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Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

"Locate offices in reasonable COL US markets"

But... the savings won't be that much. I mean, for normal people it would be, but imagine you have a bonus tied to a % of cost savings. Do you propose something which might bring about a 20% cost savings? Or a 75% savings? Of course, I just pulled those numbers out of thin air, but the cost of, say, mid-level developers in SF isn't going to drop significantly, moving to a reasonably-high-tech hub. The base salary cost may go down < 20%, but any other attendant benefits (insurance, retirement, etc) don't go away, just might be shifted a few % - or might even go up(?)

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Even if you paid the same, you'd have many more engineers willing to enter or stay in situations where they can afford to raise families at middle-class standards, not crowd into decrepit roommate situations.

How have you tested this hypothesis? I have tried to hire in low COL places and people want to move to SF instead. That’s fine, but there aren’t that many people in these other places.

Have you tried asking SF people to relocate to those places? Because I and most of my coworkers say we would do so easily.

I hear the complaint about not finding local engineers in those places. Thing is, we don't find any local engineers in SF either. Maybe 2-3 people out of 100. Everyone else is a <5 year transplant, relocated either by us or their previous employer. We have more people from the same random Chinese high school than from California.

That and local acquisitions are how we’ve done it. But very few want to go anywhere. Mostly it’s for family. It’s fine but it hasn’t helped anything.

I think senior engineers are probably the hardest to hire for and also the most important, and they usually have families and a house so I suspect it's not as easy for them to relocate.

At least that's my impression given how many of my senior coworkers have absurd commutes as they continue to live in the same house they had before joining.

Senior Engineer is what, 3, 5, 7 years in? I expect most people to accrue 2 promotions well before they get married, have kids, and buy houses. People at that stage of life at my company are usually pretty advanced on the management ladder.

When did "senior engineer" start meaning "3 years experience"?

It means “2 promotions in” and it’s not unheard of for a high performer to earn one of those every couple of years.

I agree it’s weird to invoke the word senior so early in the job ladder... I would expect 3-4 more rungs where Eng II currently sits.

The industry is awash with 23-year-old "senior engineers" who think senior means "on my second JS framework".

Unless you're at the tiniest of startups, no one picks their own title.

They do on LinkedIn and on their CVs.

I would consider it borderline fraudulent not to use the title your employer gives you when listing experience.

Nevertheless on LI it is very common for people to sprout Senior prefixes that I am certain they never had when we were cow-orkers!

> Have you tried asking SF people to relocate to those places? Because I and most of my coworkers say we would do so easily.

You probably wouldn't, though. You're probably not going to relocate to Tulsa or St. Louis or wherever, because once you start looking at the decision seriously, you're going to realize that even if this one particular company has attractive jobs there, if you ever want to leave or get laid off or whatnot, the rest of the job market there ain't so great.

It's the kind of thing that sounds great initially, but starts to fall apart upon deeper analysis.

So what? You can just move again. The ability to put down roots as long as your job holds is better than no ability to put down roots at all.

Works well if you don't have a family.

Well sure, if you're already paid well enough to have a family in the Bay Area, discussion about compensation/COL anxiety is moot.

Only people I know who can make that work have either doctors or other software engineers for spouses.

Sure but the grandparent post is talking about moving to a low cost of living city for some company, and then some years later that company downsizing or closing and laying people off, and then not having many other similar employment options available.

So if you move, start a family because you can now afford it, and then lose your job 5 years later, you're going to be less mobile and also limited by job options.

I am in Tulsa and actively recruiting SF people, zero takers so far.

Sure, but there's a middle ground between SF and Tulsa. Say, Denver or Chicago or SLC. Less tech jobs than SF, but still plenty. Higher cost of living than Tulsa, but not SF or NYC levels.

I live in Colorado and over the past couple of years have seen a lot of Bay area companies coming to Denver. Not sure if they are moving SF engineers over, but they are definitely building teams in these lower cost areas.

> Less tech jobs than SF, but still plenty.

It's not just about number of tech jobs, but the quality thereof.

These days, programming is such a needed skill that coders are almost like accountants, practically every business above a certain size needs at least a few for internal tools. But that kind of work makes you a cost center, with the attendant technical and cultural problems.

What the major tech hubs offer is an abundance of even high quality programming jobs, in a wide variety of fields.

Because they are paid more in sf. Hire remotely spend the extra $ on talent.

If it’s comp, then rejections would happen at initial pay band discussion or final offer. Numbers on Glassdoor for us look good. But instead I have very few leads whose work is interesting or who do well in the interview process. Frequently, they want to move to SF anyway. They tell the recruiter that.

Honestly, comp numbers are past the point on Maslow’s pyramid where they can get someone to care. If you’re not going to get a guy for $350k but you can get him for $700k, he’s not planning on sticking around and he can’t produce $1.5m of value in his one year that he’ll stay for the payout. Few people are like that. It doesn’t make sense to optimize for that.

I would expect this from people who have not experienced SF yet. The opportunity I'm suggesting is among people who are currently in SF and disillusioned with it.

That’s fair, and I get it. I just don’t have that many people like that working with me and I work with people from 22 to 45 years of age.

Seriously, I’ve had people move from here to Texas or Washington, and they keep the straight bump in wages that comes from not paying state tax. But that’s a single digit number out of a 100+ team. It isn’t helping expand the team.

> I have tried to hire in low COL places and people want to move to SF instead.

In another comment you suggest that you'd pay $350k, but at $700k you would suspect their loyalty. I'm in Portland and not interested in moving to SF, and if you're offering $350 - $700k comp I'd be happy to talk with you. :-)

I think the OP's point wasn't "cost savings" but "getting developers" by giving them what they want.

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