Companies relocating out San Diego…

[Hatfield]

The WebSense relocation “package” was a 20% pay cut and zero moving assistance. It remains how many people from SD will actually go. The knuckleheads at Vista Equity apparently have the attitude that engineers are all interchangeable. And I’m hearing some pretty disturbing things from my friends in the OmniTRACS division which Vista recently bought from qcom.

[Anonymous]

maybe not as bad as you think for the local economy, Smart people are getting out fast. I worked at active and most people are looking, many already have jobs. Companies and recruiters are fighting for people too. In that sense I don’t see huge impact at least on the engineering side. And I now work with someone from omnitracks and they described the same thing there.

To be honest, at least for active, saving money (less salary) is all they care about. No attempt to save key people or knowledge. Some products will just wither. HOwever people are leaving so fast that there won’t have to be layoffs – to bad they lost top performers which isn’t what they were hoping for.

[joec]

I think this is all too common for these “numbers” moves. It’s not really about innovation or the founders making a legacy play…

Anyhow, another reason to move companies out of CA is that people who studied in Austin or Texas Universities may want to stay near their college town where they all went to school so the labor is there and it’ll be very hard to convince a decent/good programmer from another state to come to CA with our extreme housing costs and other taxes/fees…

Unless you are the superstar performer, you’re just not going to get that relocation package or salary.

I think companies actually don’t care if you move or not since they are doing it to save money…Saw this back 10-15 years ago with India as well.

I actually think “most” engineers are pretty replaceable. The tough thing as some of the coders here will relate to is that not a lot of work is done by people who need to be truly creative/innovative. Correct me if I’m off though since I was more on the backend side (data centers/IT/servers/networks/security).

[The-Shoveler]

” it’ll be very hard to convince a decent/good programmer from another state to come to CA with our extreme housing costs and other taxes/fees…”

We get resumes all the time.

[spdrun]

San Diego is a lot cheaper than NY or many places on the East Coast. Programmers are generally younger — it’s not that hard to rent a studio in one of the beach cities for about a grand a month. Easily doable even on an entry-level programmer’s salary of $50-60k per year.

[The-Shoveler]

Don’t know about Socal so much but at least in the bay area, there are probably five or six start-up’s working on the next big thing for every old corporation that relocates, if fact it seems weird but I see more older tech companies expanding in San Jose area. Does not seem fair actually, they should move some of those down here LOL. We just hired three guys form Canada a month or so ago to relocate to San Jose.

And yea we did give them a relocation package.

[FlyerInHi]

Good point on replacement jobs. As long as new jobs are being created, maybe it’s only part of progress that old jobs move away.

I heard that Hyundai is moving many jobs out of OC to Dallas. Other companies have done so, but so what?

Econprof and Joec said that high income Californians are moving away. I don’t think anymore than before. people who have the means to establish bonafide tax residences in low tax areas have done so for years. But they always keep homes in CA. Most high income earners have to pay CA taxes anyway because their money is made in CA.

Some people are indeed sick of costs and ideology of CA, but when they move they have to find new jobs, they don’t have the ability to keep their current income sources. FWIW, the big cities in Texas are about the same ideology as San Diego. The difference is that they are surrounded by different ideology.

Websense is not a big company at 400 employees. If they weren’t part of vista equity, it’s questionable they would have been able to negotiate an incentive from Texas.

[The-Shoveler]

There was some movement to split California into 5 or 6 different states (sponsored by some guys in San Jose area)
I am not sure that would end well were it to occur.

[joec]

Oh well, maybe I am way off then. I guess I can see a young guy with no family moving and renting a cheap place to possibly hit the next big thing in a major tech hub…with roommates or free housing in the facebook or google dorm, sure, makes a lot of sense.

Do you get a lot of people who are middle aged (35-45, married with kids) moving with a large pay and relocation package upwards of 150k-300k?

I suppose I should’ve said I don’t think as many people with families are coming here to raise a family and buy a house.

If you’re young and can strike it rich, yeah, I guess it makes a lot of sense to roll the start-up dice since your cost/housing is cheap.

Correct me if I’m way off again and more of the recent offers are more for young/no family folks or people not buying houses.

[spdrun]

Who says anything about moving to a tech hub to strike it rich? If you’re unmarried, living somewhere like PB where you can walk to the beach after work, drive 3-4 hours to go skiing in winter, have “good” weather basically all year round, and which has its share of unattached people of the correct gender is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than living in inland Texas.

[The-Shoveler]

I don’t work for Google or Facebook or apple so don’t know what they offer.

Ours was close to a moving van expense and a free apartment for 6 months

I have heard of a google engineer turning down 500K salary though because he was getting more at google

[flyer]

This is an interesting thread, but since I’m not in the tech field, (although I received my degree in Aerospace Engineering before becoming a pilot)after reading all of the posts, I was just wondering what the “shelf life” of an engineer, (in all disciplines) is today?

I’ve heard stories that if you don’t make all of your money by at least 50, you’re SOL, and that it’s difficult to find and/or keep a job. Is that true, or just rumor?

[Coronita]

.

[Coronita]

[quote=flyer]This is an interesting thread, but since I’m not in the tech field, (although I received my degree in Aerospace Engineering before becoming a pilot)after reading all of the posts, I was just wondering what the “shelf life” of an engineer, (in all disciplines) is today?

I’ve heard stories that if you don’t make all of your money by at least 50, you’re SOL, and that it’s difficult to find and/or keep a job. Is that true, or just rumor?[/quote]

I’m probably more paranoid than most people….My personal take about tech software in areas like mobile…. that if you haven’t gotten out of pure technical work and moved into senior management, you’re pushing it by the time you hit 40ish… Your shelf life goes quickly down afterwards….

Why? You’re more expensive than your peers, you’re probably less efficient than your peers, and even though you might have experience, people care more about how quickly things get done these days….And since things move rather quickly, you really have to stay on top of your game if you want to stay in business. This rule probably doesn’t apply as much if your work for the government or for the defense business, or if you run your own show and have established your connections…..but for tech companies in cut throat businesses, consider yourself warned….

I work in a cut-throat business… We compete in foreign markets with other foreign players. And frankly, some of the competition are on 7 day work weeks. We’ve been getting by… by employing people in 3-4 locations around the world so we can do roughly 24 hr development… The difference between winners and losers is drastic…. Winning means you probably have job security more/less at the same company most of your life… Losing at a company really means losing the farm….When you’re younger you had the energy and time to hop around…

It’s really funny because it’s really different from other professions like doctors or lawyers. You hear doctors/lawyers practicing in their 60ies…Much less in engineering…

I predict in about 1-3 years, I will probably be set off to greener pastures, whether it’s voluntary or not…But it’s expected…. I chose to remain technical all my career, since it was where my personal comfort and passion was….But it’s a double edge sword when you’re older.

[flyer]

Thanks for the insights, flu. Very interesting.

Good to know you followed your passion within your chosen field. I felt the same way about becoming an airline pilot when I started out. There’s a lot of satisfaction in achieving your dreams in life.

Whatever you do from this point on, I’m sure you’ll be fine, since you’ve mentioned you’ve taken steps to be well prepared for whatever your comes your way. In an industry as competitive as the one you’ve described, that sounds like the smartest way to play the game and win.

[Author]

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