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Businesses The Almighty Buck United States Technology

Tech Jobs Are Surging in Seattle, Declining in Silicon Valley (axios.com) 156

The number of posted tech jobs rose by 10.7 percent in the first half of the year from 2016 in the Seattle area, as eight tech hubs continue to dominate the U.S. technology industry, according to a new study by Indeed. From a report: But while Silicon Valley retains its spot as the premier technological center in the U.S., tech listings plunged by 5.9 percent in the western and southern valley around San Jose in the first half of the year, and an even higher 7.8 percent in San Francisco and along the eastern Bay Area, Indeed said. Raleigh, NC, saw the largest plummet, with tech listings dropping by 14.6 percent.
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Tech Jobs Are Surging in Seattle, Declining in Silicon Valley

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  • by DavidHumus ( 725117 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:05PM (#54876903)
    Not that I'll read it.
    • https://www.axios.com/tech-job... [axios.com]
      It's to the right of the headline. It's been this way for a while. It's dumb.

      • Re:Reference? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:43PM (#54877219) Homepage Journal
        Hey, whatever floats a persons' boat.

        I'd rather stay where I am...not quite taxed to the bejesus....and more freedom.

        I like my guns and enjoy very lax regulations here, I like not being forced to sort my garbage, you can, but you are still free to just put one can out for the garbagemen. No "sniff" test on my car for an inspection....hell, and where I live, I can go to a bar 24/7, or buy beer, wine or liquor in a grocery store 7 days a week....drive through daiquiri stores, and no one has much a hangup about who you are, etc....

        I find it a very good thing that different states can mostly self regulate and have the laws their citizens enjoy, rather than a one size fits all federal mandate on fucking everything.

        Let's keep it that way, eh?

        Have fun in Seatle....I'll come to visit, but not wanting to live there. I'm sure many out there feel then same about here.

        No problem, nice to be free to choose in the US.

        • I like my guns and enjoy very lax regulations here,

          Country mouse and city mouse have different problems, which are solved with different solutions. As well, in some cases what people do in their yard has significant effects on what happens in other people's yards. You may not have to sort your trash, but it's still illegal for you to burn plastic. You don't get a tailpipe test because you don't have enough tailpipes to matter much, but you still have to deal with basic federal emissions regulations (it's still illegal for you to remove original emissions eq

          • Country mouse and city mouse have different problems

            Well, I live in New Orleans...I'd not call it exactly a very tiny rural town...especially with the adjoining suburbs....

            • Well, I live in New Orleans...I'd not call it exactly a very tiny rural town...especially with the adjoining suburbs...

              It's not a town, it's a disaster area. I hope nobody paid you to stay, because that should be a crime.

              • It's not a town, it's a disaster area. I hope nobody paid you to stay, because that should be a crime.

                hmm...not sure why you say that?

                Sure it has some unique problems, mostly due to some high poverty areas, but has improved since we started getting rid of a lot of the projects throughout the city, which started before Katrina.

                But most everyone that lives here LOVES it...cost of living items like food, and drink (haha) are cheap...seafood is plentiful year round, there is all kinds of sportsman activities

                • The problem is not the community, which by all accounts is wonderful. It's the location. If you could pick it up and move it all to someplace that wasn't just going to get wiped out again, I'd cheer it along.

                  • The problem is not the community, which by all accounts is wonderful. It's the location. If you could pick it up and move it all to someplace that wasn't just going to get wiped out again, I'd cheer it along.

                    Well, that's the thing...we weren't wiped out.

                    Hell, a year after Katrina, we had more restaurants than we had before Katrina.

                    The areas that got really devastated, most of them, were in need of flushing out anyway. They were built on swamp land that was never a safe place.

                    New Orleans is older than

        • Alex: "This town has guns, garbage, daiquiri's, and easy car inspections."

          BZZZT. "What is 'New Orleans', Alex?"
    • You get in a traffic jam on 237 at 6:05 am and tell me jobs are fleeing. To avoid traffic you need to get up at 4 AM and leave work at 1 PM.
    • As always, there's a link next to the headline, but the "article" is little more than a worthless summary of the original article. The original article [hiringlab.org] has quite a bit more information, with the headlining statistic being their breakdown of the share of tech job listings that each of eight regions has:

      1. San Jose: 19.2%, -5.9% from 2016
      2. Washington D.C.: 17.4%, +4.5% from 2016
      3. Baltimore: 12.8%, +3.4% from 2016
      4. Seattle: 12.5%, +10.7% from 2016
      5. Raleigh: 11.1%, -14.6% from 2016
      6. San Francisco: 10.9%, -7.8% from 2016
      7. Aust
    • Peope in Seattle are so logical

  • Original Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by VorpalRodent ( 964940 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:10PM (#54876925)
    Not stated in the summary for some reason, but here's the article: http://www.hiringlab.org/2017/07/25/next-silicon-valley/ [hiringlab.org]
  • Summary quotes one paragraph from a three-paragraph article about an Indeed.com job study that is much more interesting to read.

    http://www.hiringlab.org/2017/07/25/next-silicon-valley/ [hiringlab.org]

  • Cost of living there could not continue to infinity.

  • That'll change too (Score:5, Insightful)

    by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:15PM (#54876963)

    Silicon Valley is on the decline because property is too expensive, taxes are too high, and the overall cost of living is higher than anywhere else in the US. Rent on a 1bdr apartment in SF will cost you 60K/yr, which is why you will find 1bdr apartments housing 6-8 adults regularly.

    Seattle isn't far behind in terms all the down sides of Silicon Valley.

    When companies can't hire people or pay too much in taxes themselves, they move to locations where they can do better. Nothing new here. Politicians still don't recognize the failures of their policies, and people still vote in the same ole crap politicians.

    • Seattle isn't far behind in terms all the down sides of Silicon Valley.

      Rate things are going, neither is Portland. :/

    • by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @04:34PM (#54877619)

      When companies can't hire people or pay too much in taxes themselves, they move to locations where they can do better.

      That has been the case for literally decades. Yet they are not moving to East Bumfuck for the cheap taxes and labor.

      It's almost like there are things in addition to taxes that drive these decisions.

      I lived in a dying rust-belt city. The people there were absolutely sure they could low-tax and low-cost-of-labor their way into a bunch of new factories/industries. They got none. But they are very sure that if they keep doing the same thing, it'll work.

      It turns out the people managing these organizations did not want to move to a dying rust-belt city, send their kids to the awful underfunded schools (but taxes are low!) and deal with the poorly-maintained streets (but taxes are low!), or walk past the crack pipe display to pay for gas at the local Exxon station (can't afford those fancy pay-at-the-pump pumps)

      And it turns out it's also difficult to get the highly-skilled employees they need to accept that environment too, leading to massive staffing issues and paying Silicon Valley-like rates to get people to move there.

      So you actually get no labor cost savings, and you have to make up for a lot of services not provided by the government due to low taxes. And if you decide your management doesn't actually have to be there to manage, there's always a poorer country that will be even cheaper than East Bumfuck.

      • by eepok ( 545733 )
        THIS! The greatest myth of attracting large employers is that they won't move to City A because taxes are "too high". The truth is that neither their big money earners want to live there nor do they think they'll be able to attract the necessary skilled employee pool.

        People want to live in nice places and, as Seattle, San Diego, Orange County, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Portland, etc. all show, they'll pay for it. They'll pay for transit. They'll pay for good schools. They'll pay for bikeability. They
      • Just because they are not all moving immediately, or all at once, does not mean it's not happening. Detroit was the Technical center of automotive for a very long time, and the crash took a couple decades. It happened, despite all of the politicians and unions claiming it was impossible. Those wheels were turning for a very long time and Detroit and Michigan ignored the warning signs. More and more taxes, more and more regulations and fees. Once the automotive companies established outside of Michigan,

        • by pnutjam ( 523990 )
          Pennsylvania and Detroit both have alot of tech jobs. Their city problems have more to do with white flight and the decline of manufacturing.
          • by s.petry ( 762400 )
            Come from Detroit like I did, and then talk. The Metro Detroit area has about 5% of the tech jobs it had in the late 80s early 90s.
      • No, sorry, all the issues you cite are not what the big tech companies care about, they care about two things:
        1. their costs (which include labor costs) and they care about
        2. labor availability.

        The primary reason that Silicon Valley is what it is is due to the large pool of talent that exists there. You are much more likely to get an on-shoring factory to come to your town than an actual tech company, because the factory requires far fewer people with advanced degrees to run than the core business of somet

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I agree with your post (meaning, the main reason behind the decline), though will say that there are other reasons as well. Preface: I've lived in Silicon Valley for 20 years as a tech worker, and I'm not native to this area.

      Particularly when discussing issues like rent, or "localised" issues, it's important readers understand San Francisco != Silicon Valley. I can't speak for rental prices in SF, but I *can* speak for areas such as Mountain View, which has been considered the "core" of Silicon Valley for

      • When tech workers are paying half their incomes to RENT an apartment, I wouldn't call those incomes "insane". Unless you mean "insanely low relative local cost of living".

        Yes, inequality and economic disparity are a BIG problem. The solution, however, is not to let tech pay relative cost of living stagnate even more than it already has. (Tech wages have been stagnant for a decade, while cost of living more than doubled.)

        What drives the high cost of living? First and foremost, the cost of housing. Which in

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by sootman ( 158191 )

      "Silicon Valley is on the decline..."

      Citation needed. AFAIK everything in the Bay Area continues to get more expensive, not less. That is not a typical indication of "on the decline."

      Call me when shit ACTUALLY goes down. Until then, it's like the old joke, "No one goes there anymore -- it's always too crowded."

      In other news, why the fuck are all the tables in that article images?!?

    • Seattle isn't far behind in terms all the down sides of Silicon Valley.

      Really? It's 40 minute commute from Tacoma and there are tons of 200k houses there. It is not even close to being like SV.....

    • Remember, San Francisco is not Silicon Valley, and it's not a tech hub unless you count web stuff.

  • What is a Tech Hub? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bit trollent ( 824666 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:16PM (#54876967) Homepage

    I think there is a bit of a flaw in the way this indeed survey and others identify national tech hubs.

    According to this survey, the top tech hubs have the highest percentage of their job listings advertising for tech jobs. This disregards the actual total number of tech jobs.

    For example, Austin is considered a tech hub in this last while Dallas is not, but Dallas has way more tech jobs than Austin, which is a smaller city. The difference is that Dallas has a very diversified economy, so the percentage of job listings for tech is lower.

    Personally, I'm more interested in the tech hubs that are part of a larger diversified market. Just like a diversified portfolio protects you from losing money from fluctuations in the market, a diverse economy protects your ability to find a local job when your industry takes a downturn.

    • Having is more jobs is nice because there's more variety, but what I care about as someone who wants to have an easy time finding and keeping a job (and who wants to be paid well) is the number of jobs relative to the number of qualified workers . I'm not convinced the situation is better in Dallas than in Austin.
      • Exactly this ^^^

        I've been working in Denver for the past four years. I recently did a job search and ended up getting far underpaid and underemployed because despite Denver's reputation as a "tech city", the market is awash in more candidates than there are jobs.

        This week, I advertised myself to be available in other markets in the hope of getting a better job and my phone and e-mail immediately blew up. It looks as if even in Salt Lake, there are more hiring managers seeking candidates than there are

    • by mikael ( 484 )

      The worst thing I heard about Dallas and other cities was the danger of "home invasions". This is from coffee table tech discussions. Then there is the hire-and-fire policies. California does have some employee protections.

    • If you've got engineering skills then you normally want to go to a new engineering job. An engineer doesn't fit in well with a bank for instance. Sure, if the tech economy goes bust there then at least you can start over as an 50 year old underpaid junior employee.

      • What - banks don't hire programmers?
        • Engineers. Silicon Valley is a lot more than programmers. And if they banks do hire programmers, they'll be at the corporate office and not in Dallas.

          • I'll have to tell my software engineer friends that work for banks in Dallas that there aren't any tech jobs in the banking sector here.

            Probably should tell myself that software engineering position at a bank that I turned down a few years ago never really existed.

            I don't think Texas is greatest place on earth or anything - I'll leave that to people far more pretentious than I am - but here is a news flash for you.

            The corporate office is in Texas... That's what a diversified economy is all about.

            • Ok, what engineering jobs are there in banks? They make devices, design circuits, write low level code, build bridges, ...?

              • Banks perform real-time mission critical financial transactions over a global network that can essentially never go down. I'm sure there are some engineering challenges there if you look for them.

                It sounds like you'd rather make devices and do low level code.

                Perhaps you would like to work on a new processor designed to handle radar data in self driving cars.

                Texas Instruments [dallasnews.com] may be a good fit.

                Designing new processor isn't your thing? You want to be an engineer that builds bridges - great.. there are tons o

              • Yes, some of them do.

      • There are tons of companies who are desperate for highly skilled engineers and will bend over backwards to get them -- but have problems because they are not engineering companies.

        I highly recommend engineers, particularly new ones, to investigate these situations. Such companies often offer challenges, benefits, and a degree of freedom that no engineering firm can even come close to.

        An engineer typically wants to do engineering on interesting projects. Such projects are more difficult to find in traditiona

  • by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:21PM (#54877005) Homepage Journal

    California has earthquakes, but Seattle has earthquakes PLUS volcanoes. Seattle is in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which makes the San Andreas fault look weak and puny. So yeah, your chance of dying in a natural disaster just quintupled by moving from Palo Alto to Seattle.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dutchmaan ( 442553 )
      I've lived in both Palo Alto and currently Seattle. I've yet to feel a single earthquake in my 10 years here, and Mt Ranier (if it erupted) is more of a threat to the southern suburbs than the city or it's northern suburbs where the tech sector is strongest.
      • by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:45PM (#54877231) Homepage Journal

        CA gets more small and medium earthquakes like the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge earthquake, but Seattle area has more potential for mega earthquakes of biblical proportions.

      • I've lived in both Palo Alto and currently Seattle. I've yet to feel a single earthquake in my 10 years here...

        Last one in Seattle was in 2001 and it effectively shut down the city for the day as everybody had to go home to check their gas lines and some buildings had to be condemed. There were at least three more in the six years before that that were easily noticed by people as everything in the building they were in started to shake. That we haven't had oen in 16 years is making me nervous.

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:46PM (#54877243)

      Did anyone else read that as, "Seattle is in the Canadian Abduction Zone" and think Canadians were being held hostage in exchange for maple syrup? ;)

      • by mikael ( 484 )

        They get bundled into a van with blacked out windows, driven to a reservation casino and have to play until they win the grand prize of a mounted moose head.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:53PM (#54877317) Journal

      Mt. St. Helens is a long way off, and nothing near Seattle has gone off in what, 10,000+ years?

      The Cascadia Subduction Zone goes off, and the tsunamis it'll generate will make nowhere on the West Coast (or Japan, China, etc) a very safe place to be.

      • Mt. St. Helens is a long way off, and nothing near Seattle has gone off in what, 10,000+ years?

        Rainier goes off once every 300 years or so. Last one was in recorded history by European explorers. About due for another one. Others in the area go off every 500 years or so, and again, could be about that time.

      • Actually, California wouldn't get much of a tsunami from a quake in the CSZ, because it's coastline is parallel or at a negative angle to the path that the pulse wave would take. Take a look at California on a spherical map. Eureka and Trinidad would get clobbered, but everything south of the cape of California would be shielded from most of a tsunami (and most of California is south of that).

    • But WA State has no income tax, lower property taxes, about equal sales tax, and a lot less debt-per-capita as compared to CA. CA has much better weather, though - I was born and raised in Seattle, but now reside in SoCal where we complain about our 30 days a year of rain...
      • Not true. Seattle does have an income tax.

        Now stop moving here!

        • Seattle THINKS it has an income tax. WA Constitution Article 7, sections 1 and 2 state that any tax on income must be uniform (meaning - no minimum income level, no progressive levels, it's on every penny from the first to billionth and beyond), and it cannot be more than 1%. Seattle's "law" fails on both counts - and it will be struck down by the State Supreme Court as has happened consistently in Washington over the last 80 years. Yes, I lived there, and that was one of the things I loved about WA (but
          • Seattle THINKS it has an income tax. WA Constitution Article 7, sections 1 and 2 state that any tax on income must be uniform (meaning - no minimum income level, no progressive levels, it's on every penny from the first to billionth and beyond), and it cannot be more than 1%. Seattle's "law" fails on both counts - and it will be struck down by the State Supreme Court as has happened consistently in Washington over the last 80 years. Yes, I lived there, and that was one of the things I loved about WA (but the B&O tax, on the other hand, sucked for small businesses).

            Which it is. Flat tax with one standard $250,000 per adult earner exclusion.

            I've been 100/100 on the WA Constitution so far. It's kind of funny watching you guys who fell asleep in your civics classes getting p0wnd by someone who was in the Canadian Army and only moved here when he was 30 (born in US), because you don't actually bother reading your own state constitution. Or your own laws.

            Agree about the B&O tax.

            • It's higher than 1% (fail), and it is not uniform (the State Supreme Court has consistently ruled over the last 100 years that uniform means NO deductions, no minimum thresholds, must be applied to the entire value of what is being taxed, not a portion thereof). It's a fail through and through.
        • It's the sales tax that puts me off. I hate sales tax with an extreme passion -- not because of the tax itself, but because nobody seems to include the tax in the marked prices, forcing me to constantly do math in order to figure out what something really costs.

    • California has earthquakes, but Seattle has earthquakes PLUS volcanoes.

      You probably have not heard of Lake county, California. It's one of the most volcanically active places on the planet [wikipedia.org].

    • California has earthquakes, but Seattle has earthquakes PLUS volcanoes. Seattle is in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which makes the San Andreas fault look weak and puny. So yeah, your chance of dying in a natural disaster just quintupled by moving from Palo Alto to Seattle.

      Still better than living in the pit of snakes that is the Washington DC Metropolitan Area.

    • California has earthquakes, but Seattle has earthquakes PLUS volcanoes. Seattle is in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which makes the San Andreas fault look weak and puny. So yeah, your chance of dying in a natural disaster just quintupled by moving from Palo Alto to Seattle.

      Yep. Horrible here! Do not come! Too many people, too dangerous. If more people move here it might set off the eathquakes which will set off the volcano. Stay in CA.

    • California has earthquakes, but Seattle has earthquakes PLUS volcanoes. Seattle is in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which makes the San Andreas fault look weak and puny. So yeah, your chance of dying in a natural disaster just quintupled by moving from Palo Alto to Seattle.

      That's all fine and good but you really only need to bring up the weather to convince most people.

    • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      I read Seattle internet access is like 20th century dialup.
  • Portland, OR is benefiting from the Bay area tech job departure to some degree. Tech jobs here are increasing and the real estate prices are going up. But they are still way way below Seattle or Bay area prices. I frequently have to travel to Bay area for work. That place is just nuts. I simply do not understand how so many there can afford the rent or mortgage.

  • Is it possible that people are moving away from crazy web startup land to more established companies? Microsoft is poised to become the new IBM in terms of lock-in and guaranteed revenue with Azure, and Amazon has their tentacles in everything including AWS these days. Both are very close to becoming monopolies (again) raking in large amounts of money at a constant rate. Talk about a good place to find a stable job where companies have enough cash on hand to treat employees well...the opposite of post-bubbl

  • Too Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) * <seebert42@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:52PM (#54877301) Homepage Journal

    Even tech people require housing. The smart investment money should be OUTSIDE of the hubs, which have become overpriced.

    • Re:Too Expensive (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @05:46PM (#54878033)

      Exactly. I paid $163,000 in 2013 for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1768 sqft home on a third of an acre. I have a 7 minute commute at 30 mph to get to work, the software company I work for has for the last several years been rated as one of the best places to work in Texas, and I make enough that my family can live quite comfortably off my salary alone, despite only being in the workforce for a few years.

      Why would I move to a place where the same home on less land with a worse commute could cost me upwards of 8x what I paid here, but wouldn't come with a salary to match? What with the startup culture of workaholism on top of that, I see those tech hubs as only being for uninformed people who want to play the startup unicorn lottery or those who are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to work on a particular problem or at a particular company. Otherwise, I just don't get it.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by zieroh ( 307208 )

        You lost me at Texas. I lived in Texas for many years. It's a racist, redneck backwater, lacking both culture and world perspective.

        No thanks.

        • You lost me at Texas. I lived in Texas for many years. It's a racist, redneck backwater, lacking both culture and world perspective.

          No thanks.

          Some parts are, sure. Most isn't any better or worse than anywhere else. Having lived in California, (south) Florida, and Texas, I'd take Texas any day. Even so, you don't have to choose to live here. There are plenty of other places with similar costs of living and similar job opportunities. Choose any of them. The point is just that you don't choose a crazy expensive place.

        • In other words, it is a place where you don't have to worry about a high pot smoker running you off the road.

    • Even tech people require housing. The smart investment money should be OUTSIDE of the hubs, which have become overpriced.

      Current businesses and high tech industry require large pools of trained possible employees. Those just don't exist outside the hubs unless you want to hire and train people which businesses don't want to do because they'll just leave for a better job. They can't attract people outside of the hubs in sufficient numbers because typically, those people living in the hubs like it there and moved there before looking for a job. Currently, they (businesses or the empolyees) don't even seem to be moving to places

      • In tech, any skills trained more than four months ago aren't exactly useless, but close. Since any employee you are going to train anyway is going to require training, it is much cheaper to do that at a lower rate of pay- made possible by lower rents and mortgages.

        I would not invest in a business that wastes money on looking for the perfect workforce already trained. It's a waste of resources.

  • Not a bad time to mention the other side of the coin: Will the last person to Seattle- Turn out the lights [historylink.org].

  • Seriously, this is totally fake.

    Look, if you believe this, you'll believe we have a $15/hr minimum wage, and grew from 600,000 to 700,000 people since 2010, and will be 1,000,000 people by 2040. And that we have (looks out the window), 45 construction cranes building new 6-100 story buildings in Seattle itself, and more on the Eastside.

    Totally made up.

  • You couldn't pay me enough to live in Silicon Valley. Seattle is a much nicer place to live -- at least for now.

  • I grew up in the trailer parks of Issaquah/Bellevue/Redmond. When I was in gradeschool we toured the MS campus in Redmond. They told us we were the future, not, over the past decade, I've found myself priced out of my hometown for miles in all directions..... These implants are bringing all the stupid-ass laws with them up from Cali too. I'm not even allowed to smoke in my own car anymore.

    A few things that have happened over the past 5 years...

    Tolling bridges to Seattle.
    Tripling of bus-fare.
    Sin-tax on booz

  • People arguing taxes too high are like those arguing helicopter sales are not plentiful because they are gas guzzlers. If you can't afford the housing in Silicon Valley, taxes are a non-issue.

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