Americans have never been so unwilling to relocate for a new job

But for a lot of people the answer is "I want to live somewhere else." I relocated away from a really nice job with challenging work and interesting co-workers simply because I didn't like where I was living. I suspect that I'm not the only one.

The first tier cities are getting more and more expensive (partially or perhaps primarily do to employment opportunities - i.e. safety) and instead of moving "away from a city", people are moving to other less expensive cities with employment opportunities which, as they grow, become more expensive and repeat the process. And also you have to compare to trends over time.

For example, high value manufacturing in the Bay Area (eg. chiplets, electronics) got priced out to San Joaquin Valley and helped lead to the growth of Sacramento; Bay Area tech new grad salaries got so inflated that internships, new grad, and H1B roles in Sales, Professional Services, and SWE started relocating to Austin and Dallas in the 2010s; and back office roles in Accounting+Finance began moving from NYC to Charlotte in the late 2010s as salaries for those roles began breaching the 100k mark in NYC.

If I'm someone specialized in Solutions Engineering or Back Office work, I'd probably find a comparable amount of job opportunities in Austin or Charlotte as I would in the Bay or NYC, with the added benefit of affordability.

As you correctly point out, there's an equilibrium between cost of living and the advantages large cities are offering. Here in Berlin we are starting to feel the pressure hard, but it is still much cheaper than the other big European cities, and thus growing by 200k a year.

The mass exodus already happened.

Everybody who wanted to leave what they thought was overpriced pretty much already did.

We might see some continuation - but given that companies are trying to claw back as much remote work as possible - I'm skeptical.

What we save on living in a HCOL locale, we can spend on traveling several months out of the year while I work remote.

The problem is that if you lose your job this plan will crumble on first contact with the enemy. I'm job hunting right now, and between 'ghost jobs', bad recruiters, low ballers, take-homes with unstated requirements, leetcode grinding, system design studying, optimization for "best talent, lowest salary", and the fact that workers have absolutely no power means you don't have a choice how you work at some point.

Once savings start to dry up, you'll work in person. You'll move if they ask, you'll take a lower salary and a worse position... after all, do you want to eat?

I read that Jamie Dimon's office is a fully decked out apartment on Park Ave (NYC) so for all his griping about remote work, he essentially works from home full time.

Fully remote work doesn't eliminate the risk of layoffs throwing a wrench into your life. It's only viable for senior/staff level devs who have much higher job mobility compared to everyone else in the tech sector.

This was always the case for companies that wanted to offshore. Remote work hasn't changed that.

That was already happening. Remote work doesnt change anything with that.

Moreover, dont think that the senior dev in those other places will work for American companies for dimes like that. They will want the equivalent of top dollar in their country and that ends up being closer to the cost of the remote American dev when the obscene real estate/housing costs and general cost of living in places like SF or NY are removed from the equation. If you dont give that remote overseas dev the competitive rate in his/her country, he will either go with someone who does or he will just follow the traditional, more respectable career track in his country - like moving to manager positions in a respectable local corporation or launching his own business.

And if the American company goes for junior devs who are actually willing to be working for dimes when they start, they will get sloppy jobs like how they get with such cheap outsourcing now. And at the moment those juniors gain some experience, they will either ask for competitive pay or they will leave and take the traditional career route.

Every time companies either bring the jobs back, bring the people back or spend more on hiring good firms in their offshore country of choice.

Working in academic R&D, I've usually found myself in "virtual" teams spread over many time zones or even continents, so the people I work most closely with are not the ones I would see in the office building and accompany to lunch. We were effectively embodying more of a glorified coworking space before any of us had heard of this as a named concept.

My boss always professed a preference for onsite collaboration but then was, ironically, the one most often away on travel or offsite at other satellite locations in our city. I could be in the office daily but not see him for weeks, going even longer between substantive face to face conversations. Most coordination was already digital before the pandemic.

At the same time, our division with a dozen or so employees is supposedly tight-knit and managed as a matrix org to share responsibilities. But in reality, logical silos are formed. Only a couple people pay attention to any one project and usually do so for an entire, multi-year project lifecycle. When we were onsite, we would spend most days in our private offices and not have a work-driven reason to visit one another.

Our group went from all onsite to hybrid with several remote-only. The rest agreed to return to the office one day per week on a day they chose by consensus. After a year of this, I can see that the locals often struggle to get quorum for the scheduled onsite day. We've also struggled to get our nominal quarterly all-hands get togethers to actually recur.

Fast approaching my 50s, I think more about lifestyle effects on my future health, or about retirement savings and the economy as a whole. I don't see that outsourcing of our individual "remote" jobs is a risk worth pondering. Rather, it would be whole companies or sectors as part of bigger trade wars or economic crashes. That is another kind of conceit to worry that our knowledge work could be out-competed by foreign workers while the parent organization and managerial layers are not also subject to competition from foreign companies.

This is a big deal for workers with families and closer-to-median income. Having to pay $20,000-$30,000/yr to replace services you're getting for free from family (child care, help with home improvement/repair projects, help with transportation, all kinds of stuff) might not be that big a deal to a family making $300,000, but it's huge to a family making $70,000. A 20% increase in income made possible by moving away from family might make good sense for the former, but be break-even at best for the latter (and a losing proposition of CoL is otherwise higher than where they are).

...and then people wonder why birth rate is declining.

Cities are more compact than suburbs. Kids are entirely dependent on their parents and adults to drive them everywhere, so in many poorly planned suburbs and bedroom communities, they're generally stuck at home. Similarly, the elderly can become isolated from family and friends that are scattered about with no easy way to visit them, or kept from participating in the social life of their town because either there is no social life due to hostile urban planning, or because they cannot get there as driving has become more difficult with age. The benefit of living in walkable cities and towns with good public transportation is especially obvious for these age groups.

> Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.

I'm a manager at a smaller company and I can tell you we are very much aware that we are not a big corp and that "big co" things are not going to work for us. Me and the other managers I've worked with have read all the "gotta see your empire" comments on HN and other places and our general reaction is: "good, now I know what not to do".

I will say at my company, we were all in-office with maybe 5% remote in 2019, now that number is closer to 50%. We are seeing the advantages and the massage from higher ups (VP's, President, CEO) to all middle managers is: adapt or die. The way we look at it is, if we force RTO, all it will do is drive away talent. We now live in a world where you can't look up and see all your reports, some managers like it, some hate it, but the general vibe is: "we have to adapt (and no we are not Google)"

[1]:https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

No one is stopping you from trying it.

That used to include the so-called "professional class" but the story of the intersection between social status and work for the last few decades has been MBA types pushing those positions downward‚and preventing them from ever rising, in the software world. They may not be doing it consciously, but a lot of stuff about work-life for software folks sure looks like what you'd do if you wanted to squash the social status of a cohort that earns enough money that they'd otherwise be on their way to solid membership in the upper-middle, like micro-managy "methodologies", avoiding giving us personal offices, widespread and oft-expressed but IME rarely-accurate stereotypes about software folks necessarily being bad at everything except fiddly computer shit, and the way interviews are run.

Professors and doctors were two big groups that held high status and had a fair amount of freedom and trust to run their own affairs, once they'd paid their dues, but both those worlds have been invaded by MBAs who've taken over running everything and brought the same contempt for "mere" workers that we see in the rest of the business world. AFAIK lawyers have held them off, so far, but I may just not be aware of MBA-ification there.

Granted, I don't think a judge needs to be the deciding factor on letting an employee stay or go. But I do believe a contract stating expectations, a minimum employment contract (if employee meets those expectations) is necessary and should be enforced in today's business world. Even apply it to salaried, or "skilled workers". A busboy at a restaurant doesn't need a contract, but an accountant with 5 years experience should at least have that safety net.

> Now you're going to have courts deciding what constitutes grounds for firing and what doesn't

Courts are slow and cumbersome, but also mostly designed for this purpose. Any notion of a bad actor would be a legal one eventually.

Lots of people already do this.

Laying people off after coercing them to abandon stable means of sustenance is indefensible. The devil doesn't need sympathy.

You mean, like they already do (ultimately, with administrative agencies as a first line) because of public unemployment insurance?

The difference is, of course, the company can afford the risk. The have hundreds/thousands of employees. You have one job.

Boomers and GenX hypernormalized around a 70 year bubble.

Like those at Exxon who accurately modeled climate warming in the 80s, the ecological cost, those who knew knew they’d be long dead before it became obvious.

Remember, the day you buy a house, you are no richer. This is because the asset (house) is offset by the liability (the mortgage).

Even if you have significant equity in your house, the supply of "better" comparable homes is sparse at best.

And likely your existing mortgage is at a rate 1/2 of the current rates.

In California, Prop 13 means that property taxes are essentially fixed and nonincreasing at the time you purchase your house.

This is sometimes used as a defense of Prop 13, but all it really means is that any increase in total tax burden has to fall disproportionately (in fact, almost exclusively) on new purchasers and their tenants.

Forcing someone to relocate means giving up that privileged tax status and starting over "from scratch".

Are you living under a rock? Mortgage rates going up make that impossible.

Your new interest rate is going to absolutely demolish any inflation benefit your current house has. I don't think people really understand how bad higher interest rates are when there's a housing shortage.

- A $500k house at 3% is $2,100/month.

- A $500k house at 7.5% is $3,500/month

- That's a difference of nearly $17,000/year

The house that was $500k at 3% in 2021 is still $500k at 7.5% in 2023. Housing prices haven't budged. We'd need to see a 20-40% reduction in prices across the board to stabilize affordability, but that won't happen because there's too much demand.

This is actually advantageous to first-time buyers since higher interest rates (and lower prices) mean their down payments go further.

I've noticed that over the long haul (in my area, anyway), it's neither cheaper nor more expensive to rent vs own. In the short term, one can be more expensive than the other, though.

But the big difference is that you're building equity if you're buying, and you're not if you're renting. So which is better, financially speaking, depends a lot on what you're trying to accomplish.

Real estate is entirely local, such that making broad generalizations like this is detrimental. In some markets it may be better to rent, in others it is better to buy. Regardless of the cost, availability is also a factor - in my market, you might as well buy if you are qualified, as the market for rental properties is even tighter than buying and rents have increased faster than home prices.

If he gets to a point where he couldn’t pay rent because of a systemic problem, I trust him well enough to know that he wouldn’t make me go through a long eviction process. He would have to move. But we would help him find sone place cheaper. No for logistical reasons, he couldn’t stay with us.

But my wife and I said, that once they move, we are selling the house. We do not want to be landlords.

It's pretty much impossible to "win" in housing unless you're investing major sweat equity, or factoring-in intangibles like satisfaction with a like-minded community or peace of mind.

apologies, I was misinformed. consider this comment retracted

This post and thread are talking about moving due to losing a job. Not about a calculated move done for financial gain.

Assuming they've been employed for longer than 2 years. If they've been there less than 2 years, it's pretty much in line with the US.

Not necessarily. The current state of high rates and high valuations (due to few sellers) is very unusual. It is so skewed that, for example, I could sell my condo and use proceeds to pay off my remaining mortgage and buy, for cash, a large house in excellent condition in a smaller town. Someone close to retirement might do that and retire today instead of working another 5-10 years. My 2c.

2014 - 5%/30y

2015 - 3.75%/30y

2016 - 2.75%/15y

2021 - 2%/10y

Source: seeing it myself in my current company. Also remembers: shareholder class is ruthless. If I can see this, they are seeing and acting on it as well.

Moving to a cheaper location allows them to cut a major % of the salary requirement due to living costs. Companies are already saving billions by creating satellite offices in cheaper states and providing remote work in that state or region - some even without requiring any days in the office.

When the salary requirement is reduced by cutting out the cost of living like that, what ends up being the salary minimum is not so much different from what the overseas dev would want. Its not like top talent in that country will work for the American companies for dimes so that American shareholders can have a payday. You either pay that dev something that will make it worth for him to not go for a major local company and lose the social status and perks associated with it (very important in many local cultures), or he will just take a more traditional career route and work for the local giants.

And its not like sloppy copy-paste work from juniors who accept $10-15/hour when they start their career was not available before. If any company that is worth its salt was not able to run a major tech business with such juniors before, they wont be able to run it now either.

Therefore what remote work in the US hurts is basically the outrageous real estate sector and its margins. Which is why they put pressure on companies for RTO through the politicians it backs...

Agreed. And my point is that is horrible for American middle class, great for American shareholder class and great for software industry in cheaper places. Just like it was for manufacturing.

The flip side of the coin is that it's frustrating as a dev: nobody knows anything, when the entire employee base flips so often. Middle managers just don't get it, AFAICT.

In German, there is a word, gemütlichkeit, with no precise English translation but which can be approximated as "the coziness and lack of anxiousness you feel among people you love and trust". There is simply no way to achieve that as a social animal except in developing deep friendships.

In particular, I think there is immense value in knowing and being known, concisely, "intimacy". Not having to hide any part of yourself, and being every bit of you that you can be, can be hard in settings where you don't have a persistent support network of close friends who are willing and able to accept you as you are (feelings which you would reciprocate, because you love those people). Feeling accepted by your community is the only antidote to loneliness.

Building a network like that takes a lot of time and a certain amount of effort and good fortune. I would be dreading that effort necessary to build new connections from scratch to feel welcome in the communities I wish to be a part of. Keeping up online really doesn't achieve that kind of intimacy unless you're a certain kind of person who can easily bounce between many different social settings/relationships and can get by with a certain shallowness in the "how've you been lately" arena. And flying back and forth all the time goes against my ethics with respect to carbon emissions, not to mention the expense and routine hassle of it all.

When I applied to the job there was a note saying that they would not offer relocation expenses. I was one of two people hired into the team at the time for similar roles, and the other guy told me he managed to get relocation money just by asking

Lasting friendships form in mysterious ways. You need only be open to the possibility.

You get to hire and fire if the relationship doesn’t work, but if you’re still adamant on forcing a relocation then the risk is shared.

I'll take less opportunities for more stability. Many people would. That's what this article is all about. Better for most to have less that you can rely on than more one year and less the other and no sense of calm.

Otherwise companies are pressured to spend money just because they happen to have money, even if they don't have anything productive to spend it on. That's not a good thing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-13/remote-wo...

If that's the case, drug tests and breathalyzers are cheaper than office space.

If I understand correctly, this is how the Danish mortgage system works.

So if the mortgager wants to get rid of the mortgage so they can move, and the mortgagee wants to get rid of the mortgage because it's worth only half of its par value, there should be a massive incentive for a fair deal to happen.

Instead, the only option is for the mortgager to pay off the par value, which is a huge windfall for the mortgagee and a rip-off for the mortgager. So the mortgager decides not to move and everybody loses.

This is pretty interesting. I think they will because they do today so long as the right amenities are provided and there is density. Personally we relocated and to a downtown neighborhood and 1.5x'd our taxes but now we have a fantastic park and other great amenities. The schools suck but maybe we could just do a statewide voucher where you aren't tied to where you live for where you send your kids to school or something. I expect more private schools to emerge as well. [1]

There is a lot of economic waste in CBD in many American cities. In Columbus we have acres of surface parking lots in the downtown area. Converting those to housing, small businesses, and leaner offices will probably not 1-1 replace giant skyscraper corporate HQs (though I'm a little naive to the tax arrangements there) but they'll help.

One way to think about the CBD in, let's say Columbus is that the surface parking lots are an extractive economic feature that are only sustainable to the city's tax base so long as they're filled with workers going downtown. Once those lots aren't functioning properly you have all this space... and you need tax revenue... so something will have to give and I don't think it's the city.

I think a better question to ask is are people going to be able to afford higher taxes from living in the suburbs without any amenities. Sidewalks and trams and municipal water scale much better with density than having all that stuff spread out everywhere. Right now we can "afford" them because of cheap oil and such but that won't last.

[1] Please note that I strongly support every child getting the best education possible. I don't know what the solution is exactly, but I do know that city schools at least where I live have been bad and continue to be bad and at some point we're just wasting money and we need a better solution.

This is how humans treat nature without mindfulness. I suppose it should not be a surprise when we treat each other as we do nature. As humans are also part of nature.

sounds pretty accurate to me.

A 1 hour drive is a pain in the ass. A 1 hour train ride can be a nice time to read or work.

Regardless, it's Economics 101. Supply and demand. And that products can and do price based on what the market will bear.

It's naive to believe we went from mainly single income households to dual (or more) and there were no side effects, no unintended consequences.

We haven't been able to justify having any kids yet still, and I'm nearly at the age where it starts becoming harder to have them (happens for guys in their mid 40s).

My parents had me and a house in their 20s. I just had shitty credit, student loans, and roommates.

To go into more detail check out Elizabeth Warren's book: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke

From the summary:

In this revolutionary exposé, Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and financial consultant Amelia Tyagi show that today's middle-class parents are increasingly trapped by financial meltdowns. Astonishingly, sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable to financial disaster than ever before. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but has 25% less discretionary income to cover living costs...

https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-...