NBC News reports:
Many urban centers have seen residents move out in large numbers since the start of stay-at-home orders in March, but the shift has been especially dramatic for San Francisco, a city that was already experiencing rapid change because of the tech industry. Software engineers, CEOs and venture capitalists have chosen to jump from the Bay Area to places such as Denver, Miami and Austin, Texas, citing housing costs, California’s relatively high income tax and the Bay Area’s general resistance to rapid growth and change.

The scale of the departures is visible in vacant high-end apartments, moth-balled offices and quieter streets in neighborhoods popular with tech workers. And while no one is exactly celebrating, especially as Covid-19 has devastated the incomes of many people, some residents were ready to take a break from the rich…. Rents may have fallen 20 percent or more from a year ago, but they’re still high by national standards, and many artists left the city a long time ago.

Although some companies such as Pinterest have canceled leases, Google is expanding its offices in San Francisco, a sign of the tech industry’s attachment to the city despite the local hostility and the predictions of a permanent work-from-home culture…

Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of Media Alliance, a San Francisco nonprofit that is often critical of the power of tech companies, said she wonders whether tech workers will want to return to a place where they’ve received a mixed welcome. “The level of tech blowback in San Francisco and the Bay Area was going up in intensity,” she said. “I think there’ll be sort of a reluctance to come back and face that, because that was reaching a level that was hard to live with — when you are the cause of all social problems, in the eyes of a significant part of the population, at least.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Are Tech Workers Fleeing the San Francisco Bay Area?