51–60 of 65 posts
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If you want mountain views, your best bet might be more urban Salt Lake City or Boise.
And you could actually add Tahoe/Reno, Portland and Bend, OR to that list as well. And of course Boulder, CO
There is also Idaho Falls and Los Alamos, which both host major DOE labs, I think, that would attract tech activity.
After leaving Tektronix in Portland, my Dad moved further in tech at Hanford. The mountains are not so big in Richland, however (well, we lived on a small mountain when we were there).
Maybe unpopular here, but I for one, like suburbs next to a big city. I can have access to the city once in a while, there is a potential large job market if I want to jump ship, but also have a garden and quiet streets. This is basically an ex-rural town with a history, but it just grew suburbs and tech offices around it.
I rationally understand that it is unsustainable and I watched all the videos about death of suburbia and all that. Yet, am I going to uproot my family because I watched those videos and read a few article on HN? Probably not.
I grew up in a city, in a small apartment, with noisy neighbors, piss in the elevator, being flooded from upstairs, getting pick-picketed in transport. So there is nothing romantic about that for me.
I have also seen farming life and living in the rural areas, getting up at 5am in the cold and rain to feed the animals, worried about crops being eaten by pests, nope not for me either.
I think if more places accepted remote work, and job market would be more stable, there would be a great opportunity to places like Billings.
It always seems like I'm one of the few in my age cohort (~24), but I'd rather work in Montana than SV/NYC any day. It feels like everyone just wants to be downtown to some major city, but I just want a respectable house on 1/2 acres with mountain views and snow every winter.
I think you're right about your cohort. But in the next 15-20 years, I think there will be a swing in the other direction. These things are cyclical; your cohort hated growing up in suburbs with nothing to do, but their parents hated growing up in crime-addled cities packed with people, and their parents hated growing up bored on a farm, etc.
That video didn't have a single person that wasn't white and young adult/middle aged. Maybe the hat guy is older, but still – diversity didn't seem a priority in the list of features. Maybe that's entirely representative of the demographics, just found it striking.
As an non-USAn, I'm always suprised how much emphasis is put on this in the USA ("look, these office visualisations have only white people in them, that's unacceptable!"), while at the same time very little is done to really improve the lives of minorities.
So it is in people's minds pretty often. Other places have this as well. In Western Europe it is perhaps ww2 stuff. Someone here just yesterday claimed they don't want to use the 'ss' Linux command to diagnose socket issues because of how it relates to 'ww2'.
In other parts it is all about nationality, if you call someone by a different nationality, they might be terribly offended by it. It looks silly from the outside, but once you live there it makes sense why there is emphasis on certain things like that.
I think you have to grow up in a place to internalize that. When I was in Portland with a co-worker, who was born and raised in US. He leaned over and whispered "Have you noticed, how everyone is white here?. It's freaking me out". But I haven't noticed until he mentioned it. For better or for worse, it is just not something I think about. But he did.
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i had the exact same sentiment looking at this video. i didn't see a hint of diversity in any of the shots.
Would be interesting to know the racial proportions of the town.
5.5% hispanic (5,860)
4.2% American Indian alone (4,458)
2.1% multiracial (2,223)
1.0% black (1,049)
0.9% Asian alone.
0.06% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone.
0.03% other race alone.
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Yup. Though Missoula (another 180 miles west) is getting big pretty quickly (including a Y-Combinator company), as is Helena (about 90 miles north-west of Bozeman).
What's the YCombinator co?
Billings? Really? It gets a bad wrap out here in Montana (unfairly, I will add). Missoula and Bozeman are the 'cool' cities. Billings is just a big oil town. They do have some nice bouldering though.
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Would be interesting to know the racial proportions of the town.
86.3% white alone (92,543) 5.5% hispanic (5,860) 4.2% American Indian alone (4,458) 2.1% multiracial (2,223) 1.0% black (1,049) 0.9% Asian alone. 0.06% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone. 0.03% other race alone. http://www.city-data.com/city/Billings-Montana.html
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Most people agree with you. There are far more young people living outside SV/NYC than inside.
This is definitely true, but I spend too much time on HN and living in Austin and it definitely affects my views on my peers.