I'm a software engineer with a great job in midwest but I have never been happy here and have been contemplating about just packing my stuff and moving to Seattle for the past 3 years. I don't have any job leads but I have enough in savings to get a place for 6 months. Does anyone think it's sane to just move without job offers?
Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
131–140 of 312 posts
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "original neighborhood profile" wasn't gay creatives. That didn't happen until the 70s/80s. It was blue collar mechanics and auto-shop workers before then.
Oh yes definitely. I don't mean a bunch of gay artists came and built it in the 30's or postwar period. But the reinvention of the place, in the 70s and 80s as you say, was what helped make it distinct culturally. That's now coming to an end and a new era is starting - but lots of people would rather it didn't, myself included. Not much we can do though.
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#133Took 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.…
Seattle has never been particularly welcoming to newcomers; people there tend to be insular and it can be hard to make friends if you don't already know people (even before the amazon/tech stuff -- plenty of articles about 'the seattle freeze' that predate it). Being from there helps. Not being in tech helps -- there are so many new software engineers meeting one just isn't very interesting. You can hardly blame peop…
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like it to me. What difference does it make if you inherit your money or earn your money. Either way you're "rich".
I can't imagine you're this obtuse for real but I'll bite. Pretty sure the backlash is against the "kids" part of rich kids - as the phrase "rich kids" insinuates second-gen wealth, a mass of money without having the responsibility or maturity to have earned it. Very different story than for many of us self-made engineers, coming from the lower end of the economic bracket and taking advantage of scholarships and fina…
The backlash is not against "kids", but unreasonable defensiveness about the word "rich," because "oh, I'm not rich, I'm just getting by even though I have a stupid-good 401k and benefits and make enough money to never look at a bank statement." When you have to own up to just not really working all that hard and just not really having a struggle in your life that you didn't create, lots of people feel real bad. (And the ones that are hurting people with real problems should feel bad. "But economics" does not clean one's hands of one's contributions to even faceless evil.)
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seattle has never been particularly welcoming to newcomers; people there tend to be insular and it can be hard to make friends if you don't already know people (even before the amazon/tech stuff -- plenty of articles about 'the seattle freeze' that predate it). Being from there helps. Not being in tech helps -- there are so many new software engineers meeting one just isn't very interesting. You can hardly blame peop…
>> Also everyone hates amazon. Odd, compared to Bentonville where everyone loves Wal-mart.
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#136I'm a software engineer with a great job in midwest but I have never been happy here and have been contemplating about just packing my stuff and moving to Seattle for the past 3 years. I don't have any job leads but I have enough in savings to get a place for 6 months. Does anyone think it's sane to just move without job offers?
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seattle has never been particularly welcoming to newcomers; people there tend to be insular and it can be hard to make friends if you don't already know people (even before the amazon/tech stuff -- plenty of articles about 'the seattle freeze' that predate it). Being from there helps. Not being in tech helps -- there are so many new software engineers meeting one just isn't very interesting. You can hardly blame peop…
Have you ever tried traveling anywhere around South Lake Union at the end of a work day? It's an absolute nightmare, and doesn't do anything to ingratiate Amazon to the rest of the city.
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#138I have a question for all you unrepentant capitalists out there -- why is it that massive concentrations of wealth pretty consistently tend to lead to a decrease in the overall quality of life? Because if the boosters of capitalism are to be believed, the path to making society better on balance is to enable people to accumulate unlimited amounts of personal wealth and then sort of let that wealth diffuse through the…
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seattle has never been particularly welcoming to newcomers; people there tend to be insular and it can be hard to make friends if you don't already know people (even before the amazon/tech stuff -- plenty of articles about 'the seattle freeze' that predate it). Being from there helps. Not being in tech helps -- there are so many new software engineers meeting one just isn't very interesting. You can hardly blame peop…
I keep reading all these scary stories about how unwelcoming people from Seattle is; I moved here back in February and my experience until now have been completely the opposite: almost every Seattleite I meet is super friendly and talkative, at the point that it feels almost like being in a small town. Maybe I am just lucky? but I think Seattle is one of the coolest cities in the US, except of course for the traffic.
I lived in Seattle for 4 years and I generally found people cold and distant, my wife did too.
Re: Seattle, in Midst of Tech Boom, Tries to Keep Its Soul
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seattle has never been particularly welcoming to newcomers; people there tend to be insular and it can be hard to make friends if you don't already know people (even before the amazon/tech stuff -- plenty of articles about 'the seattle freeze' that predate it). Being from there helps. Not being in tech helps -- there are so many new software engineers meeting one just isn't very interesting. You can hardly blame peop…
> and avoiding talking about work entirely fuck, is this not SOP for everyone? conversation order of operations: work < people < things < ideas
Unfortunately, it's not SOP everywhere.