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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

> with no success.

Not entirely.

"In addition to confirming that the gigafactory will employ 6,500 full-time employees, Tesla also raised its average wage estimate to $26.16 per hour.

Full-time staffing for the gigafactory will comprise of:

4,550 production associates paid $22.79 per hour 200 material handlers paid $22.79 per hour 460 equipment technicians paid $27.88 per hour 360 quality technicians paid $27.88 per hour 930 engineers and senior staff paid $41.83 per hour.

Wages paid by Tesla for the gigafactory will total $353.6 million per year at full employment. The figure does not include construction jobs for building the plant. Tesla partner Panasonic already started listing jobs related to the gigafactory."

http://www.rgj.com/story/money/reno-rebirth/2014/10/23/tesla...

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Why does Tesla need all that direct labor in a battery plant? Battery production is usually highly automated. They're building a single item in large quantities. That's a job for hard automation. Here's a video of the Nissan Leaf battery plant.[1] It's all special-purpose machines and robots. There are a few people walking around. That plant has maybe 250 employees. The largest auto assembly plant in the US, Ford's at Kansas City, has 3700 employees.

I doubt Tesla will ever reach that headcount. It's probably just PR to get deals from Nevada.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBboW2Sw3Co

Historically, tech companies did this by offering to relocate existing companies, not necessarily by hiring additional workers in the area as a priority. Tons and tons of people following the first dot com were asked to relocate to specifically North Carolina and Texas and take paycuts. That caused basically a mass exodus until these companies relented and let people keep their Bay Area salaries. Thing is, the cost of living difference was so much that a senior developer was getting more than half the executives in the area and could afford basically any property listed.

A North Carolina relocation is a large part of the story in The Soul of a New Machine.

The Tesla factory is not in Reno and will not benefit Reno. Neither are the majority of manufacturing facilities that have opened here recently. If you are a welder I can can get you a job making between $25-50 per hour depending on your certifications in about ten minutes. If you are a programmer you'll be hard pressed to find a job paying market rate.

> If you are a programmer you'll be hard pressed to find a job paying market rate.

If you're a programmer, work remote and disconnect your wage from your geography.

As an engineer with a remote job, you will be unlikely to get certain kinds of jobs that have the same sort of pay-off that people get locally. If I was a remote worker for Facebook or Google, I wouldn't be able to use the cafeteria, and most start-ups in early stage tend to want people onsite where they can talk to each other much more. Furthermore, companies seem to pay significantly more just to have you on-site. In contrast, I've noticed most of the remote jobs I've applied to just aren't as good in compensation as ones onsite. I can easily find a random job as a senior engineer for $160k+... but it's really hard to find that as a remote worker. The extra $20-$40k / yr does add up even if you're in a significantly lower cost of living area.

> I can easily find a random job as a senior engineer for $160k+... but it's really hard to find that as a remote worker. The extra $20-$40k / yr does add up even if you're in a significantly lower cost of living area.

I don't believe the $60K+ more a year ($160K SFBA vs $100K remote) makes a SFBA job a net positive, considering how substantially higher the cost of living is. Equity, of course, is always a lottery ticket.

>>Furthermore, companies seem to pay significantly more just to have you on-site.

That's because they are usually located in places with high cost of living.

It's ~25 minutes east of downtown Reno; much of the workforce will live in Reno/Sparks.

Expectations here are that the vast majority of people employed there will probably choose to, or already will be living in Fernley. The ties to Reno in the press are more about the name and the fact that it's the largest population center in this area.

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