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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

One way to minimize the cost of living impact is to set up satellite offices. Set up a campus in Texas or Oklahoma. It's not like people would not take jobs there. I'm sure some globe trotters would not, but most jobs don't need the globe trotter kind of mentality.

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Janitors, bus drivers, food service workers and security can't work from a "satellite office". This is about more than engineers.

Fewer engs in the bay area lowers pressure on cost of housing, among other things.

Yes, but a lot of the big tech companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft want people to work at their head office location rather than opening up satellite offices across the world. I understand how it simplifies logistics and communication, but it's not without its own problems.

I live in and grew up in Oklahoma and every time I hear a horror story about housing in these high-population areas I balk. I have a good, challenging job making what would be poverty-level income in SF but I have a house, a nice car, and can travel a few times a year. I guess the night life isn't as good or there is "not that much to do" but I hang out with my friends, eat good food, and drink good beer so I'm not so sure what else I could really want.

The tech giants could put satellite offices in OK, or people could just move and shoot for one of the good jobs that are already here. I really don't get why anyone puts up with SF.

At one time, Google had such an office here in the Phoenix area (I think it actually located in Tempe or Chandler); they closed it after a few years ostensibly because they couldn't find enough workers who met their standards.

So maybe it's a chicken/egg problem; they'd love to set up such offices, but they can't find the workers they need. The workers they need are all in California or some other similar, more liberal-outlook place (Arizona as a whole, and Texas, and a lot of the rest of these desert places are mostly very conservative, unfortunately) - and they don't want to move to such places.

I don't know how you change this quickly. I don't think you can. I'm wondering if it is this divided political and social culture wars attitudes etc that is making this a gordian knot to figure out...?

They are not unable to find people to staff their DCs and their DCs are typically in small cities (though not all). So it's not that.

I'm sure they could find talent in BOS for example, but they don't have major offices there (as opposed to LAX, & LON, for example).

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