Comment by zwayhowder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zwayhowder | Hacker News Reader

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Not every employee is a programmer, and how many people moved from places like Mississippi to Seattle/Silicon Valley/NYC etc? Surely some of them would love to return to their home state or nearby earning good money, paying a lot less rent and actually seeing family and friends from their childhood.

I can respect your decision to stay in Hawaii, just like I stay in Sydney it's a vibrant multicultural city with everything I want. Despite coming from a small town in a rural area I wouldn't go back, especially as the nearest Korean BBQ would be a 6 hour drive away.

However if that small town grew to a medium town and had those things, and enough money to build some community facilities that I desire such as public pools that are open year round and have enough space for multiple activities (First world problems you can't go for a swim on a hot day because the local swim squad has the whole pool reserved), theatres that could host local and travelling groups, a public library that is open more than twice a week and of course city wide broadband, preferably available to outer regions as well (5G networks might bring this one home)...

Any big move like Amazon would have to be thoughtfully planned, the last thing a small town needs is thousands of new residents with salaries 2-5 times the local average driving up the price of everything, imposing their worldview on the community and creating an us/them divide in the town.

Not that many people who work at big tech companies moved from places like Mississippi to Seattle/SV/NYC. Lots of them came straight out of school (and top schools these companies recruit from are concentrated on the coasts), lots of them came from overseas and most of the rest came from other coastal areas. Even those who came from places like Mississippi don't all prefer their hometown.

Also what makes places like SV and NYC great is that they are big and diverse enough to serve as acceptable second/third choices for lots of people from all kinds of places. Some people may prefer small towns and cities, but most people who do have are often driven by concerns like family and friends and have specific small cities they'd prefer. HQ2 in some small city in Mississippi may appeal to those who happen to be from that area, but don't offer much to others from small towns elsewhere in the US. If you consider that these companies employ glboal workforces, this is even more obvious - if a random American tech worker had to work in Turkey, would they rather work in Istanbul or a random small Turkish village?

I don't understand this idea that it would be better for top tech companies to be headquartered in random places in the US - it's obviously terrible for the companies involved but it also doesn't serve the greater good. It leads to 1) company towns that live and die with the company; 2) environmentally inefficient sprawl; and 3) talents being trapped in wrong situations at wrong companies due to immobility. Furthermore, a critical mass is important and innovation is not a zero-sum game - if Silicon Valley's capital and talent, etc was spread around the country, I don't think the outcome is that you get the same level of innovation and wealth creation, only distributed more fairly - a lot of it probably never happens. Innovation is almost certainly accelerated along by a concentration of capital and talent in a small area. This doesn't mean everything should be in SV, but that there are strong benefits that accrue to society at large from companies choosing to bring talent to an already talent-rich area.

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