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by lsiq 152 days ago
Adafruit is basically the best but their whole reside-in-NYC philosophy makes zero sense. The contention that they can hire better people in NYC holds no water because over 50% of what they pay their employees goes to 3 layers of governments with no meaningful benefit AND their people pay NYC rents.

They could literally halve their prices or double their pay if they moved to Jacksonville or similar. And their employees would get daily sunshine and own a house, instead of inhaling 100 year old dust in the subway everyday, commuting from their tiny 1BR apartment. It boggles the mind.
2 comments
cloudfudge 152 days ago
Turning this thread into a weird anti-NYC rant is certainly a choice.
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ptorrone 152 days ago
not everyone who works at adafruit works in our industry city, brooklyn factory. we've been doing remote before it was a thing, you can check out our shows or ask before assuming the worst, but whatevers, you made up your mind and want us to move to florida.
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lsiq 152 days ago
I would love to use Adafruit boards in my production, but I have to resort to custom Chinese PCB stuff to be competitive. I don't want anything, but taxes and CoL is basic business logic.

SparkFun is in Colorado, which isn't a low tax state but their cost of living is still lower. So all else equals, they are going to earn maybe 5-10% more profit on the sale of a commodity item like a Teensy. You have better products than they do, all else equals you could earn 25%+ more than them, by simply moving to greener pastures, whether that be NC, TN, NV, or FL.

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LeafItAlone 149 days ago
>simply moving to greener pastures, whether that be NC, TN, NV, or FL

Yeah, but then they’d be in NC, TN, NV, or FL which, frankly, sounds absolutely miserable. They made the right choice by being in NYC.

Adafruit seems to be doing very well where they are. Why would they want to suffer in such junk states like those with worthless governments when they could continue to be where they are and are happy? They’d also be scraping the bottom of the barrel in those places for talent for the necessary in-person positions. The stars up mentioned sure are cheaper, and they still cost more than they are worth.

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dekhn 152 days ago
As a long time internet user and consumer of products from both Adafruit and Sparkfun, I don't think your participation in this thread is doing you any favors. Like others here, I advise de-engaging with this debacle for now.
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