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Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

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Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#51

Post by jdavis703 »

elnado wrote: post #46
tyre wrote: post #44

There are many reasons YC requires you to be in Mountain View during the program. When you finish YC, every partner will tell you to stay in the Bay Area. As CEO of a post-seed company, I had to start building relationships with Series-A investors. They are all here, so I could meet them in person without much travel, or they could come visit our office. That matters. When our investors hold events, they are here. I…

Right, I was just about to reply with a similar response to another post. I went to Virginia Tech, lived in Northern VA for a while, and now I'm here in SF and it's like night and day. I did not believe that being here would be such a huge and significant difference, and yet it is. Influential and successful people in tech are so incredibly accessible here. After only a couple months I got to meet VCs, startup founde…

Fellow ex-Virginian and I have to agree. Many of the entrepreneurs in the DMV seem like they're doing a startup because doing a startup is cool, but don't have any idea on how to actually build a business. Maybe one day I'll come back, but it's even hard to find skilled people who want to work at a startup out there -- perhaps because they've experienced what I'm talking about also.

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#52

Post by mountaineer22 »

FajitaNachos wrote: post #37
stevehawk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Fiancee interviewed at Stanford last year for a surgery fellowship. But it was never high on the list because of the cost. Oddly enough, ended up in Little Rock which is starting to develop a tech market and is crazy cheap to live in (I came from DC).

I'm from Little Rock, though I haven't lived there in a few years. It is crazy cheap, but I'm not sure I would call it a "tech market". The Northwest part of the state is vastly superior to LR in my opinion. You should get up there sometime if you haven't.

Bentonville is nice, but pretty crazy real estate bubble.

Lots of spec homes being built.

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#53

Post by jdavis703 »

warlox wrote: post #15
quantumhobbit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Richmond too. It is a great city. Very affordable, youngish, a fun mid sized city. We probably have more microbreweries per capita than anywhere else in the US. But I do feel like we are flyover country as far as tech is concerned. Compared to northern VA we might as well not exist. However I do think it is a good place for startups if only because there is an outsized amount of talented engineers stuck in cor…

You can't hire the people working for megacorps if your company is in Virginia because they are more likely than not bound by noncompete clauses. Only California throws them out as a matter of public policy, which is one of the main reasons why Silicon Valley is where it's at.

Are non-competes a thing out there? All the contracts I've seen when I was working in VA have barred taking code, customers, etc with you when you leave. But I never encountered one of those "you can never work at a company that uses computers after you've worked with us" clauses.

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#54

Post by mountaineer22 »

base698 wrote: post #40
gtaylor wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raleigh is where I'd probably be if I wasn't here in the Bay Area.

There's just nothing to do in Raleigh, unless all you do is drink and go to restaurants.

...and the horrible traffic, where the city loves to randomly close streets for events (almost every week).

...and the excessive police presence.

...and the re-segregated schools.

Not to mention the state legislature, right?

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#55

Post by jdavis703 »

jostmey wrote: post #2

My wife is looking at residency programs (she will be an MD). She has an interview at UCSF, but we are not sure we will go--San Francisco is just too expensive. Salary is only $65000 and we have to pay back student loans. I cant't imagine any doctor wanting to train in San Francisco. The city is pricing itself out of existence.

I assume you also make at least $65,000? If so you'll be fine in the Bay Area with your combined incomes. When I first moved out here four years ago I was making only $95,000/year and still had plenty left over to go on vacation, get drinks, eat dinner out, etc.

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#56

Post by cfallin »

sndean wrote: post #12
jostmey wrote: post #2

My wife is looking at residency programs (she will be an MD). She has an interview at UCSF, but we are not sure we will go--San Francisco is just too expensive. Salary is only $65000 and we have to pay back student loans. I cant't imagine any doctor wanting to train in San Francisco. The city is pricing itself out of existence.

My fiancee is currently going through the same process. She's going to, but not taking seriously, the interviews she has in Manhattan. OTOH, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and a few other cities look promising. Some of the programs in Manhattan and Brooklyn are paying ~55000. She's in (we're in) >400000 in debt from the med school loans. There's no chance we can go there. (Maybe if they paid ~100000.)

+1 to Pittsburgh! My girlfriend is a resident at UPMC and from everything I hear/see, they're treated well. The cost of living here is cheap enough that if you're making 50-60k you can afford one of the nicest 1-bedrooms in the East End (area around the universities); I'm very comfortable on half that as a PhD student. The town is filled with nerds of both the tech and medicine variety (we have Google, Uber, etc offices too). Anyway, best of luck!

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#57

Post by DrScump »

meritt wrote: post #8
pj_mukh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't believe the media hype, I have a couple of friends doing their residency out of UCSF and loving it. Look at places in East bay (or slightly south of it) online. It is all on the BART so it is convenient to get SF. Yes, you can't live in SoMa or have a three bedroom house with that salary but SF city is not the center of the universe.

Hype? It's an hour+ commute between East Bay and UCSF. All my friends doing a residency put in close to 80 hours a week at other facilities. I'm not sure how that's remotely sustainable to waste that much time commuting.

If it's purely wasted time, sure. If she has reading, research, or other "portable" work to do each day, however, commuting with somebody else doing the "driving" isn't wasted time at all. That's part of why I take Caltrain to SF whenever suitable.

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#58

Post by DrScump »

RandomName2020 wrote: post #50
Tempest1981 wrote: post #9

Places to consider (from the article): - Richmond, Virginia - Eugene, Oregon - Manchester, New Hampshire - Huntsville, Alabama

Eugene has bad air.

Can you elaborate? It seems counterintuitive unless local smog is trapped by an inversion layer or there is smog-producing industry nearby.

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#59

Post by whybroke »

Too bad housing prices are viewed as a completely uncontrollable force of nature beyond any human ability to tame. Too bad a supossedly endless stream off ideas and innovation apparently can't possible solve it.

Otherwise the chief driving force of the economy might not be increasingly constrained by literal rent seeking.

But rent-seeking is apparently a sacrosanct property right that trumps all other issues of well being and so we must comfort ourselves with myths that innovation is so independent of culture that it can appear anywhere and, if it does, won't be choked to death in infancy in exactly the same way every time.

Re: Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

#60

Post by Retric »

tyre wrote: post #44

There are many reasons YC requires you to be in Mountain View during the program. When you finish YC, every partner will tell you to stay in the Bay Area. As CEO of a post-seed company, I had to start building relationships with Series-A investors. They are all here, so I could meet them in person without much travel, or they could come visit our office. That matters. When our investors hold events, they are here. I…

SV ~doubles your burn rate, when you are sucking up VC funds that's not an issue. But, a lot of SV failures may have succeeded in other places.
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