New Data: Tech Companies Expand Hiring From 'Tech Hubs' to 'All Over The Place' (nytimes.com) 28
"Just two years ago the metropolitan areas that serve as the nation's technology hubs seemed to be sucking tech jobs away from other parts of the country," remembers business writer Peter Coy in the New York Times. "A Brookings Institution report in December 2019 noted that just five cities — Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and San Jose, Calif. — accounted for more than 90 percent of employment growth in the innovation sector from 2005 to 2017.
"The trend is now in the other direction: The tech hubs' share of employment is falling." This development was already starting in 2019, and the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated it. Newspapers are full of stories about Silicon Valley tech workers moving to parts of the country where the housing is cheaper and the fishing is better... Employers seem to be benefiting from the trend: Mark Muro, a Brookings senior fellow, told The Wall Street Journal in July that tech companies, by letting people work outside their home offices, can "truly access lost Einsteins all across the country."
The evidence for this shift used to be mostly anecdotal. Now there's hard data. It comes from the Conference Board, a business-supported research organization. Gad Levanon, the founder of the board's Labor Market Institute, gave me a preview of data he has collected using software that tracks almost all the online want ads in the United States. He focused on ads placed by tech employers based in five tech hubs — the same five as those surveyed by Brookings in 2019, except with Los Angeles in place of Boston. His findings? "West Coast tech companies are dramatically shifting their hiring to other parts of the U.S.," Levanon wrote to me in an email. "Not just for tech jobs, but also engineers, scientists, managers, business and financial professionals."
Levanon also analyzed the data according to where new jobs are being offered. "They are moving to all over the place," he wrote me. Some of the jobs, he explained, are in metropolitan areas where the employers were already established — such as New York, Washington, Boston and Austin, Texas. "But some of the shift," he said, "is to areas where they barely hired before" — like Boise, Idaho, and Des Moines, Iowa. Because of the pandemic, employers have gotten more comfortable with hiring people who don't work at their companies' headquarters, Levanon says. Some new hires may be working at home while others are in satellite offices. Casting the net wider gives companies access to more talent — including people who may work for lower salaries because their living costs are cheaper elsewhere.
"The trend is now in the other direction: The tech hubs' share of employment is falling." This development was already starting in 2019, and the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated it. Newspapers are full of stories about Silicon Valley tech workers moving to parts of the country where the housing is cheaper and the fishing is better... Employers seem to be benefiting from the trend: Mark Muro, a Brookings senior fellow, told The Wall Street Journal in July that tech companies, by letting people work outside their home offices, can "truly access lost Einsteins all across the country."
The evidence for this shift used to be mostly anecdotal. Now there's hard data. It comes from the Conference Board, a business-supported research organization. Gad Levanon, the founder of the board's Labor Market Institute, gave me a preview of data he has collected using software that tracks almost all the online want ads in the United States. He focused on ads placed by tech employers based in five tech hubs — the same five as those surveyed by Brookings in 2019, except with Los Angeles in place of Boston. His findings? "West Coast tech companies are dramatically shifting their hiring to other parts of the U.S.," Levanon wrote to me in an email. "Not just for tech jobs, but also engineers, scientists, managers, business and financial professionals."
Levanon also analyzed the data according to where new jobs are being offered. "They are moving to all over the place," he wrote me. Some of the jobs, he explained, are in metropolitan areas where the employers were already established — such as New York, Washington, Boston and Austin, Texas. "But some of the shift," he said, "is to areas where they barely hired before" — like Boise, Idaho, and Des Moines, Iowa. Because of the pandemic, employers have gotten more comfortable with hiring people who don't work at their companies' headquarters, Levanon says. Some new hires may be working at home while others are in satellite offices. Casting the net wider gives companies access to more talent — including people who may work for lower salaries because their living costs are cheaper elsewhere.
But more Silicon Valley offices are being built (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd welcome this trend if it's for real, but a lot of investor money is betting otherwise. Tens of millions of square feet of new offices are being built across the Bay Area, and recently Silicon Valley office lease rates hit a new record high: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/08/covid-real-estate-silicon-valley-office-rent-record-heights-tech/
Aren't they just tearing down old buildings (Score:2)
Re:Aren't they just tearing down old buildings (Score:5, Interesting)
They are tearing down old buildings (not all of them offices), but they're also building enormous amounts of new office space. Last time I checked, Redwood City had a net increase of 5.5M sq ft. Google alone is adding multiple millions of square feet of new offices to San Jose.
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Next time you are looking for a job remember this. Companies that do this are either tied up in real estate so have a vested interest in it staying valuable, or are plagued by presenteeism.
At this point needing to be in the office more than a couple a days a week is a red flag for many jobs.
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None of that contradicts the claims.
Apply some critical thinking.
There is a shortage of foos everywhere in the country Flum. Previously foo hiring was concentrated in the region of Bazzle. Recently, foo hiring was expended nationwide. Q: Foo employment in Bazzle is going down T/F/unknown
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Do the cat/box one next!
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If you can't figure out that if you don't know, you don't know, you're gonna score "fail" on any IQ or comprehension test.
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False.
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Before I explain, I assumed you meant "expanded" instead of "expended." I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt instead of treating you like a troll. If you actually meant "expended" then the answer can only be "unknown" because the question doesn't make sense.
The answer is not known because expanded hiring nationwide does not in any way dictate what happens in Bazzle. They could both be increating.
But at the sa
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False, you don't get multiple answers. You fail. The answer is unknown. You're adding in external assumptions that rely on things you don't know. You're just wrong. You're constitutionally incapable of understanding "known unknowns." You're pathologically compelled to make up an answer, no matter how hard you have to wave your hands.
You have three options. T/F/unknown. You're saying it "must" be "either" true or false. But you don't know which. That means it is unequivocally unknown.
Q: I have some coins in my pocket. Are they a) an unknown number, b) an odd number, or c) an even number?
The answer is only unkn
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**roflcopter**
There is nothing "wrong" with the question. And yes, I am a programmer. Computers are absolutely unforgiving about logic, and they do not care if you think that logic should be whatever you decided.
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Previously foo hiring was concentrated in the region of Bazzle. Recently, foo hiring has expanded nationwide. Preparations for more foo hiring in Bazzle are going way, way up. Q: Is there a significant long-term trend to reduce the concentration of foos in Bazzle? I think Bayes would say your confidence in the existence of such a dispersal trend should be reduced. That's the critical thinking that you might have missed.
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unknown
Cheaper by the dozen. (Score:3)
Some new hires may be working at home while others are in satellite offices. Casting the net wider gives companies access to more talent — including people who may work for lower salaries because their living costs are cheaper elsewhere.
Well this is what people wanted, minus the lower salary after all who wants those?
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Based on my experience, this sentiment is right, but numbers are off.
One of the big SV tech companies recruited me. They were pretty uncertain about even going up 50% from my current position, but it seemed like maybe I could get them to do that at best. Then I looked at real estate and even going an hour away the houses were about 3 times as expensive despite being half the size of my current house.
I can live like a king in my current area on less money, or get more money but have less to spend because a
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I mean presumably, moving to SV would mean you get to accumulate equity faster than you currently do, so you can choose to make the tradeoff now to be end up with higher net worth.
Wit that said total wealth accumulation isn't a goal in itself. What's the point in saving for a better retirement if your life up to retirement sucks?
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Not sure if percentage wise I gain equity faster. My house has doubled in value since I bought it here. I am paid well enough that I was able to pay off the house pretty early. I'd probably be better off using excess income to buy up homes nearby and leverage them, but I feel like I'd be needlessly contributing to the shortage of 'houses to buy to own' problem by literal rent seeking, so I'll stick to a balance of mutual funds and such.
Re: Cheaper by the dozen. (Score:1)
Let's consider where the hiring pool usually is for these places: expensive private universities where many kids grew up thinking money grows on trees and the creme de la creme on the academic side go on to grad schools in expensive cities making under 35k a year for about 5 years.
If you hire from a place where the calculation you're making is an abstraction rather than a reality, you can afford to pay less.
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Since the `90s I've been hearing people say they wanted the same purchasing power but to work locally, and one of their arguments was usually that it would cost the company less money.
'all over the world' (Score:3, Interesting)
is now just a small step away. There are lost Einsteins all across the world. I don't know how we prepare ourselves for that.