Housing isn't a critical issue at all. Housing is large cities is a critical problem.
With the internet and modern transport infrastructure there's no reason to live in a big US metro area like SFO or NYC. The quality of life sucks and the cost of living is outrageous. I can be in midtown Manhattan with a trip about 20 minutes longer than the average Long Island commuter, and live in a bigger, nicer home in a better place that would be possible in the metropolitan area.
It's kind of ironic that we pay people on the other side of the planet to run our IT systems, but the average technology company insists on locating much of its stateside operations in a small number of ridiculously expensive places that increase cost and almost certainly decrease the quality of output. Car companies figured this out 100 years ago.
I think this is a dubious statement. The bifurcation of American society, with increasing concentration of wealth in cities, and increasingly desolate rural areas, has only accelerated in recent years.
The fact is that most in demand knowledge workers want to live in central urban areas. You say you can have commute "only 20 mins longer than your average Long Island commuter" - does that mean your door-to-door time is over an hour each way? No thank you, I'd much rather live in a small apartment with a 15 minute walkable commute.
>The fact is that most in demand knowledge workers want to live in central urban areas.
That's definitely false. There are hot markets for "knowledge workers" in every American metro, and a hot virtual market that is more than happy to pay for talented developers no matter where they're located.
In local markets, salaries may be adjusted based on the cost of living, but in relative terms, valuable knowledge workers have a lot of opportunity and are compensated well for their work wherever they live.
You might be conflating "my classmates at the university" with "in-demand knowledge workers", but it's incorrect to assume that people who could match the profile of a recent graduate comprise the majority, or really even a substantial part, of the "desirable worker" market. Real-world experience is immensely valuable, and real-world experience is generally only found where age, the necessary corollary of experience, exists. That is frequently not urban centers.
I know a senior developer who, in his mid-50s, left behind the Seattle metro for a quiet life in the mountains of Idaho. As long as he had an internet connection, his clients were more than happy to keep him on board.
I've spent my entire career in metro areas of respectable size, but not the "urban centers" or tech hotspots that you're probably referring to. There are good (and bad) developers everywhere.
>No thank you, I'd much rather live in a small apartment with a 15 minute walkable commute.
That works while you have 1 -- maybe 2 -- inhabitants in your "small" (read: tiny) apartment. If you ever have kids, the impracticality of this plan will be immediately visible. This further suggests that you're constraining your view of "in demand knowledge workers" to the under-30 set. I suggest you get out more!
I think it has more to do with stage of life than type of worker. For example, now that I have a family, I find that I'm willing to spend a few extra minutes driving to the office in order to have a more spacious house and more open space for the kiddos.
That's assuming that the jobs are actually in the city, as opposed to industrial parks in the suburbs. Although urban offices are more common that they were 20 years ago I'd be willing to bet that there are far more engineering jobs in suburban locations than there are near walkable urban cores.
I'm door to door to work in in the morning in around 10 minutes. About 25 if I walk.
My comment is more about the idea that we demand that people work in overcrowded cities in large offices, where most jobs can be done remote or in small offices.
> With the internet and modern transport infrastructure there's no reason to live in a big US metro area like SFO or NYC.
This is an utterly ridiculous statement. Clearly there must be many reasons that hundreds of millions of people worldwide choose to live in big cities. Just because you do not personally find it valuable does not negate its benefit for countless others.
I'm not talking about global. If you read carefully, I scoped that statement to "big US metro" areas.
There are plenty of reasons that clustering like industries is useful. IMO, it's been taken to an extreme and the reasons for doing it in technology are mostly convenience for investment management types.
The case has already been made by the large companies. How many of JP Morgan's 30,000+ developers are in the NY metro area? If you pick 6 mid-sized tech companies at random, and try to justify why they need to be in SFO, you'll have a tough time. Most of the engineers could be in Omaha for half the price.
I'm sorry, you did say US metro, so let's reduce that number to tens of millions.
You're talking about something different now, needs versus wants. People live in cities for many reasons besides strict necessity. Quality of life, cultural events, diversity, ease of transportation, take your pick. Heck, there are plenty of developers who work in Silicon Valley but choose to live in SF. They could live closer to their jobs. Are they daft? Or do they value other things about urban life that make the extra rent and a longer commute worthwhile. Price is not the only consideration for where to live.
If I live in San Francisco or New Work, my spouse can easily get a job. If I want to change jobs, I can easily do so without putting my life upside down. This what a large, diverse job market does. Plus a lot of people value urban amenities (i.e. the ability to walk 2minutes to your favorite café...)
100 years ago most households had one 'breadwinner', and this breadwinner had a job for life. With the advent of the 2 working adults households, and increase in job mobility, having access to a large pool of potential employment is crucial for many.
I mean part of that is what kind of tech CEO wants to live in Kansas? They want to live in NYC or SF or maybe Seattle. The companies are sometimes built where they want to live, sometimes relocated but in the end people like cities.
Getting off the main subject but there are lots of midwest towns that are pretty cool. Especially those with universities. Culture, things to do, good public schools, low cost of living, low crime rate, low tax rates, people not defecating on the sidewalks.... I think could be attractive to a lot of people.
It seems like Kansas ought to be a much bigger tech-hub for startups (along with other central-US states) because everything is cheaper and you can get reasonable latency to both coasts without having a presence on both coasts. What's holding them back is probably more cultural/political than anything else.
With the internet and modern transport infrastructure there's no reason to live in a big US metro area like SFO or NYC. The quality of life sucks and the cost of living is outrageous. I can be in midtown Manhattan with a trip about 20 minutes longer than the average Long Island commuter, and live in a bigger, nicer home in a better place that would be possible in the metropolitan area.
It's kind of ironic that we pay people on the other side of the planet to run our IT systems, but the average technology company insists on locating much of its stateside operations in a small number of ridiculously expensive places that increase cost and almost certainly decrease the quality of output. Car companies figured this out 100 years ago.