The current San Francisco influx is unsustainable. If you're somewhere else in the world and thinking about coming here to do a startup, I wish I could convince you to change your mind.
San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San Francisco interesting has been driven out by the high prices -- it's a much more homogenous city than a few years ago, where mom-and-pop shops and other neighborhood amenities have been replaced by places selling $10 "artisinal grilled cheese" sandwiches and "mixology" bars where you can buy your choice of $15 cocktail. SF feels increasingly like a city for wealthy yuppies, because...it is a city for wealthy yuppies. Living here on anything less than a good engineer's salary is becoming a tall order.
Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute when you're jockeying for position at the bar in a crowded room full of guys. If you're a 20-something male programmer looking for a date in SF, I feel badly for you. Hope you like BART, because you're going to Oakland (if you're lucky!)
Once upon a time it was only a mildly bad decision to locate your startup in San Francisco, but you could justify it with the appeal of a diverse, cosmopolitan city. Right now, there's a very real financial penalty (rents, salaries, taxes), and the cultural benefits are waning. There are a lot of great cities in the US, and on the internet, you can work from anywhere. Try those instead.
>Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute when you're jockeying for position at the bar in a crowded room full of guys. If you're a 20-something male programmer looking for a date in SF, I feel badly for you. Hope you like BART, because you're going to Oakland (if you're lucky!)
So what you're saying is San Francisco is now highly optimized for homosexuals? (part of why I want to move there from Boston, to be honest)
The high cost of living in San Francisco means that any demographic group that isn't defined by its high income is being marginalized, so this isn't the case.
to be honest i keep bumping into homesexuals (of either sex) in SF. I think its a pretty large part of the population, compared to other cities. if you swing that way, I'm pretty sure the dating scene is quite above average.
It's been the best place for homosexuals for decades. I can remember a character from The Way of the Gun calling it a "Mecca for homosexual migration".
This is totally wrong. Yes SF has a ridiculous cost of living, but it still has an amazing ratio of single women to straight guys. Unlike the Peninsula, you do not need to be rich to meet and date attractive women in the City.
If you are an employed (white?) guy who can't get a date in SF (not to be confused with Palo Alto), you need to get out more, or just get on okC. There's a whole lot more to the City than yuppie bars in SOMA or the Marina.
Like anywhere, it can help to stand out a bit, and being a straight white guy without tons of money who works with computers is about as far from 'standing out' as you can get in that area, from my experience. I was a lot happier from that point of view when I got out of there and moved to Italy, where I ended up meeting and marrying a very smart and beautiful woman.
On the subject of "gay", something that I liked about the bay area was that gay is pretty common, and of course accepted and so it's just something that is, rather than someone's "defining attribute", so it's not this big deal. That's how things should be.
You have clearly never been to NYC or LA. One can get a absolutely get a date in SF, but the ratio is terrible compared to other US cities.
A single friend of mine in SF (who actually does quite well for himself) is fond of saying "any single man who moves to SF either is gay, has an asian fetish, or is crazy." It's crass and hyperbolic, but there's an germ of truth in there somewhere (FWIW, he's crazy).
It is becoming quite homogenous here. There's just a ton of really wealthy, well-paid business/engineer types.
I've heard varied reports on dating. Some friends are very successful, others no so much. This seems to be more a personal situation then dependent on the culture of the city as a whole. You just gotta get on that tinders or cupes or grindr if that's your thing and play the game just like any other city.
It's a fun city, but it's increasingly become a fantasy for rich white people.
Like parent says lots of "lifestyle" shops; I'm going to arrange a store so it looks like my home but everything is for sale. It's all bullshit though because the rent for these lifestyle shops must far outweigh what they're bringing in. It's hobby businesses for the wives of rich white C-level execs. I don't know I just made that last part up, but you get the picture.
While I agree that race should have nothing to do with it, culturally it's much more acceptable to talk about white gentrification then gentrification by any other race. Also, in this case I'm not interesting removing the white designator because it really is predominantly white males.
Also the gentrification happening in the Mission is very much a race thing. "Keep the Mission brown" is a slogan used by many in this neighborhood. I'm assuming it's not new and it's also racist. So I don't really know where to draw the line. I am a white "techie" male gentrifying a "brown" neighborhood; at least that's how those who live in the Mission see me. And, to be honest, that's what is going on all over San Francisco so I can't really disagree with their assessment.
It's a fascinating and complicated and very sad situation for everyone involved.
SF Mission is/was an ethnic neighborhood that happen(ed) to be working class, more than than the other way around. There were many poor-er areas in sf, but you went to the mission for colour, sun, ethnic food, and the fact that nobody was snobby or annoying. It used to be a great place to throw house parties...as long as you weren't violent or setting shit on fire...nobody would ever blink/complain...etc.
Probably because they are predominately young whites, but always remember that the picture you see is the photographer's choice (by taking it or not) and the editor's choice by running the one he did and not the ones he didn't.
Every picture tells a story, but not necessarily the only one.
What you're missing is that when people say an area is "becoming increasingly Black" they usually are talking about it going from 0% to 5%, or from 5% to 10%. Parts of San Francisco (at least certain businesses) are moving towards 100% white. It's a fundamentally different phenomenon.
If you look at real numbers, the white population of San Francisco has been declining for at least for the last 22 years (up until 2012). It is possible that in the last 2 years it has stopped, or even grown a little but it was 41.7% in 2012, and it is likely still under 50%.
Detroit isn't like that because all the black people moved in, it's like that because all the white people moved out once black people started moving in.
Then why don't non-white people move in to SF, just like in Detroit?
Alright, enough with the wisecracks.
The people moving in during gentrification are rich or rather richer than the current residents. Just because the overwhelming majority happen to be white is a mere coincidence arising of multiple factors. These people are not really white/black/brown, their only true color is Green, like the dollar bills in their banks and pockets. The color of their skin is secondary.
With all the song and dance about loss of diversity, in any city or context, I see it as a green-ification, not a white-wash or any other racially motivated term. This is a class issue that is always conflated as a race issue, with the the same lame excuse: because, history.
Monoculture is bad no matter what group it is. I think there's just a different perception of language. Those of us who post often about class struggle issues (clearly the group I'm in) aren't always blaming white people (at least I'm not) but just trying to identify that it's a problem.
If there's anyone in SF who deserves blame for the current situation, it's stakeholders (people with land who don't want zoning changed to preserve their "views") and NIMBY types, who are often the same. None of this would be a problem if responsible zoning and development could be done.
...but I see things from the perspective of a poor white person rather than a rich one.
People have been saying for decades that NYC is unsustainable, yet it's still the center of the country for finance. San Francisco could well become the next New York: software engineers getting paid $300k/year and talking about how they're not really "rich" because they can't even afford to buy a 2 bedroom condo.
Or it could become the next Detroit when the tech industry decides that it doesn't "need" to be in the Bay Area.
I doubt that there'll be that dramatic a change because there are too many actors, Detroit was more vulnerable because it depended on such a small number of anchor employers
Detroit's early draw was its access to transportation and raw materials: iron ore, coal, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway. For heavy manufacturing, these were all advantages.
San Francisco has appeal for weather, scenery, and an excellent harbor. Disadvantages include earthquake hazard, and an increasingly unreliable water supply. The latter isn't critical yet, but could well be.
The car industry didn't move from Detroit. The work got automated away and growth got captured by foreign competitors. If that happened to finance, New York would suffer the same fate. But by the time robots can program themselves, all bets are off anyway.
The finance industry is entirely dependent on proximity, even more so with the increase of algo. At the highest level of business-dealings, your company has to be within "10 minutes midtown mid-afternoon traffic" distance from the people you meet with (clients and other financial companies) in order to be taken seriously. This is why NY hedge funds tend to be clustered around Midtown East and banks are around Battery Park.
The tech industry doesn't really have such requirements. People are comfortable with working remotely and using video conferencing; more importantly, the tech industry doesn't have regulatory requirements like the financial industry does that require people to conduct business from a physical office.
Whether SF is sustainable or not, well, I lean towards not, but in the long-term it looks pretty bad socioeconomically. Personally, I have no desire to live in the bay area and look for work elsewhere.
Signed: Former hedge fund employee and New Yorker.
Panino is Italian for sandwich, it literally means small bread.
Panini is something I first experienced in France, where it's made with a special semi-raw bread. I've never seen anything quite like it in Italy, though.
Panini and Panino are pretty much synonymous. Panini is just the anglicized word, although it seems the Italians don't generally grill them. I've had Panini/Panino in Italy, France, the UK, and Canada.
Ok, I'll give you a pass if you are from Italy, for example.
However, the story was about the Bay Area... and growing up in California I noticed a trend that exploded about 10 years ago.
Fancy, casual restaurants stopped selling sandwiches and "grilled-cheese",
upgraded the bread, and started calling them Panini.
The price was also increased by $5 dollars/per for a marginally better product.
Some people are looking for places to spend their relatively-high incomes. Ditto for other, oddball things that have come along, of late, like super-expensive shaving equipment (first thing that came to mind).
By all means, I'd love to know what kind of value it adds. Up to this point, I've assumed that this, and products in this category, are some sort of hipster fad.
hipster fad? double edge safety razors have been around since at least 1930. not really a 'fad' ;)
they normally provide a better/closer shave, much much cheaper blades (compared to gillette), greater selection of blades/razors. there are probably more advantages.
I'm quite aware that these kinds of razors were once commonplace. It is their [expensive] comeback that is noteworthy, and what I've dubbed a 'hipster fad'
More than that. Rents for apartments have doubled in the last year in Oakland, says my friend who owns a lot of diverse properties in the East Bay, so you know it's much worse in SF.
not necessarily; the relative desirability of oakland might have increased faster than the relative desirability of san francisco, compared to their respective 2008 values
> when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.)
Women don't live in SF?
Or are you just talking about women in tech? They're rare everywhere.
That was always a little exaggerated IMO, but in the 20-something demographic, yes. SF feels like a giant frat party right now. At an all-boys school.
If you're 30+ things are less bad just because of the basic demographic realities of single life. But my friends from NYC still laugh at the dating scene here.
A buddy of mine had a theory that the lack of acting and fashion industries (compared to LA and New York respectively) had a significant negative impact on the overall attractiveness and gender balance of the general SF population.
Former STL startup founder here (slicehost). We were from St Louis, so starting the business here made sense and gave us several distinct advantages (cheap power, data center space, etc).
For startups, it's currently an ideal place IMO. There are quality people here doing whatever it takes to help people get a business started. Money? They can help. Space? They can help. Introductions? They can help. A low cost of living gives you plenty of time to figure things out. Throw in a ton of good restaurants, a decent art/music scene, a couple of good universities and you have something worth serious consideration. Biggest downsides are weather (winters are chilly) and you need a car.
> If you’re trying to bootstrap, being based in San Francisco is awful.
Especially if you have a family. I rented a four bedroom house in a great neighborhood in Sacramento that was a bike ride from Midtown for $2900/mo. We ended up buying a bigger house in the same neighborhood for even less per month. No commute, food is cheap, etc. The cost savings are enormous, and I'm sure it's more expensive than St. Louis...
Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question.
I actually live in Scandinavia now, and the winters here are warm in comparison!
Oh, really? I'm living in Scandinavia and looking to move elsewhere. Midwest was one of my options, and I had never thought winters were so bad over there!
I've lived in Finland and spent time in Sweden in the winter and I grew up in Ohio (went to college in Michigan) and I can tell you that the winters in the midwest vary greatly depending on which part you live in. Finland and Sweden both had longer, colder, winters than Ohio does, for example. Chicago will get super cold and windy but the winters still aren't as long as in Scandinavia.
Basically, much of the midwest has shorter winters but some parts of it have equally harsh or even harsher (the Dakotas, for example) weather. Northern Michigan is quite a bit like Finland, for example, while the lower portion of Michigan is nothing at all like Finland.
Totally depends on where you go, even within the midwest.
Winters are shorter, but the temperatures drop much lower than in Denmark, anyway (perhaps not colder than Finland). Here are the nightly low temperatures in Chicago for the next 5 days: -17 C, -20 C, -25 C, -22 C, -13 C. I have never seen temperatures like that in Copenhagen!
Granted, in an average week Chicago won't be quite that cold, but in general its winter weather is pretty harsh. People bike to work all winter in Copenhagen, which would be unthinkable in Chicago weather (even if the city had better bike infrastructure). I actually like it being moderately cold and snowy, but -5 C is about my limit.
Humidity was always the killer for me. I remember flying from San Diego to St. Louis. It was 75 degrees and dry in San Diego, and 102 degrees with 94% humidity in St. Louis. I wanted to die, heh
That said, I always liked the variety.
It means that I have pretty strong, nostalgic feelings associated with the seasons changing.
That site is a brilliant resource. Thanks for sharing.
One of my main considerations when moving somewhere is the climate.
It would be cool if the site had links to places with similar climates (could be calculated with some kind of distance metric from all the variables). I loved the climate in Sydney, so it would be nice to see a list of places in the world where it's similar.
No problem. That's actually the first time I've seen it as well, and it seems to have pretty much all the information I'd like about climate.
And yeah, I've never looked around for one, but being able to search for cities within similar bounds would be nice. Makes me wonder if there are national weather databases you could use to perform your own queries and get similar results.
Oh, variety is good. Weather here in Denmark is so plain and boring. The only remarkable season is May-July, thanks to the long days and relatively warm weather.
I totally agree humidity is horrible. I've stayed a few summers in The Hamptons, Long Island---and humidity was a killer. I cannot imagine coping with 102 F / 94%.
Yeah, 102 wasn't normal. It just stuck out most in my mind because it was pretty literally seared into my brain, and the contrast to cali didn't help :)
I cycled twenty or thirty miles a day pretty consistently and it never ceased to amaze me how quickly my shirt would become a sopping wet rag the second I stopped
I know this isn't exactly the best metric, but the demand for programmers in St. Louis seems very low. When I look at Craigslist I see a couple Java jobs, a couple PHP jobs and even one godforsaken VB.net job. Even Jeff Atwood doesn't use VB.net.
So I'm doubtful that it would be easier to keep the contracts coming in while in St. Louis.
As a coder living in St. Louis, I can say that this hasn't been my experience at all. There is an exceptionally high demand for coders around here. Barely a week goes by without someone trying to poach good programmers. Its not necessarily all sexy startups, but there is an excellent market for programmers in general.
We have a fairly good startup scene (though obviously nothing on SF) and a large number of more traditional corporate employers of programmers like Express Scripts, Monsanto, Wells Fargo, Scottrade, Ameren, Charter,
Anheuser Busch, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. There is also an exceptionally active biotechnology scene here.
I'm hoping this is the case in a year or so, when I plan on moving back to Stl from Atlanta. I know a few guys doing C# and f# work in stl. They seem to think prospects are pretty good.
Not quite. We've got about 5000 programming jobs or so available here. Of course they're not all with the latest technology, but things like http://launchcodestl.com are working to help fill these open positions.
I haven't commented on a Hacker News item for a long time. As a programmer who's constantly looking to expand his team with someone I can trust to do good work, we can't hire them fast enough. The tech scene here is rapidly growing and it's not hard for a good programmer to land a spot in a tech company here.
It seems if you're half-good at just about any language, you'll get an email a week from a recruiter from a decent company. Definitely not as many startups, but many interesting projects to choose from. And remote work while living in a (comparative) mansion in the Midwest is a good selling point :)
St. Louis seems to be one of the more attractive places if you can swing security clearance. A lot of defense contractors in the area due to being a larger city plus having a couple large bases nearby.
I was in St. Louis for Strange Loop 2013, and I was pretty astonished at how nice (and uncrowded) the downtown was. I asked about it at http://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1mlum2/whats_wrong_... and got some interesting responses. The "what's wrong with..." was in the sense of "surely it can't be as great as it seems here?", by the way.
Most midwestern cities have no pedestrian traffic downtown. That is perfectly normal across much of America.
In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car. They live, shop, and eat in the suburbs. They use their cars for all of these activities.
The C.B.D. ends up deserted at night when the office workers leave. Any successful night-time businesses have parking, in order to attract suburban customers. There is little reason for anyone to be on foot.
The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians. I imagine those areas have excellent central parking, and deliberately-created "walkable" areas for browsing. A great development pattern to bring life back to deserted downtowns.
"In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car."
And, as I was walking about at rush hour, I expected to see a lot of car traffic, but the streets were practically empty of autos. The nearby freeway across the river was quite busy, however. I think the reddit thread had good things to say about the former decline of the city center.
> The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians.
I was one of the people who mentioned some of those places in that thread. There are such places in St. Louis, but Strange Loop (which I also attended) is not held near any of them. Most of the stretch talked about in that thread, from 9th and Market up to Union Station, is kind of a pedestrian wasteland (for lots of reasons related to density, failed urban renewal projects, and so on). Nobody in St. Louis goes to Union Station anymore; it's a complete failure of a project. But, likewise, nobody here would use it as any sort of example in a conversation about foot traffic in the city.
And so it begins. The Bay Area is starting to lose some of its talent to other areas (in an already tight talent market). This is just one example and I ran into a few others in the past 2 months, that are in a gtfo state. I have also tried to hire good people from other areas of the country that used to be interested in SF but are no longer seeing it as a nice place to actually live, because they too can do the math.
This is one of the things I'm jealous of America for coming from a British perspective: that is, a wide variety of cities being technologically advanced and good for startups, tech and businesses generally. Think Austin, think Raleigh-Durhan, think Philadelphia, think Seattle..
Everything in the UK is so grotesquely skewed towards London when it comes to modern tech. Some other cities aren't entirely horrible (Manchester, say) and some have a technically progressive air going for them (Brighton) but it sounds like even St Louis as a relatively small US city has more going for it in one place than most top tier British cities that aren't London (say Leeds, Nottingham, or Birmingham).
just to throw some figures at you about how big st. louis is or isn't:
> As of the 2010 census, the population was 319,294, and a 2012 estimate put the population at 318,172,[6] making it the 58th-largest U.S. city in 2012. The metropolitan St. Louis area, known as Greater St. Louis (CSA), is the 19th-largest metropolitan area in the United States with a population of 2,900,605.
And I'll be the annoying St. Louisan who feels compelled to put these numbers into some context for what feels like the billionth time.
St. Louis City is entirely independent from the surrounding St. Louis County and covers an exceptionally small area by the standards of most big cities (~66 sq/mi). Some similar cities have addressed this by merging with their surrounding county (Indianapolis, for example, which is about 368 sq/mi), but even those that haven't (e.g. Kansas City) still cover a much larger portion of their region (316 sq/mi for KC).
It's very easy to exit the city-proper in St. Louis and not feel at all as though you've left the core of the city. The inner-ring suburbs are quite urban and, while the distinction between them and the City itself is the source of much local posturing, it's a misleading delineation if you're trying to figure out just how big St. Louis really is.
(As a side note, this way of dividing up the region also has a significant effect on the City's infamous crime statistics, for reasons that should be pretty obvious with a little bit of thought. That is to say, if you define almost any city as only its most inner core, then you're going to end up with much higher crime rates than if you include its suburbs. And if you're comparing one city that doesn't include its suburbs with cities that predominantly do, then, well, you get the idea.)
In other words, the larger MSA/CSA numbers more accurately reflect the relative size of both St. Louis's urban core and the surrounding region.
> (As a side note, this way of dividing up the region also has a significant effect on the City's infamous crime statistics, for reasons that should be pretty obvious with a little bit of thought. That is to say, if you define almost any city as only its most inner core, then you're going to end up with much higher crime rates than if you include its suburbs. And if you're comparing one city that doesn't include its suburbs with cities that predominantly do, then, well, you get the idea.)
This applies to many cities in the Northeast as well. The cities are tiny compared to cities in other parts of the country.
I wasn't trying to say anything bad about st. louis, just trying to give him a scale to compare to, since he said he had no idea about the size of st. louis. Oakland and SF are actually similarly sized geographically; Oakland's only got ~55 sq. miles of land and SF has ~49 sq miles of land. And each is surrounded by smaller separate cities that should probably just merge into the larger city already.
This is true and correct. Much talk has been brewing (again) about the merging of St. Louis city with the county and one of the reasons given is to alleviate this constant confusion by outsiders.
If you're looking for "San Francisco" feel, crowd, look, shops, and trendy neighborhoods in St. Louis. Go to the "Central West End" District. If there's one thing St. Louis can be proud of it's that district. That whole area from Forest Park (bigger than Central Park in New York) including the neighborhoods around it, Barnes Jewish Hospital, Children's Hospital Complex, GasLamp District, Central West End is really nice.
I miss tower grove park, forest park, and the botanical gardens most about having left stl. Partly because I could see the botanical gardens from the balcony on the back of my apt, though
I love St. Louis. Certain parts have a European feel that no other city outside of Canada has. There are a lot of extremely bright, hard working people there too. It is odd. It is a city that seems to not know how much untapped talent it has.
That being said, there are parts that are rundown and sketchy. There are huge problems with drugs like methamphetamine outside of the 'normal' urban drug issues that most cities have. In addition, from what I understand, the Missouri tax system is terrible (property tax on many large items you own like cars in addition to your homestead tax and sales tax on top of income tax).
I went to Washington University in St. Louis, and I was overall impressed with the beauty of the city (especially forest park) and the sense of community. The kids at the school were wicked smart (ranked 7th in the nation in terms of average SAT scores--higher than Stanford).
The city is super segregated. When you cross Delmar, the population shifts from very wealthy and white to poor and black.
Yeah. But how the city is technically setup doesn't stop people from being confused and stopping there.
I'm not saying that east st. louis is terrible as an indictment of st. louis. I love stl. I can't wait to move back. I've just met a lot of random folks who don't realize that east st. louis is different, and stop by.
Luckily, if you stay on the west side of the river, you're pretty much fine. I lived in the city near the botanical gardens for awhile and it was great.
There are sketchy places in St. Louis itself, but they're not as bad as east st. louis, and that's like just about any other city I've been.
I think weather plays a large part in why people like to live in the Bay Area. Many refer to the high cost of living here as the "sun tax." As I sit in my office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I can't even fathom living in St. Louis.
There is a hefty sun burn tax in Texas. 100 degree weather for sometimes 30 straight days. May - Sept are all 90 degrees+ without fail. The winter is colder than the bay area.
I lived in both states and the weather in the Bay Area isn't enough to justify the heavy income tax, sales tax and cost of housing. It's great that it's in the 60s and 70s year round but with zero rain fall you got other cons making up for pros in that category. Sure Texas is hot and that is a downside but agreeing that the weather in the Bay Area is worth an insane amount of extra cash isn't correct.
If you have large housing needs (family/etc.) I can see that, but as a single person renting I didn't find the pricing difference large enough to be worth choosing Texas just for the housing savings. Paid about $700/mo to rent a 1-bd in Houston, vs $1100 to rent a nicer 1-bd in Santa Cruz, near the beach. Sure, that's almost $5k savings over a year in Houston, but you're not going to retire on an extra $5k. Well more like $4k savings overall once you take into account the extra electric bill I had in Houston, running the A/C for 7-8 months of the year.
The average property tax rate is 4x California's, though. On the other hand, the average property value is lower. How all those factors combine depends on your income/location/etc. The group that comes out worst is the middle class in cheaper areas, around 40th-70th percentile incomes. If you make mid 5 figures, and live in a $150k house, your tax situation would be better Bakersfield than in Houston.
For single-income household of two making $55k, the annual difference shakes out to about $500. Not an insignificant sum but also not a huge difference.
But your comparison is between Bakersfield, a medium-sized city whose largest employer is Kern County, and Houston, the world capital of energy and a major player in shipping, healthcare and aerospace.
Which city is more likely to actually pan out a $55k job for our hypothetical middle-class family? Houston (median income, $58k) or Bakersfield ($38k)? Where is that barely higher tax burden buying better schools? (I'll take any of Houston's suburbs on that count)
I grew up all over California but I've lived in Texas for the last nine years, I've seen the difference. Texas certainly isn't perfect but our cities are actually affordable.
The price of a house usually translates into how much the monthly/annual payments are for the house since it directly effects the demand curve. Up property tax prices and house values go correspondingly down. Up average incomes, house prices go up, etc. Decrease interest rates enough and housing prices can go up significantly.
and if you make 6 figures your income tax alone would make for a mortgage payment in Texas. Property Tax in Cali is also pretty messed up with people paying almost nothing because they inherited their home from their parents along with their tax rate from the 60s.
Housing costs in WA can't hold a candle to Texas. The median home price in King County (where Seattle is located, for those who are unaware) is $415,000. Median home price in Dallas County is just a tad under $200,000. To get that in King County, you have to be all the way down in Federal Way or Auburn, both of which are so far out you'll need a car (so you get to sit on IH-5 for days) and you might as well not even try to have a social life in Seattle.
If you want a house in or that has access to the trendy area of Seattle, be prepared to cough up anywhere from $300,000 to $600,000 (median is $619k but I assume some folks will buy a smaller house or one that needs a bunch of work to get the price down).
415k is median...federal way and auburn are still below that. You can do better than ok with $400k in Seattle if you are willing to go condo.
Texas has bad schools, high Crome, dumpster divers everywhere. Washington state is a first world country in comparison. Even some boondocks place like Spokane where houses still go for $150k compares well to Texas (though the tech jobs are all in Seattle).
My point was that "better than OK with $400k" will get you a mansion in Dallas' northern suburbs or a very nice rambler with a pool inside Dallas itself, not a condo with an $800/mo maintenance fee. I'm not bagging on condos, either, but not everyone wants to live in one, plus the better ones in Seattle are getting picky about who can buy. It floored me to see an ad for a condo saying "no dogs." (Who bans dogs in Seattle? That has to be a recipe for disaster.)
You're 100% right that you can find cheaper housing in Auburn, Federal Way (mind the gunshots), Everett, or even Spokane. The problem is that living in none of those places gets you the walkable, diverse lifestyle of being in Seattle.
Also, thanks for painting all Texas schools with such a broad brush. I graduated from a north Texas (public, non-charter) high school that is well-ranked, in addition to graduating from a state college for my CSCI degree. My siblings came after me through the same school, one as recently as 5 years ago, and none of us are drooling founts of stupidity who can barely sign our own names. It's almost as though different areas have different levels of achievement in their schools.
$800/month in maintenance fees? Are you joking or exaggerating, or are you trying to justify your McMansion preference with hyperbole?
My experience of Texas was all in Austin, maybe that is a lower end city compared to Dallas? Not sure, but I was amazed by the poverty versus the worst places I know of in Washington state (where I'm native).
$554/mo in HOA and they're currently running a $210/mo "special assessment" for some recent upgrades. Almost everything on Capitol Hill is in the same boat. A condo in Issaquah had $325/mo for the HOA and another $300/mo to put in a new pool. I'm not sure why condos in Puget Sound love their special assessments but they sure do.
HOAs in north Texas that aren't considered "luxury" wouldn't dream of asking for more than a few hundred bucks a year. $254k gets you a newly-renovated 4bed/2bath half a block from the Capitol Hill-like Bishop Arts district in Dallas, a straight shot into downtown, transit, and no HOA: http://www.redfin.com/TX/Dallas/720-Elsbeth-St-75208/home/30...
We're the inverse: I'm a native of Texas and moved to Washington State. Seattle is awesome but it's very, very expensive compared to where I came from. Seattle has a lot to offer that Dallas doesn't, like weather that isn't incredibly unbearable and politicians that aren't incredibly unthinking, and scenery that isn't incredibly uninteresting. Trying to compare the two on price? Not in the same ballpark.
(The worst place I know of in King County is Federal Way and Austin was worse than that? Damn, the place has gone downhill a LOT since I was there.)
Texas has simultaneously some of the best and worst schools everywhere, like most states. I spent two years in a CA high school and two years in a TX high school and the difference was worlds apart—the CA school was a joke. Falling apart, horrid teachers paid below the poverty line, huge drug and violence issues. All AP classes have been cut.
The Texas school, conversely, was a palace of education. Better in every way. Highly-paid teachers, actual funding for extracurriculars, buildings that weren't condemned. Four years of computer science classes.
Are there bad schools in Texas? Absolutely. But the fact is (unfair as it may be) that in the areas a software developer is likely to live, the schools are fantastic.
Yes. Other factors as well. I just said a large part... not the only or the largest. Another one is that you are not more than a couple hours from snow (assuming we're not having a drought like right now), the beach and the forest. I'm sure other places enjoy this diversity of nature as well... but we do have it pretty good here.
I would also add that people the bay area in general, have a "let's get it done" attitude. In the south and mid west people are a lot more laid back and generally more interested in football, Bud light/Miller light/Coors light and liberal bashing rather than putting in all-nighters. It was an eye opening change when I moved to the SF bay area.
I maybe an exception to the stereotypical software engineer, but I work best around motivated people rather than people who are laid back all the time.
Wow, not only is this an entirely ignorant and untrue stereotype; it implies that putting in all-nighters for your job is a good thing which I think its fairly universally regarded as untrue.
Well you better read my post again. I said "generally", not all of them are like that. Also the assumption is if you're putting all-nighters there is some reward in the end (money, stocks, recognition etc.). IMO I get more done during all-nighters than during the day and I'm not the only one in my team who does that.
Saying "generally" doesn't make it not ignorant or not a stereotype - in fact I'm pretty sure its just the opposite. "Generally, people in the midwest are beer swilling, liberal bashing layabouts" is pretty much the definition of a stereotype...
There is certainly nothing wrong with working at a time of day which is most productive for you, but the implication was that midwesterners were generally unwilling to put in a bunch of extra hours to "get it done." Not that they frowned upon people who liked to work at night.
I would argue, pretty strongly, that the culture of "kill yourself working a billion hours a week for your startup" is unhealthy physically, socially and mentally. Sure there is an outside chance that you hit it big and get fabulously wealthy. In the mean-time you pass up tons of actual real-life salary, benefits and vacation time that are tangible, usable, and increase your quality of life today. (Not to mention an actual retirement account, which most startups seems to neglect.)
We cannot have an honest conversation since whatever I say is pigeon-holed to a stereotype. You might as well live in the mid west for a while and find out for yourself vs SV.
In life, no one hands you a bunch of money for nothing. No startup guarantees anything, I assume most people are fully grown adults who are able to make rational choices fit for them. You can make your own choices in life and live with it and take responsibility.
Not my experience. We may look laid back, but a lot of folks in the Midwest grew up around "get it done now" jobs. I see the attitude keeps even in other jobs not as time critical. It's a learned habit.
Out of politeness I'll leave you beer, etc. comments alone.
Cold winters always gave me time to do more coding so I could enjoy the summer more, but I'm in North Dakota these days so I might have a odd view of cold.
I really don't get the aversion to cold weather either. It is part of the reason us "northerners" read so much.
When it gets to -24F out, aka you can get frostbite underneath clothes, you tend to say well lets just sit inside and do stuff or read/etc...
Cold isn't bad, cold+wind, that is the killer. I met a woman from socal that moved here recently. It was about 20F out and all I had on was a sweater. She looked like she was going to go for a recreation of Shackletons expedition. Granted I might be a bit crazy but cold really isn't that big of a deal. Look at the Buddhist monks that dry off wet towels on their shoulders in subzero weather.
But, if it keeps out the riffraff eh, I'll keep it.
Yep, cold + wind is what kills you. I've always said North Dakota is quite good at killing the stupid or unlucky[1]. Oil has brought a lot of people from southern states and I worry a lot about their safety. This weekend we should hit -26F before wind chill off a 20-30 mph wind. Good time to stay in and code.
1) for the love of what you hold holy do not go too fast on icy roads (that means you SUV driver). One unlucky moment like sliding a foot or two in front of a semi will be it. Don't leave that as an Xmas present.
I've been living in Palo Alto for the last year, and I'm moving back to Toronto next week to bootstrap my own startup. The weather has been making me think twice!
Heh, and around that time, it was in the high 60s here in Southern California. Sure, we don't have enough water to sustain ourselves, but it's winter and shorts weather.
The last picture is of the City Musuem. If you are ever near St Louis with kids you have to go there. It is one of the coolest places I've ever been to.
I think I might have had more fun than my kids did. Climbing outside in rebar tubes 40 feet above the ground is a lot of fun. We didn't do the 7 story slide though - we walked up there but the line was not moving at all.
We are going back this summer (I live in New England but go home to Southern Illinois every summer for a visit).
This is all great, but if you're building a company focused on earning money by doing sales (especially one that has you interacting with other tech companies), the amount of clients you can meet face to face in St. Louis (and the size of the deals) is not something I'd suspect to be competitive with what you'd find in SF.
This is where the rubber hits the road. Staff talent -- especially creative, tech, sales, marketing -- can be identified and managed as a distributed workforce. Most clients need face time. Most prospects need face time before they are clients. It's anachronistic, but mostly the way of the world. I'd love to hear differently.
St. Louis is great. I wouldn't live there. It's very similar, at least in my experience, to my hometown of Memphis. The Italian food is obviously better, but we have barbecue. :)
America has a lot of great cities. They all don't have the technical talent level that San Francisco has, but good culture is not monopolized in San Francisco.
St. Louis is cheap, but it's cheap for a reason. If you think 6th and Market is bad, take a stroll through East St. Louis. It has the 3rd highest murder rate in the country. Violent crime is on the rise. [1] Basically, it's one of the most dangerous cities in the country.
If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, then you'd probably be better off just moving your startup to Oakland and maintaining a connection to the Bay Area startup network. Or, if it does, move to a more modern, safer city in the South that still has a low cost of living without many of the economic problems of the rust belt cities (and better weather to boot!).
Have you lived in St. Louis? East St. Louis is not St. Louis. I lived in St. Louis for the better part of 27 years (Tower Grove South, St. Louis County, Central West End, and Boulevard Heights) and never had any problems. St. Louis is a city of neighborhoods, just like many other places. Some areas have higher crime than others, but to categorically call the whole town dangerous isn't fair.
Having grown up in St. Louis, I will say that the statistics about violence are highly skewed. Yes, the rates of violent crime in East/North St. Louis are extremely high. However, it's not terribly difficult to avoid these areas (unless you're really into strip clubs). The suburbs and most of the rest of the city are no less safe than comparable areas in the bay area.
I grew up in the area too, and moved back a few years ago. People often give me weird looks when I say I live on the Illinois side, assuming I'm living next to Pop's or something. The Illinois side is all really nice farmland if you just go a few miles out from the city. That is one of the nice things about Saint Louis. I grew up on several acres of land, my dad was able to commute to downtown in less than 30 minutes, and he was able to afford that on a mid-level government employee salary.
East St. Louis is really a separate topic from St. Louis; the name is just coincidental. That said, when I lived in St. Louis, East St. Louis was the destination of choice for carjacker-rapists who would take their victims across the bridge and dump them in some industrial parking lot.
St. Louis is currently listed as 3rd highest violent crime rate in the country (Detroit is #1, but in years past St. Louis edged out Detroit for murder rate). I'm not saying don't move there, but just be aware that north St. Louis is a pretty bad area and the economy doesn't seem to have improved much, despite the massive investments into the central urban attractions like the Arch, Union Station, and the things listed in the OP.
Perhaps the main problem with St. Louis is the division between the actual city of St. Louis and the various suburban towns that surround it. In 1970, the city boasted a population of nearly one million, and just 3-4 years later it was down to about half that. City residents blame the population implosion on school busing which led to white flight. The burbs like Clayton, Webster Groves, etc., in St. Louis County ("the County" as people call it) had their own tax base and when affluent people flocked there, the city lost a substantial portion of its tax revenue.
Overall, I really liked St. Louis but the crime rates are pretty bad. The weather in the summer is also bad -- very hot and humid. You will need AC, and it doesn't come by default with every dwelling. If it were me, I'd be looking at Phoenix or Tucson, because of their proximity to southern California and of course the weather, but then I spent some time in Arizona and fell in love with the place. Cost of living is probably comparable if not cheaper than St. Louis as well. Can't speak for the start-up community in Phoenix, however; there's not much of one that I heard of, as of 2010 or so.
>> Basically, it's one of the most dangerous cities in the country.
If you're worried about the violent crime rate, don't move to the south. Texas, Florida, and Louisiana are always near the top for violent crime rate. The states with the lowest murder rates are in the north, generally. You want to move someplace like Vermont or Oregon.
East St. Louis is a different city, across the Mississippi river and in a different state than St. Louis.
St. Louis has taken its share of knocks over the years like many Midwestern cities, but those crime statistics are not indicative of the normal experience here.
"New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."
i live in santa monica, which in my mind is like an improved san francisco, and an improved los angeles, combined. i can always see a tiny twinge of jealousy when i tell current-SFers that i live in SM now. :)
it's not perfect but it's good for me. i have an amazing view from both home and the office, i can walk OR drive OR cab to get food/coffee/clothes/entertainment, and have access to the rest of LA if i choose to leave the sm/westside bubble.
St. Louis may have the best chess scene in the US, or perhaps second only to NYC. Among other things, it hosts the US Championships every year. And Magnus Carlsen has played there. And Anna Sharevich lives there. (I.e. a lot more than the "Hall of Fame.")
I used to live in St. Louis and worked at a startup that was located in downtown (right on Washington Ave) 13 years ago. Back then downtown was dead after 5pm, as everyone left to go home back in the suburbs and not much of a night life in the city.
Recently, I went back to visit for the first time in over 10 years. I was amazed that there was a night life, and families would go out to eat in the city! It seems to be turning it self around well, but I am sure there are more hurdles to make it even safer.
In addition to it being easier to get funding [1], it sounds like St. Louis is really looking to be a good spot for a startup in the US.
It is not only rent but other things like higher sales and income tax rates in California. My wife and I live in the mountains in Central Arizona and the cost of living is lower than California in many ways.
Economics aside, and on a more personal note: it's a shame to lose Jon. He's one of the kindest, most talented founders (and friends) I've met in SF, and it's a shame he's leaving.
> 3.8x cheaper than San Francisco. Moving to St Louis is going to almost quadruple my company’s runway.
It's inversely proportional to your personal rent? Your company has no revenue, no employees, no office, no servers, no contractors, no contracts, no other costs in general? Is that really a company?
I don't think you're moving a business, I think you're just moving.
Long-time lurker, just saw this post about my hometown so I created an account.
I have a tech business in St. Louis. I love living in St. Louis and will never live anywhere else.
A few comments:
It is extremely hard to hire\find good programmers. I've posted job ads on Dice and Craigslist, and received 2 or 3 replies. I don't think I received ONE reply from Dice. The replies you get are people that can't answer the most basic questions.
You will HAVE to use a recruiting firm that will try to poach the talent and you have to search out resumes. It will cost at least $50k for a programmer that can't even answer the most basic questions in an interview. Fortunately, I got very lucky and found one of the most kick-ass people on the planet.
In regards to East. St Louis, as other people mentioned, it is NOT in Missouri, it's in ILLINOIS. The only reason people in St Louis go to East St Louis is because the bars stop serving at 1:30 or 2AM. If you want to drink past that, everyone goes to East St. Louis. Either that, or to go to strip clubs. Given that, if it's a Friday or Saturday night, you'll see a bunch of other St Louisians over in East St Louis at Pops, or the Oz, or at strip clubs. It is definitely a bad area though. I've been to East St Louis many times and have never felt threatened.
The bad part of St Louis is North County. Unless you live there, the only reason to go there is for drugs. I've never been there, and as far as I know, you can't drink past 2AM there, and they don't have any strip clubs. I've driven by there many times, and I knew someone that worked in North County for years and never had any issues. It's like any other city, there are parts you don't want to venture through by yourself, late at night.
Unfortunately, I think most of the crime in both E St Louis, and North county, is local, black on black crime.
Downtown is somewhat desolate. If you want to live downtown, there are some cool areas like Soulard which is making a come back. Most people live in West County, South County, St Charles county, etc. I would never live downtown. Most of the action is outside of downtown. There are good sized office buildings in Clayton, West County, etc.
In the county areas, there are cops all over the place(which is a good thing). I've lived in a lot of places, and the bottom line is it's one of the safest places I've lived.
I read HN all the time, but don't know much about this start-up. Welcome to St. Louis though! As others mentioned, there are a lot of talented people here.
The problem with these places is what happens, when you need to hire people to build your company. The tech world is full of impressionistic statements like 'they have a startup scene,' but when you start getting numbers on available talent, you'll see you're putting yourself in a bad position.
To take an example where I have better data, people have commented on the vibrant and growing startup scene in Santiago, Chile. Maybe it is vibrant and growing, but the total number of people professionally employed in software development (devs, testers, manager, product managers, etc.) is only about 2000.
Split that 2000 into 50 different companies (and 50 tech companies would often be held up as proof of viability for the location), eliminate the high percentage with the wrong skill set for your company, and how likely is it, really, that you could build an engineering team of 20 and sustain that in the face of attrition over time?
St. Louis isn't going to have more than a few thousand of the same sort of people. Most of them are also not products of local universities with strong engineering programs relevant to most of the kinds of software behind most tech startups these days. The supply therefore is not growing at a steady rate or being replenished.
75 startups in one location? What happens, when the half that make it past the founder stage need to hire 3-4 people? Not only are there only a few available devs of any skill level available for each, but they all have dozens of options on the same block.
For startups, a higher percentage of engineers in an area employed by companies of 50-people or less actually makes hiring harder. In such a situation, they all have options of more or less equal value, and you have little to distinguish yourself from the others. The fact that SV has Google, Yahoo, Mcsft, etc. alongside a ton of mid-sized and smaller companies makes it easier.
If you've ever tried to recruit for a startup, think about how often you bring up ownership, autonomy, "startup culture," etc. as selling points? How well does that work in an environment, when nearly everyone already has that where they are?
This is just a quick set of reflections, but the overall point I hope is made. The truth is that staffing your startup is one of the most brutal forms of competition your business will experience. You're one of many, many players competing for an extremely scarce resource that very few founders even know how to identify, qualify, or retain, once they've got them.
If you ever plan on building your company beyond a small team of friends and local referrals, you should be doing everything you can to stack the deck in your favor. The Bering Sea may be an expensive and crowded area for gold prospecting, but you're still more likely to find gold there than in Lake Michigan.
Your point's valid as far as the importance of depth of engineering talent, but I will push back and say the talent's not nearly as sparse in St. Louis as you think.
St. Louis has two strong universities: Washington University[1], ranked 14th in the nation, and St. Louis University, ranked 101st [2]. Washington University has the 7th ranked SAT score average, ahead of Stanford, Columbia, Duke, et. al. [3]
While a huge chunk of these kids move away from St. Louis (including myself), the challenge of getting talent to St. Louis isn't as hard when you have a strong U. in the area as a default. There are also great champions of the St. Louis scene, like Jim McKelvey, cofounder of Square and Wash U alum.
If a startup has a cool mission, a cool tech stack, -and- operates in an area with a low cost of living, low congestion, and plenty of culture, art, and restaurant variety/quality, it can compete quite nicely with yet another Silicon Valley company when it comes to attracting talent.
Relocation for a startup? If your startup employer fails, you are stuck in a city far away from your support network. If you chanced a startup in the city you lived in, at least you could recover quickly, get a new job, whatever.
Relocation can work well for more established companies (and even then, two body problems often kill that), but it doesn't make sense at all for a semi-risky startup.
What happened to all those startups that "need to hire people to build (your) company", to quote the prior post and argument? I mean, you "have dozens of options on the same block." Just take a job with one of them.
EDIT: A bit more seriously, and to your argument in particular, that's where low cost of living comes in your favor. "Hmm, I could take $90k in Silicon Valley where I will have to be careful with my budget, or I could take $75k in St. Louis, where I will live comfortably"; why in the world would you accept a startup in the Valley (thus moving there) given that decision, all other factors being equal (they're not, but there are plenty in favor of St. Louis, as this article points out)?
You're showing yourself willing to move (a software dev willing to relocate will not be short of a job for long; heck, you could always later -look- to move to the Valley), and you'll be able to sock away funds for emergencies much more easily..
You moved for a startup because it was a great fit for your skills, the startup failed...now what? If there are only a few other startups, what is to say one will be a good fit? Also, your network isn't fully developed yet, maybe you've only been in town for 6 months...getting the right job via word of mouth will be very difficult.
If you don't believe developers are basically exchangeable commodities, then it is easy to see that we need a very large pool of jobs + a decent support network to find those jobs.
SF having critical mass of startups and people you already know (they moved from where you were before) makes it very appealing. SLT has none of that.
I wonder if startups should offer a last resort re-relocation signing bonus. Although the signalling is counter-intuitive, this way everybody at least acknowledges the riskiness of a typical startup.
Worst case, the employee really needed the cash and used it for something else, but nobody could say that the startup didn't try to soften potential hard landings.
St. Louis has a large creative/advertising industry relative to other similar cities, so there's a larger pool to hire from than you might think. Your point is still valid, and something that can only change with time.
A lot of people say SF/SV/etc is terrible because it's full of Californians, but I've lived all over the country and known lots of people from lots of states and I'd rather live among Californians than Missourians or (god forbid) Texans.
I work with a Texan. Really nice guy and smarter then me but he never talks down to me. He phrases his suggestions as questions and the thicker he lays on the drawl the more likely it is that his opinion will turn out to be good advice.
I know a guy like that. He's not a Texan, I don't think that part matters. He's a retired Chicago cop. I interact with him in the context of volunteer work for a few organizations locally. I have no idea how he does it, but he'll walk up, start chatting, have a question or two, maybe relate a musing he was having, and go on to talk to someone else. Every damn time I find myself doing his bidding and about an hour realizing that fact. I have no idea how he does it, other than he's a wizard. He never says "do this", or "i think you should ...". I've seen it work on many other people as well.
San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San Francisco interesting has been driven out by the high prices -- it's a much more homogenous city than a few years ago, where mom-and-pop shops and other neighborhood amenities have been replaced by places selling $10 "artisinal grilled cheese" sandwiches and "mixology" bars where you can buy your choice of $15 cocktail. SF feels increasingly like a city for wealthy yuppies, because...it is a city for wealthy yuppies. Living here on anything less than a good engineer's salary is becoming a tall order.
Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute when you're jockeying for position at the bar in a crowded room full of guys. If you're a 20-something male programmer looking for a date in SF, I feel badly for you. Hope you like BART, because you're going to Oakland (if you're lucky!)
Once upon a time it was only a mildly bad decision to locate your startup in San Francisco, but you could justify it with the appeal of a diverse, cosmopolitan city. Right now, there's a very real financial penalty (rents, salaries, taxes), and the cultural benefits are waning. There are a lot of great cities in the US, and on the internet, you can work from anywhere. Try those instead.