Please someone explain something to me regarding the tech sector and housing. Why is it that the most location independent sector, tech workers, are huddling around certain urban areas? It makes absolutely no sense.
Shouldn't tech workers or even just simply technology savvy people be able to work anywhere that has fast internet? So why is that community not living in the countryside or in small spread out concentrations, instead of everyone having to pile into certain cities?
Sure, if I could get gigabit fiber in the middle of South Dakota, I could work just as easily as anywhere else. Unfortunately, there wouldn't be anything for me to do outside of work.
I live in NYC right now and it's fantastic (and fantastically expensive). I can walk to any number of world class restaurants and museums, take the train to see even more amazing things, and generally feel like I have the world at my fingertips. Is that pricey? Yes. But I work so that I can make enough money to do things I find fun, some of which are things outside of work.
Please someone explain something to me regarding the tech sector and housing
Edward Glaeser wrote a book that answers your question: Triumph of the City. Cities promote knowledge transfer and idea generation because of all the random interactions that happen among people. It's useful to be among people who are doing things like what you're doing. Cities offer great ways for cooperation and competition.
If you're doing routine tasks over and over again that can be done remotely maybe you don't need to live in a city. But the rest of us do, and the reasons make a lot of sense!
As someone once described to me, if you have a lot of money, the world's great cities, London, NYC, LA, Hong Kong are your playgrounds. Living, working, and playing within a walking distance or transit-friendly distance is strongly becoming an aspiration for those who have the skills or money to afford it.
If you make $300-400K/year in New York City, you can afford to live a little. Midtown or Chelsea apartment. Nice restaurants. Drinks in bars. $7 lattes.
This is exactly it for me. I don't live to work, I work to live and I want to have interesting, dense, urban things as near to me as I can manage. My salary isn't as high as some around here but I still pulled off buying a cute, compact house smack in the middle of Seattle near 24-hour transit service and minutes to everything I want to do. That's after moving from the suburbs of Texas where anything besides a 7-11 or a Cici's Pizza were at least a 15-minute drive (and you could forget going via transit).
Humans are social creatures and we want to be around other people. That's a generalization that usually holds true. Some people do want to live in a rural setting, with acres of land separating them from their neighbors. A coworker of mine does that and is quite happy with it. There just happen to be more of us, apparently, who want the urban environment.
Personally, I've decided to leave the rat race of Silicon Valley / SF and take my family somewhere more quiet where we could settle down. I've had one hell of a time finding a job that would be okay with a remote employee, though. I had a couple companies who at the start said they would but when the day of the real interviews came they would suddenly get cold feet.
For all the complaining about a lack of talent, the people making the hiring decisions sure don't seem to want to compromise on this point. That sort of "perk" is huge for me -- it's the sort of thing that would make me interested in your company in the first place.
There's still a large value IMO of working physically next to those you work with. The ideas flow easier, meetings can happen organically, there are no timezone issues, etc.
Yes, this sector can work remotely less painfully than others, but that doesn't mean its optimal.
Because the vast majority of people that are young and ambitious prefer to live urban areas with all the advantages that come with it.
And with the high level of gentrification in many successful cities, unlike 25 years ago those urban centers are now also attractive for older people and people with families, people who used to move to the suburbs.
People want to be there, and contrary to what a very vocal minority suggests, most people don't want to work remotely, at least not full-time, and those that do don't necessarily want to do it from the middle of f-ing nowhere.
I'm sure there are a lot of tech workers who live in the countryside, it's just that we don't hear about them very often. We read mainly about the people in the tech centers, because that's where all the networking happens, and that's where all the journalists are.
I make a database client, and when I look at the billing addresses of my customers, I do see a lot of companies based in San Francisco; but the majority of customers are from pretty random locations all over the world.
Shouldn't tech workers or even just simply technology savvy people be able to work anywhere that has fast internet? So why is that community not living in the countryside or in small spread out concentrations, instead of everyone having to pile into certain cities?