[Coronita]

[quote=sdrealtor]Just some data to ponder over. I have been tracking 2 markets this year.

Mira Mesa has a population of about 85,000. There have been 33 houses placed on the market this year most of which are in same price range.

The NCC area I follow has about 125,000. THere have been 82 houses placed on the market of which about half are basically trophy properties above $2.5M so about 40 that would be purchased by typical working folks living in the area.

Long time owners are locked into mortgages with rates in the mid 2% range with a low prop 13 tax basis and many are sitting on gains above the capital gain exclusion level. THere is no major relief in supply coming anytime soon no matter what happens with the economy. My mortage plus taxes, insurance and hoa is less than the rent on a 1 BR Apartment around here now. I am not unique here.

It doesnt take everyone in a WFH job to buy the 5 to 10 regular homes that hit the market each week in either of these areas. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things but no good thing ever dies[/quote]

Longer term owners are pretty close to debt free or at least have rental income that covers said low interest 30 year loans.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Your reasoning for why some remote workers makes sense, and it has nothing to do with Covid. My point is the great majority of things went to extreme levels due to covid. One is remote work, the other main change is the Fed printed over 4 trillion dollars and doubled their balance sheet in 2 years.

With Covid winding down, there will be less Fed support and less folks working 100% from home, overall. You just keep giving niche examples. I never claimed that work at home will completely go away after Covid. But it will go down significantly. It has been publicly announced by several of the major Tech companies. Are you claiming they are lying? What insider knowledge do you have at Amazon and Google that I don’t have? Just because your company isn’t requiring people to work at the office doesn’t change that.[/quote]

I didn’t say that covid was the cause of all remote workers to begin with. But now that covid has proven that remote workers are viable, businesses are seriously considering using remote workers because it’s been proven by many companies that it can be implemented successfully.

That’s the point. The cat is out of the bag. My company was already remote friendly before covid, and simply extended that as an option…But other companies that were hesitant before and saw the results, many are going to continue that.

Previously, most companies were hesitant even consider remote workers as an option because there was the concern about productivity, reliability, etc. Covid forced some of these companies to do this in order to keep running.

Many (not all companies) have figured out it works well for them and even when covid is no longer going to be an issue, they will continue with a remote friendly policy. Some companies will do old school and revert back in office only.. And some employees that are either scared or take offense to that will have the opportunity to switch employers, if their skills/abilities/etc are in demand.

Honestly, Google and Amazon prefer in office, but given how well they pay (better than MSFT), given their comp packages, I’d pour coffee for them if I could get in. Amazon is a little unique in that you don’t really get much before 3 years. If you can survive for 3 years though, that’s serious $$$$…In both cases though, they have enough satellite offices that an employee prospect just has to report to “a” field office. And I’m pretty sure for the right candidate best of the best, they will still make exceptions than the norm…In San Diego, that’s totally possible because like I said Google, Amazon, Apple all have a sizeable presence here now…

The other thing you are discounting is the issues with the supply chain and the now uncertainty of war….Onshoring is now making a comeback where at least in the hardware sector, companies are now compelling to onshore Fab and moving away from China and even Taiwan (or at least second source stuff domestically)… I mean, Taiwan will still be a leader with TSM, but they too are setting up shop here in the US because given the political instability right now in China, there’s a vested interest and a national security interest to bring some of this work back into the US. And given that we have inflation, perhaps that US wages now can justify having some of this manufacturing done in the US again. While companies like Intel never able to let US chip fab workers work remotely to begin with, they are expanding their footprint by now spinning up Fabs in the US for that reason. TSM and Samsung doing the same thing…

These manufacturing jobs won’t be available in CA, but elsewhere in the US, it’s good news.

Intel in Ohio:
https://www.jobsohio.com/intelinohio/?gclid=CjwKCAiA9tyQBhAIEiwA6tdCrL9OqumazgSlVdITKG5Lh5k_u_TZkB0ivQbf7ZNuAtmEhIc2G5GH9BoCYUcQAvD_BwE

TSM in Arizona:
https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/317329-tsmc-will-open-3-5-billion-semiconductor-fab-in-arizona

Samsung in Texas:
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-announces-new-advanced-semiconductor-fab-site-in-taylor-texas

America wins.

Long term.. Political instability is probably good for the US…US has the unique privilege of being worlds away from Europe and Asia, where the geo-political instability is happening. Just like in WW1 and WW2, continental US was shielded from main conflict…Seems to me, that US is a safe bet right now to expand to fix the supply chain issue, especially with inflation, that can justify higher wages to do it here.

The serious consideration is if a company spends a fortune to setup more FAB in Taiwan, what if China overruns it like Russia did with Ukraine? From a national security interest, it makes sense to invest in the US.

Work is coming home. And as long as there is hardware work, software work will follow and all the ancillary support technology that comes with it.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone][quote=Coronita][quote=deadzone]Problem is if there is layoffs at Shopify or whatever it will be due to after effects of market crash and recession from the bursting of the bubble. So in that scenario most of the industry will be laying off.

Back to the original comment, sure there will probably some companies offering fully remote for a while. However, the point is majority of folks are going to be heading back to the office, at least part time, very soon. And the total pool of fully remote workers will be going down from the peak of Covid. How much this affects RE in San Diego, is debatable, but it is not a positive.

Not every employee or engineer can act like an entitled baby and just quit and move to another company because they don’t get their 100% remote gig anymore. That only works now, if at all, because the job market is so tight due to all of the Fed money printing. If/when the Fed turns off the spigot, there will be a recession and the job market will not be tight anymore.[/quote]

For every company laying off there are a bunch of VC funded new companies. Nothing has changed really. Shopify even doesn’t have a major footprint in CA. Also a bad example, Shopify has been routinely hiring and firing well before their latest wall street numbers. It’s part of their “culture”…

Shopify actually IS one of the companies that count on remote workers to get around the high cost of employee Bay Area employees.Because they know they can’t compete with the FANG companies for talent with deeper pockets.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Shopify-RVW41454067.htm

Besides, given their large customer base, there’s plenty of contracting and consulting work and offshoot products built on top of shopify . It’s not just the company it’s the entire ecosystem of developers and talent to support all the large customer install base. Similar to what Salesforce.com did.[/quote]

So when Fed turns off the spigot, there will be an overall recession and tech will be hit very hard. Less jobs industry wide. San Diego and everywhere. Remote and office. At this point, employees will have a lot less leverage to “Demand” that they be allowed to work at home.[/quote]

It really depends. So many retail and entertainment companies are scrambling to reinvent themselves. That won’t slow down because for them it’s sink or swim for them. I’m in this space and our business has been growing during the pandemic. Other companies larger players have taken out low interest loans and using it to invest in their business. My company did something like that. As far as our business is concerned, we have remote workers because we need personnel closer to where our customers are than a central office. It’s easier for them to be onsite to do work that feeds into the product than having them travel back and forth between our Florida office. Hiring someone from Florida and having them spend 60% of their time as engineers on a plane is going to accelerate their resignation than hiring someone in LA next to our clients and allowing them to work remotely and be onsite…same could be said for our clients in the Midwest and Southern states. Also applies to our UK and Aussie customers…In fact now that work remote is more acceptable, there’s no need to restrict remote workers just to field engineers and support engineers and sales… It’s possible now to embed mobile engineers and platform engineers that work on the main product in these strategic locations more easily and as a result run a more integrated team from beginning to end…lots of benefits doing that too, because it reduces the traditional problem of product engineers being out of touch with real customer needs and issues…

Again, unless you are in management and have weighed some of these pros and cons, you won’t know why some of these decisions are made and you’re basing your opinions based on news articles you read that has very little to do with real business problems companies are solving.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Problem is if there is layoffs at Shopify or whatever it will be due to after effects of market crash and recession from the bursting of the bubble. So in that scenario most of the industry will be laying off.

Back to the original comment, sure there will probably some companies offering fully remote for a while. However, the point is majority of folks are going to be heading back to the office, at least part time, very soon. And the total pool of fully remote workers will be going down from the peak of Covid. How much this affects RE in San Diego, is debatable, but it is not a positive.

Not every employee or engineer can act like an entitled baby and just quit and move to another company because they don’t get their 100% remote gig anymore. That only works now, if at all, because the job market is so tight due to all of the Fed money printing. If/when the Fed turns off the spigot, there will be a recession and the job market will not be tight anymore.[/quote]

For every company laying off there are a bunch of VC funded new companies. Nothing has changed really. Shopify even doesn’t have a major footprint in CA. Also a bad example, Shopify has been routinely hiring and firing well before their latest wall street numbers. It’s part of their “culture”…

Shopify actually IS one of the companies that count on remote workers to get around the high cost of employee Bay Area employees.Because they know they can’t compete with the FANG companies for talent with deeper pockets.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Shopify-RVW41454067.htm

Besides, given their large customer base, there’s plenty of contracting and consulting work and offshoot products built on top of shopify . It’s not just the company it’s the entire ecosystem of developers and talent to support all the large customer install base. Similar to what Salesforce.com did.

[Coronita]

[quote=an][quote=Coronita]Well anecdotal story… I have a friend who works at a small biotech company. She’s on the administrative staff and they and support were all told to go back to the office starting next week…

However all the scientists and researchers…They are allowed to work remotely indefinitely.

Now this might seem a bit unfair, because it is. But you know why the company did this, right?

The company views the administrative staff as easily replaceable so they get treated like crap. And their philosophy is well if you quit go ahead we’ll just find a replacement.

However, when it comes to the scientist and engineers. It seems like they don’t want to fvck with them, because I guess if they said the same thing, the scientist and engineers would just walk across the street to a competitor.

Go figure.[/quote]
Yep. Also, for every 1 big company that make their employee goes back to work, there are a few not as big that are going fully remote. Here are some:
Stripe, Shopify, Twilio, Jobot, CloudApp, Slack, Meta, SalesForce etc.

Even Amazon is still advertising for remote positions on LinkedIn.

Also, good luck to the companies who try to tell their engineers to go back to the office after they have already moved. I doubt they’ll fire them lol.[/quote]

I have intel at what goes on at Qualcomm on this very issue and it’s very comical.

so you have some folks who are very concerned who think going back to the office everyone should wear masks and show proof of vaccination….

Then you have a bunch of people who refuse to wear masks and refuses to vaccinate citing individual rights..

Then you have the first group say fine if that’s the case segment the workplace.somthst unvaccinated and in masked people occupy one part of the offices and the vaccinated masking people occupy the other.

Then the unvaccinated unmasked people claimed this would be discrimination because bases on whether someone was masked or not and citing Hippa privacy for someone’s vaccination status….

Then you have the vaccinated group expressing concern that about having in person meetings and what if they get sick….and is the company going to be liable for creating an unsafe work environment….

So then as a mediation it was proposed that meetings in office be conducted via video conference….which imho would defeat the entire purpose of returning back to work in person….

I think when it’s all said and done, what’s going to happen is what my employer picked. Hybrid model… Those that want to go into an office can do so… Those that don’t want to don’t.

And hiring for engineers will continue to be open for remote “for the right candidate”, where the requirements for interview go up for that flexibility..where you end up having sort of an engineer’s caste system. In which your cream of the crop techies get what they want and those that aren’t that good wash out in the interview process. Lol, I’m one of these people that wash out in some interviews.

That’s how I’ve been getting approached lately my the big 3… Microsoft, Google, Facebook have all been pinging me about work and their time has definitely changed. Because in the past I said I can’t relocate and the convos would stop there, but these days the recruiters are saying we are remote friendly for the right candidate. I guess if they are willing to spend that much on an employee they really want , letting them work remote is the least of their concerns. I mean shit for some of these companies, they are saying take 4 weeks to study for an interview and send you a guide or recommend an interview prep company. No different than at SAT prep class. Lol…that’s pretty intense….if I was younger I might have motivated to study and go through with the interview.

Personally, I miss going into an office, but that’s me.

[Coronita]

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[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Okay so we’ll see about the remote work/back to work debate as the year progresses. Just pointing out that a lot of big, important tech companies are calling their folks back to work. And that is most definitely not a positive for SD RE market.

Bigger issue I see is if the magnitude of this tech stock crash reaches .com crash level or worse, and the Fed stops printing money to support the corporate bond market as they did before, there will simply be a lot fewer jobs in the industry.

And let’s face it, if hiring 100% remote is fully normalized, why would I hire a San Diego engineer at 200K when I can get the same productivity out of an Indian engineer for 50K or less?[/quote]

Again you aren’t in the tech industry so clearly you don’t understand. I have 4 teams. 1 main engineering team 3 outsourced providers. Your idea of paying someone $50k to get good work these days is way off. our cheapest contracting firm overseas is running around $90k, and there are a boatload of reasons why you can’t count on them to do research and things that aren’t fully speced out. As I mentioned before , part of dollars spent on US employees is so they can accommodate loosey goosey requirements and don’t have 15+hr timezone difference. That might seem to cost more in front, but if you consider how much time is spent going back and forth and redoing stuff, it ends up being in the worst case scenario roughly the same cost. There had ways been the opportunity to use contract firms from overseas well before the pandemic….but unless you setup a shop there and make them your own employee they won’t have a vested interest in building something you want like your full-time hire will. This was even before then pandemic. If your assertions we’re correct, there would be no engineers hired in the US over the past years because the pandemic didn’t bring on the ability to hire foreign contract workers. That option was already there….200k isn’t San Diego wages. It’s what you pay a where in the US for top talent.

Again, lots of people who aren’t engineers, who haven’t built anything, haven’t had any leadership or management team, sure like to think they know what they are doing and yet that couldnt be further from the truth. Reading news articles doesn’t make one an expert in how tech companies run or how to acquire (and more importantly) retain good talent. There’s a false belief people that don’t know that good engineers could easily be replaced by another. While this might be the case for like min wage burger flipping jobs (which in today’s labor market I would challenge that assertion too), things clearly aren’t that way in tech. You have a bunch of posers that apply to these tech jobs but they aren’t real and won’t get hired.

If I get a resume from who says.theu are.an experienced mobile “engineer” who’s only relevant experience is taking classes at “Full Sail University”, it’s going into the trashcan

.

[Coronita]

[quote= deadzone ] [quote=Coronita]But you aren’t a tech worker deadzone. How would you know what the prevailing pulse of this situation is???[/quote]

All the big silicon valley companies such as Amazon, Google, etc. were originally planning to bring back their folks to the office 3 days/week back in January. That got delayed due to Omicron. Now that Covid is finished they are going to be resuming these plans soon.

Bottom line the majority of tech workers, or white collar workers in general, are not going to be able to work fully remote forever. They hybrid/flex schedule will hopefully stay for long term but the number of people working fully remote from home will be drastically going down from here on out, not increasing.[/quote]

But again, you’re just reading articles and not even in tech. You are basing your assumptions on what some companies do. For every company that says they aren’t going back to work, there’s plenty of companies that are offering remote options because it’s cheaper then setting up a satellite office that the big companies are able to do..

For your really bad example, this won’t make a dent in San Diego housing because Amazon is expanding huge in San Diego. Ask all the Intuit employees that recently quit and went over to Amazon….People who were old timers I thought would never leave Intuit went there.

Google also has expanded their footprint down here with their chip group and also their acquisition of Fitbit.

Apple too. They have their chip group and connectivity down here.

Also VC funding down here for biotech outpaced bay area.

So these big companies that ask people to go back , going back means reporting to a local field office which they have…

As far as the other smaller companies…if they want to retain employees they either have to pay more than these bigger company IRS (which most cant) OR provide more non comp benefits. Or get stuck with employees that are not so in demand….

Some of the comp packages that are being thrown around are like $300k+….LinkedIn is offering around $210k base, excluding stock and bonus and 401k match… for Android seniors… Remote. I mean you have to deal with awful react native in addition to Android, which might be why, but still….

Shit, at $300kish for a senior, I was tempted to apply if I was still pretty hands on. Less stress comparable comps versus working at a small company with a larger role.

[img_assist|nid=27522|title=linked|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=500]

IOS Senior Engineer
And any job with the requisition number 69 has got to be a winner

[img_assist|nid=27523|title=linkedin2|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=500]

I’ve been hearing some pretty ridiculous sign on bonuses too from that Redmond company.

My company for instance, can’t compete on dollar alone. Senior at my company are around $165k. And that’s actually pretty good for a company in Florida.

[Coronita]

[quote=sdrealtor]Had coffee today with a QCOM friend. April 1st they want them back two days. He’s contemplating whether he’ll agree. Key member of his team moved up north and another to North Carolina. Neither are coming back to office[/quote]

Well anecdotal story… I have a friend who works at a small biotech company. She’s on the administrative staff and they and support were all told to go back to the office starting next week…

However all the scientists and researchers…They are allowed to work remotely indefinitely.

Now this might seem a bit unfair, because it is. But you know why the company did this, right?

The company views the administrative staff as easily replaceable so they get treated like crap. And their philosophy is well if you quit go ahead we’ll just find a replacement.

However, when it comes to the scientist and engineers. It seems like they don’t want to fvck with them, because I guess if they said the same thing, the scientist and engineers would just walk across the street to a competitor.

Go figure.

[Coronita]

[quote=sdrealtor]Bookmarked[/quote]

I know why. lol…

I had an interview for this one company. Manager relocated to Mammoth Lakes. Senior Director was out of Covina. VP was out of Seattle. They didn’t seem to care where the Mobile Director lived.

[Coronita]

But you aren’t a tech worker deadzone. How would you know what the prevailing pulse of this situation is???

[Coronita]

[quote=svelte]Well you learn something even from bad decisions…if you take the time to analyze why it was bad.

The trick is to learn to avoid the bad decisions as much as possible, but there are going to be some. just no way around it.

In the rear-view mirror, most of my bad decision were worth the pain. Though if I could start my life over again with the knowledge I have now, I certainly would side-step each of them!

There are two decisions that really need to be right in life: who you marry and what you do for a living. I think I got both of those right.[/quote]

The funny part is every single time I had to leave a company was when the company got acquired or merged. I mean, from an equity and money perspective it was great. But from a job continuity perspective it sucked. Broadcom was a case that if it wasn’t for Hock Tan swooping the company down and treating it as a MBA “parts worth more than the sum” project, I could have easily stayed there 10+ years…Leaving with a RSU pot was just a consolation prize , I wish I could have stayed there…happens so many times….

Happened again this time too… M&A’s suck for tech employees. And the worst is when the parent company that bought you is run by imbeciles that think they know better than you do…This time around I get doubly screwed because my stock options were negotiated 100% all or nothing at the 3 year mark, with only a 25% immediate vesting upon “change of control” (IE acquired) …. I didn’t think it was a big deal because I thought I’d be able to make it to the third year at least, while most stock/option grants are over 4 years…But man, the imbecility I deal with now on a daily basis is just off the chart. I’ll take that 25% and run early.

Really simple example. My engineers have been asking for a development IOS and android phone. At most costs $1000 per person. Chump change for the company… And man, the parent company is like, well we don’t have a mobile phone policy for normal engineers, but you can submit like this large stack of paperwork justifying a stipend for each of the employees that need a phone, they will have a $50/credit per month for a phone plan and $200 credit for a phone, and they will have to pay for the rest of the phone. I’m like WTF, they don’t need a data plan, they just need an actual IOS phone and an Android Pixel to do their work. So it ran up and down the finance and my uselss VP, and dragged on for 2months..with me finally saying something like: “I don’t understand why this is so difficult for everyone to understand why a mobile engineer needs a work phone hardware to get his job done and shouldn’t be expected to use his personal phone.. I don’t see many server engineers bringing in their own servers… Do you?” and then pissed, I ended up just buying each of my engineers a dev phone out of my own pocket so we could actually get work done…

What does my company do? “Well, FLU, shouldn’t have done that. Because what you did makes the company look cheap…”

Gee, ya think?

[Coronita]

And of course, this is what working in an enterprise software startup business is totally like…lol

[img_assist|nid=27512|title=Sales|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=500|height=600]

[Coronita]

[quote=svelte][quote=Coronita]Work. Because I’m PTO interviewing for another company today. Of I get it I’ll give current employer the option to match and a few other things I want them to change. And if the don’t, oh well… :)[/quote]

I hear ya. So tired of watching companies make the same stupid mistakes. It doesn’t affect me so bad when I watch other companies do it, but when it is a company I work for it kinda gets under my skin.

When/if I decide I’ve had enough, not sure if I’ll find another job or just pack it in. I could do either at this point. Would definitely be better off financially if I waited a bit, but I’d be just fine either way.

Just signed up for a US Social Security login today. That tells you I’m starting to run the numbers! SS will be a pretty minor part of the puzzle and is a bit in the future anyway, but it is still nice to have the complete picture.[/quote]

I keep saying this will be my last company if I get this new gig. And that was a few gigs ago. Truthfully, as long as I can continue to find a new gig the pays reasonably well or there is the lure of “pre-IPO” shares in a late stage funded company, I keep playing.

But to be fair, I’ve had my fair share of bad decisions over the past 20+ years too. This one sums it up:

[img_assist|nid=27511|title=Oops. 3 strikes.|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=500|height=600]

lol….

[Coronita]

[quote=teaboy]trouble sleeping or in a different time zone?

tb[/quote]

Work. Because I’m PTO interviewing for another company today. Of I get it I’ll give current employer the option to match and a few other things I want them to change. And if the don’t, oh well… 🙂

[Author]

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