Eastward Ho (Updated)
[Guest post by DRJ]
Ed Driscoll links a Forbe’s report regarding McAfee’s no-hire policy for California:
“David DeWalt, who heads McAfee, is very intentionally not hiring new staff in the Golden State. Even worse for California, the company a while ago transferred entire departments elsewhere. Is McAfee based in California? Kind of. Only 14%, or roughly 900, of McAfee’s 6,500 employees are left in Silicon Valley.
This is a cost-saving measure. McAfee ranks Silicon Valley fourth with the dubious distinction of most expensive places to do business, behind Russia, Japan and London. That’s kind of shocking. Mountain View, Calif. sure ain’t Tokyo in any sense.
DeWalt figures he can save 30 to 40% every time he hires outside of California. And that’s roughly the premium he has to pay in the form of a moving bonus to get someone to relocate to California. Sunshine, pretty hills and nice beaches aren’t enough? Apparently not.”
California may be high on businesses’ no-hire list but it won’t be the only State there. With ObamaCare, taxes, and continuing unemployment, we’ll all be there soon enough.
— DRJ
UPDATE: In related news, California’s last auto plant has shut its doors. It made Toyota Tacoma trucks and Corolla sedans, and the shutdown had been announced last year:
“The plant began 25 years ago as a joint venture between Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Co. GM pulled out last year, and Toyota later announced it would halt production, eliminating about 4,700 jobs.”
Meanwhile, Toyota’s U.S. sales were up 35% last month.
H/T Drudge.
and the other three he kinda sorta has to….but the People’s Republic?
not so much.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 4/1/2010 @ 1:17 amI also note that he goes to the places offering him the most in the way of tax breaks and subsidies. Where will McAfee go when those places cut off the monetary goodies?
the friendly grizzly (3711fe) — 4/1/2010 @ 3:58 amthe friendly grizzly — 4/1/2010 @ 3:58 am
I don’t think TX offered him that much. And besides, I’m thinking McAfee is in the Austin area, where there is plenty of high-tech talent to go around.
Brad S (9f6740) — 4/1/2010 @ 5:20 amWe welcome McAfee and other businesses in the Midwest. We don’t have the mountains and oceans, but you can get a really nice house for $200-250k; food is cheaper; less traffic. And we’re chock-full of TEA partiers. 🙂
Corwin (ea9428) — 4/1/2010 @ 5:22 amMountain View, Calif. sure ain’t Tokyo in any sense.
For those who have to live in the area, the cost of living is monstrous. The insanely rich from venture capital firms and their funded companies have pushed up real estate beyond NYC levels. Couple that with the onerous land restrictions by CA, and presto – you have a housing crisis.
Dmac (21311c) — 4/1/2010 @ 5:39 amNo, pretty hills, sunshine and nice hills are not enough. Because most state and local governments in California are patently insane, taxing and regulating everything there to the point where – pretty hills, sunshine and nice hills are not enough.
Metallica (bb58d8) — 4/1/2010 @ 6:02 amCalifornia is becoming a theme park for the rich and left wing. The rest of it looks a bit like Guadalajara with gates shutting out the poverty. If my kids weren’t here, I would be out of here so fast Jerry Brown wouldn’t know I was gone until my tax forms came back “Unknown at this address.”
MIke K (2cf494) — 4/1/2010 @ 7:15 amColor me crazy, but I left California 2 1/2 years ago and really miss it. I was born and raised in California, surfed all my life, and all of our friends and family are there. I know the state government is nuts, but you really can’t beat the beaches & weather. The taxes are not as burdensome as you might think. I moved to Pennsylvania and my combined taxes & utilities are far higher here. Sure, my house was cheaper in Pa., but the cost to heat & cool the place is astronomical. And my township & school taxes…don’t get me started.
william (f541e4) — 4/1/2010 @ 7:33 amWilliam, I also found the heating/property taxes in the Midwest to be such that living costs would have been about the same as here in CA. So we didn’t move back but will just visit.
That being said, CA has to fix this or end up as another Detroit on a mass scale.
Texas seems pretty attractive. They have the right philosophy.
Patricia (fa8e06) — 4/1/2010 @ 7:56 am#8 Agree about Pa. taxes. Much cheaper for me in Fla. other than home insurance. Pa. does or did have a generous public employees pension system that must rankle taxpayers. Of course no COLAs for past eight years or so. Let’s see what states do well with enforcing against crime when Obama’s economy heads south even more.
I passed on moving to Ca. because of its taxes that follow you everywhere. Colorado was nixed because of a 5% state tax on pensions of early retirees.
I’m sure card check legislation won’t help garner jobs. And look where Mercedes and BMW built their US plants.
aoibhneas (6e9f23) — 4/1/2010 @ 8:00 amNow that Microsoft gives away antivirus sw for free (MS Security Essentials,) McAfee has more to worry about than just Cali costs.
gp (72be5d) — 4/1/2010 @ 8:00 amHow long before Henry Waxman calls him to D.C. to publicly berate him for trying to make a profit.?
MU789 (d20b17) — 4/1/2010 @ 8:25 amWilliam,
I was born and raised in CA myself; most of it at the beach, so I get what you’re saying.
However. My husband and I moved to rural SE Texas two and a half years ago, and we haven’t looked back. Our cost of living (taxes, fees, utility rates, gas prices) is considerably lower.
And the *quality* of life is just beautiful.
X_LA_Native (175006) — 4/1/2010 @ 9:15 amCost of living is my major problem with living in California – in the urban bay area, at least, everything is staggeringly expensive.
But my friends and family are here, and it’s difficult to tear myself and my husband away from that.
aphrael (73ebe9) — 4/1/2010 @ 9:45 amI hear that – although my local and state politicos have made an enormous mess of things here, I can’t break away from the city that I’ve loved for my entire life. If that keep at it, though – we may have no choice but to skeedaddle.
Dmac (21311c) — 4/1/2010 @ 9:58 am“if they…”
Dmac (21311c) — 4/1/2010 @ 9:58 amEh. Cali’s back has been broken by being held hostage by the unions and special interest for decades. And so it goes…
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/1/2010 @ 10:02 amMy question is why does this company need to be in Silicon Valley. There are plenty of lower cost cities in northern cal.
Most programmers I’ve met a younger single guys who are more mobil, so relocation shouldn’t be too big an issue. Further, in this economy, who in their right mind would turn down one of these decent paying gigs to work in east Palo Alto or one of the less desirable areas? Houses in Modesto are damn cheap from what I hear.
Move to the Inland Empire. Plenty of land and cheap housing is available.
TakeFive (7c6fd5) — 4/1/2010 @ 10:32 amUnless the inland empire has changed significantly since 1991 – the last time I lived there – you couldn’t pay me enough to move back: it was unpleasantly hot, impossible to walk anywhere, and the air quality was terrible.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 4/1/2010 @ 11:13 amHouses in Modesto are damn cheap from what I hear.
They are, but the commute from Modesto to Mountain View is 90 minutes each way without traffic and could easily be 2.5 hrs with traffic.
Very, very, very few people will do that.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 4/1/2010 @ 11:17 amThe Inland Empire has filled up itself. In another ten years, a the rate is growing, Inland Empire will become a western suburb of Phoenix.
SPQR (8475fc) — 4/1/2010 @ 11:26 amSPQR: unless the nomenclature has changed – which is certainly possible – once you go over the hills into Palm Springs, you’re no longer in the inland empire.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 4/1/2010 @ 11:29 amOT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8599707.stm
For those who laugh at the “give peace a chance crowd.”
HeavenSent (a9126d) — 4/1/2010 @ 11:40 amCalifornia is paying now for believing its own hype, and putting in charge of it a guy who thought “saving it” was just as simple as pumping iron and reading a script.
It’s a macrocosm of what’s happened with the city of San Francisco. Bank of America, the legendary banking behemoth began by an Italian immigrant in S.F. shortly before the 1906 earthquake, was the heart of the financial district, and the builder of the largest (though not tallest) building in the city. But upon the merger by North Carolina-based NationsBank in 1998, the newly-formed bank’s first order of business was to relocate its HQ to Charlotte, NC.
Conventional wisdom was that businesses and wealthy individuals would be more than willing to pay a premium to put a S.F. zip code on their letterheads, and there was no amount of tax or meddling regulation that could overcome the magnetism of “The City.” It would have been laughable in years previous to pick a mid-sized town south of the Mason-Dixon line over beautiful, Bohemian, picturesque San Francisco and its surrounding area, with the major universities and highly-coveted vineyards just an hour’s drive away. Nobody’s laughing now.
Scratch that — nobody who cares is laughing. The wakeup call came, and self-serving S.F. pols picked up the phone, dropped it, and went back to sleep. They still haven’t learned. In case you haven’t heard: Mayor Gavin Newsom, presiding over a 1.6 billion-dollar deficit and with one foot out of his City Hall office looking at the Lt. Governor’s office, has said that the institution of ObamaCare should not phase out S.F.’s “Universal” health care plan because FriscoCare doesn’t discriminate against illegals.
L.N. Smithee (9119f4) — 4/1/2010 @ 1:05 pmUnbelievable.Bravo to the UAW for saving those jobs. Refusing to bargain really helped.
Pat (366dd8) — 4/1/2010 @ 1:24 pmIt’s a macrocosm of what’s happened with the city of San Francisco.
and yet San Francisco appears to be doing much better economically now than in 1995.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 4/1/2010 @ 1:27 pmElaborate.
L.N. Smithee (9119f4) — 4/1/2010 @ 1:41 pmThose GM badged Corollas (Geo Prisms) were the best cars to ever be associated with GM. Close contenders are the Saturn SL series before the UAW took over, and a few recent Buicks, but the Geos were made with much more pride.
GM knows why Toyota is rebounding, because they saw firsthand how much work they put into their plants.
dustin (b54cdc) — 4/1/2010 @ 1:44 pm“… San Francisco appears…”
You can only put so much lipstick and pancake on a pig. Pretty soon, it twitches a facial muscle, and the whole facade drops away.
AD - RtR/OS! (f793c7) — 4/1/2010 @ 1:51 pmTo really see the decline (rot) that is endemic in SanFran, all you have to do is look at the K-12 enrollment numbers for the last twenty years, and the countervailing increases in payroll costs for the SFUSD.
LN: a fantastic amount of money was pumped into the city during the period 1995-2008 or so. The SOMA area has been developed into high-density housing with retail/commercial below; china beach and the dogpatch have attracted jobs and residents and seem to have successfully managed conversion from a seedy, run down former port area. the population of the city, which had been falling for decades, expanded in the 2000 census and is expected to be larger in 2010 than in 2000.
the economic revival of soma and the dogpatch hasn’t expanded throughout the city, to be sure; but neither has there been a marked economic *decline* anywhere in the city in the last fifteen years. which indicates a win, on balance.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 4/1/2010 @ 2:39 pmAbout San Francisco: for years the hub and I would slip in frequent getaways to SF, stay in plush joints, and drop some healthy tourist money on shows and restaurants, however, since Anthony Bologna and his sons were gunned down on the sidewalks by an illegal immigrant who was protected by their sanctuary city law, we haven’t returned.
Keeping our money in our pocket is the direct result of their sanctuary law. It also has a direct impact on the city’s tourism revenues. I realize we’re just a microcosm yet I can’t help but wonder if others too are refusing on principle to spend discretionary income there…
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/1/2010 @ 3:23 pmSo instead of attracting businesses we are asking for welfare!!
*screams at computer*
(aoibhneas, where are the Mercedes/BMW plants?)
Patricia (fa8e06) — 4/1/2010 @ 4:01 pm(aoibhneas, where are the Mercedes/BMW plants?)
Alabama & the Carolina’s.
AD - RtR/OS! (f793c7) — 4/1/2010 @ 4:31 pmBTW, it seems that CA has two “Inland Empires”, since what is known as San Bernardino/Riverside Counties in SoCal is referred to as such; and it seems that the same name is being applied to the northern San Joaquin Valley by some here, or am I misunderstanding?
As to property values in Silicon Valley….
AD - RtR/OS! (f793c7) — 4/1/2010 @ 4:36 pmThose that made the big bucks during the .com boom have theirs, and probably like the situation where the proles on the floor have to live over in Modesto and commute – keeps the riff-raff off the streets on the week-end.
I would have sold or shuttered the California operations of my prior employer. They were just not worth the hassles. I had my CEO convinced 45% of the time, I just couldn’t keep him over 50% long enough to get it done.
daleyrocks (718861) — 4/1/2010 @ 4:55 pmIt seems that CA has two “Inland Empires”, since what is known as San Bernardino/Riverside Counties in SoCal is referred to as such; and it seems that the same name is being applied to the northern San Joaquin Valley by some here, or am I misunderstanding?
That’s possible. I’m only aware of the San Bernardino/Riverside name, but I have very little familiarity with the northern central valley (aside from Chico, where I have friends whom I visit a couple times a year).
aphrael (73ebe9) — 4/3/2010 @ 9:15 am