[brianm]

I disagree. The original article is specifically about attracting good talent to Austin. Someone presently in the valley, who is worth attracting, generally has no reason to leave. You need to come up with good reasons for them to leave which outweigh the massive black hole of attraction for tech talent which is the valley. Offering a significant salary cut is not going to help your cause -- you cannot be losing on hygiene factors when you are selling from a weak position.

Trying to sell the candidate on the cost of living being lower is actually bogus anyway. At high salary levels you cannot look at cost of living as a percentage difference, you need to look at absolutes. A thirty percent pay cut on a 150k salary works out to about 2500-3000 per month after taxes. This is a lot more than the absolute value cost of living difference.

Making it even worse, you are asking candidates to move from an environment where they have a couple hundred interesting alternate employment options, all at that 30% higher salary, if the current job does not work out. They are moving to a, at best, tertiary market -- meaning there is a very good chance that they will have to move again for their next job.

[moocow01]

"Someone presently in the valley, who is worth attracting, generally has no reason to leave" - I get your point but many people once they have families feel pressure to get out of SV probably due to long hours, cost, etc. Not everyone leaves but I've seen many good engineers leave to the more affordable tech hubs (Austin, Portland, Seattle, etc.) I have to admit that once I started visiting these places I can now understand why many people move.

[mjwalshe]

why would you move your family to an area with less opportunity for them? Is their partner going to be able to find a "propper" job will their kids get a good education and have a wide choice of "propper" carrears (or will they join the army as thats the best choice on offer)

[allenp]

Its probably worth saying that there is a big difference between moving from SV/SF to Seattle, Portland, or Austin, and moving to a small town of 1000 people in the middle of nowhere.

Opportunity for career growth isn't the only factor in where a family moves - there are a number of other concerns like safety, values, closeness to family, and fresh air and water.