161–170 of 312 posts
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Whitewashed? I think this is the most diverse Seattle has ever been. Just a smudge above Portland.
I think darmok is using whitewashed to mean "sanitized" or "cleaned up" not "has a greater percentage of white people". Like when congressional testimony whitewashes a friendly fire incident, it generally means that they are covering it up or making it look better.
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.…
I silently follow a private facebook group for a bay-area city (which you need prove you're a resident of to get access) and it's an echo chamber of xenophobia, anti-tech bias, and misguided hate.
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?
You might move a bit farther out of town to extend your savings. Plus if you're outdoorsy or would like to be, being 20 miles closer to the Cascades makes getting out midweek feasible and beating the crowds on the weekends.
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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
Seattle lost its "soul" a long time ago. For me, Almost Live! going off the air was really the bookmark that Seattle was quickly becoming a homogenized west-coast city (no different really than SF or Portland).
I don't really think Amazon is worth singling out, either. Amazon doesn't help, but Microsoft's a monolith that's been around for quite some time. They used to (and still do) pull a shitload of the UW CSE graduating class straight into MSFT, and nobody wants to live in Redmond or Bellevue until you're starting to think about a family, a house, etc. It also goes totally unmentioned here, but biotech was/is huge in SLU.
My point being, money's been flooded into Seattle for quite some time now. If they wanted to keep Seattle "Seattle", i.e. different from the other west-coast cities, the time to plan that out was 15 years ago.
I also think it's hilarious to hear people bemoan the death of the hill, and even more hilarious to see signs like "rich kids leave" and shit like that. I bet they weren't around a decade ago when the gay community used to say the exact same thing to hipsters that were flooding into the hill (myself included), even down to the insinuation that all hipsters were rich kids. Hilarious to see history repeat itself.
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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…
What makes you say that "rich kids" implies second-generation wealth? Everyone I know who uses it in a pejorative sense is pretty clearly referring to how most of the people in question are still being carded at bars. A 23-year-old making $120K is on the lower end of upper-class and can safely be assured of moving upward barring very unusual circumstances. And if you work in startup-ish/leading-edge tech, I'll lay ev…
I guess the reason I assume the backlash is against 'kids' and not 'rich' is, to use my own anecdote, most everyone I know in this industry who might be incorrectly classified as "rich kids" came from much humbler circumstance, and they also try to keep perspective on their extreme good fortune as you do.
Perhaps it's the circles we run in, but most of the people I know personally who would be caught in the crossfire of "rich kids" are aware and grateful daily of their massive advantage because of the stark contrast to their childhood economic experience - and it makes them work twice as hard to make sure they maintain it, as well as pay greater attention to those evils.
I feel like the truer crime called out by "rich kids" is reveling in privilege, oblivious at its cost to others - that total lack of societal awareness I tend to associate with children, which I guess is why 'kids' seemed more backlash appropriate.
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.…
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 was wondering why Seattle did not have as vibrant of a tech meetup community as Atlanta. I chalked it up to that, in Atlanta, everyone has to drive to get to the meetup. But now I see, it might be something else.
I'm not sure about bonding and making friendships with people with mutual dislike for one company or another. It's in my experience, those affiliations makes for good acquaintances. But friends? A friend is someone who, if I knocked on their door at 3AM and said I need help, they might be cranky, but they'll let me in. A friend is someone who, if I get a call from them saying they need me to bail them out of jail, I'd do it.
People who are proud of hating Amazon, or upset that I am neutral about it -- I think I will just walk away. That's one of the shadow sides I notice, living in Capitol Hill back in year of 2013: people are aggressively politically-correct, many are passionate about liberal stance, or being tolerant of people. It's a big contrast from living in Atlanta.
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> and avoiding talking about work entirely fuck, is this not SOP for everyone? conversation order of operations: work < people < things < ideas
Here in the DC metro area, pretty much the first question you get upon meeting someone is: "So, what do you do?" Unfortunately, it's not SOP everywhere.
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?
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Yeah, I'm not all that concerned with making friends with people that are hostile about my profession. That's so petty. >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 What does that even mean? I hear this all the time and I honestly have no idea how to "respect Sea…
As someone who has lived in a few cities filled with counter-culture types, they can be incredibly insular, superficial, and tribal. Ironically, they end up being a different looking, but similar acting version of the wealthy elite they claim to hate. It seems like everyone in these places is just trying to re-invent a "cooler than thou" image, looking down on others who don't prize their typically temporary life-sty…
That's not been my experience of Seattle though. But then again, I'm pretty unconventional myself.
There is a point to "living simply". That's not necessarily counter-culture. Some folks eschew materialism as a self-image thing. But some folks have already been on the extremes of material wealth, have already found that it wasn't what it was cracked up to be, and choosing to live simply comes from wisdom and experience.
I hope you're able to find out for yourself whether the material possessions actually makes you happy -- and that you do find happiness, whatever form that takes for you.