Ask HN: Where are other tech scenes outside Bay Area

I feel like I’ve missed the boat when it comes to home ownership here in the Bay Area. Furthermore, my wife wants stability in home ownership for our nascent family, and renting is hardly affordable, not to mention lacking in the potential for growth in equity.

The usual option of Austin doesn’t excite me.

Where else are people going that has a Tech scene?

Currently, I’m working as a Director of Engineering, making 300k+, but it doesn’t seem to matter; all I can afford is either under a freeway or under power lines, it seems. I don’t want to overextend across 30 years.

Any suggestions? I’d be happier, I think, somewhere else, with a lower paying job, incredibly, but I’m having a hard time figuring out somewhere with a good mix of weather, jobs, properties, schools.

I was gonna say Raleigh, NC. After looking up what RTP refers to, I am pleasantly surprised to see this as the first answer!

Have you worked with a real estate agent and lender to see what properties you could afford? You might be surprised with what you can afford.

I recently moved from SF to San Diego about a year ago and just bought a house. It’s not that we couldn’t afford a house in the Bay Area. Just that in SD we could afford a house in a neighborhood we’d actually want to live in.

It’s a different market down here. Lots of biotech and defense contractors. Primarily Java, C++, C# but you can find some ruby and php positions. I haven’t seen any python and very little node.js positions but they are out there. Startup scene is obviously much smaller but if you look hard enough you can find some great companies.

I'm a former Bay Area startupper (Marketing/Sales early stage and a bit of product, not an engineer) and did a stint in Berlin and am currently in Tallinn (Estonia). I think for quality of life Berlin can't be beat, it's a big city but you can choose the right neighborhood for a reasonable price and get any sort of vibe you want from small town to big city hipster (okay maybe there are a few neighborhoods with the latter vibe).

But frankly I doubt you're going to be able to secure a gig at that pay, you'll have to decide if general quality of life is worth the monetary tradeoff. The tech scene itself is much more nascent in Berlin (and way underfunded) but you may be able to parlay your 'Silicon Valley' roots into a sweet senior gig in an innovation lab or as a senior engineer at a bigger corporate that's trying to compete with newcomers which is a big theme in German corporates right now

Denver, Colorado.