Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#11

Post by davidw » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:09 PM UTC

hisham wrote: post #8

Seattle is pretty good too.

I'm from Eugene, and don't think I could handle the weather there again, let alone further north, although if other people reading this are curious, I'd have to put a word in for Portland, if the climate isn't a problem for you.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#12

Post by iratsu » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:10 PM UTC

You might want to consider Montreal, Quebec. It's a very lively city. It's more populated than what you're asking for (1.6M), but it has 4 universities, and the city itself is on a mountain (mount royal, not a very big mountain), which is itself on an island (the island of montreal).

You can e-mail me if you want to know more about this city. iratsu at gmail dot com

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#13

Post by kirubakaran » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:13 PM UTC

Move to Coimbatore, India.

Great climate, natural beauty, five big engineering colleges, low pollution, low living cost ($300/month=great life), many libraries, awesome eateries etc.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#14

Post by semigeek » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:13 PM UTC

Boulder's great - good community of hackers. Startups work together to throw fun events (private hack-a-thons, discussions around new technologies, etc). They've got some great New Tech Meetups, The Boulder Open Coffee Club, etc. Good group of VCs in the area as well.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#15

Post by kajecounterhack » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:23 PM UTC

Holmdel, NJ. Home of AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Avaya, Vonage and general telecommunications. Lots of brain here. Population is 20% Asian, so kids get off on chinese new year (today). Schools are very exceptional, and the selective High Tech High School nearby in Lincroft is top 50 high schools in the country. A decent home around here is between 400-700k, probably a little cheaper for townhouses.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#16

Post by nonrecursive » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:23 PM UTC

Stay away from Santa Fe! I lived there for a few year and it's not hacker friendly. It's a beautiful place, but when I was there there wasn't much of a hacker community. Also, it's expensive there and it's hard to find jobs that pay well outside of Los Alamos and city/state government. If you're white (I'm not), you'll likely encounter racism and you'll likely have a harder time in city/state government than if you weren't. If you're a freelancer, you'll have a hard time finding customers that are willing to pay a decent amount for your services. There's also a large current of snobbery and defensiveness in the culture which is distasteful in general and which doesn't really nurture hackers.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#17

Post by nonrecursive » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:23 PM UTC

dfranke wrote: post #3

Somerville, MA fits the bill pretty well, for sufficiently small values of "decent climate".

In about an hour the Grog in Newburyport, MA is going to have a "North Shore Web Geek" meetup. I think we're about an hour north of Somerville.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#18

Post by dougb » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:24 PM UTC

Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland, Squirrel Hill) is a great place. Housing close to the city can be found pretty cheap. CMU, Pitt Med School, RAND. It definitely has topography. Has a small biotech community.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#19

Post by pius » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:26 PM UTC

larrykubin wrote: post #6

I live in Austin, TX and find its size to be manageable, although it is growing fast. Is that too large for you? It has the University of Texas, its in the 'Hill Country', and has a lot of smart and creative folks. I don't have a car and ride nothing but the Capital Metro bus. The average age is pretty young here, so there are a lot of parties and such, which is a plus for some but minus for others. You will like it…

Thanks for the info, I'm city shopping right now and I'm planning to check out Austin at SXSW. Any Austin tips for me? I try to avoid having a car at all costs, so it's good to know you've found that feasible.

Re: Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?

#20

Post by rms » Thu, Feb 07, 2008, 10:29 PM UTC

dougb wrote: post #18

Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland, Squirrel Hill) is a great place. Housing close to the city can be found pretty cheap. CMU, Pitt Med School, RAND. It definitely has topography. Has a small biotech community.

I'm in Pittsburgh until I leave... the biotech community mostly consists of UPMC but they have a huge presence in the town. There are some medical device startups here but the lack of angel/VC funding minimizes the startup presence.

Housing is very cheap here; it's one of the few housing markets in the country with the peculiar property that a monthly mortgage payment would be less than rent on an equivalent house. I wouldn't recommend raising a family in Oakland, which is turning into a student ghetto all over, but Squirrel Hill's a good neighborhood.

There's a whole lot of topography and global warming has made our winters a little better.