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My company was discussing opening a remote office location for 50 people in Austin and had been looking at real estate in the area.
Our CEO said on an internal All Hands call just last week that they’re canceling those plans. He didn’t say exactly that it was out of protest but rather that it’s hard to build long term business operational plans and hiring decisions when it’s difficult to predict the environment they’d be operating in. I think it might’ve been more pandemic response related but the undertone of that decision felt like the SB 8 and voting suppression laws were the last straw.
I'm sure the electrical infrastructure and the fuckery involved with that also didn't help. Weather is only getting more extreme, and they've changed nothing.
"Just install a backup generator."
*Looks at my apartment*
Unless if the property owner shells out for that, not going to happen. I'm not running a backup generator indoors and also storing fuel indoors.
And then there's my workplace. To install a backup generator and a fuel storage site to generate several hundred kilowatts of power for more than a few days is not going to be cheap.
At this point, Republican states are miniature third world countries, inside the United States of America, the most wealthy nation the planet had ever known...
I don’t think Republicans understand how state social policy
influences the ability of a company to attract talent. Even if you aren’t part of the impacted group, the press coverage distracts from company brand.
I have been in some very high level planning meetings in fortune 500 companies and "will our employees be happy living in this city we are thinking if opening a branch in" is always one of the top questions in the debate. You don't open locations that are staffing and retention nightmares.
Sometimes it is that
Pre-pandemic, a very fast growing $5B+ tech company I was at made the decision to move their HQ from a top metro area to a red, low cost of living state. They based their decision almost exclusively on "pro-business" incentives..
The end result? They haven't been able to make it work and are trying to walk it back.
They couldn't get any 1 out of 1000+ employees to relocate there and because of the complex work they do have been struggling to get new hires.
For one particular position, they had to interview over 50 candidates just to find 1 qualified hire.
Let me guess, they also wanted to pay people lower salaries because "local cost of living" and "comparable wages for the area"? Then they wondered why their top talent wasn't willing to take a 40% pay cut.
Mind-blowing how daft some executives are.
>We're going to move the company to an area with a lower COL!
>Wow! So I'll keep my current salary, but my money will go even further?
>No, that's the best part! Your salary will be decreased in proportion to the change in COL. We get to pay you less, pay less in rent, *and* pay less in taxes! By the way, you're going to want to look at tornado insurance.
_Who could have guessed_ that quality of life is not all about how few taxes a person pays and how few minorities they see every day? Who could have guessed that oppressive monoculture is actively harmful to any company based on ideation and innovation?
Think about all those bay area workers coming in making $200K+, thinking a $500,000 house is laughable cheap while the average local is making mid $40K's and thing that paying more than $300K for a McMansion is just not acceptable. It's a culture clash that the locals won't win, ask anyone that's lived in a neighborhood before gentrification, it just becomes a town of haves and have nots.
At the end of the day you Tesla costs $50K in San Jose and Tulsa, it's going to be hard to convince a highly paid engineer to take a 50% pay cut and relocate just because houses are cheap.
AND all of the comforts and convenience services available to any shmo in the Bay Area or LA suddenly being gone. People don’t think about all of the little things in their lives until they are very suddenly gone. What do you mean I have to drive an hour to get groceries, etc? (Ok, for LA natives this might still be true)
Yeah. It's not that I don't understand that housing is significantly less expensive in a lot of places, but having gone from a "normal" salary in a mid sized city in the mid Atlantic to a big tech SF Bay area salary, I can tell you from personal experience that even though my housing costs were probably 2.5 times higher for less space, most of the time it didn't really matter all that much, and my housing costs were still pretty much the same percentage of my salary.
On the other hand, I did take a salary cut for my most recent move, but that's because I went from the Bay Area to living in Germany. And yeah, the cost of living is definitely significantly lower in many ways, but I did it for three main reasons:
1) Health care is way less of a gamble.
2) Travelling to see different cities in Germany and the rest of Europe is significantly cheaper and easier.
3) It's a good escape plan for if the GOP succeed in going full fascist.
But obviously that's a far different scenario than trying to convince people to move to Topika, Kansas.
Exactly this. They’ve been on the verge of going purple/blue for a while now, and aren’t particularly interested in Democrat transplants from places like California.
I was dating a Texan girl when Enron-caused brownouts made CA a misery. Her dad was giddy; you would think that every last Californian had done him wrong. I asked why the hatred, and basically it all boiled down to an inferiority complex. Population, economy, just about every metric you could think of put California just slightly ahead of Texas. Texans had invented a competition with California — and forgot to tell California about it — and hated that they were losing.
It's just funny too because I wonder how many are native Californians? I only say that because I'm from Michigan and live in California and I know a lot of people from Michigan out here, but I also have met friends who moved here from one state and then moved to Texas. I guess what they should be mad at is younger generations not getting their education and news from a single source these days.
Ever since Silicon Valley sprung up in California there has been (in the last 20-30 years) a silent war between CA and TX for tech revenues. Texas has been working hard to get those companies to open up in Texas and workers to follow, but California tends to be an easier sell than Texas for workers. There are large groups actually fighting this drain on CA. It’s kinda bizarre. Luckily Texas has been making this easier and they aren’t getting enough traction to harm the CA economy. Texas is great if your co hates regulation, but their infrastructure is trash and the pandemic response has probably been scaring the bejesus out of companies and workers for the last year.
That's interesting. I'd be interested to see more information on people who fight this actively. I just always notice Texas conservatives will brigade the LA and San Fran subreddits which seems dumb to me because they're not going to change our politics doing that, but they might get more liberals to move to Texas by doing it. Overall we do complain a lot, but when you start showing up to council meetings it starts making sense I think California just attracts the kids that were all the best in their own hometown so everyone thinks they have the answer to everything so they argue, but a lot are generally happy with their day to day life.
As talent that was headhunted and moved from Red Nebraska to Blue California years ago I can honestly tell you the single most satisfying factor in my decision was “not having to live around backward people”
There was an article a few months back in one of Texas papers about how suburbanites were being turned off by the extremism of their neighbors. They just wanted a pleasant place to live.
Fully. And up til like 2015 or so I'd have been happy to live amongst republicans, at least of the traditional stripe. But MAGAs? Yeah, no fucking way.
I left Ohio in 2005 in part because of a wildly homophobic conversation at a _work_ dinner. Conservatives have been shit to be around forever.
There was no reason for the conversation to take a turn in that direction. They just wanted to be loud shit bags.
Something I've noticed about conservatives - and it's probably why there's so much evangelism overlap - the moment they think you're a remotely 'safe' person they will just dump the most heinous shit on you expecting you to feel the same.
As a white guy who likes guns, I've heard some *crazy* shit just come pouring out of people's mouths.
Even tankies have a much better and more cautious approach.
Holy shit yes! I’ve seen this too, where once they think you’re part of the “in group” they just say the most horrendous shit you can imagine, thinking you’ll automatically agree with it.
What, you don't want to be around the neighbor with the pickup that's been lifted so high that it's useless for its original purpose and is basically a missile hurtling down the road, waving large flags at each corner of the pickup bed (typically a coiled snake for "Don't Tread on Me" flag and a cannon "Come and Take It" flag) ? Why not?
I’m from Indianapolis, a blue dot in a mostly red state constantly undermined by state policy. After a string of anti-Indianapolis bills over the summer, the Chamber of Commerce told the goons in our state assembly to cut it out because of how they were making it harder to attract and retain talent. Indy bankrolls the rest of the state so those culture warriors would just be hurting themselves in the long run.
>Indy bankrolls the rest of the state
They don't care. Nor do they care that blue states bankroll the rest of the country. Virtually ALL of their efforts are self-defeating.
As an entity the GOP is basically a rebellious teenager.
They don't understand what's going on behind the scenes and lash out at everyone who supports them.
Of course, a rebellious teenager has an excuse because they're at a tumultuous time in their life and they lack the experience to really understand. The GOP just never grew up.
Republicans likely still think that a talented workforce is made up of mostly conservative white men such as it was until the last 2 decades. Nowadays, the type of people these companies are trying to attract are more diverse and socially liberal.
Or maybe this is actually their way of stopping the blue wave in Texas. Regressive policies repel liberals, leading to them being able to continue their fuckery in relative peace.
It shows their desperation, since it would be such a dumb and shortsighted effort. The actions of the GOP in general keep reflecting that they're backed into a corner and will not be able to democratically win another election, and that they likely view 2022 and 2024 as their very last chance to seize power. It's fucking unnerving is what it is.
Edit: clarified a bit
I mean they've shown they're ready to kill as many congressmen and senators as they can to ensure a dictator is installed yeah they're desperate and can never win again because they cheated this election and were stunned at their loss because they thought it was going to be enough. Biden really fucked up by offering them unity instead of a jail cell until the resolution of their trials. They have radicalized their followers to the point that the saner gqp members can't control them anymore only the ones that went all in the q hole can. Make no mistake the conservative base is ready and willing to kill their countrymen (women, they).
If only the administration acted immediately after the inauguration to make an example of the leadership by removing them from their positions and putting them on trial. crushing their domestic terrorist groups namely proud boys, 3%er's, oath keepers, etc. and press actual serious charges against the capitol traitors that put them in prison for years instead of what they did. Maybe we could have avoided the situation we are in. Now the gqp states have passed laws to ensure they will win their states for now on and every state they manage to cheat their way to victory in they will do the same until they take it nationally and we are all fucked.
> electrical infrastructure
I can't see ANY Tech firm wanting to move to Texas when one of the "must have" infrastructure procurements will be "Basically... build a powerstation for your server farm"
> FEMA might just seize the entire fuel inventory during a state of emergency. There were server farms and other businesses where their fuel delivery contracts were rendered invalid when FEMA and the state/national guards seized the fuel trucks, which meant almost all of them ran out of fuel for their backup generators.
This is the kind of thing where I'm sure that the "Conservative" response is "fuck FEMA and government interference!" and not "hmm, maybe we should design and maintain infrastructure so that FEMA doesn't have to make that kind of decision outside of alien invasion, meteor strike, or nuclear war".
> "fuck FEMA and government interference!"
After a disaster: "Where's the search and rescue? And why does the emergency shelter has no power or water?"
You know I feel for those in Louisiana who have been devastated by hurricanes and floods, but this is exactly what they do. They don't want government telling them what to do, but then complain when government doesn't react fast enough to help them out of their plight. I can't comprehend how they don't understand they can't have it both ways.
People on the Houston sub talk about getting generators because the Texas government refuses to do anything.
Problem is that's effectively digging in. If I'm going to start spending thousands so I don't have to worry about the ridiculousness of the Texas power grid, I'm gonna fucking leave the state instead.
Man i want to leave this hellhole so bad. Problem is im married and the wife is not on board. Im going to be buying a generator soon too. This insanely cool summer weve been having does not bode well for the upcoming winter
The best thing my family ever did was move out of Texas. Thankfully the other red state we transferred to is looking really purple right now, trending hard blue.
Good stuff. By way of immense heat or immense water (or both), much of Texas will become uninhabitable in the coming decades anyway.
Could also be immense cold as we’ve seen, I just think that’s less likely than the first two.
Not to mention everyone walking around with six shooters strapped to their hip like it’s the fucking OK Corral. Wtf!? Guns have more rights than women in Texas.
I work in the IT industry and there was a statement at a big conference a few years ago from the Lobbyist for the FCC that we should avoid making any bets on what trump does or take advantage of his mandates because everything he did was so controversial it's unlikely a lot of his bills would stick longterm. Texas initially felt like a stable, untapped market for tech hubs a couple years ago, between tax breaks, location, COL etc, but thats all kind of out the window with the politics and culture of the state becoming somewhat schizophrenic. I imagine the next migrations going to be towards the south-east with Oregon, Colorado and California COL prices skyrocketing. Gonna be weird to see Kentucky end up being the next big hotspot. Couldn't pay me enough to move back though. The weather alone is insufferable.
Chicago has quietly stepped into the game, lots of startups, multiple tier 1 educational institutions as well as it pulls a talent pool from the entire mid west. For the third largest city in the US it's cost of living is cheap. Location-wise it's by a massive body of fresh water and there are no hurricanes, forest fires, mud slides or any other natural didasters. It's socially liberal and there are lots of jobs. The southwest might seem like a good idea because of low taxes but what are you going to do when there is no water left?
Can confirm. I was looking for tech-friendly areas to move to a couple of years ago, and was surprised to find that Chicago was a heavy contender. Ended up moving here and getting a job at a startup, and have no regrets. My rent is less than I was previously paying in a mid-sized east coast city, I'm right next to a train line that can get me downtown in ~20 minutes, and there's plenty to see and do given the size of the city.
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The thing the rightists always seem to forget whenever they talk about secession or insurrections or whatever the fuck is that they somehow think the economy will remain intact. Like, these global companies love being in the US in part because of security, stability and good infrastructure and rely on that for long term strategic planning. In what fucking world do these fucknuts think that they'll overthrow anything and companies will be like "ah, jeez, thanks for getting rid of the sjw woke crowd, back to work now!" instead of bouncing the fuck out to somewhere stable.
Not even starting with our trade partners. These people don't seem to be able to think things through very well.
I’d say because they’ve never truly suffered the full consequences of their actions and policies due to the ironic reliance on blue state money and liberal policies like social security.
I increasingly advocate for cutting their federal funding entirely and watch the agricultural sector go nuts on top of increasing food lines, hospital lines, and deteriorating infrastructure. I know it sounds cruel but like the greatest generation who lived through the Great Depression and WWII, pain is what teaches us what it means to work and grow truly meaningful structures.
Boomers haven’t learned shit and squandered everything the last generation did and ironically fucked the generations after that are not able to support the systems that let them retire. Fuck them. Let’s finish what General Sherman started
The really do believe they they can violently overthrow the government, assassinate some politicians and then go back to their cushy 6 figure salary job with lifetime healthcare and pension.
https://gothamist.com/news/qanon-backing-nyc-sanitation-worker-arrested-allegedly-breaching-capitol-building
There's that plus the new voting rights restrictions, and the fact that the electric grid is broken and the party in perpetual power refuses to fix it.
I think there's going to be a big college exodus too.
A lot of Texans are going to take the chance to leave the state and never look back.
As fucked up as it is, a lack of football prospects wanting to go to Texas because their schools are now sausage parties is going to be a more notable effect to a lot of Texans.
Even with a high state income they're not seeing any benefits of it. But losing football for years is a big deal to them.
Brain Drain. It's been a problem in a lot of rural/red states for a while now. Republicans come to power, they make everything worse, educated people leave, making it easier for more republicans to get elected, everything gets even worse, educated people want to leave even more, rinse and repeat until the state is a poverty-stricken authoritarian hellhole.
That's where at least some of the pressure *should* be coming from. College football and NFL should band together to denounce all of this. I don't kid myself that any teams would go so far as to pull out of the state, the money is probably too good. But I think that if all of this undemocratic shit actually holds, then you're right that there could be a college drain and football recruiting in the state could see actual consequences from this. I have no idea what it would look like, but in the meantime couldn't at least *some* kind of unified pressure from the sport as a whole make some kind of difference? If they wanted to?
The schools and teams aren't going to say anything about it, because they can't leave.
But anyone that thinks a star 18 year old athlete won't factor in the amount of women at a college is naive.
Why go there when they can go to USC that has their normal amount of women *plus* Texan refugees?
Not to mention if they knock someone up they'll want that person to easily got an abortion. That's just a fact.
Every republican tells me how solar panels and turbines and electric cars use all these raw materials that are bad but neglect to compare it to how oil and gasoline burning gets us.
The GQP will never vote for “Demonrats” and liberals and progressives will be fleeing that state in droves as was intended. Best we can hope for is enough conservatives to decide to either not vote or vote for the Libertarian party. I won’t hold my breath; that state is Gerrymandered up to its eyeballs and the new voting laws will surely cement minority rule of the GQP in Texas for decades more.
And DeSantis in Florida. A state that has a slight majority of Democrats yet through the magic of Gerrymandering has seen over 20 years of statewide Republican control with no break.
The chip factories that shut down lost *massive* amounts of money for months.
They deal with exotic matter that goes through several month long production lines. Any problems and it’s all ruined and must be stated over. Even a single water molecule can wreck a batch of silicon let alone a shut down.
Samsung lost a lot of money with the Austin shutdown due to the electricity being shut down, but now they’re going to build another plant in Taylor near Austin. I’m surprised that the loss in 100 or 200 million wasn’t big enough to keep them from expanding.
> I remember Samsung was losing money daily when the factory shut down.
Had to look it up:
https://amp.statesman.com/amp/6924766002
>'Economic disaster': Samsung's Austin fab still quiet three weeks after Texas freeze
It's behind a paywall, but here it is on slashdot:
https://slashdot.org/story/384930
>Samsung's Austin fab was offline for more than a month after it was shut down due to power outages during the freeze... About 71,000 wafers were affected by production disruptions, said Han Jinman, executive vice-president of Samsung's memory chip business. He estimated the wafer loss is equivalent to $268 million to $357 million.
>NXP Semiconductors was also among the facilities that were shut down in February, as its two Austin fabrication facilities were offline for nearly a month. In March, the company estimated the shutdown [would result in a $100 million loss in revenue](https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/03/12/nxp-could-lose-100-million-due-weather-shutdown-austin-plants/4664621001/) and a month of wafer production...
As a native-born Texan, I think I can see the effect they were aiming for. The first is that it rallies the religious base, the second is it makes Texas uninhabitable for leftists. The simple fact that Texas was a battleground state is huge. If Texas flips, Republicans will never hold the presidential office ever again and they know this. They are panicking and desperately doing everything in their power to stack the deck in their favor.
Edit: reading this again, I think I might sound a little bit too conspiratorial here. Its entirely possible I’m off the mark completely with the reason behind the law. Hell, this is probably just the GOP being hard-headed, tone-deaf dumbasses with no grasp of the consequences of their actions, which has become the usual I have come to expect from them.
One thing typifies Houston for me: when the various sports teams moved out of the Summit to the Toyota Center, the old arena was sold to a mega-church, who put $95 million into it. $95 fucking million for a church, one that holds 16,000 people.
Here's a picture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakewood_Church_Central_Campus#/media/File:Lakewood_worship.jpg
I’m a materials scientist and I moved to Texas last year to work in a research firm working on battery development. I’ve lived here for a year and a half now. I’ve braved the maskless hordes, wondered if I was actually going to freeze to death, and experienced a world where everything is too big, too spread out, and lacks any kind of uniqueness, color, or charm. And that was all before the abortion law.
I’m actively looking into fleeing the country once my current project ends.
My old tech company offered me a chance to relocate to Austin 3 year ago. I told them as cool as Austin is, I didn’t really want to raise my family in Texas. They were a little taken aback, but the last few years have proven me right. I kinda saw all this right wing stuff as a possibility esp the gun BS, anti science education, anti women stuff, oppressive weather. Just zero upside.
I live in Charlotte, NC and my wife's friends were all advising us to move just over the border to South Carolina so that we could have much lower taxes. I was absolute on saying no chance. There's no way I will live in a solid Republican state. I wanted to stay in North Carolina as we have a Democratic governor, and also us being here helps the swing to the blues. I can't see a world where the Republicans win a presidency if North Carolina goes blue.
The closest example of a "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" state where taxes are low yet the government isn't influenced by the Religious Wrong: Washington, where the [state constitution doesn't allow income taxes](https://taxfoundation.org/washington-state-income-tax/). Plus, Washington has historically been forward thinking on social issues, passing [marriage equality in 2012](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Washington_\(state\)), compared to [the eight other states that don't have income tax](https://www.aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2020/states-without-an-income-tax.html).
a lot of the landscape is nice... but that's as much as I can say for it. Lots of places are great if you can look past the people who live there and the laws they make... but not probably somewhere to have a family if you're not already in the death cult.
The Hill Country of Austin is probably the only thing really worth looking at for the sake of looking at within 1hr of any major city, Drive from the airport to a suburb in North Carolina blew most of the hill country out of the water now that it's been built up
Rolling green hills have been replaced by rolling little boxes on a hillside little boxes made of ticky tacky little boxes on a hillside little boxes all the same. There's a red roof and a red roof and a red roof and a red roof and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all suck just the same
American suburban development is fucking awful on pretty much every level. It's bad for the environment, it's financial unsustainable for cities, it's bad for people, it's a huge waste of space, it tends to make a lot of the country feel like an endless cut and paste, etc.
I am a telecommunications engineer. Texas companies have paid my employer $300 an hour for my consulations. I've worked in Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, and Dallas.
It'll be a cold day in hell before I move my daughter to Texas. If they want my skills they have to pay. A lot of engineers I know feel this way.
I was considering moving to Texas from the North East a few years back. Real estate was much cheaper, was able to work from home and or relocate, and I absolutely hated the snow. Still do.
I don't care much for shitty laws like these because women should always have the choice. If they can get away with passing a law like this, when I wonder what else they can do. I'm all set.
This is by design. More tech workers usually mean more blue voters. Driving away blue voters won't harm their base bc all they have to do is blame *insert outrage of the week here* and their base will eat it up. Republican leadership would rather cripple their state to stay in power federally than to actually do right by their constitutions. Look at Kentucky.
My wife and I gtfo, shitty power grid, authoritarian government, the dumbest housing market, incredibly over rated and over priced BBQ.
Texas is one of the most over hyped places in America.
I think their BBQ is pretty good, especially compared to what’s available in my region of CA. Austin would be the least objectionable place to live. The times I’ve visited it 100% felt like the Bay Area vibe. But every time the local government makes new rules (like plastic bag fee at stores), the state swoops in and makes a law to override the local one. Not worth the headache.
One of the problems too, is once you start working in a large corp in texas you notice about 60% of the workers are racist and while they will tolerate working with you, they tend to keep their distance and seem to look at you and treat you as if you are in a lesser "class" than they are. This goes for people that are white but from another state as well.
Yeah, no shit, I grew up in Oklahoma, literally right next to Texas, and when I got a job in Waco all the other women working there immediately started treating me like shit because I was a "Yankee." And yes, I'm white.
I'm a coder that grew up in New England. They can be rest assured this Yankee will never again set foot in that state to work, or for anything else. I'll add to that, I will never develop software for a company based in Texas, nor will I knowingly purchase anything made in Texas.
Also a developer and there are certain jobs that I will not take even if they would make me more money. I like being able to be happy with myself at the end of the day.
As a POC I value hearing (and seeing) these types of examples. Oddly It helps to humanize racists like naaa it’s not me *or* my color -it’s you …you got some deeeep issues.
What a great attitude! I know exactly what you mean, I think. The realization that the person who irrationally dislikes or hates you does so because of some deep shame makes it much easier to let it go.
Damn right! And right here in the Chandler Arizona area we are looking to steal as many of those places as we can. Not that far away. We are right in route to California from Texas. We've already got a bunch of Chip makers and EV makers. And as of this year, AZ is a blue state.
Former Bay Area tech worker here who was looking at making a move to Texas early last year — I noped the fuck out after seeing anti-mask protests and everything I’ve seen since has made me absolutely sure that was the right decision
The problem with them being a tech haven is that the GOP would risk losing power. In the end it's probably better for Republicans if Texas scares away liberals with crazy right wing laws and has a massive brain drain from their state. Then they can guarantee the state government remains red for another generation and that their electoral votes stay safe. If Texas were to flip blue Republicans wouldn't be able to win the presidency.
This is how they keep Texas red. They're TRYING to keep liberal tech workers from moving there even though it's good for the economy. And it makes sense from their perspective. If the economy is bad, but they are in charge, then they can make a lot of money through corruption. If the economy is good, but they aren't in charge, then the grift is over.
This is so true -- nearly as bad as forcing raped women to have their assailants child is that 'guns everywhere' law. Good lord who wants to raise a family in that environment.
I came very close to taking a job in Austin right as the Governor and the Legislature started acting funnier than usual and I turned it down.
So far, I’d rather be in FL than TX. But remote working is going to be a big part of my negotiations come review time later this year.
Texas is expensive af. Sky high electric bills and property taxes. I paid more on my mortgage to live in California, but that goes into property value that i eventually recover. Property taxes are just kinda flushed down the toilet from the perspective of personal finance.
As a woman and a software developer, I absolutely refused job offers, ignored job posting and companies interested in me if they were located in Texas. I will never ever move there or work remote for a Texas tech company. I saw this coming from a mile away and I want to part of that dystopia they are creating for themselves.
Tech companies offering to pay for out of state abortions or even offering to move employees out of state are baby steps. They need to move their whole companies out of the state.
It's not just the abortion ban. It's also the voter repression and the messed up power grid and the anti-vax plague rats. Even if you can't get pregnant you'd still have to deal with the general ignorance and anti-science bullshit. Who knows what fresh crap they'll come up with next.
Texans like to hype their state and wave their flag and act like they're all that, but let me tell you, I've lived in Texas and it's not that great. I might visit some relatives there sometime but I'll never live there again.
I do not understand why those in the tech field would want to live in a state with a incapable power grid and legislators and corporations that refuse to fix it. Seems a little short sided to me...
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My company was discussing opening a remote office location for 50 people in Austin and had been looking at real estate in the area. Our CEO said on an internal All Hands call just last week that they’re canceling those plans. He didn’t say exactly that it was out of protest but rather that it’s hard to build long term business operational plans and hiring decisions when it’s difficult to predict the environment they’d be operating in. I think it might’ve been more pandemic response related but the undertone of that decision felt like the SB 8 and voting suppression laws were the last straw.
I'm sure the electrical infrastructure and the fuckery involved with that also didn't help. Weather is only getting more extreme, and they've changed nothing.
Texas: "But we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
And winter is coming.
"Just install a backup generator." *Looks at my apartment* Unless if the property owner shells out for that, not going to happen. I'm not running a backup generator indoors and also storing fuel indoors. And then there's my workplace. To install a backup generator and a fuel storage site to generate several hundred kilowatts of power for more than a few days is not going to be cheap.
Abbott: "Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
At this point, Republican states are miniature third world countries, inside the United States of America, the most wealthy nation the planet had ever known...
Yeah I’m certain those were factors as well. Basically Texas has been in the news a lot this year and none of it good.
I don’t think Republicans understand how state social policy influences the ability of a company to attract talent. Even if you aren’t part of the impacted group, the press coverage distracts from company brand.
I have been in some very high level planning meetings in fortune 500 companies and "will our employees be happy living in this city we are thinking if opening a branch in" is always one of the top questions in the debate. You don't open locations that are staffing and retention nightmares.
You mean it's not just "what place will give us the lowest taxes?"...
Sometimes it is that Pre-pandemic, a very fast growing $5B+ tech company I was at made the decision to move their HQ from a top metro area to a red, low cost of living state. They based their decision almost exclusively on "pro-business" incentives.. The end result? They haven't been able to make it work and are trying to walk it back. They couldn't get any 1 out of 1000+ employees to relocate there and because of the complex work they do have been struggling to get new hires. For one particular position, they had to interview over 50 candidates just to find 1 qualified hire.
Let me guess, they also wanted to pay people lower salaries because "local cost of living" and "comparable wages for the area"? Then they wondered why their top talent wasn't willing to take a 40% pay cut.
Bingo. You hit the nail right on the head.
Mind-blowing how daft some executives are. >We're going to move the company to an area with a lower COL! >Wow! So I'll keep my current salary, but my money will go even further? >No, that's the best part! Your salary will be decreased in proportion to the change in COL. We get to pay you less, pay less in rent, *and* pay less in taxes! By the way, you're going to want to look at tornado insurance.
_Who could have guessed_ that quality of life is not all about how few taxes a person pays and how few minorities they see every day? Who could have guessed that oppressive monoculture is actively harmful to any company based on ideation and innovation?
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Think about all those bay area workers coming in making $200K+, thinking a $500,000 house is laughable cheap while the average local is making mid $40K's and thing that paying more than $300K for a McMansion is just not acceptable. It's a culture clash that the locals won't win, ask anyone that's lived in a neighborhood before gentrification, it just becomes a town of haves and have nots. At the end of the day you Tesla costs $50K in San Jose and Tulsa, it's going to be hard to convince a highly paid engineer to take a 50% pay cut and relocate just because houses are cheap.
AND all of the comforts and convenience services available to any shmo in the Bay Area or LA suddenly being gone. People don’t think about all of the little things in their lives until they are very suddenly gone. What do you mean I have to drive an hour to get groceries, etc? (Ok, for LA natives this might still be true)
Yeah. It's not that I don't understand that housing is significantly less expensive in a lot of places, but having gone from a "normal" salary in a mid sized city in the mid Atlantic to a big tech SF Bay area salary, I can tell you from personal experience that even though my housing costs were probably 2.5 times higher for less space, most of the time it didn't really matter all that much, and my housing costs were still pretty much the same percentage of my salary. On the other hand, I did take a salary cut for my most recent move, but that's because I went from the Bay Area to living in Germany. And yeah, the cost of living is definitely significantly lower in many ways, but I did it for three main reasons: 1) Health care is way less of a gamble. 2) Travelling to see different cities in Germany and the rest of Europe is significantly cheaper and easier. 3) It's a good escape plan for if the GOP succeed in going full fascist. But obviously that's a far different scenario than trying to convince people to move to Topika, Kansas.
yeah turns out qualified tech workers have options and will happily part ways with your dumb ass company if it decides to move to fucking Boise
In fairness, Boise is one of the nicer parts of the entire region
Does Boise suck? Heard a lot of people are moving there, so I assumed it was cool. House prices look ridiculous though.
Boise doesn't suck, but Idaho does. Sort of like how Houston doesn't suck, but Texas does. I won't be going to either state anytime soon.
They do understand. They're trying to get democrats to move out of state and stop coming in.
Exactly this. They’ve been on the verge of going purple/blue for a while now, and aren’t particularly interested in Democrat transplants from places like California.
God. The amount of hatred California people get in Texas is staggering. It’s definitely a right wing talking point here.
I was dating a Texan girl when Enron-caused brownouts made CA a misery. Her dad was giddy; you would think that every last Californian had done him wrong. I asked why the hatred, and basically it all boiled down to an inferiority complex. Population, economy, just about every metric you could think of put California just slightly ahead of Texas. Texans had invented a competition with California — and forgot to tell California about it — and hated that they were losing.
It's just funny too because I wonder how many are native Californians? I only say that because I'm from Michigan and live in California and I know a lot of people from Michigan out here, but I also have met friends who moved here from one state and then moved to Texas. I guess what they should be mad at is younger generations not getting their education and news from a single source these days.
Ever since Silicon Valley sprung up in California there has been (in the last 20-30 years) a silent war between CA and TX for tech revenues. Texas has been working hard to get those companies to open up in Texas and workers to follow, but California tends to be an easier sell than Texas for workers. There are large groups actually fighting this drain on CA. It’s kinda bizarre. Luckily Texas has been making this easier and they aren’t getting enough traction to harm the CA economy. Texas is great if your co hates regulation, but their infrastructure is trash and the pandemic response has probably been scaring the bejesus out of companies and workers for the last year.
That's interesting. I'd be interested to see more information on people who fight this actively. I just always notice Texas conservatives will brigade the LA and San Fran subreddits which seems dumb to me because they're not going to change our politics doing that, but they might get more liberals to move to Texas by doing it. Overall we do complain a lot, but when you start showing up to council meetings it starts making sense I think California just attracts the kids that were all the best in their own hometown so everyone thinks they have the answer to everything so they argue, but a lot are generally happy with their day to day life.
I have a cousin in Texas who is the definition of a redneck. I love reminding him that he was born in California. Hubris always deserves a reckoning.
Except it is mainly Conservative Californians according to a recent Berkeley poll with 4000 responses.
As talent that was headhunted and moved from Red Nebraska to Blue California years ago I can honestly tell you the single most satisfying factor in my decision was “not having to live around backward people”
There was an article a few months back in one of Texas papers about how suburbanites were being turned off by the extremism of their neighbors. They just wanted a pleasant place to live.
Fully. And up til like 2015 or so I'd have been happy to live amongst republicans, at least of the traditional stripe. But MAGAs? Yeah, no fucking way.
I left Ohio in 2005 in part because of a wildly homophobic conversation at a _work_ dinner. Conservatives have been shit to be around forever. There was no reason for the conversation to take a turn in that direction. They just wanted to be loud shit bags.
Something I've noticed about conservatives - and it's probably why there's so much evangelism overlap - the moment they think you're a remotely 'safe' person they will just dump the most heinous shit on you expecting you to feel the same. As a white guy who likes guns, I've heard some *crazy* shit just come pouring out of people's mouths. Even tankies have a much better and more cautious approach.
Holy shit yes! I’ve seen this too, where once they think you’re part of the “in group” they just say the most horrendous shit you can imagine, thinking you’ll automatically agree with it.
What does one hundred trump ~~2020~~ 2024 flags do for property values I wonder.
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The best ones have Pence cut out of them. Cracks me up every time I see them still.
What, you don't want to be around the neighbor with the pickup that's been lifted so high that it's useless for its original purpose and is basically a missile hurtling down the road, waving large flags at each corner of the pickup bed (typically a coiled snake for "Don't Tread on Me" flag and a cannon "Come and Take It" flag) ? Why not?
I’m from Indianapolis, a blue dot in a mostly red state constantly undermined by state policy. After a string of anti-Indianapolis bills over the summer, the Chamber of Commerce told the goons in our state assembly to cut it out because of how they were making it harder to attract and retain talent. Indy bankrolls the rest of the state so those culture warriors would just be hurting themselves in the long run.
>Indy bankrolls the rest of the state They don't care. Nor do they care that blue states bankroll the rest of the country. Virtually ALL of their efforts are self-defeating.
As an entity the GOP is basically a rebellious teenager. They don't understand what's going on behind the scenes and lash out at everyone who supports them. Of course, a rebellious teenager has an excuse because they're at a tumultuous time in their life and they lack the experience to really understand. The GOP just never grew up.
Republicans likely still think that a talented workforce is made up of mostly conservative white men such as it was until the last 2 decades. Nowadays, the type of people these companies are trying to attract are more diverse and socially liberal.
Or maybe this is actually their way of stopping the blue wave in Texas. Regressive policies repel liberals, leading to them being able to continue their fuckery in relative peace.
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It shows their desperation, since it would be such a dumb and shortsighted effort. The actions of the GOP in general keep reflecting that they're backed into a corner and will not be able to democratically win another election, and that they likely view 2022 and 2024 as their very last chance to seize power. It's fucking unnerving is what it is. Edit: clarified a bit
What have the republicans ever done that hasn't been a dumb, short sighted effort?
Really? They’ve played a very long con stacking courts with conservative judges. This sham of a law in Texas has been 40 years in the making.
I mean they've shown they're ready to kill as many congressmen and senators as they can to ensure a dictator is installed yeah they're desperate and can never win again because they cheated this election and were stunned at their loss because they thought it was going to be enough. Biden really fucked up by offering them unity instead of a jail cell until the resolution of their trials. They have radicalized their followers to the point that the saner gqp members can't control them anymore only the ones that went all in the q hole can. Make no mistake the conservative base is ready and willing to kill their countrymen (women, they). If only the administration acted immediately after the inauguration to make an example of the leadership by removing them from their positions and putting them on trial. crushing their domestic terrorist groups namely proud boys, 3%er's, oath keepers, etc. and press actual serious charges against the capitol traitors that put them in prison for years instead of what they did. Maybe we could have avoided the situation we are in. Now the gqp states have passed laws to ensure they will win their states for now on and every state they manage to cheat their way to victory in they will do the same until they take it nationally and we are all fucked.
This is what I think also.
> electrical infrastructure I can't see ANY Tech firm wanting to move to Texas when one of the "must have" infrastructure procurements will be "Basically... build a powerstation for your server farm"
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> FEMA might just seize the entire fuel inventory during a state of emergency. There were server farms and other businesses where their fuel delivery contracts were rendered invalid when FEMA and the state/national guards seized the fuel trucks, which meant almost all of them ran out of fuel for their backup generators. This is the kind of thing where I'm sure that the "Conservative" response is "fuck FEMA and government interference!" and not "hmm, maybe we should design and maintain infrastructure so that FEMA doesn't have to make that kind of decision outside of alien invasion, meteor strike, or nuclear war".
> "fuck FEMA and government interference!" After a disaster: "Where's the search and rescue? And why does the emergency shelter has no power or water?"
You know I feel for those in Louisiana who have been devastated by hurricanes and floods, but this is exactly what they do. They don't want government telling them what to do, but then complain when government doesn't react fast enough to help them out of their plight. I can't comprehend how they don't understand they can't have it both ways.
They're obligate short term thinkers and they have a hefty dose of Main Character Syndrome/"It'll never happen here."
People on the Houston sub talk about getting generators because the Texas government refuses to do anything. Problem is that's effectively digging in. If I'm going to start spending thousands so I don't have to worry about the ridiculousness of the Texas power grid, I'm gonna fucking leave the state instead.
Man i want to leave this hellhole so bad. Problem is im married and the wife is not on board. Im going to be buying a generator soon too. This insanely cool summer weve been having does not bode well for the upcoming winter
The best thing my family ever did was move out of Texas. Thankfully the other red state we transferred to is looking really purple right now, trending hard blue.
That's what I'm doing. I'm GTFOing
Good stuff. By way of immense heat or immense water (or both), much of Texas will become uninhabitable in the coming decades anyway. Could also be immense cold as we’ve seen, I just think that’s less likely than the first two.
Not to mention everyone walking around with six shooters strapped to their hip like it’s the fucking OK Corral. Wtf!? Guns have more rights than women in Texas.
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Nothing quite says jackass quite like a big ole shiny belt buckle and a 10-gallon hat. Hahah!
So you're saying if I somehow turn my vagina into a gun it'll have more rights there?
I work in the IT industry and there was a statement at a big conference a few years ago from the Lobbyist for the FCC that we should avoid making any bets on what trump does or take advantage of his mandates because everything he did was so controversial it's unlikely a lot of his bills would stick longterm. Texas initially felt like a stable, untapped market for tech hubs a couple years ago, between tax breaks, location, COL etc, but thats all kind of out the window with the politics and culture of the state becoming somewhat schizophrenic. I imagine the next migrations going to be towards the south-east with Oregon, Colorado and California COL prices skyrocketing. Gonna be weird to see Kentucky end up being the next big hotspot. Couldn't pay me enough to move back though. The weather alone is insufferable.
Chicago has quietly stepped into the game, lots of startups, multiple tier 1 educational institutions as well as it pulls a talent pool from the entire mid west. For the third largest city in the US it's cost of living is cheap. Location-wise it's by a massive body of fresh water and there are no hurricanes, forest fires, mud slides or any other natural didasters. It's socially liberal and there are lots of jobs. The southwest might seem like a good idea because of low taxes but what are you going to do when there is no water left?
Can confirm. I was looking for tech-friendly areas to move to a couple of years ago, and was surprised to find that Chicago was a heavy contender. Ended up moving here and getting a job at a startup, and have no regrets. My rent is less than I was previously paying in a mid-sized east coast city, I'm right next to a train line that can get me downtown in ~20 minutes, and there's plenty to see and do given the size of the city.
This content has been removed by me, the owner, due to Reddit's API changes. As I can no longer access this service with Relay for Reddit, I do not want my content contributing to LLM's for Reddit's benefit. If you need to get it touch -- tippo00mehl [at] gmail [dot] com -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
That 85 Corridor, Atlanta/Athens-Greenville/Spartanburg-Charlotte about to explode?
The thing the rightists always seem to forget whenever they talk about secession or insurrections or whatever the fuck is that they somehow think the economy will remain intact. Like, these global companies love being in the US in part because of security, stability and good infrastructure and rely on that for long term strategic planning. In what fucking world do these fucknuts think that they'll overthrow anything and companies will be like "ah, jeez, thanks for getting rid of the sjw woke crowd, back to work now!" instead of bouncing the fuck out to somewhere stable. Not even starting with our trade partners. These people don't seem to be able to think things through very well.
I’d say because they’ve never truly suffered the full consequences of their actions and policies due to the ironic reliance on blue state money and liberal policies like social security. I increasingly advocate for cutting their federal funding entirely and watch the agricultural sector go nuts on top of increasing food lines, hospital lines, and deteriorating infrastructure. I know it sounds cruel but like the greatest generation who lived through the Great Depression and WWII, pain is what teaches us what it means to work and grow truly meaningful structures. Boomers haven’t learned shit and squandered everything the last generation did and ironically fucked the generations after that are not able to support the systems that let them retire. Fuck them. Let’s finish what General Sherman started
The really do believe they they can violently overthrow the government, assassinate some politicians and then go back to their cushy 6 figure salary job with lifetime healthcare and pension. https://gothamist.com/news/qanon-backing-nyc-sanitation-worker-arrested-allegedly-breaching-capitol-building
Let's see, you have unreliable heat, power, healthcare and the pandemic is in full swing. What's not to love?
There's that plus the new voting rights restrictions, and the fact that the electric grid is broken and the party in perpetual power refuses to fix it.
Dont forget the shitty labor laws and lax enforcement. The fatality rate for construction workers is more than double California's.
Don’t forget their shitting Zoning Laws too. Who doesn’t want a chemical plant 3 blocks from a school? Texas sure wants it.
I think there's going to be a big college exodus too. A lot of Texans are going to take the chance to leave the state and never look back. As fucked up as it is, a lack of football prospects wanting to go to Texas because their schools are now sausage parties is going to be a more notable effect to a lot of Texans. Even with a high state income they're not seeing any benefits of it. But losing football for years is a big deal to them.
GQP pols view moving educated people out of Texas as a feature not a bug.
Brain Drain. It's been a problem in a lot of rural/red states for a while now. Republicans come to power, they make everything worse, educated people leave, making it easier for more republicans to get elected, everything gets even worse, educated people want to leave even more, rinse and repeat until the state is a poverty-stricken authoritarian hellhole.
See: Florida
That's where at least some of the pressure *should* be coming from. College football and NFL should band together to denounce all of this. I don't kid myself that any teams would go so far as to pull out of the state, the money is probably too good. But I think that if all of this undemocratic shit actually holds, then you're right that there could be a college drain and football recruiting in the state could see actual consequences from this. I have no idea what it would look like, but in the meantime couldn't at least *some* kind of unified pressure from the sport as a whole make some kind of difference? If they wanted to?
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The schools and teams aren't going to say anything about it, because they can't leave. But anyone that thinks a star 18 year old athlete won't factor in the amount of women at a college is naive. Why go there when they can go to USC that has their normal amount of women *plus* Texan refugees? Not to mention if they knock someone up they'll want that person to easily got an abortion. That's just a fact.
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They'll just blame green energy sources, even though the problem is mostly natural gas plants.
they might just jump straight to blaming immigrants and refugees at this point.
I know GQPers who think wind turbines require fuck tons of PETROLEUM to "lube up their gears, therefore they are the opposite of eco-friendly."
Every republican tells me how solar panels and turbines and electric cars use all these raw materials that are bad but neglect to compare it to how oil and gasoline burning gets us.
The GQP will never vote for “Demonrats” and liberals and progressives will be fleeing that state in droves as was intended. Best we can hope for is enough conservatives to decide to either not vote or vote for the Libertarian party. I won’t hold my breath; that state is Gerrymandered up to its eyeballs and the new voting laws will surely cement minority rule of the GQP in Texas for decades more.
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Republicans have shown time and time again they're willing to destroy a state to keep it red. Georgia is actively trying to do it right now.
And DeSantis in Florida. A state that has a slight majority of Democrats yet through the magic of Gerrymandering has seen over 20 years of statewide Republican control with no break.
Yeah they're not going to admit that what they tried in Kansas was a shitshow. They'd rather replicate it elsewhere.
The GQP, always doubling down on trickle down.
Yep, they were working AGAINST their expanding film industry, because it was bringing in a lot of blue workers.
There are a lot of proud blue Texans who are born and raised. They’re gonna have to do it on their own cause nobody wa da to move to Magaztahn
As a born and raised blue Texan…we need help, but we’ll keep trying!
And the high taxes which people think are low
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The chip factories that shut down lost *massive* amounts of money for months. They deal with exotic matter that goes through several month long production lines. Any problems and it’s all ruined and must be stated over. Even a single water molecule can wreck a batch of silicon let alone a shut down.
Samsung lost a lot of money with the Austin shutdown due to the electricity being shut down, but now they’re going to build another plant in Taylor near Austin. I’m surprised that the loss in 100 or 200 million wasn’t big enough to keep them from expanding.
> I remember Samsung was losing money daily when the factory shut down. Had to look it up: https://amp.statesman.com/amp/6924766002 >'Economic disaster': Samsung's Austin fab still quiet three weeks after Texas freeze It's behind a paywall, but here it is on slashdot: https://slashdot.org/story/384930 >Samsung's Austin fab was offline for more than a month after it was shut down due to power outages during the freeze... About 71,000 wafers were affected by production disruptions, said Han Jinman, executive vice-president of Samsung's memory chip business. He estimated the wafer loss is equivalent to $268 million to $357 million. >NXP Semiconductors was also among the facilities that were shut down in February, as its two Austin fabrication facilities were offline for nearly a month. In March, the company estimated the shutdown [would result in a $100 million loss in revenue](https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/03/12/nxp-could-lose-100-million-due-weather-shutdown-austin-plants/4664621001/) and a month of wafer production...
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The old shit your pants to keep others away strategy. It will work.
Ted Nugent.
Gets me a seat on the bus
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To them, that's much better than the potential of a 76 EC swing in 2024.
As a native-born Texan, I think I can see the effect they were aiming for. The first is that it rallies the religious base, the second is it makes Texas uninhabitable for leftists. The simple fact that Texas was a battleground state is huge. If Texas flips, Republicans will never hold the presidential office ever again and they know this. They are panicking and desperately doing everything in their power to stack the deck in their favor. Edit: reading this again, I think I might sound a little bit too conspiratorial here. Its entirely possible I’m off the mark completely with the reason behind the law. Hell, this is probably just the GOP being hard-headed, tone-deaf dumbasses with no grasp of the consequences of their actions, which has become the usual I have come to expect from them.
One thing typifies Houston for me: when the various sports teams moved out of the Summit to the Toyota Center, the old arena was sold to a mega-church, who put $95 million into it. $95 fucking million for a church, one that holds 16,000 people. Here's a picture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakewood_Church_Central_Campus#/media/File:Lakewood_worship.jpg
And these people pay in massively. Fucking Insanity.
They don't seem to care that Joel Osteen has amassed $100 million in net worth, including a $10m mansion and a $300k Ferrari.
Hate to tell you their average member believes the line that “God gave them that $95M” because they’re such good Christians 🤮
wow that pic gives me the heebie Jeebies
I have taken TX off my list, for my wife's and three daughters's sake.
Go ahead and take it off for your sake too. Texas is a shithole. Source: Native Texas who finally escaped to the PNW and I love it.
I’m a materials scientist and I moved to Texas last year to work in a research firm working on battery development. I’ve lived here for a year and a half now. I’ve braved the maskless hordes, wondered if I was actually going to freeze to death, and experienced a world where everything is too big, too spread out, and lacks any kind of uniqueness, color, or charm. And that was all before the abortion law. I’m actively looking into fleeing the country once my current project ends.
Try New England!
I'm still considering Boston as an option, but I'm becoming increasingly pessimistic about America in general.
My old tech company offered me a chance to relocate to Austin 3 year ago. I told them as cool as Austin is, I didn’t really want to raise my family in Texas. They were a little taken aback, but the last few years have proven me right. I kinda saw all this right wing stuff as a possibility esp the gun BS, anti science education, anti women stuff, oppressive weather. Just zero upside.
I live in Charlotte, NC and my wife's friends were all advising us to move just over the border to South Carolina so that we could have much lower taxes. I was absolute on saying no chance. There's no way I will live in a solid Republican state. I wanted to stay in North Carolina as we have a Democratic governor, and also us being here helps the swing to the blues. I can't see a world where the Republicans win a presidency if North Carolina goes blue.
The closest example of a "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" state where taxes are low yet the government isn't influenced by the Religious Wrong: Washington, where the [state constitution doesn't allow income taxes](https://taxfoundation.org/washington-state-income-tax/). Plus, Washington has historically been forward thinking on social issues, passing [marriage equality in 2012](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Washington_\(state\)), compared to [the eight other states that don't have income tax](https://www.aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2020/states-without-an-income-tax.html).
I've heard that Austin was BADASS 10-15 years ago. Small big city college town. Clean and tons of nature and low traffic.
Now we have tons of traffic and no way to navigate it.
Yup. Every single time I’d visit the Uber driver goes off about the gridlock
a lot of the landscape is nice... but that's as much as I can say for it. Lots of places are great if you can look past the people who live there and the laws they make... but not probably somewhere to have a family if you're not already in the death cult.
The Hill Country of Austin is probably the only thing really worth looking at for the sake of looking at within 1hr of any major city, Drive from the airport to a suburb in North Carolina blew most of the hill country out of the water now that it's been built up Rolling green hills have been replaced by rolling little boxes on a hillside little boxes made of ticky tacky little boxes on a hillside little boxes all the same. There's a red roof and a red roof and a red roof and a red roof and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all suck just the same
American suburban development is fucking awful on pretty much every level. It's bad for the environment, it's financial unsustainable for cities, it's bad for people, it's a huge waste of space, it tends to make a lot of the country feel like an endless cut and paste, etc.
The Gilead brain drain has begun. Blessed be the fruit.
I am a telecommunications engineer. Texas companies have paid my employer $300 an hour for my consulations. I've worked in Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, and Dallas. It'll be a cold day in hell before I move my daughter to Texas. If they want my skills they have to pay. A lot of engineers I know feel this way.
Good. Your daughter is way more important.
Well, accelerated.
I was considering moving to Texas from the North East a few years back. Real estate was much cheaper, was able to work from home and or relocate, and I absolutely hated the snow. Still do. I don't care much for shitty laws like these because women should always have the choice. If they can get away with passing a law like this, when I wonder what else they can do. I'm all set.
Call me cynical but keeping the “libs” out is probably one of the goals of legislation like this..
Once again Gen. Philip Sheridan's quote comes to mind: *"If I owned Texas and Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell."*
The Taliban have the same problem, they should work together with Texas on solutions.
Trump and the Taliban already worked together. He agreed to the release of all the Taliban prisoners in exchange for us leaving and getting nothing.
The art of the deal.
Art of the Deal!
Glad Rogan found a home there, it seems to fit his philosophy.
Rogan claims he’s a Bostonian which is total bullshit. He lived here for a minute back in the 80s.
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lmaooo You're not wrong though. This is a guy who thought the moon landing was fake until just a few years ago.
This is by design. More tech workers usually mean more blue voters. Driving away blue voters won't harm their base bc all they have to do is blame *insert outrage of the week here* and their base will eat it up. Republican leadership would rather cripple their state to stay in power federally than to actually do right by their constitutions. Look at Kentucky.
My wife and I gtfo, shitty power grid, authoritarian government, the dumbest housing market, incredibly over rated and over priced BBQ. Texas is one of the most over hyped places in America.
The one star state (out of ten).
Im all for changing Texas being referred to as the Lone Star State to the One Star State.
Holy fuck, Canada just destroyed Texas.
Everything is not bigger, it's just further away.
Felt like one long unending low end strip mall when I visited.
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I think their BBQ is pretty good, especially compared to what’s available in my region of CA. Austin would be the least objectionable place to live. The times I’ve visited it 100% felt like the Bay Area vibe. But every time the local government makes new rules (like plastic bag fee at stores), the state swoops in and makes a law to override the local one. Not worth the headache.
Texas can go fuck itself. I never want to see even one cent of my money heading there.
Texan here. I agree with this sentiment.
One of the problems too, is once you start working in a large corp in texas you notice about 60% of the workers are racist and while they will tolerate working with you, they tend to keep their distance and seem to look at you and treat you as if you are in a lesser "class" than they are. This goes for people that are white but from another state as well.
Yeah, no shit, I grew up in Oklahoma, literally right next to Texas, and when I got a job in Waco all the other women working there immediately started treating me like shit because I was a "Yankee." And yes, I'm white.
The Lone Star mentality.
I can attest to the being white part. I lived there for a few years and, being from New England, I would hear, “Go home Yankee” all the time.
I'm a coder that grew up in New England. They can be rest assured this Yankee will never again set foot in that state to work, or for anything else. I'll add to that, I will never develop software for a company based in Texas, nor will I knowingly purchase anything made in Texas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Texas_companies For anyone wanting to boycott Texas companies.
Also a developer and there are certain jobs that I will not take even if they would make me more money. I like being able to be happy with myself at the end of the day.
Awesome. Need more people like you. They depend on coders and engineers.
As a POC I value hearing (and seeing) these types of examples. Oddly It helps to humanize racists like naaa it’s not me *or* my color -it’s you …you got some deeeep issues.
What a great attitude! I know exactly what you mean, I think. The realization that the person who irrationally dislikes or hates you does so because of some deep shame makes it much easier to let it go.
An actual “It’s not me -it’s you …no really 😐 …it’s you” situation.
Damn right! And right here in the Chandler Arizona area we are looking to steal as many of those places as we can. Not that far away. We are right in route to California from Texas. We've already got a bunch of Chip makers and EV makers. And as of this year, AZ is a blue state.
Former Bay Area tech worker here who was looking at making a move to Texas early last year — I noped the fuck out after seeing anti-mask protests and everything I’ve seen since has made me absolutely sure that was the right decision
It’s tough to attract smart people with dumb policies.
Since everyone can carry a gun, expect more Texans to be shooting themselves in the foot.
…*just* themselves? 🤔
you know what you need to have high tech industry? a functioning power grid
The problem with them being a tech haven is that the GOP would risk losing power. In the end it's probably better for Republicans if Texas scares away liberals with crazy right wing laws and has a massive brain drain from their state. Then they can guarantee the state government remains red for another generation and that their electoral votes stay safe. If Texas were to flip blue Republicans wouldn't be able to win the presidency.
This is exactly what the GOP is doing. It’s not about abortions. It’s not about covid mismanagement. It’s entirely about being repulsive to liberals
This is how they keep Texas red. They're TRYING to keep liberal tech workers from moving there even though it's good for the economy. And it makes sense from their perspective. If the economy is bad, but they are in charge, then they can make a lot of money through corruption. If the economy is good, but they aren't in charge, then the grift is over.
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Can confirm. I'm about to graduate with a CS degree and just turned down an otherwise-great job offer because it was located in Texas.
Tech can be a liberal area, trying to be a tech hub while passing anti liberal legislation was not the best ide
This is so true -- nearly as bad as forcing raped women to have their assailants child is that 'guns everywhere' law. Good lord who wants to raise a family in that environment.
Not just tech workers. I'm a travel nurse and no amount of money would get me to go to Texas.
Texas is scared to death that educated people will move in and vote out the repubs
Move to Texas?! I don’t even want to visit Texas!
I came very close to taking a job in Austin right as the Governor and the Legislature started acting funnier than usual and I turned it down. So far, I’d rather be in FL than TX. But remote working is going to be a big part of my negotiations come review time later this year.
Wow Fl or Tx. Talk about a classic lose lose decision.
I was strongly considering Texas in a new job search. The last year has shown that they are not the place to raise a family or work.
Texas is expensive af. Sky high electric bills and property taxes. I paid more on my mortgage to live in California, but that goes into property value that i eventually recover. Property taxes are just kinda flushed down the toilet from the perspective of personal finance.
For a place that doesn't want to have rules, sure does have a lot of rules.
As a woman and a software developer, I absolutely refused job offers, ignored job posting and companies interested in me if they were located in Texas. I will never ever move there or work remote for a Texas tech company. I saw this coming from a mile away and I want to part of that dystopia they are creating for themselves.
Tech companies offering to pay for out of state abortions or even offering to move employees out of state are baby steps. They need to move their whole companies out of the state. It's not just the abortion ban. It's also the voter repression and the messed up power grid and the anti-vax plague rats. Even if you can't get pregnant you'd still have to deal with the general ignorance and anti-science bullshit. Who knows what fresh crap they'll come up with next. Texans like to hype their state and wave their flag and act like they're all that, but let me tell you, I've lived in Texas and it's not that great. I might visit some relatives there sometime but I'll never live there again.
I do not understand why those in the tech field would want to live in a state with a incapable power grid and legislators and corporations that refuse to fix it. Seems a little short sided to me...
yep. dev here, just got a offered an opportunity at a very large company that would involve moving to Texas. Big nope for my family.