41–50 of 82 posts
I love that neighborhood but oof the trees do smell in the summer!
But the gingkos are lovely in the fall.
Not wanting to get clearance lowers the number of opportunities by a lot. Not every tech company works with clearances, but the money is always flowing in Defense Tech.
Most things will be government oriented rather than consumer.
Don't stay in DC proper. Alexandria and Arlington are good on the VA side. Not sure about the Maryland side.
There are lots of meet ups, but be prepared for stale tech because of the government work. Not to say there isn't progression, it's just that the government is the outsized employer (or employer adjacent) and they like to be slow and stable.
As far as lifestyle, it's a wealthy area with lots to do. Be prepared to drive though.
I lived there 4 years in Dupont Circle. It's a weird city. I personally didn't vibe with it so take what I say with a huge grain of salt. It's clean, people are intelligent, and there's a lot of stuff that's free and the architecture is gorgeous. That said, it doesn't have much of a culture since it's very transient. They way I describe it is the culture is very 'safe'. It's not gonna push the boundaries of anything.…
What neighborhood did you move to in NYC? I'm in NYC now and considering signing a 1 bedroom lease here, but the avg price in Manhattan/Brooklyn seems to be $3500 a month which is pushing me toward living in DC instead.
Only positive thing I can say is that it's way better for cycling than NYC. Good infrastructure in the city, and fantastic paved trails throughout the surrounding areas. When my friends would move away at least I could spent the weekends exploring on two wheels.
Virginia has a much lower violent crime rate (104 per 100000 vs 977 per 100000 in DC), lower taxes, a better social scene, and is more accessible to any of the common recreational activities (hiking in Shenandoah, camping in West Virginia, wineries, breweries, etc.).
Even if you like going out to a bar to socialize, I still think the Clarendon area on the north side of Arlington is better than literally anywhere in the District.
https://www.arlnow.com/2020/07/29/arlington-neighborhoods-to...
https://suburbansolutions.com/blog/arlington-va-crime-rate/
https://suburbansolutions.com/blog/washington-dc-crime-rate/
Beyond DC, investigate Arlington and Alexandria for more urban places to live. The latter is quite nice especially. It sounds like you're bringing your remote job with you. That's great! For non-defense tech, in Reston there are offices for Oracle, Microsoft, a bunch of AWS offices (more towards Herndon), and some smaller companies. Competition to get in all of the aforementioned is pretty fierce, and I suspect one good differentiator is having a security clearance.
Community-wise, tech seems to still be putting itself back together after Covid. The local scene on Meetup seemed like a ghost town when I checked a few months ago. There are some efforts to restart Code and Coffee (https://www.meetup.com/NoVA-Code-Coffee/) meetups which look promising.
Traffic is no joke. Think hard about where you want to live, how much you can pay, and how long you want to be in traffic. The less you drive, the happier you'll be.
Finally, it's worth noting that almost everyone in the area is over-leveraged in at least one of time, money, job/life commitments, and that manifests as an ambient stress. Probably very typical of any area that has money and ambitious people.
I lived there 4 years in Dupont Circle. It's a weird city. I personally didn't vibe with it so take what I say with a huge grain of salt. It's clean, people are intelligent, and there's a lot of stuff that's free and the architecture is gorgeous. That said, it doesn't have much of a culture since it's very transient. They way I describe it is the culture is very 'safe'. It's not gonna push the boundaries of anything.…
> They way I describe it is the culture is very 'safe' I grew up in the DC suburbs and my go-to example of this is the prevalence of chain restaurants in relation to the affluence of the population. The family from Michigan that’s here for four years along with some political administration isn’t going to take the time to sort through unfamiliar local places. They’re going to reach for familiar names. It’s the exact…
One mistake almost everybody in tech makes when they move to DC from somewhere else in the country is that they move to DC proper. DC, despite being a fairly walkable city with a decent subway by US standards and a lot of diverse food choices, is not where action outside of government or government related is. Nearly all of the tech scene is outside of the city in two areas. Either in the stretch of MD north of DC an…
I live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of DC and work (remotely) in tech. I would highly recommend—as have others here—that if you enjoy a nice walkable city, you should try living in DC proper, too, and if you _have to_ commute to one of those bland suburbs where the big HQs and startups are located, you'll be well positioned to reverse commute if you're near a Metro station in DC.
I moved here from San Franciso, where I had a similar reverse commute from SF down the peninsula to Cupertino for work in tech. I love DC for a lot of the same reasons I loved living in SF rather than in Silicon Valley—I much prefer city life to suburb life—even with all the grit and rough edges. If you do, too, I think you'd prefer DC proper to any of the suburbs.
I live in NW DC now and spent several years on the MD side about 500m from the DC border. I love it here. I am absolutely uninterested in politics and have no desire to work in defense and there is still so much to do around here, both recreation and career wise. Another comment was suggesting not moving into DC proper an I highly disagree. being close proximity to the metro line is what enables alot of the fun parts…
> taxes are less than both virginia and maryland Can you elaborate? "Taxes" can mean many different things and, for my situation, income taxes in Virginia are far lower than in the other two municipalities.
maryland has local county tax which for montgomery county adds up with the state income tax to be several thousand higher per year than DC, for me.
- there are more neighborhoods to DC than just DuPont and Logan Circle.
- traffic’s terrible. Engineer your life around not commuting by car. If you need a car, get off-street parking, especially if you live in DuPont/Logan and nearby neighborhoods.
- the food scene was meh 20 years ago, but no longer.
- there are many smart people here in all sorts of domains from all over the world; take advantage of this diversity of expertise.
- winter’s gray but spring and fall are glorious. High summer is miserable. You will want central air conditioning and lightweight clothes.
- tech is good here, and not just fedgov/defense, but it does not dominate everything the way it does in Silly Valley. Uncle Sam does dominate life here.
- Baltimore, Philly, and New York are an easy AmTrak train away. The Chesapeake and Delmarva peninsula is great. Shenandoah, the Alleghenies, and Smokies are not so far away. Flights to Europe aren’t bad, flights to Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean are easy.
The big downside to DC is that it’s amazingly expensive to have a family. I’ve got two young kids in a 1200 square foot rowhome. I spend $25K on private preschool for the younger and the older one goes to the neighborhood elementary school… which becomes less able to serve her academically with each year. If you want to live in DC and send your kids to private school, you’re looking at needing a $400k-$500K annual income. There are a lot of dual-lawyer families with incomes in that range which don’t feel “rich.” So if your life plans include having kids, I would absolutely build equity and savings in the mean time, so that you can strike on houses when opportunity presents itself, and not break the bank on nannies and private school. Or… plan a retreat to the burbs.
I wouldn’t do it. I grew up in northern Virginia and work in DC and lived there for a time. DC was nice 10-15 years ago when it offered some of the amenities of a big city at a much lower price point. Today there’s not much to recommend. It’s almost New York prices now but the restaurant and entertainment scene is a shadow of those places. Your apartment building will probably be full of political staffers and lawyer…
Not to mention, in NYC it's very difficult to buy a home as they are ~30-40% more expensive than renting, with high maintenance fees. For example, a 2BR in Upper East or West side (not near central park) will be ~6-9k a month with ~3k a month in taxes/maintenance.
The (made up) cocktail price index is also illustrative and in NYC one cocktail is ~$17-20 and DC is ~$11-14.