I want money to be able to live in a nice city where I can walk to things, parks and arts are well funded, where the food is great, and where there are nearby cafes and bars. I could own a large McMansion in the burbs instead of my small brownstone in the city, but I prefer the urban living. I just don’t care about having any more bedrooms, and from my perspective the less yard I have to maintain, the less room I have to clean, the better.

On the face-to-face comment: until my local cafe and bar operate a constant zoom meeting and my cycling club sets up rides inside of my home office, I don’t see internet connectivity as a replacement for real contact.

I will say this though — there is a big part of me that wants to live in a mountain town in Colorado or Vermont. Convenient nature and having places to walk to — Problem is from my experience the residents are almost entirely people twice my age with a lot of old money.

On the topic of Nashville, my buddy moved there from Boston. I honestly thought the city was quite fun (minus the humidity and the neighbors of the Airbnb blasting hellfire evangelical sermons on the radio for their morning lawn-mowing routine), but they’ve come to regret the decision because the running isn’t as good and socially right-wing politics still forces itself upon every space. Political compatibility, even for people who prefer to leave those conversations alone, is important.

Have you considered moving to the town where State U is located? Plentiful access to nature, well-educated community, Pho and independent coffee shops, affordable cost of living. This is the case in many states, since the State U was traditionally sited in a big tract of farmland.

I lived in Austin and loved it but the heat got to me. I loved the food and nightlife in Nashville when I visited. Also thoroughly enjoyed Burlington VT and would love to live there some day. I wouldn’t mind ending up back in Boston again though. If that’s the kind of places you mean, then yeah.

I bought a place in Denver now because it’s so much relatively cheaper than Boston while I’m making the same software engineer wage. I could only afford to buy a teensy tiny old studio or a spot in a garage in Boston for the cost of my centrally-located condo in Denver.

I really liked living in Austin, but I'm thinking smaller. Terre Haute, Urbana-Champaign, Kalamazoo, State College, Denton, Madison, Manhattan (Kansas), Binghamton, and many others, depending on your taste in climate, topography, and politics. Maybe Burlington, but the cost of living in Vermont is surprisingly high considering how sparsely populated it is.

I'm surprised you mentioned Terre Haute, but not Bloomington, IN (where Indiana University is located), which is really much, much, much nicer than Terre Haute.

List was off the cuff -- I've been to or know people who've lived in those places. Bloomington sounds quite nice, but it didn't come to mind.

You didn't answer the question though: Why SV? Why wouldn't Jackson, Mississippi work - I've never been there, but I can still guarantee that you will find good parks, arts, food, and you can walk downtown. The exact parks, arts, and foods will be different, but they will be good. (Note that I picked Jackson because it is the first city google maps I saw when I zoomed on the american south region - I picked the American south because of the "red-neck" association)

Very few cities have a functional downtown. In the 3 major cities in Ohio, for instance, the downtown areas were vacated when people fled to suburbs. Malls and shops closed, and blocks were leveled for surface parking. Walkability was killed in favor of drives from the suburbs. Aside from one or two streets near major sports arenas with a couple gentrified bars, downtown businesses open for lunch hour and close by 6. I imagine this is the same in much of the U.S. that isn't known for the urban living scene.

Hot and humid, mosquitoes, flat land, prone to hurricanes, not near an international airport. I presume most people working in tech would consider these a negative.

>not near an international airport

A quick Google shows lots of daily access to hubs. Unless you fly weekly, quick access to a local airport is much better than an hour and a half on the subway and air train to get to JFK (which has fewer destinations than the big hubs). That's not a real reason.

http://www.iflyjackson.com/iflyjackson/

That isn't much help. The short flight from the local airport to the big hub will end up costing you more than the main flight from the hub to wherever you're going. Those short flights to regional airports cost a relative fortune.

The airport is international - any airport of any size is (a lot of one runway airports serving only small planes are international). You pretty much need to hire your own plane if you want to fly into it, but it is international.

I think meant to say the airport isn't a major hub so you can't actually get anywhere without going first to some other place you don't want to be. That is a fair complaint.

> The airport is international - any airport of any size is

If there's no Customs and Immigration services, then it's not really an international airport - you cannot legally fly from a foreign airport and land in a local airport that doesn't have those services in the USA and likely other countries.

Source: pilot

Nothing you said contradicts what I said.Pretty much all airports with commercial service are international.

Note that being international doesn't mean someone sane would fly into the airport international. There are no regular international flights, but is an office for them and if you schedule in advance someone will be there when you arrive internationally. If you don't schedule in advance you might have to wait in the airport for a day for someone to arrive and process you. Even if you schedule in advance expect delays as unlike a hub they don't really have either a system or the experience to process you quickly.

I think cockroaches are a worse scourge than mosquitos (of course not health wise), but that was just noticeable to me at Houston type temperatures/humidity which I assume is comparable. Right now living in SF Bay area and there are definitely mosquitos in abundance near standing water sources here in summer but no cockroaches.

Mississippi just elected a US Senator who thought "Public Hanging" jokes were funny. Why would anyone with a choice want to move there?

> but they’ve come to regret the decision because the running isn’t as good and socially right-wing politics still forces itself upon every space.

I'm skeptical of this. I've not lived in Nashville, but I've lived in a whole lot of cities across the South: Charlotte, Atlanta, New Orleans. What almost all Southern cities have in common is that conservatives are a minority within the city limits. And indeed, when I check the 2016 election results for Nashville, I see that Clinton won against Trump 59 to 34% -- almost double! And also not surprisingly, Nashville has a Democratic mayor.

Does that sound like a city with right-wing politics forcing itself on every space?

The fact is, unlike Southern small towns and rural areas, Southern cities are in general fairly moderate to liberal, with a significant conservative minority (say 25-30%). Now, given our current political situation, that minority may be at present more vocal than usual, but that doesn't mean that the city is beset by "right-wing politics" occupying every sphere of life.

Also, I've lived in working class neighborhoods in Southern cities for most of my life and have never heard anyone blasting evangelical sermons, around my house or around friends. That's 20+ years as an adult. So you picked an extraordinarily unlucky Airbnb.

Yes, you run into occasional racists or homophobic assholes, but I occasionally ran into the same kinds of people when I lived in NJ for 2 years. There are assholes everywhere.

But by far most of my co-workers working in universities and small companies have been either moderate or liberal, with an occasional conservative thrown in. Which isn't surprising, since that reflects the city's political breakdown. But (at least until recently) we all tend to get along.

Now wrt to the running, I have no idea, you may be right there (although I know that the Chattanooga area has some great running).

But wrt to politics, I'm fairly convinced that your friend's experience in Nashville is either a misinterpretation or they've met with an outlier company and friends (eg, did they work for a defense-related company? if so, those are conservative everywhere, and has nothing to do with Nashville).

One of the great pleasures for Republican state governments is to hobble liberal city government initiates in any way possible, whether that be withholding funding or outlawing logical courses of action. I do not want to live in a place with regressive red state politics that are always in such conflict with the progressive goals of cities.

> One of the great pleasures for Republican state governments is to hobble liberal city government initiates in any way possible, whether that be withholding funding or outlawing logical courses of action.

I agree (although this happens less often than you'd think, for many reasons).

But in the end, I prefer to live here and fight the good fight, instead of abandoning Southern cities to the whims of their surrounding towns and rural areas.

I dunno if it's necessarily that they're outlier companies. A lot of companies in Nashville/Brentwood employ people who don't live in the city.

When I used to work remotely for a company down that way the IT dudes in the office were "These Colors Don't Run" types, at minimum. The closest any of them lived was like, Franklin.

His and his spouse's fields are Finance and Medicine, respectively. I don't know about his specific workplace, but it can be tough to adjust to a conservative culture in medicine fields if you're not used to it. I am close with someone who has plenty of issues with the medical culture here, with other doctors at the hospital showing treatment bias against uninsured patients and those who are drug or alcohol users. It's like they forget that addiction is a disease. If you use marijuana, you will be treated like an addict regardless of your actual pattern of usage. It will be noted as a problem on your chart and you will be asked to stop using it. This is a recurring pattern with patients in a very legal state. It also takes longer to get social services to help uninsured/poor patients hooked up with the right programs compared to how it was in MA. State politics still has an impact on the city, and in fields like medicine, a lot of your day-to-day processes and rules are forced upon you by state legislatures and boards. The cities are not islands in the middle of the ocean. This is the kind of abrasive right-wing culture that's hard to operate in when you take the Hippocratic Oath seriously.

That experience at the Nashville AirBnB was something that felt straight out of a thriller flick, but I totally do agree that it was a one-off experience slash fun story to tell now. First thing I heard after waking up was this preacher dude talking about people being condemned to eternal fire and whatnot, and it kept going for a while. We had several gay people and almost all atheists in the house so it's a bit scary thinking about what these others would do to you if they found out who you are. It's disturbing that this is what people indoctrinate themselves with. It's a one-off/anecdotal experience though.

>And indeed, when I check the 2016 election results for Nashville, I see that Clinton won against Trump 59 to 34% -- almost double! >Does that sound like a city with right-wing politics forcing itself on every space?

That sounds like a city where about 1/3 of the people you meet will be right-wingers. I'm in the DC area, which is more liberal than Nashville for sure, and half the white women on the dating sites here have pictures of themselves shooting guns and profiles talking about how important Jesus is to them. In Nashville, I'm sure I'd never get a date.

> but they’ve come to regret the decision because the running isn’t as good and socially right-wing politics still forces itself upon every space.

Not true at all. I have lived in Nashville (10+ years), Houston, and Bay Area. There might be some area like Franklin or Belle Meade that is more conservative. But overall Nashville is like most big cities in the south which is liberal.

It's really, really hard to manage people remotely. It might be viable in technology only organizations where most of the product deliverables come in the format of pull requests, but if you're an organization with warehouses, field agents, sales people etc., it can get really hard.

I think it's super easy to forget how much we're all just animals trying to do things that are way more complex than we're designed for. We have really great neural pathways for group management in person, from tone of voice, to posture to eye contact and other signalling. Everytime a manager says "Can you get this done sometime soon?" where they mean "sometime this week?" and an employee interprets it as "right now, please stress about this" you burn some political capital. When you're in the same room, it often comes across in tone and nonverbal queues and follow ups are way lower friction.

It really isn't that hard to manage distributed teams at all. I would say it is easier, because it forces you to be more systematic about how you measure productivity and hold your team accountable to commitments. It makes collaborative work (anything that would involve a whiteboard) a bit harder.

However, as a manager, it is very hard to advance to director or higher levels. Having the full day of face time with mid/executive level is a big advantage. And it is hard to hire and introduces some difficult comp/HR challenges.

Bringing it back to this topic, I think it makes a lot of sense as an IC or line manager to move to a 2nd or 3rd tier tech community for the quality of life balance.

Tech is squeezed into hyper-expensive cities because, as illogical as it may seem, it's where a lot of workers want to live.

As an industry, tech skews young. And a lot of young people want to live in urban environments full of culture and entertainment, and have a job that has a social dimension to it.

Now that I'm older (thirties, married, kids) remote work from somewhere other than NYC seems appealing. But it didn't a few years ago.

> Tech is squeezed into hyper-expensive cities because, as illogical as it may seem, it's where a lot of workers want to live.

That's a factor, but I think an even bigger set of factors is:

(1) industry-focussed venture capital and related support infrastructure (particularly for startups) prefers proximity,

(2) there are benefits to proximity to other firms in the industry other than capital and support structures, e.g., it's easier to pick up experienced workers as you expand if you don't have to get them to relocate,

(3) With the money flowing into the industry, wherever it is concentrated is going to become expensive, because the number of dollars chasing housing and other goods is going to be high compared to places it isn't concentrated.

It's not just young people. I'm in my forties, but divorced, and no kids, and the last thing I want is a big house in the suburbs. I want to live in a walkable urban environment full of culture, though also within convenient distance of outdoor hiking and cycling trails.

That's true to a point. Still doesn't explain Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino etc.

Those cities are in the heart of Silicon Valley. They have been good places for engineers to raise families for several generations since their companies were headquartered nearby. The migration of tech headquarters to SF is relatively new.

In these discussions, I think a lot of people forget (or don't know) that most of these cities with rapidly increasing rents were losing population just 20 years ago and certainly 30 years ago. It's easy to be critical of infrastructure investment and zoning policies in some places but a lot of the demand is quite recent on the time scale that cities develop.

just an endless pursuit of materialism. you want something so you gravitate towards it. hence a lot of regular people are destroying their financial futures by staying in these super expensive areas.

Destroying their financial future? None of my friends living in SF or NYC make less than $160k a year working as engineers. In fact, they make that nearly right out of college. The more senior engineers (5+ yrs exp) bring in $300k-500k a year.

They save a significant amount of it, more than they would have saved in any other place. And they can leave at anytime to a low-COL place and buy a house in cash.

people earning 300-500K are very wealthy by any standard. these are not regular people im talking about.

160K salary in SF is probably equivalent to 75K in the middle of America? (considering food, rent/car/health expenses)

This is so silly. Denver, Austin, San Diego, Atlanta etc. are fine cities with vibrant urban cores full of culture and entertainment yet none of them require you to pay 3000$/mo for a decent apartment or pay millions to buy a low tier home. There is a mass delusion that SF/SV and NYC residents seem to have that it is impossible to match their lifestyles without paying astronomical numbers for housing and its just absurd.

> There is a mass delusion that SF/SV and NYC residents seem to have that it is impossible to match their lifestyles without paying astronomical numbers for housing and its just absurd.

It's not a delusion. Sure, if you find the culture, entertainment, and other lifestyle features of Denver, Austin, San Diego, or Atlanta an acceptable substitute for NYC or SF Bay Area lifestyle, you can get that substitute a bit cheaper. Not everyone does (if they did, Bay Area and NYC prices would drop and those other places would climb.)

The culture and entertainment of the Bay Area is overrated compared to other metros. Everything closes early for some unfathomable reason. I'd say most transplants are there for the tech money. Good food scene, though.

> The culture and entertainment of the Bay Area is overrated compared to other metros.

“Overrated” just means other people value it more than you do. But you should be happy, because that presents an opportunity you can exploit by satisfying your preferences more cheaply elsewhere.

Certainly. It is mostly the Bay Area native in me who is jaded. Familiarity does breed contempt.

I have to agree there about cultural attractions; if you want world-class museums, for instance, you'll find them in NYC and DC. You won't find them on the west coast.

there are lots of aspects of bay area culture that are not found in quantity in pretty much any other city in the country except NYC.

Really? Seattle, Portland, Austin, LA all have aspects of Bay Area culture. What they lack is the weather, and perhaps the tech culture if that’s what you’re talking about. Maybe some regional specific demographics like SF’s LGBT community.

Austin lacks the public transportation, bike infrastructure, and arts culture of all of these cities, along with what you’ve said. It’s more dense than most places in the south, but I could never realize the dream of being car-less there. Having to drive to social functions is probably the biggest differentiating factor, in my mind, between expensive coastal cities and cheap southern cities.

I think I meant the progressive/liberal/weirdness of the Bay Area. South Bay/Silicon Valley has pretty weak public transportation and art compared to SF, as it is.

sure they do and there is a lot of interchange (less so austin). But yes I am referring to regional specific demographics and subcultures which SF has a much higher per capita population of than almost any other city. Seattle and portland feel sooooo small compared to the bay and while LA definitely does not it has its own set of challenges.

As someone who lives in the SV suburbs, life is freaking AWESOME. My wife and I both work and we have a small kid. We make a lot of money so that I never have to check my bank account. And we are just mid level managers. We own two houses that have appreciated beyond our wildest dreams. I basically have my retirement savings after working here for only 7 years. Monetary benefits aside: - Both of us work in exciting mega unicorns in growth mode and with amazing benefits and work culture - The weather in SV is awesome year round - We can be outdoors 11 of 12 months - great for my daughter - SV is majority minority - so you can imagine the diversity along with all the food options - We love nature and it is virtually unlimited - SF has the best food scene in the US now (check latest Michelin reports) - I like the tech monoculture - Career choices are unlimited - CA government is very inclusive and responds to voter needs - I like the Ocean and also like Mountains - can be off to Tahoe every weekend in the winters - Amazing small towns in short distances - Napa, Sonoma, Healdsberg, Carmel, Big Sur etc. - Los Angeles is only 6 hrs away - Virtually unlimited things to do for kids - Many more

Wow ok good for you.

> We own two houses that have appreciated beyond our wildest dreams.

Sure it's great for you, but your luck and timing isn't realistically attainable for a significant portion of the population.

It doesn't! There are a ton of people doing tech outside of these locales. I agree with you, I have no interest in living in either of those places and I'm building a VC-backed startup not in those places and it's working.

Those of us opting out are going to be part of a revolution, and you just have to be okay with the sense that not everyone is going to understand it or have the same vision until it's all proven out. It's just like starting a company in that way (who are the real contrarians again?)

Because we would rather live in NYC than Nashville. It's true NYC can be brutal if you don't make enough, but once you get over a certain threshold, there is no other place like it.

Can the money you earn as an employee make the streets quieter or the pavements less packed or the air less polluted?

Yes?

Most of the air in NYC is reasonably clean, and there are lots of quiet streets and less packed pavements. And you can always pay for special double insulated windows, or for a higher floor. My PM 2.5 readings in my Manhattan apartment are usually under 5, and better if I open my windows.

And it’s hard to beat the health benefits of waking every day vs driving like you do in almost every other American city.

walking isn't anywhere near as exertive as cycling/running.

i like walking & cycle pretty much everywhere i can. i've never found walking amongst/against throngs of people to be relaxing or enjoyable - quite the opposite so i'm sure the stress of walking in NYC negates much of the health benefits of walking in general.

Commuting to work via something other than a car is attainable nearly anywhere though. I've been doing it for a decade in central Georgia/Raleigh/Durham/Seattle/Denver. The other side of the coin is that if you do need to drive in (for whatever reason...carrying something large, need to do errands...) it's actually possible.

Queens and Brooklyn away from the waterfront are basically suburbs except that in a 30-40 minute subway commute for $130/month you get a city with 26642 eateries (8/23/2018 based on the health department ), hundreds if not thousands of points of interest and the kind of melting pot that simply does not exist anywhere else in the US.

A rhetorical question used to disguise your distaste for specific attributes of NYC, how clever. Consider, however, that those things are not important to the parent commenter, at least not as important as other attributes.

> A rhetorical question used to disguise your distaste for specific attributes of NYC

A rhetorical question

> of NYC

of any crowded city.

> Consider, however, that those things are not important to the parent commenter, at least not as important as other attributes.

I hope the irony of you making this statement isn't lost.

> how clever.

Bite your tongue and be civil.

Can the money you save make up for reduced opportunities to hobnob with millionaires and weaving yourself into a network of the upperclass and therefore increasing your chances of hitting it big (or fantasizing about it)?

Sure it can, ass-kissing the wealthy isn't everyone's hobby

I know, my comment was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek response of what I think draws many to tier 1 cities.

I see, apologies for misunderstanding your rhetoric

> or fantasizing about it

2 bucks on a lotto ticket achieves the same result for me.

Yeah, move to the Upper East Side.

I'm thinking of moving to NYC from San Francisco, while I bootstrap a new venture. It seems it should be cheaper but still have access to peer networks/potential hires and investors for when the time comes. Do you think that's right?

What's the threshold you think you need to earn for it not to be brutal?

NYC area isn't like SF. You can go 40 minutes outside of SF and it's still expensive.

It all depends where you want to live in NYC. Manhattan you'll want to make at least 150k to live alone. If you move outside then you have a lot more options but still be able to commute into the city easily.

I lived in Manhattan for 7 years and SF area for 6. I now live outside of Denver and its by far the best move of my life.

I hear nothing but complaints from people who have to commute into NYC. If you're not in Manhattan or the nicer parts of Brooklyn, you're easily adding 30 min to your door to door commute, plus the variance is huge due to the ever decreasing quality of the public transit.

If you're living in SF you already know what the thresholds are like, mostly. It heavily depends on your life situation. If you're willing to live with roommates and don't have much in the way of expenses, the threshold is significantly lower. The threshold is also significantly different if you're willing to live in one of the outer boroughs.

It's a vague answer but honestly, those factors can swing the threshold almost $100K in either direction.

min 100k if single but don't expect to save anything

+1. Looking around, most of my NYC peers are 25-35 with no kids, and a typical monthly spend is $6-7k. It's a good life, but not glamorous. Some months are substantially more expensive, almost no months are substantially cheaper.

How do you spend 6k a month ?

Uncapped stimulation and convenience. A typical month may look like this -

  - Manhattan rent: $2k-$4k (depends if you are sharing or living alone)
  - Not cooking: $1-1.5k ($5 lattes, $15 salads, $20 meals, x 30 days)
  - Socials & drinking: $1k (~$150 x 4-6 per month)
  - NYC events: $1k (gigs, comedy clubs, festivals)

Young professionals with established careers do not move to NYC to think about how much they could save if they lived in Tennessee instead. The narrow focus is to soak up available opportunities and maximize revenues, instead of minimizing costs. It's a risky gamble.

If one has kids are you kidding? Daycare is about the same as the rent, transportation is cheap but adds up for sure, food (to cook at home, yes we're frugal that way and shop at TJs for about 600 a month) and bills. Yes, some months you manage to save a little bit but other months very quickly dent into the savings.

I agree for kids. The parent mentioned not having kids though.

I’ve been beating this drum for a while. It doesn’t make any logical sense why knowledge/tech workers have to live close to these expensive cities or find affordability by becoming a super commuter from an hour or more away. Sure younger people want to live in those cities but I would think it’d be a good retention policy to allow people to transition to a remote work option.

Being able to live in a LCOL area means your tech salary actually counts for something. Not just paying rent on a overpriced apartment.

Personality types. Over the past 25 years since you started, more people with higher social needs have entered the tech workforce and they desire highly dense places to live.

That might explain Manhattan and downtown Seattle, but Silicon Valley is... some sort of suburban hell hole that I can't picture any young person being head-over-heals about.

I know plenty of folks who commute 2 hours each way from SF to the Valley, just so that they can live in a "real city".

People go to where they want to be.

As an employee, I'd rather work in a place where I can get a relevant job from dozens of different employers, made easier by overlapping networks, versus a city where I could only really work at 1 or 2 places.

You can definitely have fun visiting Nashville, but if I moved there I'd quickly run out of new places to discover; nightlife and entertainment are concentrated in a few places and activities.

There is more to Nashville than Broadway mon ami.

Where is it? There are areas of NYC and Los Angeles where you will find new cafes/restaurants/bars/clubs/shops on every block. You can set out walking a direction into the unknown and have a pretty decent night, knowing you will run into these attractions in every nook, not just the main drags, and despite living there for years you can discover new places every single day. In Nashville, would I have to uber around to disconnected, well known hotspots? How long until I know of every bar in Nashville that has people in it on a Friday night? I want to be able to constantly discover in my own city, not just when I go on trips out of town.

Remote communication simply isn't as good as in-person. There's a surprisingly large bandwidth communication channel in tone/body language that is easily lost, and quite small audio delays can throw off the rhythm of a conversation. It's no surprise that most of the best paying tech employers avoid remote work.