Thanks for answering this. It sounds like the things in the ‘maybe concerns, insufficient info’ categories are largely not concerns, which is encouraging. I’d be happy to privately contribute salary and CoL numbers to someone’s effort to figure out how much people would save.
https://angel.co/manchester/jobs is a little discouraging; there are Lead Java Developer roles listed for £30-50k , no equity which would pay $150,000-$180,000 base in SF and might well see more than $300k in total compensation. Even if you did want to buy a house, which again Bay rationalists largely just don’t, that means a house costs three-four years’ salary in both cases and in one case you own a million-dollar property which will (unfortunately for the city) probably appreciate significantly and in another you own a £125k property not expected to appreciate any. It might be better to target people who want to retire early to Manchester and people not in tech.
I don’t think any amount of gender-related recruiting is more predictive of gender balance than ‘how similar is this to the parts of the community which have gender balance’? So it actually would surprise me if, even throwing everything under the bus to achieve this goal, it worked. Of course, I’d say a thriving Manchester community with a lousy gender ratio would still be an amazing accomplishment. A reasonable way to estimate gender balance in the Bay might be “count at Solstice, excluding anyone who flew in for Solstice”? (On the Facebook page so far, of the 29 people attending 12 are women, but Facebook pages are very noisy estimates of attendance and the attendance will be an order of magnitude higher than that, so I won’t put that much weight on that.)
Come to think of it, you’ve got an uphill battle on gender ratios for another reason, which is that women are on average less likely to do weird things, less likely to be underemployed in their twenties, and likelier to have close social ties preventing moving. I still am confident in my prediction but this general factor might be a stronger contributor than culture-specific ones.
I’d be happy to privately contribute salary and CoL numbers to someone’s effort to figure out how much people would save.
Thank you. LW 2.0 message system doesn’t seem to be working properly, so I have sent a facebook request
https://angel.co/manchester/jobs is a little discouraging; there are Lead Java Developer roles listed for £30-50k , no equity which would pay $150,000-$180,000 base in SF and might well see more than $300k in total compensation.
That might be exaggerating the compensation gap just a little bit. The first senior software engineering position on that list offers £57k-£64k and 2-5% equity. (Also $300k annual compensation would put someone into the top 1% of all US adults, this is not your typical scenario. Even among rationalists, the median non-student income is $75000)
Also, hold on, Silicon Valley hasn’t seceded from the US. (Yet.) That $300k after taxes comes out to $185k (£141.5k), as opposed to £60k which comes out to £42.5k here ($55.5k). If we remove only the rent from the living expenses we have around $167k and £39k. If the houses are $1m and £125k respectively then you can buy a house there in 6 years, whereas here it would only take 3.2 years. (And no, houses are not meant to be offloaded to a greater fool when it comes time to sell. Although houses in the area we are buying are rising at ~5%/year due to the central location)
It might be better to target people who want to retire early to Manchester and people not in tech.
This is basically the general point, yes?
The opening line to the economics section:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but basing a community that’s not focused on maximising gross income in the most expensive city in North America doesn’t strike me as particularly rational.
Pointing out that “well actually, if you are a super-talented software dev you can make much more money in SF” is, well, not even wrong.
If all the talk about optimizing for human flourishing didn’t make it clear to people, perhaps the general outlook can be approximated by reading SSC Gives A Graduation Speech.
One of the underlying ideas for the project is the cost of living is low enough that you can generate your own basic income.
When you significantly reduce financial constrants, you can do a lot more things. A few that come to mind:
writing open-source software that benefits the world but can’t be made into a profitable buisness model
full-time blogging on a $1000 a month patreon fanbase
raising five children with a single breadwinner
having 10 partners and enough time to see them all regularly
living comfortably off part time work without being a programmer
having wild parties three nights a week
doing the starving artist thing without actually starving
making contributions in any field that doesn’t require more than $20k equipment (e.g. math)
writing/systemizing rationality material on a grand scale
seeing a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower
You basically can live like money doesn’t matter at a lot lower threshholds.
A reasonable way to estimate gender balance in the Bay might be “count at Solstice, excluding anyone who flew in for Solstice”? (On the Facebook page so far, of the 29 people attending 12 are women, but Facebook pages are very noisy estimates of attendance and the attendance will be an order of magnitude higher than that, so I won’t put that much weight on that.)
Accurate information would be good, I can proxy it from second hand anecdotes too. I’m just hesistant to relying on it for anything that matters.
Come to think of it, you’ve got an uphill battle on gender ratios for another reason, which is that women are on average less likely to do weird things, less likely to be underemployed in their twenties, and likelier to have close social ties preventing moving. I still am confident in my prediction but this general factor might be a stronger contributor than culture-specific ones.
Which is why we aren’t trying to bridge the gap by flying them across the Atlantic and instead trying to find them right here, and increasing the conversion rate by omitting the parts that don’t make people more rational but nonetheless make women disproportionately feel like “this isn’t for me”.
Also, dear god, I’m probably the last person that should be running this if the goal is to recruit well-heeled Ivy grad women. But again, that isn’t what we’re trying to do here. I mean, if it strikes the fancy of a few, that’s great, but it isn’t our comparative advantage. We can’t be everything to everyone.
Thanks for answering this. It sounds like the things in the ‘maybe concerns, insufficient info’ categories are largely not concerns, which is encouraging. I’d be happy to privately contribute salary and CoL numbers to someone’s effort to figure out how much people would save.
https://angel.co/manchester/jobs is a little discouraging; there are Lead Java Developer roles listed for £30-50k , no equity which would pay $150,000-$180,000 base in SF and might well see more than $300k in total compensation. Even if you did want to buy a house, which again Bay rationalists largely just don’t, that means a house costs three-four years’ salary in both cases and in one case you own a million-dollar property which will (unfortunately for the city) probably appreciate significantly and in another you own a £125k property not expected to appreciate any. It might be better to target people who want to retire early to Manchester and people not in tech.
I don’t think any amount of gender-related recruiting is more predictive of gender balance than ‘how similar is this to the parts of the community which have gender balance’? So it actually would surprise me if, even throwing everything under the bus to achieve this goal, it worked. Of course, I’d say a thriving Manchester community with a lousy gender ratio would still be an amazing accomplishment. A reasonable way to estimate gender balance in the Bay might be “count at Solstice, excluding anyone who flew in for Solstice”? (On the Facebook page so far, of the 29 people attending 12 are women, but Facebook pages are very noisy estimates of attendance and the attendance will be an order of magnitude higher than that, so I won’t put that much weight on that.)
Come to think of it, you’ve got an uphill battle on gender ratios for another reason, which is that women are on average less likely to do weird things, less likely to be underemployed in their twenties, and likelier to have close social ties preventing moving. I still am confident in my prediction but this general factor might be a stronger contributor than culture-specific ones.
Thank you. LW 2.0 message system doesn’t seem to be working properly, so I have sent a facebook request
That might be exaggerating the compensation gap just a little bit. The first senior software engineering position on that list offers £57k-£64k and 2-5% equity. (Also $300k annual compensation would put someone into the top 1% of all US adults, this is not your typical scenario. Even among rationalists, the median non-student income is $75000)
Also, hold on, Silicon Valley hasn’t seceded from the US. (Yet.) That $300k after taxes comes out to $185k (£141.5k), as opposed to £60k which comes out to £42.5k here ($55.5k). If we remove only the rent from the living expenses we have around $167k and £39k. If the houses are $1m and £125k respectively then you can buy a house there in 6 years, whereas here it would only take 3.2 years. (And no, houses are not meant to be offloaded to a greater fool when it comes time to sell. Although houses in the area we are buying are rising at ~5%/year due to the central location)
This is basically the general point, yes?
The opening line to the economics section:
Pointing out that “well actually, if you are a super-talented software dev you can make much more money in SF” is, well, not even wrong.
If all the talk about optimizing for human flourishing didn’t make it clear to people, perhaps the general outlook can be approximated by reading SSC Gives A Graduation Speech.
One of the underlying ideas for the project is the cost of living is low enough that you can generate your own basic income.
When you significantly reduce financial constrants, you can do a lot more things. A few that come to mind:
writing open-source software that benefits the world but can’t be made into a profitable buisness model
full-time blogging on a $1000 a month patreon fanbase
raising five children with a single breadwinner
having 10 partners and enough time to see them all regularly
living comfortably off part time work without being a programmer
having wild parties three nights a week
doing the starving artist thing without actually starving
making contributions in any field that doesn’t require more than $20k equipment (e.g. math)
writing/systemizing rationality material on a grand scale
seeing a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower
You basically can live like money doesn’t matter at a lot lower threshholds.
Accurate information would be good, I can proxy it from second hand anecdotes too. I’m just hesistant to relying on it for anything that matters.
Which is why we aren’t trying to bridge the gap by flying them across the Atlantic and instead trying to find them right here, and increasing the conversion rate by omitting the parts that don’t make people more rational but nonetheless make women disproportionately feel like “this isn’t for me”.
Also, dear god, I’m probably the last person that should be running this if the goal is to recruit well-heeled Ivy grad women. But again, that isn’t what we’re trying to do here. I mean, if it strikes the fancy of a few, that’s great, but it isn’t our comparative advantage. We can’t be everything to everyone.