Bay Area applicants flood program that pays them $10k to move to Tulsa | Hacker News Reader

Bay Area applicants flood program that pays them $10k to move to Tulsa

sfgate.com

151 pointsohjeez175 comments

I understand people who have roots in the bay area and aren't in the position to leave (or just don't want to). I also understand people who, under the current circumstances, want to temporarily or permanently move to a location that will work out better for them.

I don't understand, though, how $10K can be the deciding factor for someone for such a major decision.

Think about all the people behind on their rent and/or need to break their lease (an additional month rent) to move otherwise they risk a court ordered eviction, a debt judgement, and being on the “do not rent” list for all landlords everywhere forever no matter if the monthly rent is 1/10th the amount that caused the problem during a global pandemic.

A $10k cash infusion solves all or a lot of that in most cases.

Many of these people had already considered leaving or walking away.

The bay area is a very transient place of economic migrants, abruptly leaving isn't a major decision for a large population there, just as marginally inconvenient as any move.

Also we are talking about less than 500 applications so far. (1000 applicants, half from california, “many from bay area), bay area is 8 million people.

Hope that provides perspective.

Well you're not getting a $10k infusion. It'll be paid out over a year. And the one application criteria (must already have a stable job which allows working fully remotely) filters out pretty much everyone you mentioned above who has been adversely affected by the pandemic.

I see

Then people want to leave!

Many people “in tech” or the eligible remote-possible population had many of their transplant friends disperse immediately back in March with a continual slow drain of more people leaving.

Tulsa is a No from me dawg, but I understand how people are hopping on the incentive without much deliberation!

I'm honestly surprised more places are don't try this - $10k for the potential tax revenue seems well worth it to me.

Probably because it doesn't work. You're most likely to attract those with few compelling options anyway.

I bet it’s a distribution of people from all socioeconomic classes. With some just seeing the advertisement for Tulsa and being inspired to move there with this money.

So the highest earners eclipse the tax revenue from the lowest that have less lucrative prospects and it is a win.

There's a national Do Not Rent list?

As soon as your name is called in court in an eviction proceeding it gets added to a list that prudent landlords check. Good luck renting anywhere from then on. People get marginalized to the worst neighborhoods until they can pay to own properties with cash, which usually never occurs.

I doubt it's the deciding factor, but emotionally, someone might already be looking at how much cheaper housing is, and think "and I get paid enough to cover the move" and think "ok, let's do it!"

Incidentally, there's a similar program for NW Arkansas, which looks to be a nicer area than Tulsa: https://findingnwa.com/incentive/

If you are trying to bootstrap something, 10K (and a free co-working space) in a city where a two bedroom apartment costs $800 rather than $4000 is pretty sweet depending on your life situation.

If those numbers make a difference then it may be a sign that the business is severely undercapitalized. An under capitalized business might last longer in Tulsa. Whether that’s a feature or a bug depends on how one values failing fast. A zombie is still a zombie.

> If you are trying to bootstrap something

That already doesn't meet the eligibility criteria

this, with everything remote, if you're dedicated and are on a budget this is an amazing offer to bootstrap your thing.

$10K is a move[0], or a huge chunk of a down payment on a reasonably priced home[1]. If you're a high paid tech worker who's been seeing a huge percentage of your salary go to sky high rent, that extra $10K might be enough to do it.

[0] I've moved cross states a few times into and out of 2bd apartments; for a self pack move you can easily expect to pay about $6-10k, depending on distance, housing arrangements, and truck configuration (single truck is cheaper than a transfer to a semi-truck).

[1] Minimum down payment on a house is typically 3.5% with good credit. $10K is enough of a down payment for a ~$300k home, minus closing costs.

> In addition to the $10,000 grant, participants will receive a year membership at a local co-working space, support in identifying housing, and regular community-building opportunities.

The $10K is basically "moving expenses". The program's other factors represent a serious effort to address the non-economic concerns with such a large decision.

I think it's less "convince Californians to leave" and more "convince Californians who want to leave to go to Tulsa specifically". For someone who has no ties to a particular place but just generally wants to go somewhere in the middle of the country, it seems much more plausible that their offer could make a difference.

$10K is a lot more money in Tulsa than the Bay Area, so the sponsors probably think it's more motivating than it really is.

$10k is a lot of money outside high COL areas. where I live, that could easily cover the move and six months of living expenses while a single person sets up a new life.

Moving to a no income tax state would be the better move if you’re optimizing for cost of living. Can easily save $10k the first year, if not the first few years even accounting for extra sales/property tax you might have to pay.

COL?

Cost of living

Cost of Living

It could be a straw that broke the camels back type situation. Additionally they may have already decided to move, but this made them choose Tulsa over other places

A few years ago, there was a similar incentive scheme by a businessman to revitalize the Jewish congregation in Dothan, AL that he grew up in. The plan was launched with great fanfare (see here: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/us/an-alabama-synagogue-o...) but failed badly: https://www.timesofisrael.com/billionaires-scheme-to-revive-...

None of the newcomers stayed, too much casual racism, no qualified jobs and bad weather.

You'd think this Oklahoma scheme will work out just the same. In Tulsa you get unbearable heat in Summer, tornadoes in Spring, bad schools (the private school for your kids will really bust your budget), driving everywhere, and racist rednecks, lots of racist rednecks. Good luck to anyone who avails himself of this program, they'll need it unless they are native Oklahomians and know what they are getting themselves into.

The irony of complaining about "racist <racial slur>" is amazing.

If you actually went and talked to these people instead of declaring they're evil, stupid and vile from far away, you might find they're actually decent humans and not the scary racist enemies you imagine them to be.

> bad schools (the private school for your kids will really bust your budget)

Oklahoma has significantly better schools than California[1]. San Francisco has notoriously bad public schools, and hardly any upper-middle people send their kids there. It's not like NYC, which has strong magnet programs for the gifted. The one really good SF school, Lowell, is replacing its meritocratic test score system with a diversity lottery.

[1]https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9617514/test-scores-naep-2013 [2]https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/21/san-franciscos-...

Anyone coming to Oklahoma from the Northeast will be in for a shock. The poor state of schools in California is a surprise, but then large parts of the state are agricultural and deep red, or otherwise simply in the middle of nowhere. CA should take a look at GA, Georgia schools are surprisingly good, especially when you compare them to the utter lousiness you find across the state line in AL. I don't know what they are doing in GA, but it works.

I (truly) wish these people good luck and hope they find the happiness they seek.

I am from near Tulsa and there's absolutely no way in hell you'll ever catch my family moving back to there. It's hot, humid, comes with tornadoes, you have to drive everywhere (and everywhere is set up on the assumption you will drive). Plus, I will never forget the clerk at the licensing office who, after the rules changed to require "proof of legal status" to renew a driving license, gave my wife shit for having "married up to America" when she presented her green card as proof of status. (Never mind that my wife had been a permanent resident for years prior to us meeting.)

Everywhere has its upsides and its flaws, but at least where I live now has the benefit of the vast majority of people and culture here doesn't want to throw my loved ones out on their ear. Perhaps some of the new arrivals moving there will change that culture. I hope so.

I think your painting with a pretty broad brush. Sitting aside your bad experience at the licensing office (and general negativity on the culture), someone moving from SF may have a higher quality of life, depending on what they value. For example, more space, lower cost of living, lower taxes, ability to travel more, save more, have a larger house, etc. You can trade tornado's for wild-fire's and earthquakes.

I lived in LA for 5 years, and in SF proper for 3. I live in the midwest now and I prefer it, not because of the weather, but for the cost.

> depending on what they value

And therein lies the rub. We had the big house (that we had to clean more often and pay more to heat, cool, and maintain), the huge yard with lots of space (that we had to spend hours every weekend dealing with, along with the cost), the two cars (with their own costs and hassles), and so on.

What we didn't have was the respect of our community, or at least the recognition that families like ours should be full members of society. It's fucking awful to hear your governor on TV crowing about how immigrants are "ruining the state," or that the latest environmental-disaster of a highway project is "true freedom."

No amount of money can ever make up for that. Where we live now, we still get to save, we still are able to travel (well, pandemic notwithstanding), and we need not drive everywhere to do it and we feel accepted--or at least somewhere between begrudgingly tolerated and utterly adored--by the government of our state.

I used to optimize for cost; no longer.

I was hoping someone would make this comment. White flight to a red state is nothing new. My neighbors in the bay area represent dozens of cultures and no one's going to pay me to give that up.

As a CA native, I feel weird and out of place when in any area with a single overwhelmingly dominant ethnicity. Whether it’s the Midwest or Shanghai, it just feels weird like something is off. I’m just too used to very multicultural areas.

I get a disquiet feeling when I'm in old southern towns like Savanah, I didn't know why at first, until I realized it's because their society is still so segregated.

> I get a disquiet feeling when I'm in old southern towns like Savanah

I love Savannah and Augusta. Those cities are a lot of fun. I spent time living in both in my early 20s. The segregation both is and isn't there. It's very strange. I think that the feeling you're describing is due to the ghost of slavery. It was always very hard for me to separate the history of the antebellum south from those two cities specifically.

To be fair, though, the most segregated place I've ever lived was easily East Los Angeles. It doesn't have that same feeling that you describe, of course, which makes it ... different but in a slightly better way.

I eventually identified that the feeling came from a noticeable divide between the people working the service industry and the people consuming the service industry. Added to that, and probably linked as cause/effect, was different places seemed to "switch" who was there based on time of day.

This comment makes no sense to me. All over California are neighborhoods (Chinatown) and entire cities (Rosemead) that segregated themselves because they wanted more familiarity, which makes sense.

Neighborhoods being segregated is much more different than entire geographical regions. People in those neighbourhoods still travel around. Also, Rosemead's most populace race according to wikipedia is only 60% asian. That's a far, far cry from 80-90+% white regions.

(I should also note that the idea they wanted familiarity is just one part of why specific minorities live together. Another is because of the effects of racism actively rejecting any attempt to integrate.)

All good points, I've been through both for a few days each recently and enjoyed myself. I wondered what the line is between a common community Vs forced segregation.

Ehh what a nitpick. Okay I confess I grew up in the Bay Area not Redding or Yreka. Ca is massive so pardon me for referring to the areas most people associate with it, the bay area and La. anyway, yes there are neighborhoods that are monocultures, but they aren’t walled off ghazas where people’s movement is restricted. And even with some areas being clustered, there’s still a lot of dispersion. And that said, again CA is massive like many states, which non Californians probably overlook, and I wouldn’t enjoy living in quite a few areas even in the LA area. Looking at you palos verdes.

As I said below to the other child, all good points and I wasnt trying to nitpick it just didn't make sense to me, perhaps it was just super early.

I love these areas and the cultures I dont have to travel afar to get a taste of.

I just found it odd as being in Rosemead the other day and then seeing that, probably just a crossed wire, my apologies.

Good for you. You seemed to move to place that sit right with your political positions.

Wanting to be respected by their community is a political position?

or some people always looking for a reason to be offended or feel like someone doesn't like them.

There are plenty of people in a self righteous bubble who think they are enlightened and those in the red states are mouth breathers who spend their day looking to hate people.

Meanwhile you see people in the Bay Area with BLM signs in their yard yet no actual black lives live in their neighborhood.

Not about having to drive everywhere, which is a deal breaker for me.

Unfortunately that's basically the case everywhere in the U.S. outside of NYC, SF, and DC.

“The only what I’ll go back is in a bag”- multiple (n=5) straight, white, ex-Texan-now-Bay-Areans. This includes me. I have never met anyone from that demographic who moved to SV from TX who espoused a different view, though they clearly exist based on the move-back fantasies common in HN comments.

That said, I did know several Indians (n=4, subcontinent, not Sioux, all Hindu, not Muslim) who seemed to enjoy Texas more than the gringos. They were all highly educated like the aforementioned cohort but also really into pickup trucks. We lost touch over the years and I’m curious to see how they viewed the cultural shifts under the outgoing administration.

Funny, from Broken Arrow myself, but indeed, have no intention moving back for very similar reasons.

Has Tulsa agreed to look for the mass graves of its citizens killed in the race massacre yet? Seems like that might deter the level of "diversity" the city is looking for.

Tulsa is 15.6% Black

San Francisco is 6.1% Black

Would maybe slow the roll on who is more diverse.

Tulsa is more Black than SF. Also, more White than SF.

SF is more diverse (even just racially; ethnicity and national origin just makes that even more clear.) There's more to the world that White and Black.

(Also, in the Bay Area, Oakland is 22.7% Black and about the population of Tulsa, so if you are looking for concentrated Blackness, the Bay Area has Tulsa beat on that as well as diversity.)

There is more to the world than black and white, but post above mine was implying black. Which from SF to San Jose (where the companies actually are) is almost all lower single digit % of pop.

As for Oakland the black pop is steadily declining, and might even be sub 20% when 2020 Census #s are released, in a decade might be mid teens.

> but post above mine was implying black.

No, in the context of the posts upthread of it, while it referenced an anti-black mass slaughter as an indicator of unwelcoming aspects of local culture, it did not imply that it was just talking about blacks.

San Francisco. Hands down. I mean c'mon. This is not token diversity - San Francisco, with its many many cultures and immigrants from all over the world constantly intermingling and its many industries is far more diverse than a midwest town. Even if there are more of one type of minority in that town.

Part of changing and improve things is to actually move there to dilute the bigotry But I can understand that one wouldn't want to be the one that has to suffer for the good cause, because it takes generations for things to improve.

The great thing about religion is that it attracts fanatics who are willing to do this work. I wish there was a movement to make the world a better place with missionaries going abroad and to remote places to make people more open minded and less individualistic.

> Part of changing and improve things is to actually move there to dilute the bigotry

Yes, bigotry is a nasty stain. Otherwise this thought sounds so tone deaf.

The common perception outside California is that Californians royally fucked it up and are flooding out like water from a ruptured damn, except they are bringing their political baggage with them to damage their new home just like the thing they can’t escape from fast enough.

It’s really odd to me that California is perceived to be such a problem while the area is so economically productive. It’s a very odd type of cognitive dissonance where something is both a model to be copied and a mess at the same time by the same people.

People try and recreate Silicon Valley while arguing non competes must be enforced. As if the ideas must inherently be unrelated.

> It’s really odd to me that California is perceived to be such a problem while the area is so economically productive. It’s a very odd type of cognitive dissonance where something is both a model to be copied and a mess at the same time by the same people.

it's only odd if you think economic productivity is the sole determination of what makes a desirable place to live. regarding SF in particular, it's phenomenal what has been accomplished there, don't get me wrong. but this has to be weighed against the fact that a "starter home" costs $1mm, the rate of petty crime rivals that of the most dangerous cities in america, etc. it's not cognitive dissonance to acknowledge that, while great things have been accomplished, a lot of stupid mistakes have also been made.

and by the way, I don't think the ban on non-competes is usually what people are thinking of when they describe california as a mess.

> I don't think the ban on non-competes is usually what people are thinking of when they describe california as a mess.

Antibusiness/antiemployer government intervention is the most commonly explicitly-cited thing, and pretty much every State law, rule, and regulation that favors employees or restricts employers is included in that basket.

> the rate of petty crime rivals that of the most dangerous cities in america

Correction: SF has nation-leading levels of property crime, a leaderboard dominated by west coast cities. The US cities with highest violent crime rates have comparably low property crime. Which makes sense: Property crime is riskier in those places.

Violent crime is often also property crime in fact, but often not counted as such. So the level of violent crime masks some of the property crime.

A negligible amount. Property crime rate far exceeds violent crime rate in every US city.

That rate of property crime is a direct result of prosperity. In poor areas there is less stuff worth stealing and people spend more effort protecting it.

The average house in Riverdale Chicago is worth less than the average car in Silicon Vally. People there make less money from armed robbery than someone can shoplift from a Silicon Valley Apple store. So shockingly with different risk/reward payoffs you get more property crime instead of armed robbery.

According to https://www.neighborhoodscout.com

SF property crime: 57.01/1000

SF median home: $1,195,367

SF per-capita income: $64k

NYC property crime: 18.64/1000

NYC median home: $1,126,049

NYC per-capita income: $73k

Palo Alto property crime: 22.88/1000

Palo Alto median home: $2,363,833

Palo Alto per-capita income: $89k

Chicago property crime: 32.48/1000

Chicago median home: $272,043

Chicago per-capita income: $34k

So SF has worse property crime even though it is on-par or poorer than NYC and Palo Alto.

That site is wildly inaccurate it lists 1.2% of homes in San Francisco as under 58k. https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/real-esta...

But, if you’re confusing the point, clearly median income isn’t the only factor. Palo Alto is 2,712.65/sq mi where San Francisco is 18,790.74/sq mi. It’s over the hump where you don’t get poor people begging etc. Similarly, manhattan effectively segregates the rich an poor in a way that San Francisco doesn’t, but wealth very much is a factor when comparing San Francisco to similar areas.

I think you mean disparity

It isn’t that CA is a problem. The issue here is ethnocentricity and a complete absence of empathy.

The only question people are left asking is if a CA transplant believes their different way of doing things is so much better then why did they leave and why don’t they go back.

I also agree it seems like some weird cognitive dissonance to look down on California’s labor and environmental laws, as if many people like to pretend they’re in the owner class. Sure, some are crazy, but overall it’s a trend in the right direction to benefit the vast majority of worker bees, at least the ones who aren’t pretending they’re going to be millionaires.

it's odd to me that larry flynt is perceived to be such a problem when his businesses are so economically productive.

Aside from not allowing non-competes what is there to copy?

Overtime after 8 hours, allowing sitting if you don’t need to stand, mandatory 30 min breaks after 5 hours, same min wage for all workers regardless of tipping, health insurance mandate, Medi-Cal, to name a few.

I have a relative with an advanced degree in a state without labor laws who has to work 12 and 13 hour shifts with zero breaks standing up.

The best anti-SLAPP law in the country, no state ban on municipal broadband, no blue laws, allows people who get a JD by remote learning to take the bar exam.

it's not even just political baggage per say, city people and second home owners are coming from a different culture and they rarely if ever try to understand ours before demanding we change it to accommodate them. they want a starbucks, they want a whole foods and a shopping mall, they drive like assholes on a good day and are straight up dangerous once the roads start to get icy. given the choice they'd turn this place into another smoggy strip mall where the foxes don't come out and you can't see the stars anymore; they wouldn't even recognize what they took from us. to them central park is nature and not a big fucking lawn surrounded by noise and dead concrete. i see exactly what all the concentrated wealth and genius managed to do to california and it scares the shit out of me. keep your money, keep your 'culture' and opportunities just please go somewhere else.

What religion is primarily focused on ending bigotry? Genuinely curious.

Hehehe, Tulsa Oklahoma. I wonder how many of them visited before applying.

I don't mean to knock the city, but it is a very different place, and SF residents might chafe at the lack of interesting nature in the surrounding area. Probably the closest large park-ish area would be the Ozarks over in Arkansas. It's a lovely forest, but still about a 2.5-hour drive away. And OK's state highways are absolutely littered with aggressive speed traps.

These programs existed for decades before the pandemic. They never caught on for a very simple reason: CoL is literally the only advantage. $10K is nothing compared to the uphill climb of career progression that inevitably comes with remote work. Hell, $10K literally less than my first relocation package and I was moving a single bedroom. TL;DR: no one moves to SFBA because it's the best CoL vs salary choice, and there are some great sweet spots for tech before places like Tulsa (eg Portland, KC, even Seattle)

CoL is the real attraction, but if you don't care about the dearth of cultural amenities, why choose a mid-sized city in a state that doesn't have any non-Catholic private schools worth paying for and couldn't even keep all of its public schools open 5 days a week in pre-pandemic times?

If you don't need good schools or cultural institutions, why not instead choose New Hampshire? Or rural Oregon? Or, as you pointed out, the Ozarks? Heck, IMO, Branson and Springfield have better public schools than Tulsa suburbs, and Branson even has more theater than Tulsa if you're ok with genuinely 100% world-class performers doing kitsch on faux river boats.

I actually moved to the Bay Area because long term it has the best compensation when accounting for cost of living that I calculated for net take home pay unless I wanted to move over to NYC fintech (definitely don’t want to). While $300k+ is a pipe dream in most of the US, it’s attainable in the Bay Area working for a big tech company as a modest goal.

Absolutely true. Really. Just don't have 4 kids :)

Agreed that Branson is actually a nice place to live. Due to the tourism, it is rather loaded with good restaurants and entertainment like museums, Imax theater, camping, hiking, etc. Though you do have to deal with a lot of tourists and traffic during the summer busy season.

Some areas in Branson even have symetric fiber, I believe even gigabit.

You could probably get a nice house in a gated community on the golf course for $500k+.

> We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone. Over half of them are from California, many from the Bay Area

If the program isn’t new, I wonder what the total numbers are like since covid started. The article only mentioned 1000 people over two weeks (from all over the country)

I have to imagine there have been A LOT more than 1000 Tulsa residents who left Tulsa for tech jobs in greener pastures over the last 20+ years.

This isn't an infusion of talent. It's probably a teeny tiny fraction of the brain drain returning to test the waters or, more likely, just to leverage grandparents for some free daycare while pandemic is on. And this is the high-point of interest.

> non-Catholic private schools

what's wrong with public schools?

The persistent underfunding. Everyone who can afford to send their children to private school will do so because OK public schools are plain awful. Of course it's impossible to raise taxes to attract any sort of decent teacher or buy equipment or even paint because it's Oklahoma, no one is using public school anyway, so why fund it.

But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.

> But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.

I went to Catholic school, and politically, they certainly seem to be for restricting other people’s freedoms (see abstinence only sex education, gay marriage, and abortion). My whole sex education at the age of 14 or so was a slideshow of genital herpes or sores and “don’t do it”.

There’s also the whole decades long organizational support of child molestation issue that one might want to avoid supporting.

At least the official position of the Catholic Church isn't biblical literalism, so you won't get the A-Beka crap. The Presbyterians down here in my village in Alabama inflict the stuff on the poor kids.

I grew up Catholic in a tradition where the social responsibility was taken seriously (also see here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolpingwerk). We didn't have the abstinence-only nonsense either, that must be particular to certain regions in the US. BTW, the Catholic position is that marriage is a sacrament that the couple administers to each other (the only sacrament where a priest is not needed), and, well, sex is complicated, and all sorts of Reddit drama happens when FWBs catch feelings & so on. This was actually how the subject was treated in school.

The recent child abuse revelations are disappointing. I always said that child abuse isn't confined to catholics, but the hierarchy at least provides some oversight that you don't have in megachurches, but it's clear that that did not happen, it was a total failure up to the Pope.

In the case of Oklahoma, the phrase immediately following what you quoted:

> couldn't even keep all of its public schools open 5 days a week in pre-pandemic times

Surely there must be a few good schools. I grew up in Tennessee and there were 4 or 5 good high schools in the state, one for each of the major cities plus an extra one due to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They also happened to be in the suburbs where the foreigners (i.e. everyone hadn't grown up in the area) were placed. But yes, public schools are chronically underfunded in the "red" states.

NOTHING! I LOVE public education.

But...

1. See the part of that comment where Okalahoma can't even keep many of their public schools open 5 days a week. And then guess at the quality of the ones that do stay open...

2. Screw the emotional/psycho-sexual abuse of Catholic schools.

I love the lower midwest, but god... even the "good" school districts in the "wealthy" suburbs are... not great.

I wonder how many of them visited before applying

The program will actually pay for a tour of Tulsa for potential recipients who have no connection to the city. That's what the FAQ page says. When you apply they also ask about your connection to Tulsa (friends, family), so to their credit they do take into account that the place may not be for everyone. They have looked into these difficulties, one should give them some credit.

Oh, for sure - we can debate whether it's misguided or not, but it's definitely nice that the city is putting so much effort into this sort of outreach, and they seem to be serious about the program. People poo-poo the $10k number, but that must have been hard to sell to a city council.

I'm more curious about how many of the applications are serious, and how many are reactive to the current situation. There's nothing wrong with seeking stability over excitement, but I sort of worry about people envisioning the whole "Great Plains" idyll.

The Ozarks extend well into Missouri as well (also a few hours drive). Ozark the Netflix series even though filmed in Georgia? takes place ~4.5 hrs drive from Tulsa. Besides the forest it's known for all the rivers that people float down.

Yeah, they're huge. I love the place. You can travel for miles and miles through remote forest, then pass through a main street that looks like the center of any other large town. You can get lost following the meandering pavement, or get in trouble following a dirt track too far. Dirt bikes share the roads with sport car rallies (and logging trucks). Expansive overlooks appear out of nowhere, and you can find backpacking trails by looking for cairns along the roads. There are equestrian camp sites. It's not really possible to describe in a short text comment.

The Ozarks is primarily Missouri and Arkansas. Really only a small area in far east oklahoma is part of the Ozarks.

I send these offers to a friend as a joke. The only one I was serious about was Helsinki.

Tulsa's pretty rad. The Ozarks are in Oklahoma too, actually. Sorry you got a ticket: Pay attention and slow down.

Oh, I only got warnings. Including some for going under the speed limit.

The state is full of small-town cops who want to throw their weight around, but they're harmless if you play their game and (sadly) if you're the right color. That's another important consideration for potential applicants.

if you're the right color. That's another important consideration for potential applicants

God, yes. I have colleagues who will not leave the interstate when driving through certain states.

The south in general has a history of funding their local governments through traffic tickets.

Or buy a radar detector. I actually got a warning instead of a ticket from a cop in Texas while I was going through a construction zone. Great times.

Sure. If I rented, my job was secure, and all of my friends are packing, of course I would take a free $10k to move somewhere else for a year. The pandemic is probably going to take at least that long to wind out. I can always just move back if SF picks up again.

I would love for Tulsa to succeed at creating a "new silicon valley"

It could be great for the area, great for the people who are early movers, etc

I don't think it will be, but I think ideas like this are good experiments. You need a certain amount of gravity before you have a good tech scene, and I am interested in knowing "what does that gravity look like? How can such friction to becoming a tech hub be erased?"

Honestly, my current bets would be: Good office space (probably not a huge open office but whatever), a good space for hosting meetups / other presentations (maybe even a conference!?), and frequent infusion of new talent -- from college or a program like the one described in the article

Then you just need a few people with a lot of initiative to build the community

This won't happen, and Oklahoma/Tulsa needs to fess up to that reality and make a real plan for their economic future.

If we're honest, DC/AZ/OR are the "third tech hubs" after SF and then Seattle/Boston/NYC.

The ambition for a midwest tech hub to join those ranks is not insane in general. Pittsburgh could make a reasonable play because, unlike Tulsa, in Carnegie Mellon it actually does have a continuous pipeline of world-class talent. Milwaukee, MSP, KC, sure, worth a long shot (with Madison <-> Milwaukee <-> Chicago HSR it'd be the short short, but, well...). Heck, why shouldn't St. Louis's Central West End be the Kendall Square of midwest biotech?!

But not Tulsa. That's just not the right play, and time is not on the region's side.

Oklahoma is heading the way of Venezuela -- a horribly mismanaged and ultimately failed oil state dependent on handouts from its primary trading partners (in this case via the US federal government). It can burst forth from the ashes, but it doesn't have Carnegie Mellon or UW-Madison or the U Chicago & the CME or Wash U. It won't succeed at the "Midwest Tech Hub" play. It needs a different play. IDK what that play is, which is why I'm not betting my mortgage payments on the future of that particular region. But I do sincerely hope they eventually figure it out.

DC/AZ/OR seems like an odd choice for third-tier tech hubs.

If I had to rank U.S. metro areas in terms of favorability for tech, I would do:

Tier 1: Bay Area

Tier 2: NYC, Seattle, Boston

Tier 3: Research Triangle, Pittsburg, Chicago

Tier 4: Austin, Boulder, Portland, LA/Santa Monica, Ann Arbor

Tier 5: Everywhere else.

There's some industry-specific tech support in various other cities (eg. oil in Houston, automotive in Detroit), but in terms of a general tech industry, they don't really register.

How can Chicago be below Austin? Chicago has Groupon, 1871, and Lightbank. Austin's downtown doesn't even compare to Chicago's downtown. It's horrible.

You're right; Chicago should be Tier 3. Editing the list a bit. There's a bit of a per-capita effect, though, where Chicago has a much larger population and many more other industries than say Austin, Boulder, or Portland, which makes them seem more tech-based even though the absolute number of firms & VC dollars is less.

It just depends. Plenty of great fintech in Chicago because of CME. Also plenty of great biotech in Chicago.

The SFBA B2C thing is not great in Chicago. IMO that's a retired man's game, but I thought bitcoin was dumb in 2010 so wtf do I know.

Lived in one, now a resident in the other, Austin's downtown doesn't even compare to the downtown of the other major cities in its own state, if you even only talked about public transit. Going east to west is a nightmare of transfers, going north to south (in non-COVID times) is a nightmare of sitting on either Guadalupe for an hour to go two miles or sitting on Lamar for an hour to go two miles. And that's IF your CapMetro bus is running on time that day.

You'll do marginally better driving your own car if you catch that section of Guadalupe going south right at the perfect time when the lights slowly cascade to green as you approach Riverside.

(Course the tradeoff here in Chicago is looping the block endlessly looking for a parking spot, but in non pandemic times, I'd trade the CTA for CapMetro in a heartbeat)

I'm not anti-Austin. I would live there for a year if the cost of living was cut in half. I just don't think the value is there.

Oh my apologies, I was hoping to concur but not paint you as anti-Austin as an individual. Sorry if my eagerness to agree gave the wrong impression.

And I even agree with you hear, now: I'd very likely move back for the same reason and if the council would stop caving to vocal minorities representing "neighborhood councils" who seem quite effective at derailing transportation planning.

Don't be so quick to push AZ out of the running.. we have (off the top of my head): Intel, Paypal, Zelle, American Express, Wells Fargo, Iridium, and supposedly a $26 Billion TSMC fab coming in the next few years. Tempe has offices for MS, KPMG, Norton/Lifelock, Netskope - and those were just what I could see from our LimeLight offices. That's on top of a pretty decent start-up/small biz scene.

I'm always surprised by how much tech. we have here now. So much more opportunity then back in 2000s..

I think the greater Salt Lake City area is making a somewhat successfull play so far to become "the silicon slopes".

There are plenty of successful states that aren't focused on tech. I moved to one of them, and I'm enjoying my life a lot more.

I was miserable in California – it's not for everyone. I'm betting that tech won't come to my area any time soon and that's a great thing.

I was careful to hedge that becoming a tech hub is not an inherent boon. It "could" be great, but I'm pretty sympathetic to locals being resistant to a bunch of tech cos and workers coming to their area and dramatically changing the fabric of the local culture without providing any benefits (or even a voice) to those who had lived there for the previous decades

There are literally dozens of places around the world trying to be the next Silicon Valley, and they have been trying for years.

Silicon Bayou (Louisiana) Silicon prairie (Des Moines) Silicon Slopes (Salt Lake) Silicon Alley (New York) Silicon Beach (LA) Silicon Forest (Portland)

It takes much more than some tax breaks and a $10,000 moving credit.

I hope Oklahoma figures something out, but this is hardly a differentiator.

Oklahoma income tax is basically 5%. The $10k pales in comparison to the tax saved from moving to a no income tax state, especially for a dual and/or high family.

I feel like there are chances that the next big startup scene ends up not being in the US, but in Berlin or ChiangMai

The "new silicon valley" is already Phoenix, AZ.

Based on what? Not disputing you, legitimately curious. I am considering moving to Phoenix. Thanks!

The semiconductor industry has an huge presence here. Here's a new (major) fab going in:

https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2020/10/20/semicond...

Intel also has fabs here. Semiconductor manufacturing is a major industry in Phoenix.

"Has tech industry" is not the same as "new Silicon Valley." As defined by an insatiable need for new programmer blood. Phoenix is laughably far from having that. Seattle (mostly Amazon) and Austin in the last decade have come closest to that, and are still a far cry.

Silicon Valley is called that because it’s where all of the chip fabs were. They’ve not anymore, and with TSMC coming to Phoenix, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Phoenix is becoming the center of the microprocessor manufacturing industry in the US. The existing infrastructure here with machine shops, contractors, etc that build and maintain the fab equipment is an obvious reason why they chose this City.

Oh boy. I mean yes in the literal sense. But Intel's been in Phoenix forever, that doesn't mean Phoenix has long been another Silicon Valley.

The change is TSMC, and they specifically cited the existing size of the semiconductor industry in Phoenix as a reason.

See my comment above - there's really been a ton of stuff spring up over the last 20 years. TMSC is supposed to be spending $26 billion on a new fab here in the next 5ish years or so. I'm hoping that breaks ground soon to help boost the economy after covid.

Any place that wants to be the new Mecca for tech has to be pro tech worker and not pro tech company.

It takes a critical mass of tech companies that are well funded and regularly hiring, so government can't be squeezing them too hard.

Fairchild showed the critical mass is one, as long as employees of that one business are free to go spawn their own. Being pro-worker is not being anti-business, but it is an explicit reframing of policy initiative.

One company can slowly crystalize a Silicon Valley, but maybe not if your economy already has one.

This doesn’t make sense to me at all, but perhaps only because I scored an incredible space in Oakland. You can’t count on not having to accept a downgrade when you come back. I’ve been in my current location for years and don’t plan to relocate until I buy a house. It took over a year to find a good spot in my neighborhood and that was when I already lived nearby and touring locations was easy.

Yeah I just found out that we're not expected back in the office until 𝟤̶𝟢̶𝟤̶𝟣̶ 2022 at least. I wish they had communicated that earlier. We would have left the bay area already.

Edit: Sorry, 2022, not 2021.

2021 is a month and a half away.

Just move out of the country to panama or belize or whatever. You'll save more than 10k on taxes and cost of living and life will be more interesting.

Taxes are due on your world wide income as a United States citizen or permanent resident.

No it's not, you don't pay taxes on the first 105k. depending on the country where you are living, living abroad can give you a significant tax advantage.

The title makes it sound like everyone in the bay area is applying to move to Tulsa.

> "We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone. Over half of them are from California, many from the Bay Area,”

so, 500+ per 2 weeks. sfgate articles are rubbish

Misleading headline. They're not being paid to leave California, they're being paid to come to Tulsa. Big difference.

There's not enough money in the world to get me to move to "Sooner" land.

I jest, but I wonder what the retention rate is like after 1 year? Looks like they have had this program in the past. Is Tulsa really getting their ROI?

"If selected, applicants are required to strictly stay in the Tulsa city limits."

Once you factor in relocation costs, the fact that urban apartments in major cities are offering revised rates & X months free, and that you're still in a city (free coworking doesn't make sense if you're concerned about the pandemic), it's moot.

Thinking wildly aloud, maybe one idea is to have collective bargaining rather than money. Say, X number of remote employees offer to move to Tulsa and participate in their economy in exchange for say, giving Oklahoma tribes back sovereignty for their land (see https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/05/indigenous-lead... )

What are the effects of transferring sovereignty? Does it mean US citizens or green card holders who aren't Cherokee can't live there?

Broadly speaking, it would mean that you are subject to tribal laws instead of state laws. Exact details vary greatly based on what the treaty the US wrote with the exact tribe in question, and to what degree Congress has explicitly expressed its intent to ignore said treaty.

Cherokee is but one of the nations in Oklahoma.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_trib...

Oklahoma has no jurisdiction over that.

Wow, coming here to Y Combinator and having to see pretty damned racist things is terrible.

I live in the Bay Area, San Jose, Have a place in Houston, Texas. It breaks my heart to see ignorance and racism, by the way for the racist and ignorant, I'm Native American Yaqui/Mexican so 100% American.

Last time I checked we are all human, so check that ignorance/stupidity and racism at the door.

Don't have time for that. Being a disabled veteran I see Army green all the same color

Class dissmissed whoever User - bruceb is.

The article says there were over a thousand applicants but not how many were approved to get the money. Anyway, with an average income of just over $27K per year in Tulsa, a handful of tech people relocating there probably makes a bigger difference to them than it does to California.

I wonder whether this is even good for them. What is the idea here? Are a few engineers supposed to rub off on everybody else and start the next Google there? Or are they looking to boost their services economy by catering to a massive remote work income disparity? I don’t know about the former, but the latter doesn’t work.

Sustainable regional economic growth depends on development of a local industry with global comparative advantage, e.g. exports. I’m not sure this will be software in Tulsa.

> "We've had over a thousand applicants just in the last two weeks alone

How many tech people are in the Bay Area? Is this around one percent?

The Bay Area has around 7.75 million people, so 1k people is around 0.013% of the population. So even if only 2% of the Bay Area works in tech, this would be 0.64% of the tech workers. According to this, it looks like it is closer to 12% of residents work in tech: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tech-employment-bay-a...

So that would mean this is about 0.12% of the tech workers in the Bay Area.

Thanks. Seems like a better headline might be "Tiny fraction of Bay Area residents apply to..."

Also Arkansas is getting into the swing of things. https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/northwest-arkan...

Makes me think of these ads you get that pays you to move to jewish settlers camps in Palestine.

If $10k is all it took to incentivize someone to leave the Bay Area, I suspect they never really moved here for the right reasons.

Why does the website complain about my Ad Blocker, when the article was clearly already paid for by the Tulsa Remote Foundation?

Tulsa is not a safe city:

https://okcfox.com/news/local/oklahoma-ranked-14th-most-dang...

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