Is this the best place to start a startup? No. However, having attempted to pull up and move to an expensive place where we knew no one (NH, in 2003), I'm not eager to go through that experience again just now, so we'll just keep plugging away until we succeed.
Zero reason to move to the bay area if you're in seattle... and a lot of reasons not to.
In my graduating class, about 1/3 took jobs in engineering, consulting, or finance that pay $60-$80k (more in finance). The remaining 2/3 became graduate students, temp workers, secretaries and teachers making $20-30k/year. The ones making $60-80k don't live significantly more extravagant lifestyles (actually, I see far more engineers and consultants living with their parents than secretaries and teachers), so they pocket the $40K/year difference.
What's a typical salary for a talented computer programmer in Alabama? Are there particular barriers to relocating to Boston or SF or Redmond or Austin and getting a decent salary?
There are a coupla barriers to moving; we have a house to pay for, hardly know anyone (personally) who doesn't live around here, and have issues "getting a decent salary" due to history. I've been freelancing for seven years, with no degree, and it turns out that people aren't interested in hiring someone like that remotely.
In 2003, we gave moving to the Boston area a shot (Nashua), but the only position I managed to get was Comcast tech support (and all our clients were down here, of course), which didn't pay enough to save up enough money for a deposit. It was a totally different world up there. Here, if you have a thousand dollars, you can pay a deposit and the first two months rent, and have plenty left over to look for a job for a month. Your first full paycheck at even a convenience store would pay the rent. In Nashua, I was making (for the 6 months we were there) about the same amount I would here for the same job, except that landlords wanted outrageous sums for housing that even slumlords would be ashamed of in the South. "Let me get this straight: you want nearly a thousand a month for a room that doesn't even have a private bath?! Did you accidentally include an extra zero?"
Anyway, enough ranting. :) If you've lived in such a place long enough to think it's normal to pay thousands a month, rather than hundreds, just to have food, gas, and a small house, I imagine it's hard to understand the shock. Six months into that attempted move, after being too exhausted from dealing with people all day (I'm not a people person) to do anything but collapse into bed, it finally became clear that there was essentially no way we would ever be able to save up enough money (we had to stay in weekly places, due to never having the 2K or so it would have required to get a crappy apartment). We'd been spoiled by doing exactly this same thing in 1998 moving to Florida, and having that turn out well.
So, basically, the biggest barrier is that it would take years of saving, here, to come up with enough money to not instantly be homeless in the Boston area or SV. Alternatively, we can just continue with doing startups in extremelycheapland, while living a middle class lifestyle on 15 hours of freelancing a week.
How much do houses cost where you live, btw? I don't think people would be "gambling away their houses" by giving you 15K - wouldn't that just be two or three years more of paying off the mortgage?
Yes, I admit I was being a bit melodramatic. :)
Houses around here cost anywhere from 30K (manufactured home and a building lot) up; site-built homes start in the 60s for a small two bedroom place. I don't personally know anyone who spent more than 150K for a house within 40 miles of here, but there are a lot of ads for subdivisions "starting in the 190s" and such, now. Property values have gone way up for newly built homes, but older homes haven't appreciated proportionately. As I mentioned above, we're paying a little over 50K for ours, but we had the land given to us by relatives.
This is all totally off-topic, I suppose. Perhaps I'll point at this thread when I start hiring to explain why I'm only offering 35K salary. ;)
If you want a startup, it sounds like you have 25 hours a week to invest in it. It doesn't sound like you need to save up a lot of money.
If you're a software engineer, even in alabama, you can easily make $60k a year.
And anyway, it doesn't matter-- if your income is that low, cost of living should be low as well.
Alabama is probably a great place to start a startup-- just you should start living on half your income.
Do that for a year and save the balance and you have a years living expenses to live off while you try and get your business going.
I think you live in a different world than some of the rest of us. Not only is 15K a lot of money (more than half of what my wife and I made last year, and we're not doing badly here in east Alabama), but it's often the case that the only people who could possibly get that kind of money are friends and family who've already paid for most or all of a house. So, the question becomes, would you rather work on this part time, or try to convince your parents or friends to bet their home on your startup?