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"When an architecture student’s dazzling ocean cleanup concept fizzled, she started thinking smaller — and tackled the problem at the source." Read the full article

Working from home is a dream come true for some people and a nightmare for others. It all depends on your perspective. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, some people who started working remotely were happy about the changes. For one thing, working from home saved them time and money that would have been spent on commuting to work every day. 

However, the most important advantage of working from home is that it will keep you safe from getting infected by the novel coronavirus. Right now, this is the only reason that counts. Thankfully, software developers have the privilege of working from home. This has propelled some of them to consider relocation from Silicon Valley to more affordable cities in Texas. 

Tech Talent Flee From Silicon Valley 

Do you know that there are more than 225,300 high tech workers in Silicon Valley, San Francisco? To put this into perspective, there are 387,000 high tech jobs in the entire country. So, if there are 225,300 high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley, then you can understand why it is the best hub for web developers around the world. Unfortunately, the city is at risk of losing its position as the number one destination for tech talent. This is primarily because of two things: talent relocation and company relocation. 

Without the companies and the hundreds of thousands of tech workers in Silicon Valley, the city is going to lose its title as the foremost destination for tech gurus in the United States. This makes it one of the most technologically innovative places in the world but it also makes it one of the most expensive. House rent in the Valley is unrealistically high and it's only going to keep increasing. Tech jobs pay more money than many other jobs in Silicon Valley. However, tech workers aren't satisfied with spending all the money they have on daily expenses. 

A small one-bedroom apartment in Silicon Valley costs over $2,000 monthly. By the time you factor in food and other expenses, you might spend over $5,000 just to survive in Silicon Valley every month. This isn't something the average worker can afford. Some of the tech workers who can afford this expensive lifestyle don't think the Valley is worth all the hype. Since they can now work from home, many of these workers have decided to leave the expensive city for more affordable places.

Why should any average worker pay $5,000 monthly to survive when they spend $2,000 for the same standard of living in another city? The primary reason why many of these tech workers remained in Silicon Valley for this long is because of their jobs. Now that they no longer have to go to the office, they want out of the city. Some of them have already indicated an interest in moving to Texas while many others have moved out already. 

Coronavirus is Changing Tech Salaries 

As tech talent and companies flee Silicon Valley, they inspire even more people to leave the overpriced city. However, tech companies that are remaining in Silicon Valley aren't ready to let their talent relocate, remote work, or not. Facebook and other companies have given their workers ultimatums. They have the choice to remain in Silicon Valley and keep their fat salaries or relocate and face cuts. The salary cuts depend on the company but Facebook is threatening to remove up to 10% of the salary of remote workers. Some other companies claim that they will cut between 8% to 20% depending on where their workers choose to go after leaving the Valley. The cheaper the cost of living in the new place, the higher the salary cut.

Bottom Line 

Covid-19 is changing tech salaries in the United States and every other part of the globe. Many similar things have been happening in tech companies around the world, but the most pronounced rate of relocation is in Silicon Valley. Tech companies like Oracle and Hewlett Packard have also left the Valley for Texas. Even Elon Musk has moved from his Silicon Valley home to the Lone Star State. If companies keep leaving the Valley, it will no longer be the most popular tech hub in the world.

Dawns early light,
brings forth a new day,
for it is the Sabbath.
God, let us pray.
Pray for our neighbors
and this I must say,
wear a mask in public
and when you play.
Be here for the morrow
and for the next day.
Avoid crowds, as you must,
keeping the virus away.

Most of us entered the Internet Age with high hopes and expectations of what it could bring to us. Now, we find an online world dominated by corporations in pursuit of increased revenues, profit, and higher valuations. A world, where we, the users of the services are the product, where disinformation reigns, radicalization is rampant, rage is out in the open and where every day our privacy slips away.  Read the Atlantic article "How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire"

Search you not, for the shiniest bead,
it has no value; it will not feed,
your empty belly, with the food you need,
so drink the water, plant the seed.
This is a problem. Have you agreed?

So the Covid-in-Chief knew how deadly the virus was back in the beginning, just didn’t want to scare us. The Head Cheerleader wanted to paint a smiley face on the coronavirus, tell us it would fade away, tell us it was contained, tell us we didn’t need to wear masks or avoid crowded bars, assure us there was nothing to fear here. Right. This from the Town Crier whose doom and gloom messages about everything from immigrant caravans to socialist takeovers are intended to scare the pants off every undecided voter in the country.

Our cities are burning! Looters and rioters and those liberal Democrats have run amok in left wing urban enclaves. Illegal immigrants are flooding into white America, raping and killing and selling our kids drugs. Crime is rampant. The cops are being handcuffed by socialist legislatures. If Biden is elected, the stock market will crash, the economy will plunge, the coming Depression will be like nothing we’ve ever seen.

This is the stuff of a calming cheerleader? One who doesn’t want to incite panic in the population? Gimme a break, the man would scream Fire! in a crowded maskless theater if he thought it might get him some votes from the survivors. No way do any rational people, if there are any left, think Donald J. Trump wanted to spare us undue hysteria. We’ve had three plus years of anxiety, fear, terror and dread. You sleep okay at night wondering about this guy’s finger on the Big Red Button? Even his fixer, Michael Cohen, will tell you this narcissist would say and do anything to stay in office. If cranking up the fear factor would work, he’s all in.

But … in my fair and balanced way, let me add that when he met with the Californians while their forests and suburbs burned, he didn’t yell Fire! No, he assured them that global warming was a hoax and science wasn’t always right. In fact, or something he’d like to think is fact, the world will grow colder instead. Soon. You wait and see, he told us. Great Leaders sometimes have to put a positive spin on catastrophe. And if a positive spin on catastrophe makes a man a great leader, well, need anyone say more? I know I’m feeling a definite chill in the air.

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In Finland this week the fjord-folks are lining up to obtain the tax records of their friends and co-workers. The government makes these documents available to any and all, apparently in an attempt to keep the income disparities we have here in the Yew Ess Aye from growing too large in their wintry environment, I guess by letting everyone know that the guy in the next cubicle makes more than they do for the same or similar work. Might be a good idea. Might shame employers who pay men more than women or whites more than people of color. Probably won’t shame hedge fund managers or CEO’s. Shame is not part of their lexicon.

But then … maybe it just makes us South Enders crazy with envy for those who worked for Boeing or Weyerhauser, Microsoft or Google, made quick fortunes and retired with golden parachutes. I seriously doubt we need financial disclosure statements of those neighbors behind gated fences. What is worrisome, at least for me, is the potential for just saying to hell with the whole system, why work for measley wages when the millionaire across the ravine is traveling full time in Asia, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Paris? A few years back my UPS driver, who had a shack up in the foothills, told me, when I mentioned my brother worked for Big Brown too and made pretty good money, that he only worked for ‘wages’. I asked what he meant, ‘only work for wages’?

“I deliver to all these dot.com retirees who made a fortune,” he said. “I just make wages.” I said I think I’d look at it a little bit different. You got a nice place up in the hills, got a decent job at a decent wage, why not be happy with that? He shook his head sadly and muttered that it was hard when half his deliveries went to folks who retired at 45, got a whopping pension and stock options, and now they sit back with the life of Riley while he has to work his ass off to make ends meet.

I told him again I’d rethink that if I were him. I said I don’t make squat but I don’t have fantasies of being rich either. Poverty won’t buy you happiness, but it won’t deprive you of it either. He didn’t think that was funny or cute and he left shaking his head, no doubt driving off to the next mansion past my shack, maybe stopping at Tyee Store to buy a lottery ticket before delivering a gold plated mailbox to my neighbor.

I don’t care what folks make. I don’t care if my own mailbox is bent and the flag isn’t gold. I do think we have too low a minimum wage and we have too many rich people taking more than their fair share. But this is America. Money talks and the poor can take a backseat or hitchhike. But some of us aren’t poor, not really, and maybe we should enjoy what riches we have. Instead of envying the wealthy.

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The slab showed up unannounced, a 4 foot by 4 foot concrete square sitting at the edge of the little park I caretake, a mystery to me. Maybe the county had decided to bring in artwork, who knows, maybe a commemorative sculpture of me, Ranger Daddle. I know, not too likely given the fact the county may not know the park even exists or if they do, who is doing the maintenance. But a mystery, like winning the Lottery, is mostly about firing our greedy imaginations.

A week went by … then two. A month. No bronze Skeeter appeared one morning. No plaque. Nothing. Just that square of concrete poured apparently by hand in the dark of night either by aliens or South End tricksters. I mowed around it and pondered its meaning the way astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey pondered the Black Obelisk, knowing only that some intelligence had brought it, who knows whether for good or ill. All I knew was I wouldn’t be moving it, not a half ton of concrete.

After a few weeks I stopped paying attention to my mystery square, stopped guessing what its Maker intended, stopped seeing it at all … until a few days ago when the phone booth showed up, one of those rectangular booths from a time just before the cellphone made public telephones obsolete. Clark Kent would have to change in a McDonalds bathroom hereafter and every citizen, no matter how impoverished, would need to purchase a personal phone and a plan.

And yet … here was the Last Phone Booth on the South End, possibly in America, maybe even the world!! In my park. Under my care. Which, considering I do not own a cellphone, is Totally Apropos, as if the Gods of Wire Transmission or the Ghost of Alexander Graham Bell had anointed me Keeper of the Dial Tone.

Of course it arrived without a working phone, just a payphone with no incoming line off the street. Most gifts, if you think about it, come with strings attached. Mine did, but not the useful ones. Nevertheless, I’m the Ranger, an American Dr. Who with his very own nonfunctioning Tardis. I would find a Way, count on it, because that’s my job. The concrete square was, it turns out, my new purpose, better, I suspect, than winning the Lottery where the end of my days would be filled with South Enders begging for loans.

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