Edit: And now the script automatically renders into a template and deploys to s3 every 5 minutes.

Here's a script that produces the ratios between number of votes and the population of each state. It's ugly but you know... whatever...

http://pastebin.com/pDU9iRnN

    Python 2.7
    argparse==1.2.1
    beautifulsoup4==4.1.3
    requests==1.1.0
    wsgiref==0.1.2

I wonder if HN limits votes by IP Address.

California 21.79%

New York 10.37%

Texas 6.74%

Massachusetts 5.07%

Florida 4.37%

Illinois 4.22%

Washington 3.82%

Georgia 3.19%

Pennsylvania 2.98%

Virginia 2.60%

North Carolina 2.26%

Ohio 2.15%

Michigan 2.11%

New Jersey 2.08%

Colorado 2.05%

Maryland 1.86%

Maine 1.78%

Oregon 1.63%

Minnesota 1.63%

Missouri 1.37%

DC 1.33%

Arizona 1.31%

Tennessee 1.24%

Connecticut 1.06%

Utah 1.06%

Indiana 1.05%

Wisconsin 0.87%

Alabama 0.85%

Kentucky 0.70%

South Carolina 0.61%

Oklahoma 0.57%

Iowa 0.52%

Kansas 0.49%

Louisiana 0.46%

New Hampshire 0.43%

Nevada 0.39%

Nebraska 0.36%

Alaska 0.32%

Hawaii 0.29%

New Mexico 0.29%

Idaho 0.28%

Rhode Island 0.27%

Arkansas 0.19%

North Dakota 0.18%

Vermont 0.17%

Mississippi 0.15%

West Virginia 0.11%

Delaware 0.11%

Montana 0.11%

Wyoming 0.07%

South Dakota 0.07%

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night!

(The C is Confusion.)

Most of us are working for less than industry rates, some substantially less, depending on the location and the kind of work. People working at the labs and Boeing make probably the best money but put up with the most crap. There are a few medical/dental firms in Albuquerque, Xilinx and some other random stuff. I honestly have no idea what they're like. Aerospace. A lot of government contracting, a lot of Manpower-type contracting too. The right skills seem never to go out of fashion—Windows, Oracle, .NET. It's funny, because the southwest used to be kind of a big unix shop.

With specialized skills, you could be "the guy" in Albuquerque without being terribly special—Rails, Node.js, etc. Last time I went to a Barcamp up there about 12 people showed up and most of them were essentially designers.

If you want to work as a software engineer in Santa Fe, I'm sure you can find a position there, but you may need to be resourceful to find it. State government is there, for instance. They outsource nearly everything but I'm sure they have a few developers in a basement somewhere. There's the eponymous Santa Fe Institute. There are colleges, most in the spectrum past non-technical and into unreality, but a surprising number of kids show up at NMT from Santa Fe with a strong background in CS. They have to be getting it somewhere there. I'd imagine there's small businesses. Santa Fe has one of the higher costs of living in the state, so maybe the pay is closer to industry standards, but it's just a wild guess. There are resorts up there with expansive web presences that need to be maintained. The casinos always have strange openings too, but they tend to be recycled frequently due to political upheavals.

It's a good question. It's a pretty rarefied market. If you want to be here, I'm sure you can make it work, but if you're in it for wealth do a stint in the Bay and bring it back with you. :)

What did you work on in Española if you don't mind me asking? I ask because that is specifically where my friends live.

I knew California would be pretty high up there because of SV but I didn't realize so many people on here live there. For people who are in CA, do you live there because that's where most of the tech start-ups are or because it's a nice place (or both)?

California is fine, the SV is okay, there are certainly jobs and lots of opportunity and at this point I've built quite the network ... but seriously, I miss being able to go outside and see a field of corn from time to time.

One day...

Not to say that farms aren't cool. I actually look in amazement at how good farmers have gotten at growing crops the entire drive down.

We miss our friends in Atlanta, but San Francisco and the surrounding area are stunningly beautiful.

Compared to Georgia/Atlanta, the biggest changes I've noticed are: 1) everything is much much more expensive. a house that would be ~$200k-$250k inside the perimeter will cost ~$700k-$800k on the peninsula. houses in the $300-$400k range would probably go for $1-2mm out here. Average restaurant bills are ~$50 for my wife & I for what I would consider pretty "normal" places (we'd probably average $25-30 in comparable Atlanta restaurants). I'm lucky that my wife's job has on-site daycare for only $1500/month. The one exception is veggies--I routinely go to the local farmer's market and walk away with a week's worth of veggies for under $20. 2) at the same time, salaries are a lot higher. even if your housing/expenses take up the same percentage of your paycheck, your disposable income will generally go a lot further (an iPad costs what it costs anywhere in the U.S.) I've bought things since moving West that I probably never would've spent money on living in GA, just because I had that extra disposable income (i.e. flying to the UGA-Arizona State game a few years back). This can be a double-edged sword, though--if you want to do your own thing or start your own company, it will be MUCH harder to do that here than in Atlanta (making $50k in the app store is a hell of a lot cooler in Atlanta than it is in silicon valley) 3) people are generally pretty nice, but not interested at all in getting to know you or chatting randomly. we've been in the same house for 4 years now and barely know the neighbors 4) the amount of stuff within driving distance is really, really incredible--including the excellent state and county parks. people here are MUCH more interested in going outdoors on the weekends (whereas I found in GA people mostly just hang out on the weekends, maybe having a bbq or going to a lake). 5) if you're an engineer and decent at what you do, you'll never want for a job. 6) the work is a lot more high-energy -- i know engineers in ATL who work from 9-5 (or less) and more or less coast through the day... but are smart enough to get all their work done. that sort of attitude does not fly at all in silicon valley. if you feel like you're smarter than everyone around you in Atlanta, move out here and you'll be pleasantly surprised 7) if you're interested in things like hackathons, there's always something going on and it's pretty easy to meet like-minded people 8) the weather's awesome

> People are generally pretty nice, but not interested at all in getting to know you or chatting randomly.

Could you elaborate on this? I've heard things like this from other people.

I guess another way to put it would be that everyone is headed somewhere (and not always a place), whereas living in the South I remember the culture being a lot more about relaxing and waiting for things to come to you. It's not as bad as New York, where everyone is literally headed somewhere, but more like a state of mind--like everyone here is working on a difficult puzzle in their head, even when they're not at the office.

Take a trip out to Tahoe or Yosemite and that mostly shuts off--people you meet on hiking trails and in restaurants/hotels are warm, friendly, and usually pretty chatty.

It was a huge change, but mostly because of the lack of social support: it would have been as hard to move anywhere.

We also made a conscious decision to live in San Francisco (first in the Mission, now just South of there in Bernal Heights): if we'd wanted to do suburbs, we could do that just fine in Atlanta for a fraction of the price.

As I mentioned, we owned a house in East Point. We don't realistically expect to be able to buy a house in San Francisco anytime soon, possibly ever, unless we have an unexpected windfall that would take care of a huge downpayment. Then again, our rent of $3k/month (typical for two bedrooms, dogs allowed) would go pretty far in a mortgage if we did manage it.

My intuition (not based on fact) is that for a capable, experienced programmer, Atlanta has relatively high salaries, and relatively low cost of living.

Then again, we have mountains, a vast diversity of state and national parks, the ocean, beautiful views, skiing, walkable neighborhoods with corner stores, no bugs for most of the year (you can leave un-screened windows open!), etc... etc...

(Lived in the Bay Area in the past, still like to visit.)

That's like Austin is in Texas, but it ain't "Texas".

So what would you call "Florida" then?

> That's like Austin is in Texas, but it ain't "Texas".

That statement is mostly wrong. Yes, Austin is a very unique place. However, I think your perception of what constitutes "Texas" is biased and incorrect, based on that statement and the sentiment that typically underpins it.

Unfortunately, much of that energy is thermal... (-.-;)

I just wish it wasn't so damn expensive to live here. States like Colorado and Arizona have been on my mind a lot lately since you can get a beautiful house out there for what it costs to buy a condo here.

If anyone reading this is from AZ, let me know.

The startup scene is definitely growing in AZ. There are plenty of interesting people doing interesting things. The low cost of living, increasing number of awesome meetups, and growing co-working community is a pretty good sign of things to come. I've met passionate entrepreneurs at almost every corner of the state. Just off the top of my head--Flagstaff has NACET; Tucson is leading the open data movement; Chandler has Gangplank; Phoenix has CO+HOOT & SeedSpot; Mesa has a wonderful Hackerspace; and Marana was recently elected a top digital city in 2012.

That said, there's room for improvement. There aren't a lot of people with experience investing in hi-tech (lots hi-tech military stuff, but not the hi-tech that HN normally discusses); as a community, we don't have really good marketing muscle; there are few veterans willing to recycle capital; and not a lot of foreign direct investment because people have this impression that folks from AZ are crazy.

I love that place though. You can live in a goddamn mansion for the prices you pay in SF.

Edit: This was posted at 4:20pm EST and normally I don't check HN much after 4, I am just waiting on something before I call it a day.

Anyone hiring in Santa Barbara? SB is my eventual goal.

The surprise here is Washington and Massachusetts overtaking Illinois, which would seem to suggest that the large tech community in Seattle and Boston makes up for the much smaller population of those metro areas than the population of Chicago.

Puget sound metro is just as big and bad as Silicon Valley. It's also subject to more indoor weather, which is why engineers who live there are more productive...

hardly surprising

Edit: formatting

34.79234505 22  District of Columbia 632,323

12.46916781 86  Washington 6,897,012

10.53242301 70  Massachusetts 6,646,144

9.463366651 360  California 38,041,430

9.105914747 26  Utah 2,855,287

8.719395243 34  Oregon 3,899,353

7.987080099 5  Vermont 626,011

7.903489526 41  Colorado 5,187,582

6.949319685 136  New York 19,570,261

6.814475157 9  New Hampshire 1,320,718

5.468597264 4  Alaska 731,449

4.833487292 26  Minnesota 5,379,139

4.760580867 5  Rhode Island 1,050,292

4.504765148 58  Illinois 12,875,255

4.361612575 4  Delaware 917,092

4.287993048 3  North Dakota 699,628

4.12008994 27  Arizona 6,553,255

3.76168379 5  Maine 1,329,192

3.645545107 95  Texas 26,059,203

3.390829366 10  Arkansas 2,949,131

3.342295327 12  Connecticut 3,590,347

3.298367784 27  Virginia 8,185,867

3.233586182 6  Nebraska 1,855,525

3.225824337 32  Georgia 9,919,945

3.143337225 18  Wisconsin 5,726,398

3.133366087 5  Idaho 1,595,728

3.076269015 30  North Carolina 9,752,073

2.984655884 3  Montana 1,005,141

2.963763963 14  South Carolina 4,723,723

2.933017771 26  New Jersey 8,864,590

2.883491226 11  Oklahoma 3,814,820

2.872917225 4  Hawaii 1,392,313

2.822988023 17  Missouri 6,021,988

2.787999151 18  Tennessee 6,456,243

2.585490416 33  Pennsylvania 12,763,536

2.549042299 15  Maryland 5,884,563

2.537214595 7  Nevada 2,758,931

2.529504136 25  Michigan 9,883,360

2.42558227 7  Kansas 2,885,905

2.155854249 4  West Virginia 1,855,413

1.99233816 23  Ohio 11,544,225

1.917970327 4  New Mexico 2,085,538

1.760055924 34  Florida 19,317,568

1.734870197 1  Wyoming 576,412

1.659054716 8  Alabama 4,822,023

1.626446806 5  Iowa 3,074,186

1.529675553 10  Indiana 6,537,334

1.199970241 1  South Dakota 833,354

1.141444361 5  Kentucky 4,380,415

1.005050041 3  Mississippi 2,984,926

0.86920752 4  Louisiana 4,601,893

You really need to only show scores with at least a certain number of respondents. You should also round to the nearest integer.

That is, the distribution of per capita (or per internet accessing population) HN engagement.

Have thought about Chicago or NYC as possible places to relocate if we move to the midwest or east coast.

Edit: I'm surprised Texas isn't higher than that. Pretty big hub for tech there and, of course, Dallas is the home of TI.

Actually, this second time boomeranging back, I realized Wisconsin isn't so bad of a place, after all. Gas prices are $0.50-0.60 cheaper, food is WAY cheaper, and the cold winters make spring and summer so much more meaningful; we actually have weather.

- DC native living in California, former Seattle resident.

http://satwcomic.com/matter-of-perspective

At the risk of sounding like an ass, adding other countries that are not states of the US seems to go against the initial question which says "If you are in the US…"

Puerto Rico might be a reasonable addition.

:)

Far less than the valley I am sure, but there has been a decided uptick in the last few years. Tech scene here is shaping up nicely.

You can't know whether something is stupid without knowing the purpose behind it. You only know the question. You don't know the use to which the answer will be put.