Interesting. I know there are Very good reasons for not relocating to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, but what were the specific reasons (aside from family/homes, if any) you and the team had for opting not to relocate?
Further to this:
2) Were team members offered raises as part of a relocation package?
3) Were team members offered the opportunity to work 100% remotely?
4) Has OpenTable approved this message?
5) Regardless of #4, are there certain conditions others would need to be aware of such as non-competes? I know NCAs are fairly (if not entirely) powerless in California, but I'm not aware of the laws impacting them in Tennessee.
Edit: per user @rfc's jogging of my brain, Stripe has a program for hiring full development teams. @wilwade, this might be worth applying to. I know I posted it in another comment, but it's worthy of top-order visibility: https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team
Interesting. I know there are Very good reasons for not relocating to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, but what were the specific reasons (aside from family/homes, if any) you and the team had for opting not to relocate?
1) Outside of family and homes, the cost of living is just crazy. Especially with a family. Also the area is more family friendly than SF (since I was there last). Commute is short and easy. Plus trees (different than SF).
2) Yes
3) No
4) As always comments are my own and may not reflect the opinions of my employer. (They have been quite kind in offering time and space to assist in job transition.)
5) These differ around the team, but shouldn't be an issue.
Heck yeah anywhere in TN vs. SAN Francisco. There's about a zero homeless epedemic(it's very sad to see/experience how many suffer on the streets there) in Nashville and elsewhere compared to the Mecca of that SAN Fran. Cost of living is great.. mountains.. fresh air.. no people shouting crazy stuff with a megaphone and more.
Note I live and am from the D.C. area and graduated from MTSU.. visited SAN Fran many times for meetings with Google who stomped on me, a reality tv show and others startup adventures. Not my cup of tea even growing up close to D.C. And Baltimore which the same suffering isn't occurring on the same scale... maybe it's the weather... hoping in the next ten or more years SAN Fran changes/helps those in need.
Homelessness is not just about pan handlers on the street and other visible forms of homelessness. A lot of the time you can't tell someone is homeless, or is experiencing intermittent homelessness.
A quick google seems to point to about 4000 people in Chattanooga experiencing homelessness per year. SF has concrete stats that are easy to find [1] and points to 7,539 experiencing homelessness per year. Based on total populations (173,366 people in Chattanooga, 837,442 in SF), the percentage is actually a lot higher in Chattanooga than in SF.
Liking a small city is totally fine of course, but it's not correct to assume SF is completely overrun by homelessness whereas Chattanooga doesn't have any.
You are comparing apples to oranges. The SF number is a "point in time count", so on that particular day there were 7500 homeless people. The Chattanooga # you are referencing is "how many people were homeless at any point in the year". Given how many people are temporarily homeless, I'm sure any point in time survey of Chattanooga would show a dramatically smaller number. I don't know if it's better or worse than SF, but comparing those two numbers is basically meaningless.
Yeah, you're right, a longer Google makes that obvious. I couldn't find a good source for PIT for Chattanooga, but it looks to be somewhere around 700 based on a few news articles. So it's about .4% vs .9%.
I think the conclusion still stands though, it's not correct to state Chattanooga has no problem with homelessness and SF is overrun. Homelessness isn't just people asking you for money on the street.
As someone who's lived in both places, Nashville has plenty of issues as well. Never seeing homeless people or people who don't look like you doesn't mean they aren't the or that there's not a problem, it just means it's less visible
Never seeing homeless people or people who don't look like you doesn't mean they aren't the or that there's not a problem
In fact, many jurisdictions have practices which inflict harm on the homeless specifically to make them less visible (and/or to cause them to relocate and become someone else's problem.)
Ok, indulge me for minute... it sounds like you're saying that choosing to live somewhere like Chattanooga will -- by itself -- result in less people suffering.
Like, as long as you can ignore it, it doesn't bother you, right? Homeless and crazy people make me, like, super sad and scared too. I totally get it. I'd live in Tennessee in a second if only there were no black people. It's so depressing having to see racism.
OT is offering good raises, so it's not really a money issue. For most of us, if we wanted to be in SF we'd already be in SF. Chattanooga is just a great place to live.
I wasn't very familiar with Chattanooga before reading this thread, but after learning more about it I can see why you want to stay. It's a beautiful city.
I had a 3k s.f. house and an all-in monthly cost of ~$2k/mo (including mortgage, insurance, pest control, etc) for household expenses.
I recently had a soft offer (verbal discussion of salary ranges) of around ~$150k to move back to TX. To match that in CA dollars, it requires ~$200k/yr+ compensation.
...count ~$1500/mo => $20k/yr for housing in TX/Dallas, ~$3000/mo => $36k/yr for housing in Bay Area.
...count ~$12k/yr for living expenses in TX, $20k/yr for Bay Area ($1000/mo for restaurants, etc, in TX, $1500/mo in Bay Area... this accounts for increased food / restaurant / drink / entertainment / parking prices in California).
TX: $20k housing + $12k living => $36k mandatory expenses
CA: $36k housing + $20k living => $56k mandatory expenses
Include a mandatory savings rate of 50% of yearly housing costs (insulate against layoffs / economic downturns) and you're at: $46k/yr for TX and $74k/yr for CA.
An offer of $150k in TX gets you income after taxes of: ~$108k minus $46k living expenses for a savings rate of ~$62k/yr.
To get to a $62k/yr savings rate in CA, you need $62k+$74k after tax income which is $136k total. That requires an offer of ~$200k/yr in CA.
Obviously these numbers are very hand-wavy, but it is instructive to go through this exercise. Running these numbers at a more modest $100k salary in TX and keeping expenses the same (leading to a ~$12k/yr savings rate), you need ~$86k in after tax income which is a ~$130k CA salary, which is ~30% increase over a baseline $100k in TX for a transfer to make any kind of sense (plus relo expenses, one-time-costs, etc).
A $12k/yr savings rate in TX for 10 years will get you $120k and a house.
A $12k/yr savings rate in CA for 10 years will get you a down payment and nothing more (ie: you cannot live/retire where you work/earn).
Sounds about right to me, and I think your numbers are more accurate than most "cost of living" calculators because it doesn't sound like you got exactly the same house in CA that you had in TX. Most cost of living calculators assume if you have a 3k sf house in one place you'll do that again in the more expensive area, which is just not how people actually live. When you move somewhere more expensive you generally downsize a bit so the increase in spending is not as extreme. Finding only a 25% difference between CA & TX is pretty conservative.
I can't speak for OP, but Chattanooga is a pretty awesome place to be. I left Chattanooga for Boulder and it was the second stupidest thing I've ever done.
The appeal of both places is that they have a wealth of outdoor activities really close by (especially rock climbing).
This is subjective, but I think the rock climbing is better in Chattanooga. Also, people are friendlier and more down to earth in Chatty, its that southern hospitality after all. The Boulderites have a reputation for being snobs and yuppies. Also the cost of living is way cheaper in Chattanooga.
Funny, as a cyclist - Chatanooga was a really exciting prospect for a trip. There's beautiful mountains to ride on, great looking roads, etc... but the locals were awful to deal with when we went. I have had less altercations and negative experiences with people in Chicago than there. Boulder on the other hand was always great for that.
Chatanooga proper seems to have done it's best to be welcoming, but it's the mountains nearby that are the draw, and the folks up there, well.. let's just say I rode by some places with signs that made it very clear non-whites weren't welcome.
I'm not a cyclist but I've heard similar complaints from cyclists about the area. The downtown is getting more bike-friendly with dedicated lanes here and there, but - as you said - the mountains are the real appeal there.
let's just say I rode by some places with signs that made it very clear non-whites weren't welcome.
I'm extremely curious to know where you saw that. I live in Chattanooga, and I've never seen such a thing.
I am sorry you had such a bad experience with the cycling and can sympathize. I stopped riding on public streets here a couple years back. Not worth my life.
I'm specifically referencing confederate flags and signs that said "Trespassers will be shot, niggers will be shot twice", when riding up in the mountains, on rural but modern paved roads. I could probably dig up specific garmin files from the rides but it was more than one place.
When you live in the South and see yourself as a good person and surround yourself primarily with liberal types, I think it can be easy to miss how pervasive the behavior you associate with "the hicks and rednecks" really is.
Especially if you are a little bit redneck yourself. When you're white and haven't lived anywhere different it's hard to imagine how it would feel to live in the South under other circumstances.
It hurts a little if you love your friends and family and hometown. But the South is a racist place; so is the US, but there's a particular character to and acceptance of it in the South that I think one might accurately describe as "worse."
What's the difference between a yuppie, a hipster and a millenial?
A "yuppie" is an term of 1980s vintage for "young urban professional", formed directly from the phrase.
A "hipster" is a term of more recent invention, for basically the same thing (a young urban professional).
Both carry some implications of both in-group trendiness and conspicuous consumption though, with the changing character of the times, the "yuppie" has stronger associations with conspicuous consumption and "hipster" with trendiness with less general conspicuous consumption (and perhaps an outward, though often skin deep, rejection of consumerism.)
A millennial is a member of a particular generational cohort, basically the group now between the mid-teens and mid-30s. Modern hipsters/yuppies are probably also millenials, but plenty of millenials are neither.
Age too: yuppies are generally older ("yuppie" was a popular term in the 80s), hipsters are probably in their early 30s, and millennials are in their 20s-early 30s.
They are stereotypes denoting different generational cultures (wikipedia calls it "demographic cohort"). If I made your list chronologically I would put "Generation X" between yuppie and hipster.
Every generation gets a name, huge swaths of commerce depend on it.
It meant "bourgeois bohemian", and referred to the sort of yuppies who shop at Whole Foods and style themselves as hippies. I knew a bunch of people who thought it applied to themselves or their friends in the early 2000s. But I haven't heard it much in five or ten years now.
The ycombinator program is still open for submissions. A team like yours is exactly the fit they are looking for and going to the bay area is for a short time.
Comments
http://nooga.com/174179/opentable-to-leave-chattanooga/
Interesting. I know there are Very good reasons for not relocating to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, but what were the specific reasons (aside from family/homes, if any) you and the team had for opting not to relocate?
Further to this:
2) Were team members offered raises as part of a relocation package?
3) Were team members offered the opportunity to work 100% remotely?
4) Has OpenTable approved this message?
5) Regardless of #4, are there certain conditions others would need to be aware of such as non-competes? I know NCAs are fairly (if not entirely) powerless in California, but I'm not aware of the laws impacting them in Tennessee.
Edit: per user @rfc's jogging of my brain, Stripe has a program for hiring full development teams. @wilwade, this might be worth applying to. I know I posted it in another comment, but it's worthy of top-order visibility: https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team
Do you need reasons other than family/homes?
1) Outside of family and homes, the cost of living is just crazy. Especially with a family. Also the area is more family friendly than SF (since I was there last). Commute is short and easy. Plus trees (different than SF). 2) Yes 3) No 4) As always comments are my own and may not reflect the opinions of my employer. (They have been quite kind in offering time and space to assist in job transition.) 5) These differ around the team, but shouldn't be an issue.
Will look into Stripe!
Heck yeah anywhere in TN vs. SAN Francisco. There's about a zero homeless epedemic(it's very sad to see/experience how many suffer on the streets there) in Nashville and elsewhere compared to the Mecca of that SAN Fran. Cost of living is great.. mountains.. fresh air.. no people shouting crazy stuff with a megaphone and more.
Note I live and am from the D.C. area and graduated from MTSU.. visited SAN Fran many times for meetings with Google who stomped on me, a reality tv show and others startup adventures. Not my cup of tea even growing up close to D.C. And Baltimore which the same suffering isn't occurring on the same scale... maybe it's the weather... hoping in the next ten or more years SAN Fran changes/helps those in need.
Homelessness is not just about pan handlers on the street and other visible forms of homelessness. A lot of the time you can't tell someone is homeless, or is experiencing intermittent homelessness.
A quick google seems to point to about 4000 people in Chattanooga experiencing homelessness per year. SF has concrete stats that are easy to find [1] and points to 7,539 experiencing homelessness per year. Based on total populations (173,366 people in Chattanooga, 837,442 in SF), the percentage is actually a lot higher in Chattanooga than in SF.
Liking a small city is totally fine of course, but it's not correct to assume SF is completely overrun by homelessness whereas Chattanooga doesn't have any.
[1] Warning, PDF: https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...
You are comparing apples to oranges. The SF number is a "point in time count", so on that particular day there were 7500 homeless people. The Chattanooga # you are referencing is "how many people were homeless at any point in the year". Given how many people are temporarily homeless, I'm sure any point in time survey of Chattanooga would show a dramatically smaller number. I don't know if it's better or worse than SF, but comparing those two numbers is basically meaningless.
Yeah, you're right, a longer Google makes that obvious. I couldn't find a good source for PIT for Chattanooga, but it looks to be somewhere around 700 based on a few news articles. So it's about .4% vs .9%.
I think the conclusion still stands though, it's not correct to state Chattanooga has no problem with homelessness and SF is overrun. Homelessness isn't just people asking you for money on the street.
As someone who's lived in both places, Nashville has plenty of issues as well. Never seeing homeless people or people who don't look like you doesn't mean they aren't the or that there's not a problem, it just means it's less visible
In fact, many jurisdictions have practices which inflict harm on the homeless specifically to make them less visible (and/or to cause them to relocate and become someone else's problem.)
Yeah and they were bussed and dropped off in SAN Fran.. agencies in Reno were doing just that.
Yes less suffering in just about every US city then SAN Fran in this regards.
Thankfully it's not seen that/as much in Nashville and Baltimore. More in the latter then the former.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Or at least better quality of life :p
I come at this from all angles from less people suffering to personally having to feel bad about their situation vs my own.
Ok, indulge me for minute... it sounds like you're saying that choosing to live somewhere like Chattanooga will -- by itself -- result in less people suffering.
Umm yeah because your blue collar paycheck goes a longer way then in SAN Fran.
Like, as long as you can ignore it, it doesn't bother you, right? Homeless and crazy people make me, like, super sad and scared too. I totally get it. I'd live in Tennessee in a second if only there were no black people. It's so depressing having to see racism.
0_0
Quality of life.
OT is offering good raises, so it's not really a money issue. For most of us, if we wanted to be in SF we'd already be in SF. Chattanooga is just a great place to live.
I wasn't very familiar with Chattanooga before reading this thread, but after learning more about it I can see why you want to stay. It's a beautiful city.
I recently moved from TX to CA (Bay Area).
I had a 3k s.f. house and an all-in monthly cost of ~$2k/mo (including mortgage, insurance, pest control, etc) for household expenses.
I recently had a soft offer (verbal discussion of salary ranges) of around ~$150k to move back to TX. To match that in CA dollars, it requires ~$200k/yr+ compensation.
Method:
Use the following two tax estimators:
https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-tax-calculator
https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator
...count ~$1500/mo => $20k/yr for housing in TX/Dallas, ~$3000/mo => $36k/yr for housing in Bay Area.
...count ~$12k/yr for living expenses in TX, $20k/yr for Bay Area ($1000/mo for restaurants, etc, in TX, $1500/mo in Bay Area... this accounts for increased food / restaurant / drink / entertainment / parking prices in California).
TX: $20k housing + $12k living => $36k mandatory expenses
CA: $36k housing + $20k living => $56k mandatory expenses
Include a mandatory savings rate of 50% of yearly housing costs (insulate against layoffs / economic downturns) and you're at: $46k/yr for TX and $74k/yr for CA.
An offer of $150k in TX gets you income after taxes of: ~$108k minus $46k living expenses for a savings rate of ~$62k/yr.
To get to a $62k/yr savings rate in CA, you need $62k+$74k after tax income which is $136k total. That requires an offer of ~$200k/yr in CA.
Obviously these numbers are very hand-wavy, but it is instructive to go through this exercise. Running these numbers at a more modest $100k salary in TX and keeping expenses the same (leading to a ~$12k/yr savings rate), you need ~$86k in after tax income which is a ~$130k CA salary, which is ~30% increase over a baseline $100k in TX for a transfer to make any kind of sense (plus relo expenses, one-time-costs, etc).
A $12k/yr savings rate in TX for 10 years will get you $120k and a house.
A $12k/yr savings rate in CA for 10 years will get you a down payment and nothing more (ie: you cannot live/retire where you work/earn).
Sounds about right to me, and I think your numbers are more accurate than most "cost of living" calculators because it doesn't sound like you got exactly the same house in CA that you had in TX. Most cost of living calculators assume if you have a 3k sf house in one place you'll do that again in the more expensive area, which is just not how people actually live. When you move somewhere more expensive you generally downsize a bit so the increase in spending is not as extreme. Finding only a 25% difference between CA & TX is pretty conservative.
I can't speak for OP, but Chattanooga is a pretty awesome place to be. I left Chattanooga for Boulder and it was the second stupidest thing I've ever done.
Ok, maybe third.
Curious: From your perspective, what are some reasons you prefer Chattanooga over Boulder?
The appeal of both places is that they have a wealth of outdoor activities really close by (especially rock climbing). This is subjective, but I think the rock climbing is better in Chattanooga. Also, people are friendlier and more down to earth in Chatty, its that southern hospitality after all. The Boulderites have a reputation for being snobs and yuppies. Also the cost of living is way cheaper in Chattanooga.
Funny, as a cyclist - Chatanooga was a really exciting prospect for a trip. There's beautiful mountains to ride on, great looking roads, etc... but the locals were awful to deal with when we went. I have had less altercations and negative experiences with people in Chicago than there. Boulder on the other hand was always great for that.
Chatanooga proper seems to have done it's best to be welcoming, but it's the mountains nearby that are the draw, and the folks up there, well.. let's just say I rode by some places with signs that made it very clear non-whites weren't welcome.
I'm not a cyclist but I've heard similar complaints from cyclists about the area. The downtown is getting more bike-friendly with dedicated lanes here and there, but - as you said - the mountains are the real appeal there.
It's something we need to work on.
Sorry you didn't have a great experience!
Hey Josh!
It's funny -- I was reading that in your voice even before I saw that it actually was you.
I'm extremely curious to know where you saw that. I live in Chattanooga, and I've never seen such a thing.
I am sorry you had such a bad experience with the cycling and can sympathize. I stopped riding on public streets here a couple years back. Not worth my life.
Very clear non-whites weren't welcome?
I'm going to have to ask for proof because it hasn't been 1961 for a very long time now. And Chatty is a very very long way from Vidor, Texas.
I'm specifically referencing confederate flags and signs that said "Trespassers will be shot, niggers will be shot twice", when riding up in the mountains, on rural but modern paved roads. I could probably dig up specific garmin files from the rides but it was more than one place.
This was 2014, not 1961.
+1
When you live in the South and see yourself as a good person and surround yourself primarily with liberal types, I think it can be easy to miss how pervasive the behavior you associate with "the hicks and rednecks" really is.
Especially if you are a little bit redneck yourself. When you're white and haven't lived anywhere different it's hard to imagine how it would feel to live in the South under other circumstances.
It hurts a little if you love your friends and family and hometown. But the South is a racist place; so is the US, but there's a particular character to and acceptance of it in the South that I think one might accurately describe as "worse."
What's the difference between a yuppie, a hipster and a millenial? I get these buzzwords confused.
A "yuppie" is an term of 1980s vintage for "young urban professional", formed directly from the phrase.
A "hipster" is a term of more recent invention, for basically the same thing (a young urban professional).
Both carry some implications of both in-group trendiness and conspicuous consumption though, with the changing character of the times, the "yuppie" has stronger associations with conspicuous consumption and "hipster" with trendiness with less general conspicuous consumption (and perhaps an outward, though often skin deep, rejection of consumerism.)
A millennial is a member of a particular generational cohort, basically the group now between the mid-teens and mid-30s. Modern hipsters/yuppies are probably also millenials, but plenty of millenials are neither.
a yuppie has an expensive car and house, a hipster has a bike and roommates, and a millennial borrows their parent's car and lives at home
Age too: yuppies are generally older ("yuppie" was a popular term in the 80s), hipsters are probably in their early 30s, and millennials are in their 20s-early 30s.
They are stereotypes denoting different generational cultures (wikipedia calls it "demographic cohort"). If I made your list chronologically I would put "Generation X" between yuppie and hipster.
Every generation gets a name, huge swaths of commerce depend on it.
Well "yuppie" came from Young Urban Professional.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuppie
Does anybody remember the terms DINK or BoBo? Some fun nicknames for demographics that I haven't heard in a while.
DINK as in "dual income no kids"? That one is still in common usage as far as I know, I have heard at least a couple people say it in the past month.
Never heard of BoBo as far as I can recall.
It meant "bourgeois bohemian", and referred to the sort of yuppies who shop at Whole Foods and style themselves as hippies. I knew a bunch of people who thought it applied to themselves or their friends in the early 2000s. But I haven't heard it much in five or ten years now.
Boulder is a bit snobby and decidedly unfriendly (in a "I disapprove of your failure to believe precisely what everybody else thinks" sort of way).
And it's godawful expensive.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but motherfuck the snow. And Boulder rent.
What do you not like about Boulder? I was there for a summer and I loved that place.
Boulder is really nice, but they have crazy NIMBY politics there:
https://journal.dedasys.com/2015/06/18/boulder-colorado-vs-b...
I think I speak for everyone when I say that we miss having you in Chattanooga.
I'm on the verge of coming back, brother.
The Bulleit would abound.
The ycombinator program is still open for submissions. A team like yours is exactly the fit they are looking for and going to the bay area is for a short time.