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Reston for a fresh college graduate? No. I made that mistake. Moved to Reston for a job at 22, newly-minted with my degree. Left less than two years later when I realized it was all overpriced and unattractive housing, traffic congestion, and middle-aged families. Now live in the heart of a hip city for cheaper rent and only a slightly lower salary. Reston has a whole lot more of tearing down single-family detached homes and townhomes and replacing them with high-density mixed-use projects to do before I’d ever consider living there again and paying $1,500/month for a 1-BR.
Lol, the crazy thing is, you can’t even get a 1BR in Reston for $1,500 a month anymore unless you want something older and not in the best condition or area.
People are now paying DC prices in Reston ($1,800-$2,100 a month for a 1BR) which insane to me because as much as I like Reston, it’s a further-out-suburb-of-Tysons-and-DC. But I guess they charge it because people are willing to pay it.
Please stop thinking you can have a tech career outside the Bay area...
These lists sell magazines, they don't start careers...
Such a preposterous statement regarding the Bay area reveals a bias that disregards what's transpiring in upcoming tech cities like Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Nashville and Pittsburgh. Just because various websites use this type of information to get clicks doesn't mean the data is incorrect or that it doesn't speak to young tech grads eager to enter the industry somewhere within the nation's interior.
Quote:
Originally Posted by brucepf
Dumbest statement I have ever read. You can be employeed in the tech field and have a very good standard of living in every state in the United States. In multiple cities in each state.
Agreed. For anyone to pontificate like this about the Bay area exclusively indicates that he's either uninformed, misinformed or overly defensive of his own city's tech turf.
Please stop thinking you can have a tech career outside the Bay Area. OK, Austin, Boston, NY, and Seattle offer fewer options, but can work out if you're a software engineer. Reston, VA??? only if you're ok with no equity comp and working on gov't contracts. I love L.A., but it's pretty awful for tech, in spite of the "Silicon Beach" hype.
These lists sell magazines, they don't start careers.
Everywhere else is one or two major employers, or minor employers with crappy comp.
If you are in biotech I’d much rather be in Boston than San Fran
Dumbest statement I have ever read. You can be employeed in the tech field and have a very good standard of living in every state in the United States. In multiple cities in each state.
You can work in IT anywhere, but not for a solid tech company. The industry, like many others, is very concentrated geographically.
You can work in IT anywhere, but not for a solid tech company. The industry, like many others, is very concentrated geographically.
That is ludicrous. The Bay Area is probably one of the worst places to be an average tech worker. Many people I know in the Bay Area are struggling to survive, even with $150,000 a year salaries. I have had several friends having to take out a second loan, file bankruptcy and making two hour commutes each way to and from their offices, so they can live in a place where they can actually afford a house or a condo. The lifestyle for a tech worker in Silicon Valley is pretty dismal. Yes, there are some real high rollers in the industry who probably have some of the largest piles of wealth and prestige, but that is not the average worker.
I agree the Silicon Valley is a good place to start and advance your career, but as far as it being the only place where you can be successful, that is wrong. Many people actually are leaving the Silicon Valley and receiving job offers for respectable companies all over the country and being paid as much as they were in the Silicon Valley. As well, if you factor in the exorbitant taxation (like 12% of your income), the salaries in the Silicon Valley are pretty much the lowest for tech workers in the entire country. The homes in the Silicon Valley are outrageously priced and tech workers live a lifestyle below tradespeople, such as plumbers, electricians, etc in other cities. In fact, I met electricians in Seattle who were making much more money than tech workers I met in the Bay Area. Your average plumber in Des Moines lives a more luxurious lifestyle than a tech worker in San Jose. This situation is starting to hurt the Silicon Valley badly as many tech workers are fleeing and many companies resort to H1B workers who are more accepting of this situation. My brother is stuck in the Silicon Valley right now because he does 3d modeling for video games. He told me he was the only American born guy where he lived in Sunnyvale. He referred to it as Sunny Hell, both because it was very expensive and it was really boring environment to live. As well, being an American he felt a bit excluded from the community there.
As I said, many companies are fleeing the Silicon Valley because it is not a hospitable environment for business. It has had a long presence, large resource pool and well established companies from the 90s, but that can only be sustained for so long as companies invest in building large facilities in other cities and man workers find other places more desirable to live. Once upon a time, the Silicon Valley was like being in heaven for a software developer. Not anymore. Now you are just another Joe average software guy and if you can afford a small apartment and not go into debt you should consider yourself lucky.
Google is building over 1,000,000 sq feet of office space in the Seattle area and has huge campuses all over the country now. That is hardly just a small outpost.. Many workers prefer to live somewhere they can not only advance in their career, but also enjoy their lives. Silicon Valley also has the reputation for the most overworked and underpaid tech employees.
Just because companies host their headquarters in these cities doesn't mean it is where a majority of their operations are taking place either.
For example, Boeing is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, but Seattle still has the largest number of Boeing manufacturing plants in the world. For example, the Boeing plant in Everett, WA is the largest building in the entire world at over 472,370,319 cu ft.
As far as launching a startup or another type of business, California, as a whole, is proving to be a very challenging environment these days. What keeps California thriving is the large presence of long established companies, investors and large pool of tech workers. However, this will change as many companies build large offices in other cities and tech workers flee for an environment that is much more hospitable. Many great companies are coming out of places nobody would have thought about, which would have been unheard of in the 90s.
BTW, saying Seattle only has F5 is pretty myopic overview of the city's tech scene. Seattle hosts many of the largest and most established software companies in this country. It goes well beyond F5. Seattle is also the headquarters of several companies with larger than average tech departments. In addition to hosting the two largest software companies in the world (Amazon and Microsoft), you also have several other large corporations such as Starbucks, Costco, T-Mobile, Alaska Airlines, Expedia, Zillow, Redfin, Windemere, Tableau, Nordstrom, etc.
Yes the San Francisco area is challenging. But tech still wants to concentrate. That's why there's been explosive growth in secondary tech centers, but mostly ones with critical mass.
It's got a few startups, some good Bay Area outposts, but no highly valued public companies, and please spare me any nonsense about IBM or AT&T.
Tech is about challenging status quo, New York is about perpetuating it.
Completely disagree. You're perpetuating SF's biggest weakness, hubris. I've been in the NYC startup/tech scene for about 10 years. In 2010 I would've agreed, in 2019, it's completely changed.
In terms of companies, NYC has everything from recent billion dollar exits, both IPO and private acquisition (MongoDB, Flatiron Health, etsy), newer tech-centric startups (Cockroachdb), late stage growing startups (Rent the Runway, Zocdoc, Betterment), and more.
Most major tech companies, public and private have a major presence in the city (facebook, google, amazon, lyft, uber, wework, etc). If you want to stick to the finance industry, all the major banks, trading shops, and hedge funds have a tech presence in nyc.
In terms of Venture Capital dollars, NYC occasionally beat SF in a given quarter, and overall it's in the same order of magnitude. NYC has many major seed stage and later stage investment firms HQ here, or at least a major office and presence (firstround, primary, thrive, bessemer, menlo, etc).
In terms of education, Cornell recently opened a major tech center on Roosevelt Island, and I wouldn't scoff at NYU or Columbia.
NYC has a much better proximity to Europe, which also has advantages. Both cities are far enough away from Asia I don't think it gives either an advantage.
I could go on an on. SF is obviously a great place to start and build a tech career (if you can stomach the issues the city is dealing with), but NYC is up there too. I would call it comparable, if not even better.
I wouldn't even say SF is a great place to start a career anymore. When you are living in dire poverty for years so you can jump-start a software career it doesn't make it so palatable. There are many new tech centers popping up that offer a wide variety of jobs and you can actually rent your own apartment without requiring four roommates. I would go as far to say that the Denver area would be a much better place to jump-start your career. Sure you may be able to land some job in the Silicon Valley, but your lifestyle will like that of somebody working a low wage service type job in many other cities.
The Bay Area also has been notorious in the past for having the largest number of imported/H1B workers who come there to basically work in IT sweatshops. Seattle also has a lot of this. If you go to Bellevue you will notice that the entire population is not even from the USA, mainly South Asian/Chinese immigrants who came to work under H1B visas. I was one of the few Americans present on the Microsoft campus. In fact, when I interviewed at Microsoft all four of my interviewers were from other countries, including England, Singapore and India.
Many software companies also have special deals with various property management companies and this also drives the prices up, since people looking to rent on their own will find prices even more inflated than they already should be . There is nothing that desirable about Silicon Valley. It is a very sterile, sprawled and uneventful suburban atmosphere where you have to drive over an hour for urban entertainment. That is why companies like Amazon tried to break the mold of forcing developers to live in these dreadful suburbs and building their offices in the most desirable urban areas. That, of course, has caused some other problems though.
My brother is literally stuck in the Silicon Valley because he is a 3D modeler and develops characters for video games. Outside of the Bay Area he struggles to find jobs since he is married to the video game companies.However, even making a little over $100k a year, he has to work a second job freelancing and can barely afford to survive there. He is actually going into debt. His $3000/mo apartment in San Mateo is pretty crappy and I even had a nicer apartment in Portland back in the 90s back when I was working at a pizza place and a dishwasher. HE has told me though that a lot of video game companies are fleeing Bay Area and opening locations in other places. He says he has considered going to Los Angeles or San Diego that are having a large number of new gaming companies being established or relocated.
I wouldn't even say SF is a great place to start a career anymore. When you are living in dire poverty for years so you can jump-start a software career it doesn't make it so palatable. There are many new tech centers popping up that offer a wide variety of jobs and you can actually rent your own apartment without requiring four roommates. I would go as far to say that the Denver area would be a much better place to jump-start your career. Sure you may be able to land some job in the Silicon Valley, but your lifestyle will like that of somebody working a low wage service type job in many other cities.
The Bay Area also has been notorious in the past for having the largest number of imported/H1B workers who come there to basically work in IT sweatshops. Seattle also has a lot of this. If you go to Bellevue you will notice that the entire population is not even from the USA, mainly South Asian/Chinese immigrants who came to work under H1B visas. I was one of the few Americans present on the Microsoft campus. In fact, when I interviewed at Microsoft all four of my interviewers were from other countries, including England, Singapore and India.
Many software companies also have special deals with various property management companies and this also drives the prices up, since people looking to rent on their own will find prices even more inflated than they already should be . There is nothing that desirable about Silicon Valley. It is a very sterile, sprawled and uneventful suburban atmosphere where you have to drive over an hour for urban entertainment. That is why companies like Amazon tried to break the mold of forcing developers to live in these dreadful suburbs and building their offices in the most desirable urban areas. That, of course, has caused some other problems though.
My brother is literally stuck in the Silicon Valley because he is a 3D modeler and develops characters for video games. Outside of the Bay Area he struggles to find jobs since he is married to the video game companies.However, even making a little over $100k a year, he has to work a second job freelancing and can barely afford to survive there. He is actually going into debt. His $3000/mo apartment in San Mateo is pretty crappy and I even had a nicer apartment in Portland back in the 90s back when I was working at a pizza place and a dishwasher. HE has told me though that a lot of video game companies are fleeing Bay Area and opening locations in other places. He says he has considered going to Los Angeles or San Diego that are having a large number of new gaming companies being established or relocated.
Interesting. I've spent my time in Chicago and NYC, so my SF perspective is based on speaking with friends as well as folks in SF we do business with. Your perspective resonates, but I think the broader SF area is still a reasonable place to consider. But yeah, I spend a week or so downtown once a years, it's sad.
As for your brother, has he considered Salt Lake City? I don't know the gaming industry well, but I know folks running software shops in Salt Lake City that actually make serious technical architecture decisions based on the fact that they can hire a ton of burnt out video game developers locally.
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