🚀 go-pugleaf

gatt <gatt@juggFUerbot.com> writes:

> My friend's mom was relocated from Beaverton to Palo Alto by
> Intel, who is paying $3,000/month for her 700-square-foot
> apartment.

That's expensive even by Palo Alto standards.  Either Intel
leased a block of premium apartments somewhere and got royally 
screwed on a "corporate rate," or your friend's mom found
her own lodging but didn't bother searching very far...as
in, "beyond the Palo Alto city limits."  There are much
cheaper options not all that far away, in either direction.

Where do people get this idea that they have to live in the
same municipality where they work?  I remember the time, 
about a decade ago, when I told someone that I worked in
Menlo Park and lived in Mountain View -- which was all of
a ten- to fifteen- minute run down the freeway, depending
on traffic.  He gave me a confused look and asked, 
"Wull...how come you don't live in Menlo Park, where your
job is?"  As though I was somehow obligated to go through
the hassle of moving, and to a place I could barely have
afforded to live in, just to be in the same ZIP code as
my workplace!


> My friend, who also works for Intel as a chemical engineer,
> owns a ~$200,000 home in Aloha. Her mother said you couldn't
> find a house like that in P.A.  for under a million.

> Screw that!

Unfortunately, the Bay Area is where the greatest concentration
of computer-industry jobs are in the United States.  Of course,
wages tend to be commensurate with the cost of living.  If they
weren't, companies like Intel wouldn't be able to get people to
move here and work for them.

If someone can find such a job in a reasonably desirable locale
with a lower cost of living, more power to them -- but then, the
wages would undoubtedly be lower in proportion.



Geoff

-- 
"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically
 intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed
 too.  Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."
					-- Ann Coulter