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CoronitaParticipant[quote=svelte]The only way housing will tank is if something hits employment and the government doesn’t ease the pain by giving them cash.
That would force some homeowners into selling or foreclosure, but any of that happening is still awhile away. At least in SoCal. It will happen again at some point in the future but not this year.
The stock market, on the other hand. That’s a different story.[/quote]
newsom is planning massive state stimmy to spend part of that surplus. partly stimmy check and partly more rental assistance.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=gzz]
Sellers can simply choose the highest offer even if it has a loan contingency.
I never got the whole “cash offer is king I’ll take that over the higher financed offer” thing.
If I get an offer that includes a bank statement showing the ability to easily put 25% down and a preapproval letter for the whole amount, I will take that over a cash offer 1% lower.
Maybe “cash offer” is being used as a short-hand for “very firm no-BS offer” and the buyers who complain about losing out to lower cash offers have shaky finances and picky contingencies.
I also have some solidarity with people who don’t have huge piles of cash, as long as they show me strong evidence they can get financing.[/quote]
In certain times, there was value for someone that can close quicker than someone who has a loan contigency. For example, if someone is selling to buy another place, the seller sometimes would rather choose a more “sure” thing IE someone like me who could remove all contingencies within 10-15 days, versus say 17-19 days + still have a loan/appraisal contingency because maybe part their funds used for selling their current place is needed for the new home because the longer someone takes to close, the greater the chances are for people to back out or get cold feet and then restart the process and find another buyer.
But these days, when there’s like a 20:1 or 30:1 buyer to house ratio, quick closing is much less important because chances are if the first buyer can’t perform, there’s probably 19-29+ other buyers that will gladly take their place. And who knows you might even be able to get even more money for it….
So sellers are more inclined (probably) to go with the highest offer, even if there’s a possibility that the buyer can’t perform.And there’s no way I probably will beat these people getting a loan to try to buy their primary home..Because for me, there’s a point which I think this doesn’t make financial sense and can’t push myself further to buy. But for others who are buying this home as their primary, some aren’t thinking purely financially but looking at it as something they plan on living for a long time, and so it’s probably ok to spend more for home ownership. Me, I’m not as attached to that specific property, and just want any property that makes slightly sense. So in this market, I’ll probably lose close to 99% of the time…But that’s ok, because I just need that 1% win every so often so i can park my money somewhere in between a 0.1% CD and a overheated stock market….And i like rental properties when the target audience is for your seasoned professional, like a qualcomm engineer just starting out or someone similar who is more than well qualified to rent… The search continues…
CoronitaParticipant[quote=an][quote=deadzone]Do you use Indeed and Linkedin to find candidates?[/quote]Yes when I was Head of Engineering at an early stage startup. But now, the recruiting team is responsible for that. But I do mobilize my LinkedIn network to point them to the job postings.
[quote=deadzone]Looking back at last year, my company provided less than 2% for COLA. I guess they got that number from some questionable government figures but we all know cost of living is rising way more quickly than that, especially in SD. With that small of COLA raise our salaries are going down in real terms big time.[/quote]
COLA is pointless in engineering IMHO. At least in my entire career experience. If you’re only giving COLA, the good one will leave.[/quote]i just went through this last month with my team. Theres this one engineer whose performance was bad that i was about to PIP him because a bunch of people had so many issues with his work for so long even before I was here. I ended up talking to HR and execs, and theres some twisted HR policy that basically prevents me for giving him a 0% raise even if his performance was lousy…So instead of a standard 2% cola raise, I was advised to give him a 1.5% raise to “send him a message”…WTF… But my best performers…i could send them a “token of appreciation” by giving them a 2.5% raise…..
I was laughing my ass off at this suggestion because i was like …hmmm… if i was still an engineer and my choices were be (1l rockstar engineer and earn 2.5% or (2) be a flaky engineer and earn 1.5%…..I’d be the flaky engineer that earns 1.5%, and use my free time to moonlight in real estate or a side business…Since shit, its not like my employer is going out of their way to reward me for a stellar performance or providing a fabulois growth opportunity…or going to drastically punish me for less than stellar performance..Id hit the red easy button and do the bare minimum just to collect a paycheck to pay the bills while i would spend considerable time and energy figuring out how i should really make my net worth grow since my job wasnt going to be key and i was only doing it because its easy. that or i would be looking for a new job…or both..
In fact, there were times i was tempted to do just that… Park at a slow moving government job. i mean, the base pay might suck, but there are a lot of perks too…like great medical and dental benefits that is more important when you are older and in poorer health..
and much chiller work hours…and possibilly just easier work…i wouldnt want to park at a job in the defense industry though. pay not good unless you are in sales, highly bureaucractic, very inflexible work structure, very little ability to move up or around unless peple above you retire or die because people in this industry tend not to move around a lot, in part because some people in this industry still have a pension carrot to keep them at the same employer for some time. oh and i dont want to be the collateral damage next time US and China gets into a pissing match and dont want to be a Taiwanese with a security clearance that falsely gets accused of espionage because thr average idiot American cant tell the difference between chinese and taiwanese and ends up fvking both of us over when they feel like it…. pass on the entire defense industry or any job requiring a security clearance….Theres one things about the defense industry…If you dont quit and move into another industry within the first 3-4 years of your career, chances you have a really high pain tolerance for getting kicked around a lot by people who are probably less qualified than you (IE bean counting program managers)…and then theres a high probability you will end up a “lifer” who will continue to work in this industry for the next 20+years for the easy job and decent benefits..Theres nothing wrong with that too, since some people hate confrontation and dont mind going with the easy flow and like i said if one had more free time, they can invest that time doing something more productive for themselves. my parents were one of them…But it took me only 2 summer internships to realize there was no way in hell the defense industry was right for me.
CoronitaParticipant.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=deadzone]Yes I agree with you about the COLA being worthless. That’s why I want to arm myself with as much salary data as possible. Mainly for taking care of my own people, I may need to get into it with the company execs if they are not willing to give more realistic raises this year.[/quote]
Why do you feel you need to arm yourself with salary data in order to negotiate your compensation in CA?
If you aren’t already aware, state law prohibits potential employers from asking you salary/compensation history from your current or previous employer in determining compensation for your next opportunity.
https://www.hrdive.com/news/salary-history-ban-states-list/516662
Now, if you voluntarily give your information about your compensation, they obviously can use it to determine your future compensation, but you are not obligated to answer what your salary history or required to provide proof of what your previous compensation history was…
So you can play it two ways. If you had a great compensation package, that otherwise would be unbelievable, I think it would be helpful to volunteer that information with proof so it it removes any doubt you made that.
If on the other hand your compensation was shitty, you aren’t obligated to say anything. At most the only thing they will ask you is “what are compensation requirements” or “this is what we are willing to pay you”… And you can negotiate from there, assuming there is mutual interest up to that point.
Most of the people that I know that jumped ship wasn’t really looking to move in the beginning. They got hit up by a recruiter on linkedin, who asked them if they were willing to consider a new opportunity, they casually said “I’m always open to opportunity but not really actively looking”, did a few rounds of informal meet and greet, and then if the company actually was interested, threw out a comp number that was big enough for them to motivate to move, thinking well if the new company gave what they wanted, they would seriously consider it, not thinking that it would happen…And then the new company gave the comp package that they threw out there. Usually, when a recruiters contacts me about a opportunity, I usually go through the motion of talking the recruiter and then the hiring director/VP, because you never know what you might find…and even if it’s not something that I’m interested in or I’m not a good fit, I always leave a note with that person “well, it’s nice to meet you. I know you’re looking for people and if there’s anyone on my network you think that might fit what you’re looking for, feel free to reach out to me and I can put you in contact with anyone you might think is interesting”… It’s goodwill to do this. Because while, you might not have landed a fitting job with that person, maybe you can help him find someone that is. And then maybe that person remembers you, and he/she runs into someone looking for someone with your background, maybe he’ll put you in contact with that person…if you do that enough, it increases you’re chances of finding a better gig. Might not be today, tomorrow, or the next month…There’s certain point that finding a next job is more about who you know and your reputation than going through the bottom up approach of applying for job through HR…
The other thing I’ve learned is if you have to pick and choose between pissing off your engineers or pissing off your VP.. Piss of the VP. Why? Because especially for a lot of those younger hot shot engineers. Those engineers give or take a few years will end up being directors and VP’s, and chances are, how well you treated them (or not) will have a direct impact on what sort of opportunity you might have in the future, when you might end up working for them because they got on a luckier path than you did… Just recently, I had a former employee asking me if I wanted to fill an open manager position because his boss moved up. I wasn’t interested in the position, because generally I don’t like moving backwards to a lower position, unless there’s a good reason to, but the boss seemed like a good guy.
CoronitaParticipant.
CoronitaParticipantMore of the details I’d say is… Given that we have a increasing higher living cost in San Diego, it seems like there are 2 primary ways to survive here.
1. Be part of the new industry/professions/jobs whatever that are commanding the higher paying compensations to allow you to absorb these higher living costs in san diego
or
2. don’t be part of the new industry/profession/jobs/whatever that pays differently now, but ensure that you have taken appropriate steps to keep your living costs capped…IE you bought a house years ago when you still could….
See not everyone here in SD must be working in those new high paying jobs in order to survive. Those people that bought their homes years ago, can continue to operating as is since they capped their living expenses more or less even while home prices/rent are sky rocketing. So while they might not be the most employable and be able to obtain the highest paid current jobs…frankly, they don’t need to in order to remain in san diego….
It’s one of the main reasons why I went into rentals. Because I knew there was a day where my skills and age isn’t the most desirable and I wouldn’t be able to command the highest pay that keeps up with higher living costs, as most engineer’s salaries tend to taper off and run flat much sooner than other professions…and so a lot of my financial decisions were made outside of engineering to mitigate WHEN (not if) that occurs….Let’s not even talk about changes to taxation policies that could flatten that earning curve much sooner, considering in some cases, that W2 income would be considered by some as “rich” and be taxed more, with very little things you can do (IE no real tax shelters for W2 salary slaves)….Fortunately for me, I’ve been able to overextend my stay in engineering beyond what I thought I would have been allowed stay in this field…by simply moving into management to prolong the eventual career death I’m pretty confident I will eventually experience, short of starting my own company that is profitable…which all else being equal, I’d rather open a Boba bubble tea place, lol.
CoronitaParticipantBack in 90ies, the real estate market in SD was just barely recovering from a very large recession that happened in SoCal, primarily in the L.A. and S.D. areas with a heavy concentration of defense contractor businesses that vaporized…
Around that time Irwin Jacobs started Qualcomm and brought 4000+ jobs to San Diego and made san diego a wireless/telco center, with a bunch of other telco’s that followed….Back then we had the same problem. While we had a lot of job openings, very few of the local employee pool in SD were qualified to do the work. So we had to hire outside and convince people to come here. They did come. From all over the US and overseas. And they filled those open jobs….
Forget about Qualcomm right now, and there 20k+ employees. Let’s talk about Amazon, Walmart Labs, Google, and now Apple who have decided to expand their footprint also in San Diego….
20 years ago, I would have said the high tech, high paid jobs in san diego were next to non-existance, unless you were a QC employee. Things are quite different now. In addition to Sorrento Valley and the Rancho Bernardo corridor, Carlsbad has also become a place where tech startups like to incubate, as two of my former employers were there. Yes, there is still a footprint of lower paid, older type of companies that are still stuck in the 80-90ies type of work and 80-90ies type of compensation. But that is slowly becoming less and less… I won’t even go into all the bio-tech and medical-tech companies that are starting (which unfortunately for me I am probably not qualified to work in)…There’s a boatload of opportunity there, and if you’re skills are in those area, it’s going to be a goldmine for you..I think bio-tech and medical-tech is even stronger here in SD than in Bay Area. I don’t see Illumina going anywhere soon, nor any of their offshoots.
IT bell weathers are also pretty solid now here in SD. One of my old colleagues founded the Service Now office here in SD. They have a pretty big footprint. Walmart Labs is also pretty much here to stay and giving Amazon a pretty good run for their money. 5 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed that because my understanding was the Walmark Labs mobile team was tasked with just maintaining deprecated app and so I didn’t decide to join that team… I think they’ve moved beyond that there seems to be a lot of innovation happening both in Sunnyvale and Carlsbad.
I think there will be some people that leave SD due to the changing industry and those who can’t take advantage of the new opportunities and also who have not taken steps to peg their living costs earlier as the cost of living start to rise here. Double edge sword of better opportunities for people with skills and that brings more money into the region which in term probably will drive up living costs more which in turn while put more pressure on those who have not fixed their living costs and also unable to take advantage of the changing/new opportunities…those people probably will have no choice but to leave…
CoronitaParticipantThe other thing about the 70:1 buyer to house ratio…
1. Sellers can simply choose the highest offer even if it has a loan contigency. There’s virtually no need to worry about things falling out of escrow of a need to rush to close escrow out of fear of losing the buyer…Because if the buyer doesn’t perform, there’s 69 other backup buyers to choose from, lol…
Cash is trash unless you want to overbid on cash or totally leverage up the ying yang to participate in this game…As an investor, I don’t want to compete against 70 people looking for a home to live in…because since it will be an owner occupied home, they are more likely to spend a lot more money on a home even to the point of irrationality…Also, with a 70:1 ratio, I’m pretty sure some new construction builders will stop with the traditional lottery system of determining who can buy a new home…It would make much more sense for the builders to auction off the homes and put them into a bidding war… Come on, builders aren’t dumb. There’s 14,000 applicants for 200 homes… The builders would have to be stupid NOT change the sales process to maximize their profits… Or at least what they will to is totally fully option out the homes and make the buyers pay for all the upgrades with the builder’s markup. Think limited edition car sold at MSRP, but fully loaded with options also at MSRP.
I mean, right now, it’s a total seller’s market on steroids, I think most homes are going well above asking. I forget where I read that statistics.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=spdrun]I don’t think it will crash, but it will normalize this summer, since people will be more comfortable listing their homes and having open houses if COVID is no longer a major issue. People will list to take advantage of higher prices.[/quote]
Huh? I don’t think COVID is really detracting people from listing their houses or having open houses because of the virus itself….
when a house comes on the market, you have to sign a bunch of waivers and then schedule a viewing time. The listing agent, given how hot the market is, usually provides a few days (usually over the weekend) where you can schedule and view the house in 15-20 minute time slots. Then usually all offers are accepted up to monday…Then there’s usually
multiple counter offer across the 10-30+ offers on that one house, if the seller even bothers with a counter. In my last case, the seller didn’t even bother to counter and just picked one offer.I don’t know. Where’s there’s 200 new construction homes in 3Roots / Sorrento Mesa, and there’s 14,000 applicants interest in those 200 homes (and that’s only the number of applicants before the builders stopped accepting more applicants…) …. I don’t know… That seems to me there’s still a lot of people looking for a home an no inventory relieve in sight….
If I were to guess, some people probably aren’t selling because maybe, just maybe they are holding on thinking that they can get an even higher price a few months from now.. Who knows. There was a condo that the seller countered 6 of us, me one of them being cash. I already put a bid slightly above asking $608k, cash offer, 15 day close no loan contigency. A few days later, seller cancelled selling the condo and decided to hold onto it and rent it out. Go figure…
I mean think about it. 200 homes 14,000 applicants….
https://www.piggington.com/3rootsThat seems pretty consistent with what some of the on-the-ground realtors are saying that when a nice north county home comes on the market, there’s like 40+ families bidding on that 1 home. In some cases 70 families bidding… 70:1 ratio as crazy as it sounds probably happens more frequently these days.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=deadzone]FLU and AN I assume are hiring for niche type positions within the wireless industry. San Diego is one of the (or the) hub for that industry so that may explain why you are not finding qualified applicants in Florida.
But I still don’t agree with your logic that folks are coming to San Diego en masse for the “lower” cost of living due to remote work. Just because you have anecdotal examples does not make it an actual thing. As Rich asked, where is the evidence that more folks are moving here due to remote work than are leaving? It is far more logical to think more folks would be leaving. Your wireless engineer making 200K would live like a king in most parts of the country.
Of course leaving SD to work remotely could be risky too. If the work from home trend is short lived, which I think it will be, then you could be screwed trying to get a job in your new locale down the road.[/quote]
Actually, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything in the wireless industry. Short of Qualcomm/Broadcom stock option bandwagon, Qualcomm/Broadcom is a pretty bad place to be if you are mobile application engineer, because they really don’t have any commercial mobile applications that make money in any meaningful way. It’s not their core business. So if you happen to work on mobile apps for Qualcomm/Broadcom, you are not making money for the company. You are a liability that will eventually get right sized if the rest of the core business isn’t doing well. If you’re an embedded software engineer, or work on chip design or do wireless design, it’s a great place to be. Application software engineer, I can think of many places that would be better. My current company is more IT’ish than pure wireless/mobile tech company. I don’t consider a company as being a tech company if the CEO doesn’t have a tech background, and mine doesn’t.
But my point was that it’s a misconception that those high salaries will be generally available. For example, as it stands, I’m going to be paying $140-50k for a mid-level mobile engineer maybe 4-5 years of experience. But there’s a wrinkle. That person better know his sh1t.
I get a lot of resumes that try to pass themselves off as a mid-level experienced mobile engineer, but I would say 70-80% of the resumes end up in the trashcan. And the ones that I phone screen, 10% make it to the panel interview. And we haven’t been happy with any candidate that makes it to the panel interview. … For instance, I get a lot of folks claiming to be a 5-6 year mobile IOS engineer. But if you take a look at their resume, most of them wrote an app on their own, something along the line of a simple “Fart Sound App” that a middle school kid probably can do, published it, and claimed that the years it took to develop that “Fart Sound App” counts as the 4-5 years of experience.
I’m sorry, if the bulk of your mobile IOS engineer experience is creating a homegrown fart sound app that maybe has 10 reviews on the apple store, those years it took you to develop the fart sound app don’t really count as relevant experience. And while I was a self-taught mobile engineer, it was different….When I learned about Android or IOS things were still relatively new and not many people were working on this…so it was quite likely self-taught people who were highly motivated people knew more than the industry…and what I self learned, it was pretty comprehensive beyond just programming the api…enough to understand how all the intricate details of of the OS so I could modify the OS, or add a new Bluetooth stack or add additional Bluetooth profiles or convince google to throw away Bluez and replace it with Bluedroid, partly an attempt at the time to fvck over Qualcomm/Atheros that was heavily dependent and invested in Bluez..and force them to reintegrate their chipset wit a brand new bluetooth stack theyve never seen before, that we had been developing since Bluetooth was first conceived, making their connectivity solution look really shitty in a new stack….in the same way they made our baseband solution look shitty… ha ha… that also involved having to work with google to fix a bunch of race conditions in Google’s Bluetooth Manager some of their engineers accidentally injected into the AOSP codebase. Pretty ironic, considering that I probably would never pass the Google interview process to be on their Android Bluetooth team, but there i was fixing bunch of concurrency shit some of their engineers who must have passed those IQ interview tests accidentally injected in the AOSP framework. but that’s beside the point.
These days, if most of a person’s experience is from their own app with a handful of reviews, and they haven’t really done anything mobile related in a professional environment…sorry, that says they aren’t really an experienced mobile engineer…
It’s also interesting to look at their educational background. Most of the candidates don’t have a CS or Engineering degree/training. Not that an CS or Engineering degree is absolutely necessary to be a good mobile IOS or Android engineer. But you see some of these candidates were a B.A. major (nothing wrong)… Took a 7 month online IOS mobile “immersion course” (with no prior software/programming experience), somehow managed to be “lead instructor” for IOS mobile software engineer immersion course (despite the extend of their experience is 7 months crash course on IOS, again with no prior programming experience), and on their resume counts both of those things as part of their 4-5 years of IOS mid-level experience….And the funny part, I see a bunch of other candidates that fit the same profile….I don’t even need to phone screen those candidates, or give them the take home “write an app so we can review” interview takehome assignment. I know it will be a waste of time… Still, occasionally I let one go through with the interview process, just to see if I might accidentally overlooks someone with sheer natural talent….I haven’t found one that is….
CoronitaParticipant[quote=an][quote=deadzone][quote=an][quote=deadzone][quote=an]The 2nd sentence say 100% remote. We have no idea where the company head quarter is and we don’t care, since it’s 100% remote. For all we know, they don’t even have an office.
BTW, how do you know that’s bay area pay?[/quote]
No idea if that is Bay area pay, just picked that as an example cause it looked like higher salaries than are typical in San Diego.
But either way, I don’t see the logic that remote work would increase salaries, or that my company would pay me my San Diego salary, for example, if I chose to remote work from Arkansas. If that option was widely available, I guarantee a crap ton of folks would leave San Diego.[/quote]
If you say so[/quote]No, if you say so. You are the one coming to an illogical assumption.
Look I would love to get a salary increase for working from home too. But not holding my breath it’s going to happen.[/quote]
You can apply for those positions and get the raise[/quote]To be fair, those positions pay well. But they also demand applicants to be well qualified. Not everyone will be well qualified. So it’s not a guarantee that everyone’s compensation/wages will be going up. Primarily those who are in high demand.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=deadzone][quote=an][quote=deadzone][quote=an]The 2nd sentence say 100% remote. We have no idea where the company head quarter is and we don’t care, since it’s 100% remote. For all we know, they don’t even have an office.
BTW, how do you know that’s bay area pay?[/quote]
No idea if that is Bay area pay, just picked that as an example cause it looked like higher salaries than are typical in San Diego.
But either way, I don’t see the logic that remote work would increase salaries, or that my company would pay me my San Diego salary, for example, if I chose to remote work from Arkansas. If that option was widely available, I guarantee a crap ton of folks would leave San Diego.[/quote]
If you say so[/quote]No, if you say so. You are the one coming to an illogical assumption.
Look I would love to get a salary increase for working from home too. But not holding my breath it’s going to happen.[/quote]
Um….I’ve been trying to hire people. My company is cheap based out of florida, where’s suppose to be cheaper to hire and there’s no state income tax. My company has come to the following 2 conclusions
1) Top talent cannot be easily acquired in Florida alone
2) While it’s been proven at my company that we can get remote workers to work (especially SDET), no one outside of florida is going to join our company if we continue to only pay florida wages. Because top talent will find a higher paying remote job…
I was just authorized today to bump up the range of mid-level mobile engineers by quite a bit to stay competitive, above what my San Diegan engineers (which already were pretty well paid) is. The truth of the matter is I don’t see many of the remote workers running for cover in florida. most of them are choosing to stay where they currently are here in some being in SD, even if dollar for dollar they might be better off in Florida without paying for state income taxes.
The feedback is they are happy they can remain where they are for various reasons.. Most have family and kids to think about and don’t want to uproot their entire family. Most people have settled here and have their homes here, and their cost of living, for practical purposes is fixed given that they decided to buy a house years ago. In fact, now having a remote higher paying job allows them to remain where there are and not worry about the limited job prospects of only a local San Diego job market previously was available. It seems like the only ones that are really talking about leaving San Diego among peers are the ones who are getting left behind who still have limited career prospects and for which the side effects of remote working from the pandemic economy they did not benefit from and who’s cost of living (mainly housing) is no longer obtainable and struggling… Hourly, non-tech, non-remote-available comparable jobs.
There is an influx of highly paid workers from higher cost areas that think San Diego is cheap for what they are use to paying and the climate, schools, weather, etc and for them, this cost of living compared to what they were previously use to as their cost of living, is considered much more affordable. My tenants for instance have been with their LA companies for several years, and previously remote work was not an option for them. Now that is is, they will continue to reap their higher paid salary from LA company and be able to live in a much more affordable san diego (in terms of for the same amount they pay for housing in LA, they are getting a heck of a lot more down here).
CoronitaParticipant[quote=sdrealtor]What is the lizard situation 3Roots vs Stone creek?[/quote]
and what about walls
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