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Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

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Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#71

Post by saryant »

mjn wrote: post #39
zinssmeister wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"sun tax" is cheaper in Texas. It's zero as in 0% income tax.

The average property tax rate is 4x California's, though. On the other hand, the average property value is lower. How all those factors combine depends on your income/location/etc. The group that comes out worst is the middle class in cheaper areas, around 40th-70th percentile incomes. If you make mid 5 figures, and live in a $150k house, your tax situation would be better Bakersfield than in Houston.

For single-income household of two making $55k, the annual difference shakes out to about $500. Not an insignificant sum but also not a huge difference.

But your comparison is between Bakersfield, a medium-sized city whose largest employer is Kern County, and Houston, the world capital of energy and a major player in shipping, healthcare and aerospace.

Which city is more likely to actually pan out a $55k job for our hypothetical middle-class family? Houston (median income, $58k) or Bakersfield ($38k)? Where is that barely higher tax burden buying better schools? (I'll take any of Houston's suburbs on that count)

I grew up all over California but I've lived in Texas for the last nine years, I've seen the difference. Texas certainly isn't perfect but our cities are actually affordable.

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#72

Post by nextos »

mjn wrote: post #31
carsongross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, man. I'd move in a heartbeat if it weren't for family in the area.

Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question. I actual…

Oh, really? I'm living in Scandinavia and looking to move elsewhere. Midwest was one of my options, and I had never thought winters were so bad over there!

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#73

Post by doorhammer »

mjn wrote: post #31
carsongross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, man. I'd move in a heartbeat if it weren't for family in the area.

Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question. I actual…

I moved from St. Louis to Atlanta and I kind of miss having a cold winter with snow (though Atlanta's gotten pretty frickin cold this winter)

Humidity sucks though, heh.

I actually really miss St. Louis

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#75

Post by wcfields »

pkinsky wrote: post #41
timr wrote: post #18

The current San Francisco influx is unsustainable. If you're somewhere else in the world and thinking about coming here to do a startup, I wish I could convince you to change your mind. San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San F…

>Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute whe…

Better idea would be to do a Media/Advertising/Entertainment focused start-up in West Hollywood in Los Angeles.

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#76

Post by doorhammer »

nextos wrote: post #72
mjn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question. I actual…

Oh, really? I'm living in Scandinavia and looking to move elsewhere. Midwest was one of my options, and I had never thought winters were so bad over there!

Good idea of what it looks like in St Louis:

http://weatherspark.com/averages/31697/St-Louis-Missouri-Uni...

Humidity was always the killer for me. I remember flying from San Diego to St. Louis. It was 75 degrees and dry in San Diego, and 102 degrees with 94% humidity in St. Louis. I wanted to die, heh

That said, I always liked the variety.

It means that I have pretty strong, nostalgic feelings associated with the seasons changing.

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#77

Post by pacaro »

rayiner wrote: post #36
timr wrote: post #18

The current San Francisco influx is unsustainable. If you're somewhere else in the world and thinking about coming here to do a startup, I wish I could convince you to change your mind. San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San F…

People have been saying for decades that NYC is unsustainable, yet it's still the center of the country for finance. San Francisco could well become the next New York: software engineers getting paid $300k/year and talking about how they're not really "rich" because they can't even afford to buy a 2 bedroom condo.

Or it could become the next Detroit when the tech industry decides that it doesn't "need" to be in the Bay Area.

I doubt that there'll be that dramatic a change because there are too many actors, Detroit was more vulnerable because it depended on such a small number of anchor employers

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#78

Post by doorhammer »

thecoffman wrote: post #53
slm_HN wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn't exactly the best metric, but the demand for programmers in St. Louis seems very low. When I look at Craigslist I see a couple Java jobs, a couple PHP jobs and even one godforsaken VB.net job. Even Jeff Atwood doesn't use VB.net. So I'm doubtful that it would be easier to keep the contracts coming in while in St. Louis.

As a coder living in St. Louis, I can say that this hasn't been my experience at all. There is an exceptionally high demand for coders around here. Barely a week goes by without someone trying to poach good programmers. Its not necessarily all sexy startups, but there is an excellent market for programmers in general. We have a fairly good startup scene (though obviously nothing on SF) and a large number of more trad…

I'm hoping this is the case in a year or so, when I plan on moving back to Stl from Atlanta. I know a few guys doing C# and f# work in stl. They seem to think prospects are pretty good.

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#79

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #65
debt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that race should have nothing to do with it, culturally it's much more acceptable to talk about white gentrification then gentrification by any other race. Also, in this case I'm not interesting removing the white designator because it really is predominantly white males. Also the gentrification happening in the Mission is very much a race thing. "Keep the Mission brown" is a slogan used by many in this…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Why I'm Moving My Business From San Francisco To St. Louis

#80

Post by zem »

dkl wrote: post #54
timr wrote: post #18

The current San Francisco influx is unsustainable. If you're somewhere else in the world and thinking about coming here to do a startup, I wish I could convince you to change your mind. San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San F…

Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008 More than that. Rents for apartments have doubled in the last year in Oakland, says my friend who owns a lot of diverse properties in the East Bay, so you know it's much worse in SF.

not necessarily; the relative desirability of oakland might have increased faster than the relative desirability of san francisco, compared to their respective 2008 values
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