51–60 of 312 posts
Seattle is not for young people. The dude pool is 2:1 in a market where beer is regularly 6.50 a pint.
In the 2010 census, the female population of Seattle was right at 50%. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/53/5363000.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Capitol Hill is the most glaring change to me in the past 5 years. One of the neatest and most unique neighborhoods in the city, in a way iconic to how Seattle was seen is now filled with brand new condos and multi-use buildings. For god sakes there have been gay-hate crimes on Broadway. Yes, tons of new development has happened in SLU, but that area wasn't much of an established neighborhood to live in befor…
It seems to me that the fact that Capitol Hill was the unique, Bohemian, and affordable neighborhood that it was in your memories was just an accident of the 20th century. It's: * Right next to downtown * Has great views and * Has very easy access to a major road, I-5. Why on earth wouldn't having credentials like that make it prime property, even if a certain retailer didn't exist? But from 1950 - 1990, nobody wante…
Took a job in Bellevue in April and moved from Philadelphia to Seattle. So far it's a been an interesting experience. I've encountered many people hostile to software engineers in general. A bunch of people immediately ask if I work for Amazon with a hint of disdain after I state my occupation. So it hasn't felt super welcoming so far. I get it, even in some neighborhoods in Philadelphia the same thing is happening.…
Also everyone hates amazon. So if you don't work there, be outwardly and explicitly proud that you don't -- that's a huge selling point when it comes to making friends. Partly because of the white collar sweatshops (people in seattle generally liberal and pro-labor), partly because of the blue-collar sweatshops, partly because 'large corporation = evil', partly because the countless new techbros with no respect for Seattle culture who spend 11hrs/day at work and don't have time to develop a personality romping around town give it a real bad reputation.
> John Criscitello placed posters in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood proclaiming “Welcome! Rich Kids,” and “Wish you weren’t here.” Its hard not to feel angry at people like this. "Rich Kids" really? These "Kids" spent years developing their engineering skills to get to the point where they are now. Are engineers paid a lot? Of course. But we're certainly not in the same category as those who inherit wealth. Most…
But we're certainly not in the same category as those who inherit wealth. Ahhh... it's the old, I'm not rich! The rich are people that make more than me! By that definition, almost nobody is rich.
It's fascinating and sad to read these articles, about some cities struggling with the effects of tech wealth while other cities would see it as an almost unqualified boon. We constantly hear about a desperate shortage of software engineers from tech companies, as well as talk of "six figure" salaries. But the median price for housing in SF is well over a million now, and if you're hoping to have kids and raise a fam…
I haven't lived in the US for almost five years now but if I did come back I'd pick a second-tier city. There's enough remote work now that you can pick any city you want in a US timezone and still make a decent living. I don't see why everyone feels obliged to squeeze into one of three or four insanely overpriced coastal cities in 2015.
What I mean by this is that San Francisco wasn't the "alpha" city for any particular career path. If you wanted to pursue law, finance, publishing, entertainment, and so forth, the alpha cities were New York, Los Angeles, and maybe Chicago. Even tech was mainly a south bay thing, and it was smaller.
That's not to say you couldn't pursue a fine career in these fields SF, and SF probably was one of the better 2nd tier cities from a career perspective (the only other one I can think of is Boston, similar in that it has top tier universities that do bring top academics to town), but it wasn't until tech hit that SF became a place you would live for your career, even though otherwise you didn't like it here.
This has changed things a lot. People have always come to SF looking for something new, but in the past, really as recently as maybe the late 90s (just before the first dot com boom), people really only came to SF because they wished to some extent to live in SF. I also think this may be what is behind many of the recent "10 things I hate about SF" posts, often comparing it unfavorably to New York or other "alpha-career" cities. In the past, whoever wrote these would simply be living in New York or another alpha city.
It has been a very deep cultural change for SF to suddenly find itself an "alpha" city for careers in a a substantial segment of the economy - in other words, people who moved to SF specifically for career advancement, but would otherwise prefer to be living somewhere else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A brief elaboration on "many people hostile to software engineers in general": the major source of this are the employers who have done a deal with the apartment owners to all but exclude anyone who doesn't work in the tech industry. The apartment owner simply doesn't rent to anyone who doesn't work for Amazon, Microsoft etc[1]. This makes people grumpy at the folks who apparently do the deal with the devil for this…
Reading this, the employers have nothing to do with it. The apartment owner/managers are deciding who is a "preferred" tenant on their own and should take the heat rather than some arbitrary employer.
And that is the primary reason I'm in NYC now instead of Silicon Valley. Of course there is proximity to family and my love of this city in general, but the main reason is that at the end of the day, I go back to my block in Bushwick and spend hours almost every day just sitting with my Puerto Rican neighbors who have lived vastly different lives from mine. And I love it.
The other option would have been to be a in a heavily white and asian male dominated situation with a bunch of people just like me, and i understand the appeal of not having to deal with things that are "different", but for me that's the best part of life.
I'm happy to have lived with whites, blacks, latinos, asians, men, women, straight and gay people throughout my life. And I'm much more comfortable in working class neighborhoods than middle and upper class neighborhoods.
So to me, it sounds like Seattle has a helluva uphill battle if it has to compete with the likes of entirely tech worker dominated buildings and wants to maintain any sort of culture at all besides whatever uniform culture that situation imposes upon an area.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the 2010 census, the female population of Seattle was right at 50%. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/53/5363000.html
The 2010 census is fairly useless for Seattle at this point. Almost 100,000 people have moved here since then (16%)
2010 estimate: 608,658
Assuming every one of those 53,742 people was male, the ratio would go from 50% female to 45.9% female.
Seattle is not for young people. The dude pool is 2:1 in a market where beer is regularly 6.50 a pint.
In the 2010 census, the female population of Seattle was right at 50%. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/53/5363000.html
It certainly isn't 2:1 - that was hyperbole - but it's bad. And it doesn't actually take a large absolute difference to produce huge changes in behavior. A standard economic model of this fact is explained nicely here: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/02/rev... In the efficient market limit, an arbitrarily small perturbation in the effective gender ratio produces arbitrarily large changes in outcomes.
Sadly, this article continues that pattern. The past is privileged and the future is to dance only to its tune. No wonder people are upset that things are changing - privilege is being challenged.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me that the fact that Capitol Hill was the unique, Bohemian, and affordable neighborhood that it was in your memories was just an accident of the 20th century. It's: * Right next to downtown * Has great views and * Has very easy access to a major road, I-5. Why on earth wouldn't having credentials like that make it prime property, even if a certain retailer didn't exist? But from 1950 - 1990, nobody wante…
Can I post this comment to Facebook without retribution?