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That Big Tech Exodus Out of California? It Didn't Happen (msn.com) 107

Posted by EditorDavid from the golden-states dept.
"Wannabe innovation hubs from coast to coast have been slavering over the prospect that the work-from-home revolution triggered by the COVID pandemic would finally break the stranglehold that California and Silicon Valley have had on high-tech jobs," writes a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

"Here's the latest picture on this expectation: Not happening." That's the conclusion of some new studies, most recently by Mark Muro and Yang You of the Brookings Institution. They found that although the pandemic brought about some changes in the trend toward the concentration of tech jobs in a handful of metropolitan areas, the largest established hubs as a group "slightly increased their share" of national high-tech employment from 2019 through 2020. (Emphasis theirs....) "[T]he big tech superstar cities aren't going anywhere," Muro told me. "There's a suggestion that we're on the brink of an entirely different geography. I don't think recent history or the nature of the technologies point in that direction.... "

"The California metropolises really do retain their irreplaceable depth and strength," Muro says. "That's not to say there won't be some movement. Early in the period we saw some exiting, especially from the Bay Area, but it turned out that much of it was within California, rather than to Kansas." This shouldn't be too surprising. The value of concentrated ecosystems in nurturing innovation has been documented for decades....

The pandemic-driven shift to remote work does seem to have opened entrepreneurs' eyes at least to the potential for doing away with centralized workforces. In a recent survey of tech startup founders, the share of respondents saying they would prefer to start a firm with an entirely remote workforce from Day One rose to 42.1% in 2021 from only 6% in 2020. Among physical locations where the founders said prefer to launch their businesses, however, San Francisco still dominated, at 28.4%, with New York a distant second....

Unlike service industries such as leisure and tourism, most tech industries experienced barely a hiccup in their long-term growth trends during the pandemic.
The column also questions when, "if ever," work-from-home jobs will become a significant share of the workforce. "Full-scale work-from-home only applies to about 6% of workers, UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti says. That's triple the 2% level of the pre-pandemic era, but still an exception to the rule."
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That Big Tech Exodus Out of California? It Didn't Happen More

That Big Tech Exodus Out of California? It Didn't Happen

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  • Good (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    Can we start telling all the Californians who have moved up to Washington State in the past couple of years to go back home now?

    • Same around Nashville. I almost dont ask anymore when I meet someone new.
    • Cali lost so many people it even lost a Congress Critter. So if it wasnâ(TM)t tech workers or homeless people, then who left?
      • It was tech, richies and homeless. Colorado got a new area code and Congress critter from it.

        • Hell, even bumfuck NW PA where I live got a new area code out of it. Metric shit-ton of California plates over the last two years.

      • Nope. The loss of Congresscritter was Texas taking two while cutting 40% of their population OUT of the counted votes crowd.

      • Cali lost so many people it even lost a Congress Critter.

        California didn't lose people. Their relative share of the population of the US decreased. Since we have a fixed number of representatives (since 1912) this means no loss is required.
        For example, Texas grew by approximately 4M people between 2010 and 2020, and gained 2 seats.
        California grew by approximately 2M people between 2010 and 2020, and lost 1 seat.

        So if it wasn't tech workers or homeless people, then who left?

        Hopefully people capable of fixing the education system wherever you're from.

    • Same around Austin. It took over a million dollars for a grassroots group to get the city council to re-enact their no public camping ordinance, and when it was repealed (without any votes by the public), Austin's crime rate went up across the board by unprecedented levels. The fact that Soros stepped in to pay groups to prevent another bill that would reverse the severe defunding of the police is also notable. Now, local places are getting burglarized several times a week, and the local PD can't do a si

      • The state just needs to step in to downsize the geographic limits of Austin down to a few blocks surrounding the capital building.

      • The fact that Soros

        Lol sure. I bet it was arranged in a pizza parlour too.

        Even the PD's bomb squad was defunded, so state and military people had to be called in when an explosive device was found.

        How many bombs do you have in Austin. To an outside observer, it would seem entirely rational to have one, well trained, very specialist group that knows what it's doing for rare events.

      • I've lived in Austin. Pretty much every week Austin PD was in the news for racially motivated violence or similar. If they would actually do their job instead of picking on black people then they could do it, but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun would it?

      • Soros stepped in to pay groups to prevent another bill that would reverse the severe defunding of the police is also notable. Now, local places are getting burglarized several times a week, and the local PD can't do a single thing about it. Even the PD's bomb squad was defunded, so state and military people had to be called in when an explosive device was found.

        But it's Texas. You can shoot back there.

    • Can we start telling all the Californians who have moved up to Washington State in the past couple of years to go back home now?

      Dude, their homes were literally burned down in the ongoing "But I want to be rich too!" utility ownership wars. They are refugees.

  • That it did happen...

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]

    The exodus from CA was never really about "just" the Big Tech companies. It's was more about the general population that got fed up the the asinine rules and high taxes from the state government. Leaving CA was the best decision I ever made.

    • An entire 42 companies? Most aren't even tech companies... and how many companies moved into California during the same period?

      • It's not so much that companies move into California, it's that Californians are constantly creating new companies. That's what allows us to tax and regulate them, watch many move out, and still bring in record tax revenue.

    • I can't speak for a 'mass exodus', but for myself, I definitely left CA (bay area) during the pandemic. The entire region felt like a shell of what it once was, leaving me very unhappy with my living arrangement (welcome to your apartment-style prison). So I left (and still kept my job). I'm now 100% remote, on the other side of the country. Do I miss CA? Only a bit. There's less traffic here, and surprisingly more stuff to do (though CA had more stuff to do when it wasn't a covid-raged hellscape).

      I feel li

    • So your "Ca business flight" story was bullshit.
      Thanks for the confession

  • If you want to avoid snow and are looking for a state with similar political leanings, you don't really have any good options.

    Then there's Florida, which is what I'd imagine you'd get if you ordered California from wish.com

    • a state with similar political leanings

      Florida's cool, if you have unscientific, fascist, authoritarian political leanings. In which case, Desantis is your man.

      • That's odd, I live in Washington State and I have an unscientific, fascist, authoritarian political leader who took great delight in pissing on both the state and federal constitutions and ruled by proclamation for two years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arethan ( 223197 )

      If you want to avoid snow and are looking for a state with similar political leanings, you don't really have any good options

      What do you mean by this, exactly? Avoiding snow is pretty easy -- just go live in the sun belt. Are you saying that it is difficult to find democratic states within the sun belt? It really isn't. Many are predominantly red states, but some are purple (ie they flip-flop, including Florida and most recently Georgia), and California is consistently blue.

      Also, do you think your state's voting history determines how you will like it there? Where you live is what you make of it. You could always go move to a sol

      • What do you mean by this, exactly?

        Simply, what I already stated: moving from California requires compromising on the climate you'll be living in. You're either going to get weather you might not enjoy, or experience an unfavorable political climate, or both.

        Having experienced more than my fair share of the weather sort and the political sort in Florida, I'd personally say “stay in Cali.”

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Arethan ( 223197 )

          Thanks for the clarification.
          In my own personal experience (and since you've called out this example quite explicitly), I moved from California to Florida and I have found no issues thus far. Grocery stores still sell food. Gas stations still sell gas (-$2/gal from the LA price, it seems). My job is remote, so we'll ignore that in the calculus (but I'm sure many of you tech nerds from CA have this same option available if you ask for it -- and yes, I did accept a pay cut to do this move). The local governme

          • The suckier aspects of Florida are a matter of perspective. I've been through a few hurricanes, short-sold my home and had to go on Florida's pathetically stingy unemployment (it's among the lowest in the country) during the great recession, and more recently have been less than thrilled about how the governor handled Covid-19. Don't even get me started on "I-4 Ultimate".

            Florida isn't the worst place to live if you've got the income, and don't have to commute in horrible traffic every day (which is litera

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Arethan ( 223197 )

              Yea, and I was on Michigan unemployment before. When I was on that "support", it was also awful. I got divorced during that stint - I can't say unemployment directly broke my marriage, but I'm pretty sure it didn't help. In fact, I've yet to see a state where unemployment is done well. The reality is that your "unemployment benefits" don't ever reflect your previous employed contribution to society. It's more often a pittance of your former income -- there is zero chance you can make rent and buy food on wh

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Arethan ( 223197 )

              Different response for a different topic.

              more recently have been less than thrilled about how the governor handled Covid-19.

              This whole argument is tired and useless in my mind, but you wanted to kick this very dead horse, so here we go...

              I don't get this argument at all. Florida has one of the largest per-capita ratios of elderly (I see this every time I buy groceries at Publix, I'm sure we still beat AZ on this front, but hey go check census and prove me wrong), and yet the death ratio to (or with) covid is... equal to national rates, or better, depending on who you ask. You don't need t

              • Florida has one of the largest per-capita ratios of elderly (I see this every time I buy groceries at Publix, I'm sure we still beat AZ on this front, but hey go check census and prove me wrong), and yet the death ratio to (or with) covid is... equal to national rates, or better, depending on who you ask.

                From what I found, Florida is #16 for deaths by Covid-19. When 34 states did a better job (granted, some by virtue of simply having low population densities), there was certainly room for improvement. I think the only reason it wasn't worse was that, at least where I live, people weren't buying into the partisan bullshit and were wearing their masks.

                So yea, covid is a lame duck down here at this point.

                With today's widespread vaccine availability, yes. There were a few snags with the initial availability (closest appointment I could find was 100 miles away

              • You may have different numbers. From Worldometer, deaths per capita (million):

                FL #17 3,405
                US "#25" 3,041
                CA #39 2,252

                CA's governor survived a recall. While, like most politicians, he is responsible for some definite foobars in the Covid response, all his opponents were basically anti-mask, anti-rules.

                US total deaths are at 1,006,445, which once again proves that we are #1 in the world.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        >> If you want to avoid snow and are looking for a state with similar political leanings, you don't really have any good options

        > What do you mean by this, exactly? Avoiding snow is pretty easy

        Maybe he's a former coke addict and he wants to avoid the temptation of "skiing" the slopes with his nose.

      • Right, because there isn't anything stopping that kind of political sea change. Absolutely not gerrymandering or voting "reforms" that make it harder for those kinds of shifts happen. Oh wait, that's exactly what gerrymandering and new "vote integrity laws" are doing. Especially in "purple" states like Texas and Georgia. In order to stop them from shifting further blue, or to roll back that change to a minority rule.

    • I wish to embrace snow - a brisk, snowy winter day is one of the highlights of my life. I love 20-degree weather.

    • If you are looking to avoid snow and want similar political leanings, then most Californians look north of California to Portland or Seattle.

      Just ask anyone that has lived in either of those cities for more than 10 years how much change there has been from people liquidating their Bay Area properties and buying places 2x the size for half the money in Portland and Seattle. And neither of those cities are exactly conservative bastions - hell, the east half of Oregon wants to be "Greater Idaho" due to the po

  • New England's textile industry moved to the South. Manufacturing moved to the mid-West. High-tech moved to the west coast.

    The same could easily happen to California, but it won't be overnight. But someday they will wake up and only Ark Fleet Ship B people will remain.

    • The same could easily happen to California, but it won't be overnight. But someday they will wake up and only Ark Fleet Ship B people will remain.

      California has things no other state has, and some of them are things no other state can have. California's not going to lose its cachet unless AGW makes our weather worse than everyone else's. The only way you wake up and California is undesirable to people with the skills to pay the bills is if most of it winds up underwater.

    • It's been said for over 30 years. And every rate measured said "Yup, CA will be #2 in 25 years! OMG!"

      I will believe it when it actually start happening. People, correction, news people, who can't read stats, let alone explain them keep giving one or two examples every time and think it's the beginning of the end for CA.

      What they don't know is that's been the trend for decades. What they don't consider is how they keep finding examples year after year. At one point one would think they do a Google history s

  • California is AWFUL, please don't visit. Definitely do not move here.

    • Really, it's horrible, stay away. If you see even one bad place in California, then you know it's enough because I guarantee every square inch is identical. Head to Texas or Florida where all the politicians are stable geniuses, the houses only cost $12, and there are no natural disasters.

    • Been there twice and it looked to me like an enormous slum.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arethan ( 223197 )

      Heh. I did move there. Then I moved out. I agree, your state is awful in a lot of ways. Also, I did that entire turn around during covid-hellscape. I remember days when the local Subway (the sandwich shop) was closed. So yea, I left. Let me know if you ever decide to make your society work again, you generally seemed like a fun bunch of chaps.

    • Reminds me of what Governor Tom McCall said about Oregon once:

      "We want you to visit our State of Excitement often. Come again and again. But for heaven's sake, don't move here to live. Or if you do have to move in to live, don't tell any of your neighbors where you are going."

  • ...I didn't think much of it to be honest. If you go a few kms south, you get to Vilanova i la Geltru, which is a lot nicer: https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aergern ( 127031 )

      The place you reference is in Spain. I've been there. And I've been to a lot of places with coasts. But if you've explored all 423,971 sqkm and found it lacking next to single port city in Spain. We should have tried harder to impress you. /s

  • "Full-scale work-from-home only applies to about 6% of workers, UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti says. That's triple the 2% level of the pre-pandemic era, but still an exception to the rule."

    Except in tech, where work from home can be done by a big percentage of workers. I was working remote for years, and now almost everyone in my NY and NJ office locations is remote. Some go in once a week just for a change of scenery.

    • Nice tax returns the CEOs and C-suiters have ... be a shame if the state audited them (and their families) going back 5-6 years if they don't bring back employees to NYC-area offices, thus restoring the revenues of local businesses and fixing public transit funding issues.

  • Silicon Valley needs the following:

    1) Close interaction and communication with other techminded folk. Silicon Valley relies on people meeting others involved in tech that are NOT working for the same company. It needs to exchange both ideas and employees freely. Creativity is all about interacting with new ideas, this cannot happen when people live far from each other. It needs a central hub.

    2) A culture and government that encourages free speech (not uses it as an excuse to insult others). Tech crea

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Close interaction and communication with other techminded folk.

      It's not like someone won't come along and invent some sort of wide area network that people could use to exchange text, documents, voice and video. Over which such interaction might occur. We could call it something like "Interweb".

      But perish the thought that even such a network could be used to organize and manage something like an entire operating system [wikipedia.org] and its supporting components [wikipedia.org]. No, that will probably never happen. These developers will have to be crammed into the same office building.

      • Someone still thinks that internet relationships are the same as real life ones?

        If someone offers you sex, would you say "No thanks, I am sexting with three people that have better pictures than you."?

        No, of course not. Text, docs, internet voice and video are all so inferior to real life.

        The kind of relationships that created all of the web as well as Silicon Valley happened in real life. The internet is a great substitution for when you can't do something in person. But it cannot compete for real pe

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          I work with people that, in real life, I might not want to deal with in more than a professional setting. I'll ski with people who are good skiers but may not be able to code worth shit. On the other hand, I can do engineering with other talented engineers that I might not put up with IRL.

          This nation still has it's problems with Jim Crow. And the prerequisite of "getting along" with people who are similar enough to me so that we can be good buddies in addition to co-workers is something that we need to get

  • The clearest sign that it is happening is how strongly the left leaning media is trying to deny it.

    Are we just supposed to pretend like all these big Tech companies have left? And ignore the influx of Californians into places like Colorado and Texas? Turn a blind eye to that congressional representative that got shuffled out of the state?

    Moderates within the Democrat party are already sidelining "the squad" and the "bernie bros". And since California is supposed to be the poster child for what the left-mos

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      California is supposed to be the poster child for what the left-most part of the Democrat party wants for the whole country

      Are you trolling or do you have proof?

  • California haters (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday March 26, 2022 @08:39PM (#62392831)

    So California has always been paying way more in taxes to the federal government than we get back. There was one year, maybe two where we didnâ(TM)t put in more than we got back .. I believe around 2007 or 8. But man that was enough for everyone to start calling California a failed state. Zero thanks from all the hater states California had been bankrolling. Now we are paying for you fuckers again, but you still claim we are a failed state. Fuck all of you haters. Pay us back then. This is why you cannot be too charitable .. the person you help starts hating you when they need more or you stop. Like the USA helped North Korea out of famine in the mid 1990s, instead of appreciation their government propaganda made them hate us more. Same thing happened, California versus red states. Fuck off you jerks.

    • How's that "high speed" rail coming along? Or what about Highway 99...that has been undergoing repairs since Bush 41.

      • High speed rail is coming along a lot better than high speed rail in your state.

        As for Highway 99 repairs .. I have no idea what you are talking about .. never heard of the issue .. I usually take I-5 when I want to go that way which is fine. I have been on segments of 99 but I donâ(TM)t recall any repair work of an extent worth bitching about or remembering .. if it is happening I doubt it is disruptive or a big deal.

        • The CA highspeed rail is now 3x over the initial budget ($33b) and still doesn't have a single line running. The fact the first section of line to actually run will be from Merced to Bakersfield (how may people will actually ride this route?) shows just how much of a gov pork project it is. Additionally, the costs will never match being able to grab a flight from one of the 3 SF airports to one of the 5 LA airports.

  • In terms of total numbers, Los Angeles County lost about 160,000 residents — more than any other county in the nation, the data show. But L.A. County has about 10 million people, so the per capita loss was slightly more than 1% compared with 6.7% in San Francisco [12ft.io] and 6.9% in New York.

    “We are in this new demographic era for California of very slow or maybe even negative growth,” said Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California

    Nearly all of the state’s po

  • There were 30 people in my team all working out of the Palo Alto office of a major tech firm in January of 2020 and today only one of them still lives in California because nobody in their right mind would live in CA if they could continue working for CA tech companies while living somewhere reasonable.

  • California is not for everyone. It's not for me. I tried California, but I like being a masshole better. However, it's fucking stupid as shit to push your personal view and think the rest of the world thinks the same thing. Sorry, as much as you and I wish it were not the case, the best tech jobs are still in Silicon Valley. The best companies and VC activity and services are as well. I know someday that won't be the case, but for now, it is. For you, the annoying facets of California may outweigh th
  • It will only change when even the highly-paid tech staff can no longer afford it or suffer some other major issues (traffic in Palo alto.. sheesh.. but still just an annoyance).
  • Great, will someone please tell all the Californians in Austin to go home? Used to be a nice city. Now it's swamped with Californians bringing the same stupid ideas and policies with them: light rail, homelessness, etc..
  • This story does not match the reality I'm seeing. My cohort has gone from 50/50 wfh to 100% wfh and I don't see it ever going back, still.

  • Stay there! You guys are too smart for me.

    I'm definitely not working from home (a home that probably cost less than two of your cars) as a programmer in some flyover state. Nope, doesn't happen!

  • After living over 30 years in Georgia, I moved to California six years ago. I'll never go back to that sh**hole state. California is so much better in every metric, especially the Coachella Valley area I'm in, now. And since I've been here, I know 23 other people that have left "red states" to come here and all are so much happier. You can keep your OAN/Fox lies and bullsh**.

  • The column also questions when, "if ever," work-from-home jobs will become a significant share of the workforce. "Full-scale work-from-home only applies to about 6% of workers, UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti says. That's triple the 2% level of the pre-pandemic era, but still an exception to the rule."

    It's only an exception to the rule because corporations want it to be an exception, not because workers are necessarily happier at the office. I left my company after 11 years for a new place because I want fully remote work from somewhere else in the country. Practically speaking, my job was fully remote, but my old company would classify it as 'hybrid', because I was theoretically required to show up at the office if needed. (And when I went back to the office to pick up my stuff, there were maybe 4 or 5

  • I'm really sick of all of the "California is the best..." and "California is bad..." narratives. My impression of California is it's just different than the rest of the US. You can't create something like California in Ohio, and vice versa. It will never work.

    It's a huge state with massive natural resources. Despite its size, there is only a thin strip of land between the ocean and the mountains that has the best weather in the entire US. Everyone wants to live in that strip, and therefore it's cr

    • I wasn't born there, but grew up there. 17 years...a few more later when I returned.

      Since then lived in many parts of the US and Europe. My take is that Cali is always a few years advanced compared to the normal US (sorry, NY). More progressive and liberal, and eventually people in other states begin to assume the same attitudes or laws. I could be wrong, and some things are simply a "California problem" with no comparable comparison to other states. California is blessed with a magical and wonderous g

  • I beg to differ. There is enormous departure from San Francisco due to high crime rates, cosmic rent levels, corrupt politicians affecting daily lives. Massive numbers of small businesses in SF have closed due to combination of effects, making it less desirable to work there. It also doesn't help that the city has unbelievably set up a city-official drug-shooting gallery right on the street in the Tenderloin area. Yeah, that'll reduce the number of car-break-ins, guys. This is accompanied by a DA who refuse

  • For the people who left CA for free states, they don't need an article to justify their decision - they're living it.

    For the people who are still stuck in CA, they need an article like this to justify their decision.

    Red, blue, yellow, or green, it's pretty clear who this article is targeted towards, and nobody else cares.

    There's more #transregret out there than #excalifornianregret. In fact, I literally don't think I've met a single person in real life that was sad they left the People's Republic of Kalifo

  • Fairly certain that there are growing quantities of jobs in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver BC.

    That said, most of the fake news about people fleeing due to crime are exactly that: fake.

    Oh, and Portland and Seattle are at decades low levels of crime, so turn off Fox News and delete that channel.

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