
Agreed. Years ago my wife and I considered moving to my hometown, a medium sized city with affordable housing (at the time).
There are a grand total of 2 employers in her field in the whole city. It’s simply not possible to reliably grow her career there.
In the end we stayed in our expensive city; in 4 years she got promoted twice, then had multiple competing offers for a new job when her employer went under. Career growth, top wages, and a plethora of jobs are available here. The only reason not to stay is because a decent condo starts at a million, but we got in at 3% interest rate so even that turned out okay.
A few years ago, I moved to Boston for a tech job. The cost of living was like 25% higher, but my salary almost doubled, so I came out for the better.
This job was on-site, so there was no choice but to live here. And by "here" I mean a 60- to 90- minute commute, both ways.
Now? My job is 100% remote, and any job I would consider would have to be 100% remote. Assuming this trend continues, I think we'll see an exodus from high cost of living areas to (slightly) smaller towns.
People are still going to want to live in places that have services, entertainment, and so on, so this isn't going to gut cities, but it will make living in the sticks more plausible.
> and any job I would consider would have to be 100% remote.
The problem is that if you lose your job this plan will crumble on first contact with the enemy. I'm job hunting right now, and between 'ghost jobs', bad recruiters, low ballers, take-homes with unstated requirements, leetcode grinding, system design studying, optimization for "best talent, lowest salary", and the fact that workers have absolutely no power means you don't have a choice how you work at some point.
Once savings start to dry up, you'll work in person. You'll move if they ask, you'll take a lower salary and a worse position... after all, do you want to eat?
It's time to unionize the tech sector. Can you imagine how industrial action (shutting down APIs) could cripple a fortune 500 company. Sadly people don't act in their best interest. Execs and capitalists only hold power as long as we give them power.
It makes more sense to focus on the capital-intensive and oligopolistic parts, e.g. cloud computing, social media and advertising. Tech, broadly, maintains a threat of new entrants.
In the technology sector, our income and share of remote work is actually pretty good. For example, most of us (in the U.S., in technology) are in or close to the top 10% of individual incomes in the United States.
I'm going through this right now but already have a remote contracting job for less than I was making but putting out feelers for in-person. The in-person jobs are usually an hour away and pay more.
Problem is waking up everyday at 6:30 am so I can be in office by 9 is a huge mental and physical stress. Moving closer isn't an option because I own my house. Right now my thinking is do I want to spend an extra 4-5 hours per day on my career just to work in a shitty cubicle for only 30k more? I'm honestly leaning towards putting up with less money and waiting for another opportunity to cross my path.
If shit really hits the fan I can sell my California house and buy a whole house outright in another part of the country and sustain myself easily. I'm just choosing to stay here but I really don't have to.
It all depends. I am remote for the last 20+ years. I have my own company but still I have to find new clients and I did not really have problems in that department.
Freelancing is a whole different game. Once you've built your network and brand you have options. I'd love to be a freelancer but I'm not competent enough with the self promotion/marketing, and couldn't handle the mental toll of the lean months.
It is also possible for talented people to set up their own businesses, even though we all have spent our entire childhood having it drilled into our heads that our purpose is to serve for somebody else.
Similar story. I have been remote for a decade, acquired real estate in LCOL locales, and have prioritized financial independence so that if I ever end up not being able to find another remote job after my last, I don't ever have to go back into an office. It is about having agency over how one wants to live their life and the freedom one wants. You will never get that time back. Life is short, and a commute is a waste of life. I prefer to not waste life for corporate upper management feels about in person work.
What we save on living in a HCOL locale, we can spend on traveling several months out of the year while I work remote.
I live close enough to access an expensive metro but I'm far enough out my property isn't that expensive plus I bought it a long time ago. Only commuted in for while and, then, not every day. Other commutes--when I've done them--have been reasonable drives.
Over the years I occasionally toyed with buying a small city place but, in addition to the increasing real estate prices, I always came back to the fact that I can always get a hotel or whatever in that or any other city if I want to spend some time in an urban location.
> People are still going to want to live in places that have services, entertainment, and so on, so this isn't going to gut cities, but it will make living in the sticks more plausible.
The mass exodus already happened.
Everybody who wanted to leave what they thought was overpriced pretty much already did.
We might see some continuation - but given that companies are trying to claw back as much remote work as possible - I'm skeptical.
I moved to Greenville, South Carolina when COVID hit and absolutely loved it. Perfect weather, good balance of space, cost, and still enough active cities if one wants to eat at nice restaurants.
My biggest fear about remote work is the trend will reverse and I'll be at a huge disadvantage trying to negotiate a new position. Though everything I've read seems to indicate the trend is here to stay.
I read that Jamie Dimon's office is a fully decked out apartment on Park Ave (NYC) so for all his griping about remote work, he essentially works from home full time.
I'm sure Diamond would be happy to have company provided housing, and pay employees in company script that is good at the company store -- imagine the profit potential!
I'd take a paycut just to work from home. My parents aren't getting any younger and I want them to spend time with my children and I want them to experience small city life.
The perverse side-effect is that smaller towns are getting expensive as hell too as more and more people don't care about staying in the city. Things raised ~30% in the last 5 years in my area, in a medium-sized agricultural town some ways outside Montreal.
Fully remote work being the norm has been proven to be a COVID phenomenon. A large portion of tech companies small or large have been pushing for at least 2-3 office days ever since lockdown measures ended.
Fully remote work doesn't eliminate the risk of layoffs throwing a wrench into your life. It's only viable for senior/staff level devs who have much higher job mobility compared to everyone else in the tech sector.
The real answer is her question, "why would I move?" Recruiter probably didn't have a good response.
But for a lot of people the answer is "I want to live somewhere else." I relocated away from a really nice job with challenging work and interesting co-workers simply because I didn't like where I was living. I suspect that I'm not the only one.
You can have offers "you can't refuse" even if you live in a major hub. But it's mostly the case that then it's a matter of you really wanting to do something on net as opposed to having to move to keep food on the table.
This varies a lot for different people at different stages of life.
For some, +$20,000 to their current salary is an offer they can't refuse, for others, they would need to double their existing six figure salary to even consider moving to another hub.
Anyone would move for a limited time period for a life changing amount of money like $20m/year.
But for realistic wages in my field, I doubt there is anywhere that would pay me enough to move. Short of moving into management (which I have little experience with) the most I could expect for making a move would be about an extra $40-60k/year moving to the Bay area which would basically cover the difference in cost of living and maybe a little extra pocket change.
Yeah. When a lot of classmates were taking jobs in Manhattan I pretty much decided you couldn't pay me enough after having an internship there one summer. (This was back in the 80s to boot.)
But, of course, I didn't literally mean that. Offer me a few million a year guaranteed and I could put up with a lot for life-changing money for a bit. But realistically not going to happen.
for $20M/year you are not really "moving". I are just getting another (very comfortable) place of residence, and you can travel as you see fit (incl. private jets).
Then you wouldn't even move. Just rent some apartment for a year and then return home when you're done. That's more than enough to pay for a mortgage and rent.
I could say the same. Money and a particularly nice location, that might be different.
Once the basics and some future security are there, more money just means a bigger resource footprint. That's still nice to have, people certainly continue preferring wealth over poverty, but it would be crazy if trade-off thresholds between modesty and ambition didn't shift a little due to awareness of environmental impact.
New York Times ran an article yesterday saying otherwise. First tier cities, in terms of size, are losing people, but second tier cities are growing. The cost of living in the largest cities puts a negative force on moving to them.
The first tier cities are getting more and more expensive (partially or perhaps primarily do to employment opportunities - i.e. safety) and instead of moving "away from a city", people are moving to other less expensive cities with employment opportunities which, as they grow, become more expensive and repeat the process. And also you have to compare to trends over time.
Class and Industry segmentation probably plays a role in tier 2 city growth as well.
For example, high value manufacturing in the Bay Area (eg. chiplets, electronics) got priced out to San Joaquin Valley and helped lead to the growth of Sacramento; Bay Area tech new grad salaries got so inflated that internships, new grad, and H1B roles in Sales, Professional Services, and SWE started relocating to Austin and Dallas in the 2010s; and back office roles in Accounting+Finance began moving from NYC to Charlotte in the late 2010s as salaries for those roles began breaching the 100k mark in NYC.
If I'm someone specialized in Solutions Engineering or Back Office work, I'd probably find a comparable amount of job opportunities in Austin or Charlotte as I would in the Bay or NYC, with the added benefit of affordability.
I can't find the NYT article, in the US it seems like LA, SF and NYC specifically are shrinking a bit, while other metropoles are still growing. In Europe this doesn't seem to hold true at all, with London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid all growing quickly.
As you correctly point out, there's an equilibrium between cost of living and the advantages large cities are offering. Here in Berlin we are starting to feel the pressure hard, but it is still much cheaper than the other big European cities, and thus growing by 200k a year.
In Western Europe, you have the primary city effect which is causing London and Paris to grow like crazy. For non-tech people, you are hard pressed to find well paying professional job opportunities outside of London and Paris in the UK and France respectively, and businesses began leaving Barcelona for Madrid after the political instability caused by the Catalonia Independence referendum.
Berlin's is probably the only major example I can think of a city growing due to actual growth opportunities, but then again Germany is also a much healthier economy than most of Europe.
The US on the other hand doesn't have a primary city in the same manner that most of Europe has - the US economy is pretty decentralized across multiple hub cities (Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle) the same way Germany is (Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg)
We do get a primary city effect at the state level in many cases. At that point it can be a bit like jumping from Paris to Berlin. Perfectly easy to do for EU citizens assuming you can handle the life upheaval and expense. At least the US doesn't have the language barriers to deal with.
> a bit like jumping from Paris to Berlin. Perfectly easy to do for EU citizens assuming you can handle the life upheaval and expense
This is a MASSIVE assumption to have. The language barrier you brought up has a massive impact for example, along with other smaller intricacies (eg. Taxes, Drivers License, Immigration depending on your nationality, bureaucratic experience, etc). Moving from Paris to Berlin or Oulu to Varna isn't some walk in the park.
And several states don't have primary city effect either (eg. CA, TX, OH, FL, NC), and bureaucratic norms in most cases within the 50 states are normalized for individual cases.
> Substantial population loss in some of the nation’s largest and most vibrant cities was the primary reason 2021 was the slowest year of population growth in U.S. history, new Census data shows.
> Although some of the fastest growing regions in the country continued to boom, the gains were nearly erased by stark losses last year in counties that encompass the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas.
> The pandemic played a role, as the number of people dying rose substantially and many Americans left cities for smaller places. But experts say that skyrocketing housing costs were also to blame, and that some of the changes are a continuation of fundamental shifts in American demographics that began before the pandemic, such as the steadily falling birthrate and steep drop in immigration.
It's hard for me to justify living in one of the most expensive cities unless it's connected to employment in some way (or I have more money than I know what to do with). Yes, they're often nice (in some ways). But a lot of smaller cities have nice walkable cores if that's your thing. Or you can just visit big cities now and then if you want to.
I think the parent post's point is not that its less likely to get laid off, but rather that there are prospects for employement that don't require relocation when you de get laid off.
Or work remotely. From somewhere cheap. It truly feels like a hack.
Not sure if these conditions will remain but it's just nuts atm. Entry/Mid level engineers out-earning local principal engineers with 30+ years experience.
I don’t think what you’re saying and what GP is saying are incompatible. Many people choose to work exclusively remotely so they can live where they want; those who want top wages, or who are in a non-remote-compatible field tend to prefer the big city with the jobs available in such.
I’d also like the point out:
> Everyone in my area (hour outside a major city) is basically the same
If you live only an hour outside a major city, you’re still living in the metropolitan region of a big city.
Really? Burned down implies thousands of buildings in a single city. The displacement of hundreds of thousands. Please, name one city where that happened.
Same source says 71 buildings set on fire. Does not mention if any were completely burned. Criteria for damage seems to be any damage at all. Saying the city was "sacked" might be more accurate, but even then that is wrong. There are tens of thousands if not hundreds if thousands of buildings in Chicago, 71 (less than 0.01%) having had any fire does not seem to really qualify as "the city was burned down"
Further, the damage seemingly was concentrated in poor neighborhoods. Hence, citation should be provided that fear post George Floyd backlash is a major reason for tech workers to leave Chicago. From the same reference:
" They missed signals that the killing of Floyd, captured on video and played millions of times by horrified Americans, could touch off looting. And to this day, they face resentment that the city prioritized the protection of downtown at the expense of residential neighborhoods inhabited mostly by people of color."
On the other hand, the reference does say the backlash and riots caused more damage than following MLK Jr's assassination does provide reasonable context to the scale of the event. Yet, with higher numbers of businesses, it might be there is more stuff to be damaged that lead to a larger figure of monetary damage (but that is still to say that both back-lashes were seemingly at least on par)
> 700 buildings damaged, burnt, or destroyed in Minneapolis.
Classic "how to lie with numbers". 698 buildings with a broken window, one with a minor fire, and one "destroyed" (whatever that means) would satisfy this description.
Not to say that there wasn't damage done; but the stats you give are clearly designed to look bad rather than to be informative.
I own property in some of the “rougher” areas of Chicago. Yes, the pandemic was hard and yes, it had some effects. But “burned down”? Come on, not in the ballpark, not even in the same sport.
As an independent voter, it's obvious why. When you become a member of one of these two parties, you're part of the team, and generally you're going to assume the best of your team's intentions, their media coverage and so on. And you'll think the worst of the other side's intentions, media, and so on. I think plenty of both sides' positions are valid and others completely fucking insane.
It's not painful, and everyone's been hearing it since it was ongoing. But the extent and severity of it was also greatly exaggerated for political purposes.
I lived near one of the areas that got a ton of media attention. Comparing what a certain breed of pundits were saying about it with what I could plainly see with my own two eyes showed that the pundits were mostly talking nonsense.
I'm not saying that there was no property damage or unrest. There most certainly was. but it was far more limited in area, and far less intense, than many were describing.
"Cities are burning" is one of those absurd things. Nothing even close to that happened.
I think some people have an incentive to exaggerate it for political reasons.
My father believes that the entire country is embroiled in an unmitigated crime wave because he gets his news from Fox and Youtube. Every time I talk to him he whines about how "the country isn't the same as how I grew up anymore."
This is a man who lives closer to the country than the city. It gives him a justification for turning his brain off and voting the way that he does, because in his mind, he's protecting the nation by preventing what he believes to be the liberal dream: allowing young, black men to run around and commit crimes with reckless abandon to bring about the end of capitalism.
They are overcorrecting for the news media that bizarrely ignored and downplayed the riots. Mostly peaceful was how CNN famously described it while literally standing in front of burning wreckage.
Some buildings were burned down in riots but not whole cities. What people haven’t noticed is that this phenomenon has largely run its course. When Tyre Nichols was killed by the police in Memphis this year the police immediately fired the offending officers and… no riots!
Many places have gotten rougher, there is the visible disorder in San Francisco but even the small city of Ithaca, NY has seen a large increase in aggressive panhandling. You can plot opioid overdoses on the map and it looks like a pattern of bullets aimed at the needle exchange. People used to think the old African-American neighborhood downtown was “dangerous” (it wasn’t) but rents have gone up, the area has gentrified, and many of the former residents have relocated to smaller towns in the area. Today people are terrified of the large homeless colony by the inlet and the accompanying shopping cart graveyard.
The pedestrian mall downtown for years was decimated by a construction project that went overtime like the construction of a nuclear reactor, then the pandemic hit. It has been bouncing back and is even starting to get more diverse businesses (it just got a clothing store after years without one, a restaurant moved into the site McDonalds vacated 25 years ago, …) but boy there are a lot of head shops that look more lurid then head shops every looked. (You are dealing with bro overdose when you have a strain of weed called “AK-47”.). I never thought I’d see the day when the mayor, the governor, and the head of the business improvement district would hail the opening of a cannabis dispensary as a strategy for economic development.
My guess is that most cities have people telling a similar story today.
You lost me at the last part where it seemed like you were blaming it all on cannabis dispensaries and a strain of weed called “AK-47” - what is bro overdose btw?
A single data point from my perspective - live in a “city”, sure things gotten rougher since the pandemic, but it’s all alive. My direct family lives in bigger cities (New York, Toronto), and even though things are not the best, people are having fun, enjoying their lives. Some things are getting better, other stuff not so much.
Won’t really entertain your views on weed, since that’s just practically doesn’t pan out. We’ve had it federally legal here for years now, society hasn’t changed at all because of it.
Maybe it's a big company thing, but every time I've had to end someone's job it took several months of performance management and about 50 to 100 pages of documentation. Imagine about a year of having your team limping and not being able to achieve its commitments, while you have to be polite and supportive to a hostile person who's obviously on their way out but can't see it, and all the while your 1:1 meetings with your boss start with "Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." Every meeting you walk into where they ask why "X" isn't done yet, you can't tell them that Charlie fundamentally can't deliver it, because any mention of that is wandering into HR territory, and you can't take Charlie off of "X" because that's going to screw up the continuity of your documentation. Meanwhile, Charlie is wandering around the halls trying to foment some kind of misguided rebellion against you, and (edit: possibly) stealing stuff.
If we are talking about a place with very few labour protection laws (HK/SG/US), forget it: You can layoff after a 10 min discussion. No biggie. Maybe throw a few months of severance pay. If we are talking about Japan, France, or Germany, it is a negotiation with the labour union. (Denmark is a very interesting exception due to "Flex-Security".)
I cannot help but bring up the infamous "Amazon PIP" (performance improvement plan): What is the point? Just sack me with a package on Day One. Much easier and less emotionally damaging!
The GP was not talking about a layoff but a termination "at the whim of a boss." I've also worked at a number of big companies in the US, in "at-will" states, and the process is much like the GP describes.
Thats if you want to get rid of an individual. It's easy if you can just put the problem person on the layoff list because the company is doing a 10% WFR as part of a stock market right-sizing initiative
They could fire Charlie without cause. Sounds like management just doesn't want to pay out UI or severance. So they'll let you suffer to document a cause.
So Charlie is such a big problem they need to get rid of them, but not enough of a problem where the solution is money.
No, it's all about the company being averse to getting sued. Even though I'm in a state that allows that in theory, it's not uncommon for people to sue for a six figure sum and get a settlement if you don't do everything perfectly.
So, the problem is money just like the previous poster said. You can pay the poor employee for a few months while building documentation to CYA or you can fire them immediately and potentially owe them the 3 months (and likely more) from a settlement. Taking months to fire an underperformer is simply an exercise in risk management not a legal necessity.
Yeah, that's what severance is for. Sign this paper that holds us harmless. We give you money to never see you again.
This is a problem that could be solved with money. If Charlie is as bad as described the boss would pay for them to go away instead of dragging it out through a drawn-out documentation process.
Even here in the UK, if a company is having redundancies you can be out the door in days or even hours. Firing a specific person for something non-performance needs paperwork, but that's a very specific case.
And the "performance management" thing it's only at certain positions and certain industries. For most people, that is not a thing ( which can be a plus too ).
Depending on the person, it can be true. I know through mutual friends that the first person I ever had to terminate walked off with a hard drive full of our IP and a prototype dev kit of a device the company was working on.
I like how you say this from the perspective not of a team lead but as another person on the team. Which means you actually don't have any real sense of how much documentation your boss had to do, just what your boss told you they did.
"Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." sounds like you hounded your boss into firing your teammate instead of continuing to coach them.
The part in quotes is the lead's manager talking. By the time you're being performance managed, your boss, their boss, their boss, etc. know about it, and the higher you go in the chain the more you're just a line in a spreadsheet that needs to be eliminated. You're on a 100 person team that needs to figure out how to get to 97, and you're the low hanging fruit because you're already marked. What you (as an IC) assume is your boss being a dick is actually a vast mechanism behind your boss, including upper management and HR, pushing them to resolve the situation.
> By the time you're being performance managed, your boss, their boss, their boss, etc. know about it, and the higher you go in the chain the more you're just a line in a spreadsheet
This is so true.
I've never been "performance managed", but if I were to be, I'd immediately start looking for another job because of what you're describing. Even if I wasn't eventually fired, I know that black mark will color everyone's perception of me from then on.
It’s almost amazing to me that CEOs have all these ideas for how to hire and retain but never once consider the very things they demand to be hired and retained. Almost like they think of the rest of us as not real people.
There's truly a different set of rules & norms, once you're high enough up the social-status ladder.
That used to include the so-called "professional class" but the story of the intersection between social status and work for the last few decades has been MBA types pushing those positions downward‚and preventing them from ever rising, in the software world. They may not be doing it consciously, but a lot of stuff about work-life for software folks sure looks like what you'd do if you wanted to squash the social status of a cohort that earns enough money that they'd otherwise be on their way to solid membership in the upper-middle, like micro-managy "methodologies", avoiding giving us personal offices, widespread and oft-expressed but IME rarely-accurate stereotypes about software folks necessarily being bad at everything except fiddly computer shit, and the way interviews are run.
Professors and doctors were two big groups that held high status and had a fair amount of freedom and trust to run their own affairs, once they'd paid their dues, but both those worlds have been invaded by MBAs who've taken over running everything and brought the same contempt for "mere" workers that we see in the rest of the business world. AFAIK lawyers have held them off, so far, but I may just not be aware of MBA-ification there.
CEOs play checkers with people. Every piece is identical and thus very easy to dehumanize. I'd bet the best direct managers you ever had were playing chess, actually trying to understand the difference between people and how to best apply them. This difference is both required, because of scale, and inexcusable at the same time.
Too many of them think they are doing us a favor by allowing us to work for them at glorious random company rather than realizing that glorious random company has no value outside of its employees.
It's amazing the reactions I get from people when I tell them the simple truth that nobody is doing you a favor by hiring you. It's a business deal, nothing more and nothing less, and if you aren't thinking of it in that way, you're going to be taken advantage of.
Nothing amazing about. CEO retain lawyers to draft custom contracts with a company before taking offer. This is mutually agreed negotiation and neither company nor job seeker is obliged to agree to such negotiation.
Sure, and the next time a tech ceo goes whining to Congress about a shortage of workers I hope my congressman tells him that no one is stopping him from mutually agreed negotiations with candidates.
To play devil's advocate -- you have to think about bad actors though.
What if that makes someone think, I can do zero work at my job and I'll get paid regardless? Or they do a super bare minimum, being incredibly unhelpful to everyone and their whole team hates them?
Now you're going to have courts deciding what constitutes grounds for firing and what doesn't, if performance was above or below a super bare minimum, how that's defined for a programming job, etc.
The Netherlands have a system in place to handle these sort of problems. When hiring anyone a contract is signed stating a minimum length of employment. If an employee is to be fired before that minimum length is up, a meeting with a mediator (typically an employment judge) is held. The company has to prove they've tried everything to get the employee to work at their expectations (re-training, moving departments, etc). If the judge determines the employee is doing more harm than good at the company, then they are let go before their contract ends.
Granted, I don't think a judge needs to be the deciding factor on letting an employee stay or go. But I do believe a contract stating expectations, a minimum employment contract (if employee meets those expectations) is necessary and should be enforced in today's business world. Even apply it to salaried, or "skilled workers". A busboy at a restaurant doesn't need a contract, but an accountant with 5 years experience should at least have that safety net.
Speaking as someone who has had two employment contracts in the Netherlands: what? Both of mine had 30-day probation, termination with immediate effect servable by either party, zero recourse. Is this something new since 2019?
A NL company can let someone go without notice during a trial period, gross negligence, or when the employee resigns due to breach of contract on the employers part.
By default, the notice period depends on the length of the contract (statutory minimum is 1 month notice, longest is 6 months). But it does allow companies to establish their own notice periods (or no notice period) as long as both parties agree.
The points against Devil's Advocacy are actually entirely antithetical to the practice. The reason there is such an Advocate is to make arguments more substantive so it's not this circular reasoning of "it's Evil, therefore it's Bad".
I don't otherwise disagree with what you say but the point is actually to require people to think and come up with strong reasons to disagree (or agree, as it might go).
There absolutely is when solutions might have unintended consequences.
And the practice isn't usually evil, just horrible planning. Companies aren't usually hiring people knowing they'll fire them. Rather it's company-wide layoffs or something, and the manager is as surprised as the employee.
So it's important to look at tradeoffs rather than just declare that one side is evil.
But what if executives could just pressure workers to do more and more for less because they know about the fundamental difference between how hard it is for workers to relocate compared to companies finding new workers? strokes chin Oh wait that’s already the reality.
> I can do zero work at my job and I'll get paid regardless? Or they do a super bare minimum, being incredibly unhelpful to everyone and their whole team hates them?
I guess the clause in the contract would mean a leap of faith by the company that they have vetted the candidate and trust the outcome. They just have to evaluate the risk of bad actors against the gain from good actors. Actually I like this as it makes the hiring company put some skin in the game.
Then the company is out a year's worth of one employee's salary and has hopefully learned to put a little more effort into vetting their potential hires. Investments have risk, including investments in human resources.
As an employee, I face exactly the same risks - psycho boss, unproductive team members, stupid leadership, fraudulent CFO, company about to die, market crash... a lot of these are impossible to know before starting the job.
The difference is, of course, the company can afford the risk. The have hundreds/thousands of employees. You have one job.
That would be a massive improvement over what we have now, but even having to move within a year after your last move is difficult, expensive, and incredibly stressful.
I don't think it's quite that, it was the pandemic and forced remote work.
Broadly what I saw is before the pandemic, employers reserved "remote work" for a select few, the boss gets to stay in his city and work from home, but you have to relocate. Anytime you would bring this up with your employer they would just go "well we just don't know [what would happen if you went remote]".
The pandemic flipped that on it's head because now everyone was working from home and realizing that most jobs could be done remotely. Now that employer can't tell you that same line before, because everyone knows the game is up, everyone knows you can be equally productive remote as you can in the office, so employees are calling the bluff.
I think we have to acknowledge that multiple causes are at play.
The graph in the article shows a strong decrease from the late '80s to the pre-pandemic period. There's a further decrease from the 2018-2020 bar to the 2021 bar, and another drop between the 2022 bar and the Q1 2023 bar.
I think the drop from the 80s to the pre-pandemic years is reflective of both greater precarity in employment and increases in housing costs in markets with lots of job opportunities.
The drop from pre-pandemic to 2021 may certainly be because of the greater share of remote-work that you're citing; people relocated, but often _in spite of_ work.
I think the gap between 2022 and early 2023 has gotta be at least partly due to the combination of greater economic uncertainty/increased recession fears and high costs to move b/c of high interest rates.
We wouldn't have gone from 29% to 1.6% without multiple factors swinging together over time.
Maybe at smaller companies, and... for now. I'm placing bets that mega-corps will be back to 5 days/week by the end of the year. If "hallway conversations" are a reason for 3 days per week, then "the data" will show that 5 days leads to more hallway conversations. Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
Maybe I'm at peak cynicism, but I suspect we'll end up back where we started. A very small number of remote-first companies (that have always been remote-first), and then everyone else. Big corps will say remote didn't work, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I sense your cynicism and I want to offer a counterpoint.
> Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
I'm a manager at a smaller company and I can tell you we are very much aware that we are not a big corp and that "big co" things are not going to work for us. Me and the other managers I've worked with have read all the "gotta see your empire" comments on HN and other places and our general reaction is: "good, now I know what not to do".
I will say at my company, we were all in-office with maybe 5% remote in 2019, now that number is closer to 50%. We are seeing the advantages and the massage from higher ups (VP's, President, CEO) to all middle managers is: adapt or die. The way we look at it is, if we force RTO, all it will do is drive away talent. We now live in a world where you can't look up and see all your reports, some managers like it, some hate it, but the general vibe is: "we have to adapt (and no we are not Google)"
Agreed. I do think we will end up at a higher plateau of remote work than we had pre-pandemic but all signs point towards the vast majority of workers returning to an office daily. I do truly believe office work is more productive than remote for most workers. I also truly believe that the executives leading the charge to return to offices overstate that impact.
America is only a Good Place(tm) for the very rich while its suffering expands out in a Power law distribution. No other "rich" country abuses homeless, the disabled, the almost homeless, and the working poor with as much unequal treatment as much except so-called "third-world" countries. The middle class of America is small, privileged, and unaware of the suffering and exploitation of ~100 M Americans below it and of its enablement of the "1%" to continue the status quo.
> The middle class of America is small, privileged, and unaware of the suffering and exploitation of ~100 M Americans below it and of its enablement of the "1%" to continue the status quo.
I would defend those in the middle class by saying that they are more comfortable than the poor in America, but have about the same amount (zero) of political power. The middle class is still a worker class, and as such is still subject to the whims of the wealthy capital owners.
I don't think I am in the middle class, as I don't even own a home, but I do make a good living and I would say I am more well-off than many people in the town I currently live in. I know about what's going on in America, and it pisses me off, and if I had the power to change a tiny bit of it I would, but I don't.
Do you have any statistics to back up anything you're saying, or is everything "just so"? How precisely are we "abusing the disabled"? Are there metrics for this? How does it compare to other countries? Can you give examples of what you're even talking about? Or how about even just... be specific?
Economics thought modeled after WW2, when the world outside the US was a crater.
Boomers and GenX hypernormalized around a 70 year bubble.
Like those at Exxon who accurately modeled climate warming in the 80s, the ecological cost, those who knew knew they’d be long dead before it became obvious.
> There’s a fundamental disconnect between how hard it is to relocate and how easy it is to lose your job.
This is it. The risk is completely one-sided and massive. Just ~6 months ago a recruiter reached out with a job that to be honest was perfect for my career path goals. But not remote, they wanted me to move across the country. Briefly considered it but it makes no sense, the risk is way too unreasonable.
If a company wants me to move, give me a contractual guaranteee of at least two years salary to be paid even if they reorg my position away. Then it's fair game.
This. My recently-laid-off partner received an offer from a company in Germany (we're from the US), and they offered a guaranteed contract of at least 2 years salary and a short probation period. That's an easier thing to stomach... You mean you _have_ to employ me for at least 2 years? Okay!
As the ideal employee in a 90's Dilbert strip (from the boss's perspective) said, "having a personal life is like stealing from the company". There's yet another headline on this site today about falling birthrates, and I can't help but wonder about the connection.
"Having any dedication outside your company is stealing from your company. Now here's an advertisement showing you the excitement of cheating on your partner for some quick fun." May not be causation, but they sure are eager to not let a good crisis go to waste.
Funny thing is, at least a few decades ago companies realized having a good employee's kid come work for them was a boon. Now they complain about the lack of good workers without thinking about the consequences of their good workers not reproducing in stable families.
OP's quote: "your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind."
If remote work is established properly, then your remote job will end instantly and will be shipped to Canada or Latin America (if bosses care about timezones) or to Eastern Europe or India (if timezones are not an issue). My company had multiple layoffs and then new waves of headcount. Most of the layoffs happened in the US. 100% of the new headcount is in cheaper countries.
Remote work seems glorious if you look at 2020-21. But beware the second order effects!
> If remote work is established properly, then your remote job will end instantly and will be shipped to Canada or Latin America (if bosses care about timezones) or to Eastern Europe or India (if timezones are not an issue).
This was always the case for companies that wanted to offshore. Remote work hasn't changed that.
I addressed this in another comment so copying it here:
[remote work] hasn't really been a reality the way it is today. During covid, we were forced to implement norms and tools for remote working (like Zoom). Also, we learned about replacing an expensive worker for a cheaper one one at a time. Earlier, there used to be entire teams in some remote location, so it was similar to having 2 islands (one large, one small) with a bridge which was crossed may be once or twice a year during annual trips to HQ. Now with one-new-person-at-a-time, teams don't lose productivity but over time, American workers are replaced with cheaper ones.
Source: seeing it myself in my current company. Also remembers: shareholder class is ruthless. If I can see this, they are seeing and acting on it as well.
Edit: cannot reply to the unity1001's reply so editing here - sorry to break it to you but earlier, there were only tools. Covid forced us to implement cultural norms and processes to actually work with those tools effectively. That was missing before.
> [remote work] hasn't really been a reality the way it is today. During covid, we were forced to implement norms and tools for remote working (like Zoom).
Sorry to break it to you, but those tools were around and the companies that were outsourcing were already using them heavily way before. So that's not a factor for anything being different either.
What? You seem to think that offshoring/outsourcing => only hiring an external company to do the work. It isnt. Companies have been setting up local subsidiaries in offshoring countries to hire local talent there and offshore the work to their own subsidiaries. It didnt bring down salaries. Neither did contracting out dev work to external companies overseas.
This is an argument for protectionist employment laws from the government. If you work for one of these Fortune 100 companies with activist investors who are now pushing to have every new hire come from India — regardless of official WFH policy — you’re already fucked anyway.
> If remote work is established properly, then your remote job will end instantly and will be shipped to Canada or Latin America (if bosses care about timezones) or to Eastern Europe or India
That was already happening. Remote work doesnt change anything with that.
Moreover, dont think that the senior dev in those other places will work for American companies for dimes like that. They will want the equivalent of top dollar in their country and that ends up being closer to the cost of the remote American dev when the obscene real estate/housing costs and general cost of living in places like SF or NY are removed from the equation. If you dont give that remote overseas dev the competitive rate in his/her country, he will either go with someone who does or he will just follow the traditional, more respectable career track in his country - like moving to manager positions in a respectable local corporation or launching his own business.
And if the American company goes for junior devs who are actually willing to be working for dimes when they start, they will get sloppy jobs like how they get with such cheap outsourcing now. And at the moment those juniors gain some experience, they will either ask for competitive pay or they will leave and take the traditional career route.
Have you not looked at the past two decades in tech? Offshoring and hiring firms in other countries has been attempted for a long, long time. The reason why it fails is because offshoring even in a fully remote environment is hard, from cultural differences, work quality, time zone differentials and so forth. You can hire a company in India to do work, but optimizing for cost and hiring a cheap shop instead of one of the more premium ones means you get exactly what you paid for.
Every time companies either bring the jobs back, bring the people back or spend more on hiring good firms in their offshore country of choice.
So what happens when instead of shipping entire departments to India, companies hire a specific individual in Dublin or Topeka Kansas for half of what a SV employee costs? There won't be nearly the issues of culture or time zones or whatever. For now, remote salaries are holding up to what workers made in their HCOL offices. That won't and can't hold true over the long run.
Periodically, I see this argument and I wonder if my work experience is really so unusual for tech/knowledge work. I do not consider my physical location as my value in negotiating or marketing myself. I've worked with people from many countries and never considered their current location to be that significant either. I managed to take work with me when moving overseas for several years. I eventually returned and work with several of the same folks still.
Working in academic R&D, I've usually found myself in "virtual" teams spread over many time zones or even continents, so the people I work most closely with are not the ones I would see in the office building and accompany to lunch. We were effectively embodying more of a glorified coworking space before any of us had heard of this as a named concept.
My boss always professed a preference for onsite collaboration but then was, ironically, the one most often away on travel or offsite at other satellite locations in our city. I could be in the office daily but not see him for weeks, going even longer between substantive face to face conversations. Most coordination was already digital before the pandemic.
At the same time, our division with a dozen or so employees is supposedly tight-knit and managed as a matrix org to share responsibilities. But in reality, logical silos are formed. Only a couple people pay attention to any one project and usually do so for an entire, multi-year project lifecycle. When we were onsite, we would spend most days in our private offices and not have a work-driven reason to visit one another.
Our group went from all onsite to hybrid with several remote-only. The rest agreed to return to the office one day per week on a day they chose by consensus. After a year of this, I can see that the locals often struggle to get quorum for the scheduled onsite day. We've also struggled to get our nominal quarterly all-hands get togethers to actually recur.
Fast approaching my 50s, I think more about lifestyle effects on my future health, or about retirement savings and the economy as a whole. I don't see that outsourcing of our individual "remote" jobs is a risk worth pondering. Rather, it would be whole companies or sectors as part of bigger trade wars or economic crashes. That is another kind of conceit to worry that our knowledge work could be out-competed by foreign workers while the parent organization and managerial layers are not also subject to competition from foreign companies.
And extremely disastrous in the short run. If societies lose good paying jobs, that is asking for a populist uprising which typically goes pretty bad pretty soon.
I've never understood macro-economics. How is it possible that in one country $70K USD is barely scraping by while in another country that is $2K. The base inputs to the economy are global commodities.
Interesting that Canada is seen as a low cost center. However, it is possibly true that it would be a little less expensive than the US (52K vs 70k GDP/capita). Note that India is 2K and Mexico is 10K so not really in the same ballpark for "offshore".
Canada is really perceived as a cheaper region than the cheapest regions of the US, while still have pretty much the same experience in terms of work culture, timezones, English language proficiency, talent etc. [Source: have hired Canadians at 3 different companies I have worked at].
It might be better said that remote work is better for the remote worker's economy. In regions where remote workers moved to, people with money in the bank found themselves homeless as there was nowhere left to live.
You move to a big city when you are young. Enjoy the social activities, the night life etc. If at some point you get married, have kids etc - generally you don't get to make full use of the city anymore, though you're still paying full price.
What I see A LOT is when people have kids, if they originally came from somewhere else is that the city's shine really dulls. They move back to where they came from, especially if there's a family support structure there. At one place I worked we snatched several senior engineers leaving LA and SF for a more family oriented life.
They move back home, new young people take their place and cycle continues.
People do often stay in greater metros. They just move out of the core city. (Of course, there's no guarantee that young people move into the core en masse either. They often weren't in the 70s/80s. A city like Boston was losing population until almost 2000.)
> Half the people in the United States live within 17 miles of a decent-sized airport, and ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an hours drive). Twenty-five percent of the population lives pretty darn close: less than 9 miles.
it would seem that the vast majority of the USA lives "in or near a greater metro".
>> it would seem that the vast majority of the USA lives "in or near a greater metro"
To the extent that you consider the cities of Monroe (Louisiana), Ketchikan (Alaska), Elmira (New York), and La Crosse (Wisconsin) to be the centers of "greater metro" areas.
They're not greater metro areas in the same sense that NYC, LA, SF, or Boston are greater metro areas.
True, but I'd certainly consider those "cities" and not "rural" but you can draw the line elsewhere; whatever or wherever you draw the line a substantial group of people live "in a metro area".
The US Census defines 80% of the US population as being urban. As you say, you can draw the line anywhere and I assume the US Census is defining it as being something along the lines of being somewhat accessible to a city of not completely trivial size. Which is fine as long as people don't read that as 80% of the population living somewhere that looks anything like a sizable city.
Yeah, I don't think that's a good metric for "greater metro". Some of the "major" airports they listed were the closest for a grand total of about 3000 people.
I live in a small rural college town in upstate NY that has its own municipal airport; there are more than 3000 people here (especially during the school year!) for whom this is the closest airport, and it's...well, it's tiny, with (AFAIK) zero regular flights to or from anywhere else.
The closest cities are Utica and Syracuse, each about 30 miles away. Only Syracuse has an airport that's worth driving to if you don't own your own plane (SYR is on the list as being closest for 1.2 million people—probably including me? The maps aren't loading, so I can't tell), and I've never heard anyone describe Syracuse, NY as being a "greater metro area".
I'm not sure if there is a proper definition for an international airport, but I'd think of it as an airport with US Customs and/or Immigration services.
I think you'd be surprised how many there are, especially within a few hundred miles of the Canadian or Mexican border! My local general aviation airport, with no commercial passenger flights, is an international airport because of nearby business/industrial activity.
You could also just draw a line further up the list. 100K passengers/year is under 300/day so you may be looking at a handful of regional jet flights that are mostly (or only) to the nearest significant airport.
Just eyeballing the list, what I'd consider a "significant" airport probably has a cutoff closer to a million passengers per year.
> They move back to where they came from, especially if there's a family support structure there.
This is a big deal for workers with families and closer-to-median income. Having to pay $20,000-$30,000/yr to replace services you're getting for free from family (child care, help with home improvement/repair projects, help with transportation, all kinds of stuff) might not be that big a deal to a family making $300,000, but it's huge to a family making $70,000. A 20% increase in income made possible by moving away from family might make good sense for the former, but be break-even at best for the latter (and a losing proposition of CoL is otherwise higher than where they are).
A city is, of course, more than the kinds of things that are taken to appeal to single young people today (though studies show that the young are increasingly becoming socially isolated).
Cities are more compact than suburbs. Kids are entirely dependent on their parents and adults to drive them everywhere, so in many poorly planned suburbs and bedroom communities, they're generally stuck at home. Similarly, the elderly can become isolated from family and friends that are scattered about with no easy way to visit them, or kept from participating in the social life of their town because either there is no social life due to hostile urban planning, or because they cannot get there as driving has become more difficult with age. The benefit of living in walkable cities and towns with good public transportation is especially obvious for these age groups.
Living downtown in a big city, perhaps not. You can still be close enough to a big city to participate in its labor market while living in a much less dense area.
>>There’s a fundamental disconnect between how hard it is to relocate and how easy it is to lose your job.
Exactly!
Plus, if you already have a house, you probably have refinanced into a low-rate mortgage which itself has enormous value contrasted with dropping it for a higher-rate mortgage on a new home. Even a new apartment lease will likely entail higher costs.
Plus the expense and time of moving.
Except for workers basically just out of college and making a major upgrade in title and pay, I cannot see anyone moving for a new job unless there is a hard written contract with liquidated damages if fired/laid-off (and very tight specifications on being fired for cause).
Employers' behavior over the past several decades has simply eradicated any credibility they once had.
Ya, some employers simply don't understand this. The last two times I've moved, the total costs were upwards of $50k, and that doesn't include the $50k I lost on the first house (due to the 2008 financial crisis).
My last boss offered me a $30k/yr raise to move to a different country for a small promotion with no real path forward beyond that. I said, "no way... it would take 6 years (after income taxes) for me to pay for that move with the increase in salary, and the new country's higher income taxes."
This. OMG this. This has happened to me twice in my career. It’s as if everyone has FAANG money or are like the tenured people who have a large amount of equity to tap into.
In my experience the more experience you have the worse you get treated, and economic headwinds are constant and continual, on top of that they're getting ready to cut people off of food stamps they're so confidant in this economy while intentionally shutting it down literally it makes you crazy, it makes you homeless.
> getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services
A lot could be included in this, but let's make some specifics explicit: if you locked in housing costs in 2020, it's entirely credible that a move could involve a 50-100% increase on that front right now.
Remote work can have pros/cons but it's more or less a declaration of independence for both employees and employers from having to care about market-specific housing costs in general.
And this is exactly why people congregate in places like Silicon Valley and New York. If you lose your job there's a 98% chance you can find another job you like within commuting distance.
For people in relationships it also means both people being able to pursue a wide spectrum of changes in their careers without moving, and one person don't need their partner to make a sacrifice in their career to pursue change.
Are there still people relocating just for a job?Purely observational but the people I know willing to relocated (or already gone) it's mainly because they want to move out of the city, due to weather, crime, lack of things to do, infrastructure or whatever their reason is. I know there are exceptions where the opportunity, the money or both is so good that if offsets the risk of things not working out. But the vast majority of people changes companies to a slightly better position with a slightly better compensation.
The cost of moving is huge: uprooting your family, switching the kids’ school, losing your friends and local interests, re-learning a new community, getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services, legal fees and taxes, packing and unpacking your stuff, loading up on new risks…
Whereas your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind.