81–90 of 115 posts
I just did the SF --> DFW move this week. Housing is 10x cheaper so that tipped the pluses ahead of the minuses for me, and it's still a big city so you can find decent things to do outside of work. Have my own b2b company that I'm bootstrapping, so I realized I wasn't tied to SF anymore for any particular reason. Will be interesting to see how the next year goes!
A little reminder that we sometimes forget in the San Francisco Bay Area -- there are plenty of other, really wonderful places to live. People here will rattle off weather, jobs, activities (outdoors) -- but the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of incredible places to live in the US, where you can make within 10%-20% of your Bay Area wage with 30%-40% or more less housing costs. Even a place like LA…
I wonder if I am a minority that puts a high value on the California climate? All of the cities listed are great. I lived in Portland for 3 years and loved the city, Seattle was great too. Spent time in TX and Chicago, though not years. Great towns, but I feel like I'll keep coming back to CA for the weather. Portland was far too dark and dreary for 9 months of the year. TX was too humid, and Chicago too cold/windy i…
I live in the midwest right now, and whenever I contemplate moving to the west coast, one of the things I would dislike the most is giving up having 4 distinct seasons.
The first warm days of spring, crisp fall mornings, "its so hot out we have to go swimming at the lake" days in summer, and the first snow of the year - these are just a few things that, in moderation, are really enjoyable to me (and many others).
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You left out being in Tornado Alley and otherwise nasty storms.
The good news is that at least Tornadoes come with plenty of warning (visible, audible, TV, radio, etc.).
I've been in a tornado warning probably 30 times in my life, and never once would anything bad have happened to me if I hadn't taken cover.
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If OKC follows the pattern of Houston, then some high-density housing will go in closer to downtown and other job centers, but for the most part, the sprawl will continue. Developers in NW Houston are putting 3500 sq ft homes on 0.25 acre lots, and the sprawl shows no signs of stopping. (low interest rates, cheap land, willing commuters)
Sprawl seems to be the norm everywhere outside of the east coast. Portland OR, Sacramento, Dallas.... The peninsula can't sprawl much, but the east bay is puking the same hideous boxy track houses on tiny lots all over the hillsides of Fremont, Hayward, Dublin and far beyond.
Unfortunately if you take the entire Bay Area as a whole, proper urban structure with walkable mixed use takes up perhaps 1% or less of the developed area. Everything else is sprawl. Even in the city of SF itself less than 1/3rd of the built area (not counting parks and lakes and whatnot) is decent walk/bike territory with amenities nearby. And you only have to go as far as Concord or Antioch to find the real deal: all-out suburban sprawl with neighborhood streets wider than I-5 and nary a pedestrian in sight.
Now when you compare to Oklahoma City, the Antioch brand of sprawl looks like it might be Hong Kong compared to some of the developments that are within the OKC's limits. For example here is a typical scene where someone took a quarter section of some field or farm and said fuck it, let's put a subdivision here.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+OK/@35.6276...
Now that's just a shame. This article isn't talking about the far-flung farms that happen to be inside OKC's city limits, though. They're talking about areas like Heritage Hills where the original housing stock wasn't bulldozed to build freeways (yet). I remember before I bought my house in Oakland I looked at what I could get for the same price in that neighborhood. As I recall there was a huge-ass mansion with a separate building constituting servants' quarters.
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> in the South/Southwest, where water resources are more scarce? As opposed to the SF Bay area, which has convenient fresh water resources... dependent on dwindling snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas.
Just made the trek over 50 to NV last weekend and was shocked how little water was flowing in the 'rivers' in the Sierra Nevada. We (CA) are going to have to get serious about alternative water sources, as the groundwater is going to deplete just as fast as the snowpack at the rate farmers are drilling wells. If we were smart, we'd drop the delta tunnel idea and start investing in desalinization plants, at the very l…
The surfer lobby has made desalinization plants a political impossibility. I'm only half-joking.
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I don't think pay is as much lower as you think it is. I keep in touch with a lot of people in tech from all around the country. Those in flyover country (Denver, OKC, Austin) make less money than those in comparable positions on the coast, but it might be 10% less. Meanwhile their housing costs are typically less than half. For comparison purposes: For the same price as this 800 square foot 1 bedroom condo in SF htt…
"and quite possibly more." There's an understatement. This is a problem with recruitment to the coasts. I can't tolerate the hit in the quality of life that moving to Mountain View would require. They offered me like $50K more than I am currently getting, which sounds nice, but to live the same lifestyle with respect to house and school district would have taken at least $100K more per year probably more like $150K m…
Maybe slightly OT, but wtf do you do with an acre of land? Have horses or an orchard? 'An acre' seems like many people's ideal size, but 1/5th of an acre would already be too much work for me.
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"and quite possibly more." There's an understatement. This is a problem with recruitment to the coasts. I can't tolerate the hit in the quality of life that moving to Mountain View would require. They offered me like $50K more than I am currently getting, which sounds nice, but to live the same lifestyle with respect to house and school district would have taken at least $100K more per year probably more like $150K m…
"All I want is an acre of suburban land" Maybe slightly OT, but wtf do you do with an acre of land? Have horses or an orchard? 'An acre' seems like many people's ideal size, but 1/5th of an acre would already be too much work for me.
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I don't think pay is as much lower as you think it is. I keep in touch with a lot of people in tech from all around the country. Those in flyover country (Denver, OKC, Austin) make less money than those in comparable positions on the coast, but it might be 10% less. Meanwhile their housing costs are typically less than half. For comparison purposes: For the same price as this 800 square foot 1 bedroom condo in SF htt…
"and quite possibly more." There's an understatement. This is a problem with recruitment to the coasts. I can't tolerate the hit in the quality of life that moving to Mountain View would require. They offered me like $50K more than I am currently getting, which sounds nice, but to live the same lifestyle with respect to house and school district would have taken at least $100K more per year probably more like $150K m…
Exactly.
I live in Huntsville, Alabama, and I live very, very well here. A 50+% pay raise to move to SF or SV looks nice until you really start to work the numbers and realize that you would actually come out worse off in many ways.
* A mortgage on a 3,500 square foot house, on a 1/3 acre lot in a very nice neighborhood runs me a hair over $1,200 a month. Including taxes and insurance. Everything except the HOA, and that's an extra $30 or so a month.
* I live in a nice family-oriented area with great schools. Don't have to worry about gang violence or anything. My biggest annoyance is the teen with the loud scooter.
* Utilities are dirt cheap thanks to TVA.
* Property taxes are dirt cheap. Income taxes are on the low side. Sales tax is a tad on the high side, but it's not bad.
* I have a 15 minute commute to and from the office every day, maybe 20 on a bad day. I'm home every night for dinner with my family.
And while Huntsville won't win any awards for high culture (although there is actually a surprisingly vibrant arts scene here considering its size, not really what I was expecting to find), Nashville and Birmingham are only 90 minutes away in either direction - great for a day trip. Atlanta or Memphis are weekend trips of a few hours away. And I can be on great beaches in a few hours as well.
With my extra income, I can afford to save and do fun things. After our daughter was born, we needed a larger car, so we bought one and paid cash for it. We go skiing in West Virginia during the holidays. We did two weeks in Hawaii for our honeymoon, a week in London a few years and a week in Jamaica a couple years ago. Just because we wanted to. We're currently planning to go all out and go to Tahiti in a few years to celebrate our 10th. Also saving for the inevitable trip to Disney World once our daughter is old enough. A lot of this is possible because my cost of living here is so low that it allows me a large amount of discretionary income.
Of course, it's not without its problems. We have a real problem with severe weather here in the Spring, and it can be kind of rough sometimes (fun fact, Alabama has had more F-5/EF-5 tornadoes than any other state). Our politicians are really idiotic and can be counted on to say very, very stupid things. We have some pretty backwards laws. And, unfortunately, there is some level of truth to the stereotypes people have of Alabama (although they are pretty uncommon here in Huntsville - it's more of a rural thing), but it's also nowhere near the level people think it is either.
But, on the whole, every time I go to look at the tradeoffs, the math always works for me to stay put here. No one has yet shown me that I can live the equivalent lifestyle in SF or SV that I live here on an average developer's salary.
Anyway, my point is, where-ever you move to, make sure you find that place that is home. That place you can truly say you love too. Don't just live somewhere to save some bucks for the sake of saving some bucks. Life is too short and you can't take your cash with you anyway.
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As an Okie (now living in NY), the last two are very accurate. Can't say I've heard much on 1) but polite or quiet racism is definitely prominent. The state hates Obama, hates renewable energy (even though it could be a leader in both wind and solar energy), and hates rational thinking. If you're not a church goer or conservative, imho, it's not an enjoyable place. You will be outnumbered 90-1. And once you've lived…
> The state...hates renewable energy Well that clinches it for me. There are very, very few viewpoints that I dismiss out of hand, but opposition to renewable energy is one of them (maybe the only one). Energy is one of the world's most important resources, and we know that we are using a source which is ultimately finite. Even if oil reserves were to last another 10,000 years (and the vast majority of experts do not…