Yeah. I used to work outside the valley, until 2008. I moved to San Jose to work with friends I worked with from Netscape.
Until I moved, I earned five figures, you know a bit more each year, and was happy. I had a house, a big spacious house by San Jose standards, and a nice town with friendly friends and so on. When I started in SV, they raised me to USD 120,000 and the HR recruiter literally apologized for it not being more. Since then it has gone up about four x, for no really good reason that I can see, since it is fun work I would do for much less. Only when you get into profit per worker does it make sense.
And that isn’t due to some moral failure entirely, but something about the weird asymmetries that networked technology seems to facilitate. One little neighborhood, but services and products for dozens or hundreds of countries. Each time a country is added to the network, the winner takes some more.
Until I moved, I earned five figures, you know a bit more each year, and was happy. I had a house, a big spacious house by San Jose standards, and a nice town with friendly friends and so on. When I started in SV, they raised me to USD 120,000 and the HR recruiter literally apologized for it not being more. Since then it has gone up about four x, for no really good reason that I can see, since it is fun work I would do for much less. Only when you get into profit per worker does it make sense.
And that isn’t due to some moral failure entirely, but something about the weird asymmetries that networked technology seems to facilitate. One little neighborhood, but services and products for dozens or hundreds of countries. Each time a country is added to the network, the winner takes some more.