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Probably some of those issues are not a big problem when you have a good salary (like child/healthcare). And a Silicon Valley salary in Idaho sounds like a pretty sweet deal.
we looked at Boise/Meridian for a relo two years back for exactly this reason, low tax, cheap housing, big semiconductor job base. ended up passing, healthcare access for our kid was the dealbreaker, not the politics in the abstract.
Micron's been in Boise since 1978. People already live there and build memory chips just fine. This isn't some greenfield relocation decision, it's doubling down on infrastructure and workforce that's already 45 years deep.
The press release says something about 4 people in Boise a long time ago?
None of the quotes have anyone from Boise or even Idaho. Not the governor of Idaho, not a University of Idaho faculty.
There are quotes from Lutnick, Cook from Apple, Jensen Huang, someone from Stanford.
What's the connection to Idaho? Why put this there?
As an Oregonian, I'm a little biased, but why not put this closer to ex-Intel employees and a source of labor. As an Oregonian living now in Florida, the stories about everyone from California moving to Texas and Florida definitely don't seem true to me. My opinion is that those migration patterns hide the realities which is that you've definitely got a lot of financiers and billionaires like Sergey Brin (i.e. tax evaders) declaring they are now Florida residents. And a bunch of people outside of high skilled fields (setting aside healthcare workers) who are migrating in search of cheaper housing. But not a lot of "middle class" tech people (I've been searching for four years and they aren't here). Probably they don't want to subject themselves to the worst public schools in the country and fight the culture wars.
But the point is, how do you staff this research lab without an expectation that thousands of people will move their families there. This is a research lab, not jobs for a data center (electrician and construction).
They were founded in Boise. Boise is their HQ and where most of their developer and research staff live. I worked there for almost 9 years. They have several fabs here, all on the same plot of land just outside of town. This will add to it.
I interned at that site about 20 years ago. Took me 30+ minutes to walk from one end (where their image sensor R&D was, before they spun it off) to the other end. As a 20 year old, it was amazing to walk past all the various clean rooms, watch the robots and the guys in bunny suits do their thing. A fun experience.
Boise is a desirable place to live if you love the outdoors. And it is a capital city. If you can't afford SF or Boulder, you might be able to swing it in Boise. Of course, Boise housing prices are expensive already, and this will make it even more expensive.
If one is or a member of your family is a woman, healthcare will be an issue, many healthcare professionals in obgyn specialties fled the state when abortion ban kicked in so only the older generation of providers who stuck it out are left and that is a cohort that is going to get smaller and smaller leading to longer and longer queues for care, they can only lure in anti abortion obgyns so the candidate pool is small.
This has been in news for years with recent article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/content/ar-AA29YwYp
The press release was poorly edited. While everyone inside the semiconductor industry knows that Micron is based in Boise, the general public doesn't. The press release should have said so rather than leaving it to the reader to interpret the 408 area codes listed for the contacts. Oh wait...that's San Jose. Boise is 208.
Fwiw the story of how Micron ended up being founded in Boise is pretty interesting.
Toured Micron's Boise fab a few years back for a supplier audit. Their yield ramp on new nodes is brutal slow compared to Korean fabs, mostly metrology bottlenecks not lithography. A research hub might actually fix that instead of just chasing HBM capacity.
Yes, Idaho and Boise in particular are absolute hellscapes. Who wants an incredibly clean, safe city with kind people who value the rule of law, a low cost of living and great access to trails, mountains and rivers. People should definitely not move there.
The announcement being made by a CEO that wasn’t born in America is just the cherry on top. Can’t wait for the complete surprise when his citizenship is revoked. I imagine it will be something about “I thought they were just targeting the bad ones”.
Boise is a great city and the Micron HQ was very diverse when I worked there. Your comment also fails at basic logic: if 75% vaccinate their kids, then ~75% of straight white guys in fact do care about their kids getting terrible diseases. Also, in my experience ethnic and racial minorities aren't any less likely to be anti-vaxxers, so there are intersectionality failures going on here too.
Not every subject needs to be made polarized political. A company that’s already in Boise that is expanding production in Boise is ultimately not making any sort of political statement.
You’d be hard pressed to find a company that makes facility decisions based on social politics. I don’t think Subaru produces cars in Indiana as a reflection of conservative beliefs just like Chevron isn’t headquartered in California because of progressive beliefs.
Also remember that thousands to millions of progressive people live in every single red state. Similar story for blue states: millions of conservatives live in California, Illinois, and New York. None of those people are hypocrites violating their values for living near family or work. Individuals aren’t responsible for value misalignment of their government or other related institutions, especially if they vote consistently and are on the losing side of the vote.
Saying stuff like this doesn’t convince anyone from the other side to abandon their views and mainly serves to stoke flames.
Hey, I just want measles to not be a thing. If that’s political, many apologies.
But to the extent there are political folks who want measles, low pay for women, abuse of gay people, and random harassment and deportation of legal immigrants, I assure you I have no interest in convincing them otherwise. I just wouldn’t move to a state they control, like Idaho.
