Yep! That's pretty much what happened with me. I worked in SF as a developer for about 4 years and then left. Back in the 00's and early 10's I was always paying less than $1000/month rent for a room in a house or apartment. It's a great place to live if you are young and don't have a lot of responsibilities or expenses. I would love to move back to the Bay Area but now I have a wife and a kid. I can buy a relatively affordable house here for about $150k (Northwest Arkansas) and be able to pay for private education for my child OR move back to Dublin/Pleasanton, spend an hour and a half on the BART every day, pay rent, and send her to public school. I make $70/hr doing remote work in my home. How much would I have to get paid in SF to get the same level of compensation? It's hard to justify moving back.

This is exactly true. I've seen many senior engineers and H1B visa holders relocate from the Bay to Seattle/Austin/Colorado etc. I think its great that the major Tech companies are fanning out. Perhaps the other centers will become more or less like SV and ease the pressure somewhat. Or at least induce the landed SF residents to consider reasonable adjustments to accommodate the influx of people into the city.

Which, btw, is not explicitly a bad thing as it means skills and talents will be spread across the country.

It’s why Austin/Portland/etc grow in these areas.

In fact, I’d go further and say it’s explicitly a good thing. While there are some advantages to concentration of industries, it’s unhealthy when taken to an extreme.

> It’s why Austin/Portland/etc grow in these areas.

Realize you're being colloquial here, but I think it's a bit SF centric to credit SF with growth occurring in other areas of the country... In the case of ATX you have at least UTexas & Michael Dell not playing a small part in the tech growth there, for starters..

If you look at the migration patterns of people in NorCal it’s really not. Hell, just ask the locals - it’s a damn cliche in Austin or Portland that ppl moved in from NorCal to there.

Also if you look at the businesses, networking, and where the VC money comes from, the SV connection is clear.

Flight from the Bay Area has absolutely powered a lot of growth in those places.

They were cool places in the first place of course, but that is why they were attractive to move to.

Agreed. We'll never solve diversity in tech if all the jobs are concentrated in the Bay Area.

Didn't Portland (well, Hillsboro) have 5 huge Intel campuses, with all the tech talent that comes along with those, for a lot longer than Silicon Valley has been a thing?

Portland has had two waves of growth - the first was due to Seattle’s tech scene.

So yes they did - due to that one.

+1

I'm making 80% of the SFBA wages and I live in the rust belt. I had a 1 bedroom, 800 sq. ft apartment a block away from work for <$1000/mo - which is actually pretty high for the area. I can rent a house for ~1,200/mo if a 20 minute commute were fine.

I've talked to a few recruiters in the Bay Area but the crime and cost of living are highly unfavorable. As far as I can tell, the only reason one would go out there is to do something state-of-the-art. I don't know why people would do anything else there unless they were already wealthy.

Where in the Rust belt? I agree, much more affordable. Interested in which city you chose, and what your experience has been...?

I've jumped between a few cities actually. I'll call out the things I wish I would have known:

* winter isn't that bad if you have a heated garage at work and at least an insulated garage (if unheated) at home

* winter is that bad if you park outside

* the downtowns of most major rust belt cities are shockingly cosmopolitan with brunch joints, breweries, and art galleries

* the art scenes are shockingly good because the costs are pretty low

* the airfare can be kind of expensive

* the spring and fall are very, very nice

* the cities are generally managed poorly but the first / second ring suburbs (esp. the wealthier / more conservative ones) are really, really nice places to live

I think Paul Graham made this point, but it's good to live in areas that used to be rich. St. Paul MN, Columbus OH, and Erie PA fit the bill - the old mansions and old town neighborhoods can be really really nice and shockingly affordable if you're used to coast prices. There's less ethnic food generally available but there is pretty authentic stuff in the immigrant neighborhoods and the prices are authentic too.

The biggest 'quality of life' thing is the ease of getting around the low storage costs. In California, it seemed like people could really only have one or two hobbies - in the midwest it's not uncommon for folks to more than half of these items: kayaks, bicycles, motorcycles, boats, fishing rods, tents, cameras, skis/snowboards, hammocks, golf clubs etc. Having winter makes it easier to get outdoors during the warm months, and if you have kids, the schools in the richer areas tend to be very good.

The downsides are the roads can be pretty bad (esp. in Illinois and Michigan), winter can be brutal, the salt can make car ownership expensive, car ownership is critical unless you make it otherwise, and it can be tough to find intellectual engagement.

Definitely true. Even other nominally 'expensive' cities can attract away Bay Area expats if they're less comprehensively pricy.

NYC has the same problem as SF: it's hell to get in and out, and no one is building new units with easy access to the city center. (LA likewise.) But Boston, DC, Houston, and other very big cities are way more forgiving to people willing to commute 20-50 minutes in return for some decently-priced housing.

And in the case of Boston many/most of the tech jobs still aren’t in the city itself although that’s shifted a fair bit. That’s a big difference between cities. In the Bay Area it’s hard to get away from very high prices. 45 to 60 minutes out of Boston in many directions and you’re into relatively reasonably priced housing.

Yep, exactly. Boston's financial tech is deep downtown (Harborside), but other big-name firms like Athena have set up shop in the outskirts and even run shuttles out from the city center. I suppose part of the reason is the number of colleges out past the densest part of the city, and the rest is the difficulty of building urban offices compared to expanding out into the cheaper Cambridge/Somerville/Watertown market.

It's definitely cheaper than SF now, but even more interesting is that it doesn't look to be set for a price spike; there's plenty of land to develop further, and for all the stupid housing laws there's not too much NIMBYism.

(Now if only the existing land wasn't so horrific to build on...)

You know things have gotten bad in CA when people are saying Boston has "not too much NIMBYism" in comparison.

Florida has few tech jobs, sadly. I say that as a Florida native that recently moved to Texas.

Tampa is one of the most underrated metro areas on the planet. Keep it that way. :-)

I hear you :) Its just so hard to see people throwing away so much money every month in SFBA without telling them other options that could make their quality of life so much better.

Exactly. That is what I am doing after 3 years in the Bay Area.