I grew up there, and just moved back. Is much nicer than 30 years ago, and legitimately nicer than boulder.

Fiber is great, and people forget how much of US infrastructure was communal in early electric buildouts as well.

Some of the objections seems to be reflexive anti-government sentiment. I haven't seen corporate services do well enough to convince me of the realistic improvements. And with most services negotiated on the national level (Netflix, apple, hbo, whatever) as direct buys, the last mile as a subsidy for cable negotiation seems wasteful.

How is the diversity there? Will a Chinese American family feel welcomed there? Asking for a friend. :)

There is almost no diversity in Colorado when compared with the large coastal cities. You may still be welcomed but don’t expect to see many Asians or Asian restaurants and stores.

Not super diverse but diverse enough to not be gawked at. There's a fair amount of Chinese and Indian tech people who moved there with families.

Maybe a short family weekend trip is in order. SF is getting so outrageously expensive.

You might want to check out the area between Boulder and Denver too. It's mostly never ending suburbia in a sense but at least you have both Boulder and Denver open to you for employment options if you live there. There's also some quaint places with smaller town feel like louisville.

Commuting from Longmont to Denver is possible but would be a lot of hours driving/on a bus. A rail link is planned but it is scheduled for something ridiculous like 2050 or sometime infinitely far in the future.

Northern Colorado is a great place to live but unfortunately not very diverse.

OT: Outside of Boulder, what's the tech job scene like out there?

The Denver tech job scene is pretty strong. A lot of startups and a growing corporate outpost presence, as well as all of the "old tech" around the Tech Center.

Northern Colorado (Longmont, Ft. Collins) has traditionally been a center for hardware design and test equipment, but unfortunately most of these companies have shrunk overall and have reduced their Colorado presence.

I would say that in recent years the epicenter of startup software jobs in Colorado has shifted back from the brief Boulder startup run and moved into downtown Denver, while Boulder has become a center for corporate outposts (Google, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, Workday, NetApp, Splunk).

Agreed - I wish FoCo could attract more tech companies - it is a great city with highly educated people (esp with CSU here). But for now your best bet is remote work if you want to get paid a salary equal to the COL of FoCo (which is almost the same as Denver/Boulder). Sadly due to lack of competition in tech, the few tech companies here pay well below market because they can. You can literally move to Boulder/Den and get a 30-40% pay increase...

Agreed. Live in FoCo, work remotely for this reason.

Go say hi to Mr Money Mustache, a fellow Longmontian (and hilarious blogger):

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/