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Where Tech Workers Are Moving (substack.com) 238

There's a narrative that the tech industry's future lies in Texas and Florida. That tech workers and executives -- sick of California's oppressive policies and sky-high real estate costs -- are moving en masse to Miami and Austin this year. That these cities are building dominant talent foundations that will persist for years due to the pandemic. That narrative is wrong. From a report: The story crumbles when placed next to new LinkedIn data showing where tech workers are actually moving in 2020. The key beneficiaries of this year's tech migration are less buzzy cities like Madison, Wisconsin; Richmond, Virginia; and Sacramento, California. These places don't get much play in the news, but they're attracting tech talent at significantly higher rates than they were last year. Austin, conversely, is gaining tech workers more slowly. The new LinkedIn data, which Big Technology is first publishing here, examines several hundred thousand tech workers in the U.S. It breaks down the ratio at which they're moving into a city vs. moving out, something LinkedIn calls the inflow/outflow ratio. The data ranges from April to October, comparing 2020 with 2019. It encompasses the core months people left their cities due to the pandemic.

The country's biggest tech migration increase took place in Madison. The city was gaining 1.02 tech workers for each one that left last year, and it's now gaining 1.77, a 74% jump. Sacramento and Richmond, meanwhile, were losing tech workers before the pandemic and have turned it around. Sacramento was adding a fraction of a tech worker -- 0.87 -- for each one that left last year, and now it's adding 1.02. Richmond was adding 0.95 last year, and it's adding 1.06 this year. Other Midwest cities, including Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Cleveland, Ohio, have significantly reduced the rate at which tech workers were leaving their cities.

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Where Tech Workers Are Moving

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  • Delta ratio? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:17PM (#60845458) Journal

    How meaningful are delta ratios? This doesn't indicate the *volume* of tech workers migrating at all. If my tiny town had 2 tech workers last year and one left, then this year it gained 2 and lost none, it had 200% growth by this formula. That's a useless metric for comparing one city against another.

    • It doesn't look like the raw data is available, but they probably did include some kind of minimum threshold or what you suggested would almost certainly have happened. Since tech workers are highly valued by most cities it's the type of thing they like to look at.
      I'm not sure just how valuable it will be though. Madison is the home of the biggest Electronic Medical Record vendor in the world (Epic). I think "become the HQ of a tiny company that will be huge in 30+ years" is a bit tough to do predictably.

    • Any time a story has relative metrics without any mention of absolute numbers you can be pretty sure the thesis is dubious and the numbers coerced into alignment with the thesis.

    • Re:Delta ratio? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @03:03PM (#60845684) Journal

      It seems like an orchard's worth of cherry picking going on. The summary opens by taking a dump on Austin, whose ratio changed from 2.06 last year to 1.84 in 2020. It then describes Sacramento as a "key beneficiary" because their ratio went from 0.87 to 1.02... barely break-even.

      They want to focus on the delta over a one-year window, but I see no reason to think these changes will be anything more than a blip in the data from a very weird year. I don't see anything in these numbers to indicate that, for example, Austin won't have long-haul growth in the tech industry. Why are they fixating on any data that might contradict what they describe as "the narrative"? It reminds me of some of the reporting done on the supposed "global warming pause" from a few years back.

    • by jbengt ( 874751 )

      How meaningful are delta ratios? This doesn't indicate the *volume* of tech workers migrating at all.

      That's what I was thinking, too.
      Plus, this is from LinkedIn. I wouldn't assume that their data is a random crosssection of the population.

  • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:17PM (#60845462) Journal

    The "Californians moving to Austin" thing is interesting because politically and culture-wise, Texas is in many ways the opposite of California. However, the Texas capital is Austin - that's where policy for the whole state is made. With Austin becoming a mini San Francisco, it creates a weird dynamic. Our lawmakers live and work in the one city that it totally unlike the rest of the state, with very different values and ways of thinking.

    All would be well if the Californians who are fleeing were cognizant of the fact "I'm getting the heck out of California because California policies haven't worked, I'm going to Texas because the Texas way works better". But they don't think that way. They come to Texas and tell us we should change everything, constantly saying "the way we did it in California is ...". If you liked the California way, if the California way brought results that you liked, wouldn't you still be in California?

    If you DO like the results in California, good for you! I really hope you love it there. I hope you get more and more of the results you like. If you find it necessary to flee from the results of the California way, doesn't it make sense to leave that behind, rather than bringing it with you?

    • Mini San Francisco with worse weather and no access to beaches, mountains, etc. SF pretty much has the ideal location excluding earthquakes and bad fire seasons.
      • Silicon Valley is what it is because of a deliberately engineered close partnership of universities (Stanford, Berkeley), finance (Sand Hill Road for small ventures, San Francisco for bigger finance), industry (the Stanford Business Park, etc) and government (In-Q-Tel). This was intentionally modeled after a similar successful pattern around MIT.

        http://www.netvalley.com/silic... [netvalley.com]

        The university had plenty of landover 8,000 acres(Note 23)but money was needed to finance the University's rapid postwar growth. The original bequest of his farm by Leland Stanford prohibited the sale of this land, but there was nothing to prevent its being leased. It turned out that long-term leases were just as attractive to industry as outright ownership; thus, the Stanford Industrial Park was founded. The goal was to create a center of high technology close to a cooperative university. It was a stroke of genius, and Terman, calling it "our secret weapon," quickly suggested that leases be limited to high technology companies that might be beneficial to Stanford. ... Varian, Associates, Shockley Transistor, Hewlett-Packard, Zoecon, Alza, and Dynapol

        That pattern continued with companies like Sun, Apple, Oracle, Netscape, Google, Lucidworks, Databricks.

        Hard to see that happening in many other parts of the world.

    • by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:31PM (#60845540)
      I think you're reading too much into their reasons for moving. TX has no income tax, and lower cost of real estate. I suspect their reasons for moving are financial, and have little to do with some "we don't like CA policies - TX does it better" concept.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by geekmux ( 1040042 )

        I think you're reading too much into their reasons for moving. TX has no income tax, and lower cost of real estate. I suspect their reasons for moving are financial, and have little to do with some "we don't like CA policies - TX does it better" concept.

        Uh, aren't state and local real estate tax rates, basically defined and/or established by local state policies?

        In this rather exacting sense, Texas in fact "does it better", and I think both you and the parent are basically saying the same thing. People were driven to California for many, many reasons. People are fleeing there primarily for one. The ultimate price you pay for living in any particular area, is largely driven by policy.

        • The high cost of living in CA, at least what you hear about on the news, is property cost, which obviously drives high property taxes (not tax rate) as a consequence. Some of that, sure, is CA building codes and construction restrictions, but more of that is driven my newly minted tech millionaires who want to live there, so they think nothing of a $2M starter home on a small lot. The lower tier of tech workers (read: everyone not C suite) can hardly afford to buy anything. That's fine for 20-ish year wo
        • by psycho12345 ( 1134609 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @05:16PM (#60846218)
          In California case, not really. It doesn't really have local real estate taxes, and the state level ones are not driven by any policy of any kind of any state government, since it was decided by anti tax conservatives 40 years ago, and the nature of California law dictates that said policy (Prop 13) can NOT be touched by the state legislature, only another popular vote can even amend or overturn it. So both income taxes and high property values flow from the fact that California tax policy is largely strait jacketed (also doesn't help that all tax raises are put to the vote in the first place, at ALL levels of government).
      • Choosing where to live based on politics is kind of silly. If the area around you disagrees with your politis, then it makes more sense to stay and be the opposition vote. "But muh vote doesn't count!" will be true almost anywhere you live unless you choose a swing county in a swing state, or go to somewhere lower population like Vermont. Votes count en-masse, but individually you just one out of millions most places.

        As for freedoms and rights, well, they're mostly identical everywhere in country. You c

      • > I suspect their reasons for moving are financial

        Are you unaware that raising the cost of doing business and chasing companies out of California (because "corporations are evil") is WHY the jobs are moving from California to Texas?

        Are you unaware that the highest tax rates in the country have a *financial* impact?

    • by Inglix the Mad ( 576601 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:36PM (#60845580)

      If you DO like the results in California, good for you! I really hope you love it there. I hope you get more and more of the results you like. If you find it necessary to flee from the results of the California way, doesn't it make sense to leave that behind, rather than bringing it with you?

      People/Opinion Writers/"News channels" constantly scream, "PEOPLE ARE FLEEING TEH DURTY LIEBRUL COMMIEFORNIA DUE TO TAXES, GUNZ, AND PC CULTURE!" The reality is simpler than that: People don't want to pay over a million bucks, often using an "interest only" loan, to buy a 40 year old ranch on a postage stamp lot, because that's what the price has been run up to in many areas. I turned down several jobs in SJ due to the cost of living difference. Sure, I'd get paid more, but the expenses would go up as well. I can have 85% of the compensation package I'd get there, at a far lower cost for things like land/house, and that made it an easy choice. I still flew out there regularly, not with C19 but that will resume after the mess is handled.

      They also ignore that most of these people aren't moving to "reddest" or "most conservative" areas of Texas. No, they're moving to the most liberal parts of Texas and making them even more liberal, while raising the population / representation delta of those liberal areas.

      As far as other areas like Madison, WI that makes sense given that UW Madison is there with the comp sci/engineering schools, plus decent schools for minor children of workers, the area itself is rather nice, has diverse cultures already due UW Madison, and the airport could easily expand into something similar to SJC if necessary. Even when I was a kid and attended UW Madison, it wasn't unusual to see people from many countries on campus as both students and teachers.

      • Yep. But also salaries are very high in California tech areas to match. But it's tough for anyone who's entry level, or for companies that want non-tech workers who are also local.

        There are lower rent areas in California, they're just not where the job booms are. The people and companies aren't migrating out to a middle of a barren plain, they still want to be a in a city. If they want rural life and still have access to relatively close tech, then California does that as well. We have commuters from th

    • by LostMyAccount ( 5587552 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:44PM (#60845616)

      The actual ruling class has always preferred to live in more culturally vibrant and morally tolerant areas. You don't think they actually want to live under their own policies, do you? Those are for containing the less desirable ethnic groups and the lumpen proletariat.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      All would be well if the Californians who are fleeing were cognizant of the fact "I'm getting the heck out of California because California policies haven't worked, I'm going to Texas because the Texas way works better".

      Do you have evidence that this is a fact? (I guess it's a circular definition because you talked about the group of people who are "fleeing" California). Let me instead put it more objectively. What reason to you have to think that a majority of people who moved out of California did so because they repudiated the majority of California's policies?

      What portion of the people moving, do you think moved because that was the best job offer they got? (do you interpret this as "California policies aren't working"

      • > What portion of people moving, do you think are moving because Texas is just a beautiful state with lovely land and people? (do you interpret this as "California policies aren't working" in the sense that if California only had different policies then it would as physically beautiful as Texas, and the people would be nice?

        Moving from California to *Texas* because Texas land is *beautiful*? Not many! Have you *seen* Texas? My family is from Texas, I like Texas, Texas is not beautiful land.

        They are mov

    • Politically and Culture wise Texas and California are actually rather similar. We have just been watching to much politically decisive news, that makes the two states seem like polar opposites. Because the Republicans would love to see California switch to being a Red State, Because in terms of Electoral and representative votes it gives the Democrats a clear advantage being a solid Blue state.
      Texas which has been considered a Red state for a while, the Democrats would love to see it blue. With Texas,

      • by Atmchicago ( 555403 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @03:03PM (#60845682)

        The similarities run deeper. California is the 7th largest [statista.com] petroleum producer in the US, right after Alaska. Both California and Texas are notorious for suburban sprawl and commuting along heavily congested superhighways. The two states are dominated by large corporations and special interests. They have large Spanish-speaking populations and warm climates.

        Americans like to focus on their differences when in fact they are overwhelmingly similar. Perhaps this focus on differences stems from a politician's need to distinguish him or herself from the "opposition." Or maybe it's just natural for people to judge one another.

    • ... its the population.  Too many people crammed into California drive up the price of everything and make life suck.  No conspiracy here, just supply and demand.
    • All would be well if the Californians who are fleeing were cognizant of the fact "I'm getting the heck out of California because California policies haven't worked, I'm going to Texas because the Texas way works better"

      Why do you presume they are "fleeing" at all? Have you considered that it's simply businesses that are moving there for a financial advantage?

      If you liked the California way, if the California way brought results that you liked, wouldn't you still be in California?

      No, not really. There are many reasons to move and the biggest is people move to where their job is located. It seems unlikely that someone would move to Texas without any plans of employment.

      Have you actually talked to any of the people that have moved to Texas from California about why they moved? It really seems like you have filled in the gaps with assumptions

      • > Have you considered that it's simply businesses that are moving there for a financial advantage?

        > There are many reasons to move and the biggest is people move to where their job is located.

        Are you unaware that raising the cost of doing business and chasing companies out of California (because "corporations are evil") is WHY the jobs are moving from California to Texas?

        Are you unaware that the highest tax rates in the country have a *financial* impact?

        Tell me you're smart enough to see that.

    • by Chalex ( 71702 )

      OK, but SF the city is also very much unlike most of California the state. Even Sacramento has little in common with the big empty of Northern California.

    • by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @03:44PM (#60845880)

      Well, the rent is sky high, I will agree. But ''oppressive policies"? That's just nonsense repeated for political purposes. Workers in Califiornia have tons of rights Oh wait they meant oppressive policies for the employers in that they have to give rights to workers? Ya, that does seem pretty much an anti-Texas view.

      From a workers viewpoint...
      Drawbacks to California: high rent/mortgage, higher income taxes. Doughts, fires.
      Advantages to California: higher salaries, close availability of many jobs nearby if you lose the current one. Skiing, surfing, dining, lifestyle.
      Drawbacks to Texas: Lower salaries, fewer rights. Hot and muggy, or hot and dessicated, floods. Higher real estate taxes. And omg, stay away from Houston or Dallas whatever you do.
      Advantages to Texas: lower income taxes, more affordable houses.

      So, work in California, retire to Texas.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
        Advantages to California: bodily autonomy. Legal pot (even allows growing your own up to a limit), few restrictions on abortion.
      • I'd generally agree with most of what you said.
        "Fewer rights" made me laugh so hard I nearly sprayed my drink all over my keyboard, though.

        You're saying "more freedom" for the state where you don't even have the freedom the use a straw? God help you if you want to make a couple extra bucks with a side hustle to pay your $10,000 dollar rent in California - have you SEEN what it takes to legally be allowed to mow a neighbor's lawn for $30? A hundred pages of paperwork before you're allowed to do some work.

        At

    • by jbengt ( 874751 )

      All would be well if the Californians who are fleeing were cognizant of the fact "I'm getting the heck out of California because California policies haven't worked, I'm going to Texas because the Texas way works better". But they don't think that way.

      So people are free to move and therefore Texas is changing. That's life, get over it. The only way around it would be travel restrictions between states, which would be decidedly un-American.

    • This is a made up narrative. Nobody, at least nobody who actually pays taxes, moves from California to Texas based on lower taxes.
      https://www.kiplinger.com/kipl... [kiplinger.com]

      CA taxes are only higher for folks making 1M / year or more, for folks making less CA taxes are actually lower than most any other state. The main problem with CA and people fleeing the state are property values. CA has a very stratified income in certain areas like SF and people simply can't afford to live there, so they move to some place c

  • Austin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:22PM (#60845480) Homepage
    Not surprising, housing in Austin is the most expensive in texas by far. Austin is also a traffic nightmare when covid is not present. Lastly, you may think you are escaping high taxes, but wait till you see your 2.2% property tax bill on your 800K house. And there is no end in sight to tax rate increases with the approval of the bond for mass transit.
    • Property tax is good if you're high-income ... it doesn't increase with income if you choose to stay in the same home. Where it royally sucks is that you still have to pay if you lose your job. It's basically a regressive tax.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not surprising, housing in Austin is the most expensive in texas by far. Austin is also a traffic nightmare when covid is not present. Lastly, you may think you are escaping high taxes, but wait till you see your 2.2% property tax bill on your 800K house. And there is no end in sight to tax rate increases with the approval of the bond for mass transit.

      I moved to Austin decades ago. I was checking out and I had to show my ID from my old state. The clerk said, "You must love not having to pay all those taxes." Then he told me my total and I thought it was too high, until I remember that sales taxes in Texas were almost double my previous state. Lack of an income tax leads to a very regressive tax system, with the poor paying the highest percent overall tax rate and the rich paying the lowest. Taxes and fees are hidden everywhere.

  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:23PM (#60845496) Homepage Journal

    Oppressive heat? tough choice. I can change my government, I can't really change the weather in Texas.

    I think a bigger deal than "oppressive" local politics is the crumbling infrastructure in California. The air quality in the Bay Area and L.A. is unbearable when there are wildfires every year. For those living a few miles outside of the city limits are growing weary of frequent power outages, some intentional (PSPS) and last anywhere from an hour to multiple days.

    If your only metric is price per square foot, then I question why anyone like that even bothered looking for a Bay Area home. You don't get a big sprawling estate when you spend a million dollars here. (I mean, I have a big sprawling estate, but it's constantly on fire and I have to pump my water with a generator)

    • Haven't the last few fire seasons been somewhat of an anomaly, even with global warming?
      • Haven't the last few fire seasons been somewhat of an anomaly, even with global warming?

        People's memories are short. Whatever happened the last year and year before are what always happens...

    • Oppressive heat? tough choice. I can change my government, I can't really change the weather in Texas.

      "But it's a dry heat", as the real estate agents say. Yes, dry - and 115F...

      Of course, that mantra doesn't work if you're moving to Miami rather than Austin.

  • The country’s biggest tech migration increase took place in Madison. The city was gaining 1.02 tech workers for each one that left last year, and it’s now gaining 1.77, a 74% jump.

    What is this nonsense? Nobody cares about the change in the rate, they care about the actual rate. So if A goes from 100 inflow a year to 74 inflow per year, and B goes from 2000 to 1800 per year, the author would conclude that the industry is moving to A? That's now how this works.

    That tech workers and executives -- sick of California's oppressive policies and sky-high real estate costs -- are moving en masse to Miami and Austin this year. That these cities are building dominant talent foundations that will persist for years due to the pandemic. That narrative is wrong.

    How does the author know that this is wrong when he never actually addresses the total number of people moving and in which direction? The change in the rate doesn't provide the information needed to determine if this is correct

  • Theyre coming here to Arizona in droves.

  • There are a lot of WFH people that are moving out of cali that are keeping their jobs but moving to a new locale. My guess is they don't have data on those people.

  • by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:46PM (#60845620) Journal

    Anyone who thinks "I'm sick of sky high real estate costs in San Francisco, so I'm going to move to Miami" is delusional.

    Miami may be a bit cheaper than San Francisco, but not by much. Certainly nowhere anyone would choose to save money on housing.

  • by LostMyAccount ( 5587552 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @02:56PM (#60845660)

    Why would the tech crowd leave states with legal pot for states without it?

  • What is the difference in pay rates?

    See, whenever business blames government regulation, I get suspicious. Just about always, businesses use government as an excuse when they are really looking for cheaper labor. You can get talent just as good as Silly Valley where I live for a fifth of the cost. The only thing is that people with Stanford degrees are hard to find - and I have found that there is this snobbery in SV where if you did not go to Stanford/CalTech/or even MIT, the only thing you are good for i

  • by careysub ( 976506 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @03:17PM (#60845746)

    Horrors! Huge numbers of workers are fleeing San Francisco. It's gonna be a tech ghost town I tells ya!

    Here are two consecutive sentences in TFA:

    The only two cities in the country losing tech workers that previously were gaining them are New York City and San Francisco. New York’s change in inflow/outflow ratio is -20%. San Francisco’s is -35%. To put that in context, San Francisco was previously gaining 148 workers for every 100 that left; now it’s gaining only 96.

    That's right, San Francisco has switched from having workers flooding in to a slight outflow. For every worker entering the SF work environment there are now 1.04 workers leaving - an almost exact balance. A slight reduction in outflow or increase in inflow would flip this to a slight positive ratio. So the real story here is that the SF workforce has stabilized. I think the Bay Area will survive.

  • Once they move, they will start demanding the cities CHANGE (Austin won't be hard...it's already a liberal MECCA) to what they fled! They will demand 15/hour minimum wage, more this more that which will cause taxes to increase and the talent coming in will demand higher wages which will cause housing to skyrocket. So, give it 20 years and it will be the same in those area, unless the Texans SHOOT BACK and tell em to GET OUT!
  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @03:39PM (#60845850) Homepage

    Madison, WI might have the biggest percent change. But it has a population of only 250,000. Houston has a population of about 7 million, so even if there is an increase of only 10%, Houston's numbers would dwarf Madison's.

  • No one EVER decided where to put their business for political reasons.

    It's all about cost. NY and California are great places to live, so it has driven up real estate prices.

    Texas and Florida have cheap real estate. So people move there.

    They bring their expectations of competent government and vote to change things. Which is how Austin became liberal. The tech people moved in and 20 years later it became a liberal bastion. Surprise!

    Texas is almost a swing state. A couple more years of liberals mo

    • They bring their expectations of competent government and vote to change things. Which is how Austin became liberal.

      In general I favor competent government, but California is not an example of competent government.

  • I'm lucky enough to be able to afford a vacation home, so I get to keep my house in the silicon valley area. My 2nd home is outside of Sacramento just as the Sierras start to rise out of the valley. The desire to live elsewhere has nothing to do with "oppressive policies" (whatever that is) and everything to with a desire to get away from the crowds and god-awful traffic. I've heard the article's narrative from friends who live in other parts of the country. I've lived there too, and the people who spew
  • As much as I want to shill for my home city of Madison (which is legit an awesome and super cool place to live), from a local perspective what's going on here becomes instantly obvious: Epic Systems. They're the 800lb gorilla of modern electronic medical records vendors, and they're located just outside of Madison in Verona. Epic is well known for hiring *TONS* of people from overseas on H1B visas. Now that visas have been extremely restricted and immigration is essentially a no-go, they've been looking

  • Shaking my head (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @04:09PM (#60845986)
    If Tech workers migrate en masse to Florida and Houston, they will simply take their pumping up of real estate prices with them.

    A lot of Cali people retired, sold their homes and moved to my area. They got raging Boners when they saw the house they could by for what to them was a steal. Within a few years, Real Estate skyrocketed here. It was almost a fortunate thing that the subprime bubble came along and shut things down to cool off.

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