Quote:
Originally Posted by tonym9428
They do set up shop in those second/third tier places for cheaper and junior hires. Take StitchFix, which recently opened an office in Dallas but is headquartered in San Francisco. By having their HQ in San Fran, they can attach top grads from CS, statistics, etc as their company is centered around machine learning. Those skilled people are NOT as common in Dallas or Nashville. But their Dallas office can be used to hire junior QA people, account managers, and other junior people. That's usually how it works when a tech company opens an office in a second/third tier city. SF for the high skilled roles and Dallas for junior folks
Why would they move to Dallas when the best talent is in SF/NYC/etc?
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It depends on the individual business.
If you're looking for the absolute cream of the crop, as most high end tech companies are, then it can be difficult to find them in Middle America. I worked at an Indianapolis satellite office of a Boston based tech company.
Most of the infrastructure team, associate systems analysts (not entry level but not full staff level either), and a majority of the systems analysts (people maintaining software for each client) were in Indy. All of the hardcore product dev and engineering was in Boston. Many of the lowest level support staff were being sent to cheaper EMEA, Indy, and APAC offices when I left.
There was plenty of local talent in infrastructure and for the more "maintenance" type roles. Software engineers with hedge fund and wealth management experience - no. An engineer or even a systems analyst with recent experience in this platform could easily bill $300+/hr consulting. That's the way to go.
Still, a new grad engineer started about $80k in our Boston office. The COLA from Indy to Boston was only 30%, and not really enough to justify the cost of living difference. Most people, unless they were really capable of being in that top couple of percent, would be better off remaining in Indy.
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