Live data from Hacker News

The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

stackoverflow.blog

141–150 of 195 posts

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about others, but I can tell you my reasons: a) Higher salary b) Better career opportunities c) An idealized view of the American society a) is easiest. I more than doubled my income by moving here. If I jumped companies (I can't due to visa) I could easily expect a 50%-100% bump. That's nothing to scoff at. Even accounting for increased cost of living, we are talking about life changing amounts of money.…

>Salaries in the EU have gone up Source on this? Preferably with respect to inflation. >and with mostly remote workforces career opportunities are better distributed I think you're overestimating the effects of this. Companies are already making a fuss about remote work in the same time zone, let alone 4-6 time zones apart.

That's fair. Most of it is hear say and anecdotal evidence. I know my company has increased salaries but that's one data point.

The only data I got from the top of my head is levels.fyi annual report. Numbers are all over the place but it shows a general upward trend. These numbers are from past years so they shouldn't account for the massive inflation of late.

Regarding opportunities, again this is mostly personal and anecdotal evidence. Due to Covid I worked remotely across the ocean for 2 years. Last year I got a top perf rating and I got my case for promo, despite being the only person in the whole org working 8 hours apart. I feel in EU there were more project with collaborations between people from different countries compared to pre-covid.

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/2019/

[2] https://www.levels.fyi/2020/

[3] https://www.levels.fyi/2021/

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#142
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PNW has had an unusually rainy spring/early summer though, I think Seattle is usually a lot drier. The only silver lining might be fewer forest fires. In my case I've been leaning hard into remote work for about 15 years now. Mostly for quality of life/access to nature. I've made real sacrifices to make that happen, but I'm glad to see the rest of the IT world is coming around to embracing us remote devs. It's st…

Seattle weather is... polarizing... even in a more typical year. I personally find it hard to deal with so little sunshine.

It is difficult, but we try to travel when it gets bad. Traveling to the east, over the pass helps. Otherwise we fly somewhere.

Personally, I find the amount of violence and crime (all-time high for road rage shootings this year) is more demoralizing than the weather.

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would never recommend visiting Dallas, it's a dull city Oh, sure Dallas, doesn't have the usual tourist attractions, but I bet that if someone came to Dallas for a week I could put a huge smile on their face by taking them to as many different ethnic restaurants as I can fit into a week. Just thinking of all the food options we have here makes me drool. And the best part is that all of these wonderful places are…

Suggestions please! I've found the food especially in Dallas proper (but not downtown) to be surprisingly good but always looking for more. Also the art museums are a lot better than I expected. We went to Vrindivan last weekend and it was easily the best Indian food I've ever had outside of India.

Well, this is gonna be a doozy... this might be multiple posts, and I'm rate-limited, so we'll see...

Let's start with Chinese food...

There are multiple places here that can easily be called Chinatowns, the bigger ones being the one in Richardson on Greenville between Arapaho and Belt Line/Main and the one in Plano at Park & Coit. Lots and lots of good restaurants in both places, and the one at Park & Coit has a lot of non-Chinese Asian places too (like a fantastic Korean fried chicken place called BBQ Chicken). Any place with "Sichuan" in the name is going to be a banger; Sichuan King (now merged with Royal Sichuan, and I think the restaurant carries both names) is one of my favorite places to order ma po tofu. One of the more famous places in Richardson Chinatown is called Jeng Chi, they were one of the restaurants that introduced xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) to Dallas though they've kinda let their fame go to their head lately (they're kinda expensive now, and other places are better) though they're still pretty good. Canton's another decent place, some of the best chow fun and Hong Kong-style wonton soup in Dallas. One of the few Hunan restaurants in Dallas, Hunan Bistro, is at the Plano Chinatown, right next door to another Sichuan place. Plano Chinatown also has a decent hot pot place, called Chubby Cattle.

Of course, there are lots of Chinese restaurants that aren't in the Chinatowns. First Chinese BBQ is a local chain with locations all over town... they used to be cash-only but i understand they started taking card very recently. Fat Ni at Spring Creek & 75 in Plano serves Chinese street food, mostly on skewers—I recommend their vegetarian stuff, such as their fried gluten and tofu (yes, fried gluten on a stick, it's good). Sichuan Folk at Spring Creek & K in Plano is another fantastic Sichuan place (there are a ton of other great Sichuan places all over Dallas too). Wu Wei Din at 15th and Independence in Plano specializes in Taiwanese food. I'm fond of Tian Tian at Preston & Frankford in Far North Dallas, which has a huge menu including Peking Duck and gold and silver buns. We also have some wonderful hot pot places, Happy Lamb at Legacy & 75 in Plano being one of my favorites. My current favorite place to order from is Long Time Ago at Coit & Belt Line in Richardson, they have a huge and diverse menu with a huge selection of Sichuan dishes and Cantonese food like BBQ pork fried rice.

Next, on to Japanese food. We have an actual sushi buffet here, Osaka on Belt Line & Midway in Addison (we used to have more, but this is the only one left). We have lots and lots of ramen joints that also serve other things including some great takoyaki and curry rice: Ramen Hakata at Belt Line & Marsh in Addison, Higuma Ramen & Izakaya at Belt Line and Midway again (different corner from Osaka though), Monta Ramen at Coit & Arapaho in Richardson, and several Yama Izakaya & Sushi locations all over town. We have an actual Japanese supermarket, Mitsuwa Marketplace, at Legacy & 75 in Plano, which has a food court inside full of great places. Gyu-Kaku is a chain of yakiniku restaurants (with an all-you-can-eat option) and locations in both Addison (Belt Line & Montfort) and Plano (Preston & Headquarters).

Korean food... our main Koreatowns are at Old Denton Road & Trinity Mills in Carrollton and Royal Lane & I-35E in Northwest Dallas. I've only been to the one in Carrollton, but it's amazing. Korean barbecue (some of which are all you can eat!), Korean fried chicken, Korean bakeries, Korean shaved ice places for dessert... the centerpiece of it all is H-Mart, a giant Korean supermarket with a wonderful food court inside. Everything in that food court is fantastic, and they serve food from several other Asian countries too, including my favorite place for xiaolongbao in Dallas. But their actual Korean food in the food court is fantastic too, there's one place that seves bulgogi in stone bowls and amazing sundubu (tofu soup). There are also a number of Korean fried chicken places outside the Koreatowns, including a number of BBQ Chicken franches all over and Bonchon Chicken at Belt Line and Quorum in Addison.

Thai food... we have Thai restaurants all over. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the breadth of them because I've usually stuck to my favorites because they're so good. Banana Leaf at Preston & Campbell and Thai Spice at Frankford & the Tollway, both in Far North Dallas, are fantastic and I always find myself going to one of those two when I want Thai food (keep in mind: Thai Spice lives up to its name... I can handle spicy food really damn well normally, but I got a 4 on their menu once and it was too much for me, I've been told by friends that their food is usually one or two levels spicier than other restaurants at the same number). Plenty of other good places, I'm just a bit set in my ways here.

Vietnamese food... oh we have a ton of them. Lots and lots of pho places, just search Google Maps for any restaurant with "Pho" in its name and you'll find something fantastic. The best places are the holes-in-the-wall with no decor. My go-tos are Pho Pasteur II at Belt Line & Josey in Carrollton and Pho Truong at Arapaho & Custer in Richardson. I have to admit I haven't gone for pho much lately... thanks to the pandemic I've mostly just been ordering delivery with a few exceptions, and pho doesn't deliver well. But it's still good, and I'm starting to go out to eat again so hopefully I should be eating more pho.

...and I think I'm going to take a break before typing out any more. I'm sure I'm rubbing up against a character limit anyway, and I want to get this submitted now in case my machine eats this post. I'll write up some stuff about food from India, Nepal, West and East Africa, various parts of Latin America, other regional American cuisines, etc. later.

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#144
post #4

This year we finally moved to the US after 2 years of Covid-induced delays. We moved to Seattle because it's where my team is based. I'm far from impressed. The housing market is so inaccessible that we had to rent a house about 1 hour commute from the office. I have hardly visited the offices a handful of times since we moved, and every time there is maybe 1 or 2 people there. Also this spring seems to be one of the…

You might not like the constant thunderstorm/tornado watches and warnings from all the pop-up thunderstorms during the summer due to the Gulf. Everywhere you go will have problems. It's mostly a choice of which problems you can live with.

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#145
post #74
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% increase in 10 years? Wow what an impossible number to accommodate. /s This likely points to slow bureaucracies or people fighting change or growth at all costs.

It doesn't sound like you're familiar with the area. Seattle is geographically constrained and there was already no empty land available for development in 2010 when the latest surge of new residents began. We can only accommodate new people by tearing down structures that already exist and replacing them with denser structures. > This likely points to slow bureaucracies or people fighting change or growth at all cos…

Land utilization is always close to 100% in cities. It's a misnomer that cities can "run out of land". Cities go up, they increase density. If they can't go up, it is usually because of zoning restrictions. And that's a choice of local residents and authorities.

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#146
There's an issue with scale with those numbers on the metro area growth/decline.

For example, Vegas, Cincinnati, and Columbus are metro areas home to 2+ million people, while Elmeria is the 10th smallest American metro area listed wikipedia with just 83k people, literally a rounding error compared to the others.

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#147
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PNW has had an unusually rainy spring/early summer though, I think Seattle is usually a lot drier. The only silver lining might be fewer forest fires. In my case I've been leaning hard into remote work for about 15 years now. Mostly for quality of life/access to nature. I've made real sacrifices to make that happen, but I'm glad to see the rest of the IT world is coming around to embracing us remote devs. It's st…

Seattle weather is... polarizing... even in a more typical year. I personally find it hard to deal with so little sunshine.

Where I live gets about 2.5x as much rain as Seattle, and I consider it a big improvement over the East Coast (of Canada). It's all relative I guess.

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#148
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God only knows why we still have net immigration. I guess despite the way minorities and lower classes are "oppressed" we're still better than everywhere else somehow?

Don't know about others, but I can tell you my reasons: a) Higher salary b) Better career opportunities c) An idealized view of the American society a) is easiest. I more than doubled my income by moving here. If I jumped companies (I can't due to visa) I could easily expect a 50%-100% bump. That's nothing to scoff at. Even accounting for increased cost of living, we are talking about life changing amounts of money.…

> Also it's impossible to not feel bad when you know that the junior eng. you are coaching due to perf issues makes more money than you, just because he lives in the US and you don't.

That sounds like a failure to negotiate properly.

> there are other places with a culture that resonates with me. So yes, USA might be better than my home country, but there are alternatives.

American culture was built by trailblazers, innovators and adventurers who left wherever they came from to build here. It's up to you to build the culture you want to see. Welcome!

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#149

As a Missourian, the percentage-pageview-change data looks odd, highlighting two cities, Joplin and St. Joseph. Both cities are small, between 50,000 and 75,000 population (2020 census), and are about an hour's drive away from the nearest larger city (Joplin is near Springfield, St. Joseph is near Kansas City, and it would take 3 hours to drive from Kansas City to Springfield.) In terms of Midwest tech hubs,the ones…

Can't speak for St. Jo but Joplin and Pittsburgh are growing from proximity to the Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers metropolitan area just exploding in growth. The interstate was finished up that now puts them only an hour drive away, and they have been benefiting greatly from that.

Re: The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving

#150
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with remote work, you can, say, go east of the Cascades where the weather is better and you have all that outdoor stuff too. I grew up in Eugene and I am just done with that much rain and, like others have mentioned, endless gray.

As someone that's done remote work for a long time, I wouldn't live east of the Cascades because it's so far from any good airport. (Also because my family and I are big travelers). Post-2020 we don't visit the office much but once your company wants you to come into the office every quarter that 3 hour drive each way from Bend is going to be hell—or dealing with that postage stamp of an airport in Redmond. Even if y…

I don't travel much for work and am not a big traveller.

This isn't really a big problem, and RDM does have daily flights to most major west coast destinations.

Post reply on HN