Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities
wsj.com
wsj.com
Getting a new job can be hard. Your options for big companies that hire tech people in the area is GE, Altria (Phillip Morris if you're okay working for a tobacco co ), CapTech, UPS, VCU... But it isn't like Google, Apple, etc. Your options for smaller companies are bad. Some startups have popped up there over the years but they have pretty unanimously been bad.
You get paid less. It's harder to advance in your career. You can't really get by without a car like many do in bigger cities.
Richmond is a very nice city, and I enjoy going back there for a week every June, but to call it a New Silicon City is crazy. Sure you can buy a house if that's what you want to do. There's a reason talented engineers flock FROM these areas, though.
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 corporate jobs here. It shouldn't be hard to poach some of them before they give up and move to SF or DC. Especially easy if you offer nationally competitive salaries.
It's much harder to raise money. There are very few investors there who can help you. There's less of a support system to help you. Fewer potential customers in the area. It's tough out there.
Very nice city, great beer for sure, low cost of living, very little opportunity if things go south for you.
We probably have more microbreweries per capita than anywhere else in the US.
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2016/11/2...
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/11/01/which-u...
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 meet other founders/executives who have started/run large tech companies, in person. I can ask them about what they are thinking about, walk through problems we're going through, and build a human-to-human relationship, off the record. That last part is important when, as a founder, talking candidly about the shit going wrong isn't usually what you get to do. Most won't do it over email, unless they know you well already.
When we recruit people, many of the best are already here, working on similar problems. There is a Catch 22 in building another Silicon Valley: to hire talented people you need successful companies; to build successful companies, you need talented people.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but the hard parts of building a tech company are easier here. They aren't easy, but easier. When you're a small team with 300 things that have to get done, having the most important ones made easier is a nice thing to have. For every minute another startup spends convincing an investor or potential hire that they can be the first massively successful company founded in Richmond, we can think about something else.
Do I wish it were the case? No. But I only have so many battles that I can fight at once, and our number one priority is building software to run cities. If being here helps us do that, we'll adapt.
Would love to be able to start a startup in Melb, Australia, because it's the most livable city in the world, but the tech scene here in comparison to SV is like living in the Stone Age. Not sure if I'd be better off moving to SV - but interestingly, I met a top CTO/CEO who had moved his company to the Valley and advised against it, because apparently it's very cliquey and it's hard to break into really well established circles, especially as an Aussie, for some reason. I'll definitely get him another coffee at some point in the future to dig into this more.
For your situation: go work in SV for a startup. That will get you in the circles and connected. Australia is easy to hire from for US companies because of E-3 visas.
Are you joking? It must be one of the cities in the world with the worst traffic. And of course, real estate is so cheap...
I wonder if remote work can help with that. It may have the potential to reduce the second part. I'm in SF, but a lot of our engineers are remote. With enough remote work in SF available, living in VA or wherever won't tie you so strongly to a tiny handful of companies, lowering the critical mass of employers needed in a location needed to kick-start a virtuous cycle.
Anyways, I now get a kick out of the idea I might be a pioneer forging a new future where building high tech companies is a world wide endeavor, but it's not for everyone.
See also Brad Feld who talks about building an entrepreneurial ecosystem, but the commitment is decades.
https://medicine.ucsf.edu/education/residency/application/co...
For a reasonable place in a good location, you'll end up at about $3000/month (there's a 1 bdrm at 246 2nd St). That's definitely expensive compared to nationwide averages, but you won't need a car if you both work in the city. As another poster mentioned, UCSF at Mission Bay (and elsewhere actually) has lots of purpose built housing at below market rates. Contact them!
I'm not sure how that's remotely sustainable to waste that much time commuting.
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.)
Can you elaborate on Atlanta's poor QoL?
edit: pros-> good Cost of Living to salary ratio, 4 seasons. cons-> humidity, traffic, public education system, lack of attractions (you can only go to the aquarium so many times).
You'll need a car to get anywhere and you're going to spend a lot of time in it. Especially if you live in one of the popular suburbs like Marietta or even Douglasville.
Source: lived in the area a few times.
To be clear, Lithia Springs is as part of Atlanta as Vallejo is part of San Francisco - as Edison is to Manhatten.
You'd need a car to get anywhere if you lived in Vallejo too... And you'd spend a ton of time in it (and about $10 in tolls) to get to Downtown San Francisco.
Prices have risen in the last few years, but anywhere from Midtown to Buckhead to the East Atlanta neighborhoods are great.
[1] http://www.med.nyu.edu/school/admissions/fees-and-financial-...
> NYU estimates med school costs at $80k per year [1], for four years.
Pretty much this. Private med schools are more expensive than public. Plus little things like buying cars, paying rent, etc. add up.
I wonder if it is some sort of nerds attracting nerds phenomenon, or just overachievers meeting in college.
Either way I feel your pain with residency and debt.
Lots of spec homes being built.
I had a roommate who was an ER nurse. She worked shifts at an SF hospital and also commuted over to Oakland (Highland) to work shifts for lower pay. I asked her why she'd drive all that way when she could just pick up more shifts for higher pay in SF. She said the experience she got in Oakland was so much more valuable. In SF, it was lots of concerned parents bringing in their children because they'd had a fever of almost 100F for over an hour! At Highland, it was gunshot victims, illegal immigrants with obscure tropical diseases and just a much larger variety of medical needs. She claimed that on a per hour basis, the experience in Oakland was 10 times more valuable than in SF.
So not only is the city pricing itself out of existence, as you mentioned, but it's pricing itself into a monoculture that takes away a lot of the diversity of the people there. And doctors might want a bit more of that diversity during their training. Then again, if she's studying for a specialty in treating carpal tunnel syndrome or interested in doing Lasik surgery, there's probably no better place on earth to be :-)
Look south of 280. Pacific and Daly City are fine, or some parts of SF. Rent is kind of outrageous, a 2br house near me is going for $4200, though it's really nice, 1920s style, and it's a house, with an extensive downstairs bonus room, separate living and dining room, and so forth. If you were more interested in saving money and it's just you and your wife, by guess is that you could knock a grand off that and still be walking distance from two bart stations, the J, K, and M lines, and the 43 that goes right by UCSF parnassus.
It's not hard to access the rest of SF from that corner, there's all kinds of public transportation options near SF City college, Portola, Excelsior, Mission Terrace, etc.
That's a ton to be spending on rent in such an unfashionable corner, but jeez, we're talking about the opportunity to do a residency at UCSF. Again, not sure about your salary, and the loans for med school can be pretty heavy, But even if you only earn half the median salary of a developer, you can make this work.
- Richmond, Virginia
- Eugene, Oregon
- Manchester, New Hampshire
- Huntsville, AlabamaI'm sure the congestion on 101, the BART, and the bridges is worse than it has ever been.
In the past cycles, people left the city because of costs and moved to the peninsula. Now even the peninsula is full of people hoping to get their kids into schools that are under-funded and have waiting lists.
I cannot predict when that river of wealth will run dry, but I think the companies that benefit from this can no longer afford to fund housing, health, etc. for every single employee they have.
Where are they going to go? They are going to go somewhere else.
It makes sense given that one of the implications of building and amazing global communication network is... that you don't have to be in a certain place in order to participate on it :-)
Also, don't get me started on the construction here in the Bay Area vs. some of the amazing craftsmanship like the one seen in the article.
I think we are going to see a lot more articles like this.
Oh, one other thing. One of the the reasons all these companies started here was because it was relatively cheap! For example, Apple picked Cupertino because everything further north was 'expensive'. Imagine that!
Drive around Menlo Park south of Santa Cruz Ave and west of El Camino and you'll see many beautiful houses with craftsmanship at least as high quality. This is new construction but with a traditional design, interspersed with 1950s ranchers that haven't yet been torn down. Of course you may be paying $1,000+ a square foot to build these new custom homes, so your 3,000 sq. ft home is closer to $5M including land.
So only an order of magnitude more than these "New Silicon Cities..."
My hourly rate at my current remote job is about half of what I made at Google living for a while in Mountain View, but with the local very low cost of living, I am better off financially with my current job.
I hope the future is more distributed, with people and companies taking advantage of beautiful and cheap places to work and live.
Toronto is big. Much bigger than many places mentioned.
A secret Canadian bit: healthcare is pretty good, and 'free' - at least it's not out of pocket, and covered by taxes which are on par with Cali/NY. That makes a difference in the very early stages, I think. There is a lot of technical talent in Canada, just not great marketing and business leadership, and of course nothing like the Valley etc..
Canadian system is 'pretty good' for 95% of needs, and it covers everyone. It's also less than 1/2 the cost of the US system.
I understand that there are long waits for some things - and this is a drawback party of the system, but also just crappy service - and definitely not good.
And yes - you don't get a doctor anymore. It's a problem - but you can go to any clinic (and you can chose, some are better than others) and get service on the spot. You just don't get to see the same person over and over. I agree this is not good.
I don't like 'hard single payer' as we have here in Canada - but some of the advantages cannot be overlooked.
The moment you don't have coverage, or the coverage won't cover you for some things ... then you understand. Most people in the US know of a serious 'health care horror story', whereas in Canada, it's not so bad. You have to wait longer. But for things that require immediate attention, you usually get it.
Again - not saying it's better, just that there are some advantages.
Yup.
It's due to a lot of reasons, but that will change if the talent is there.
It's particularly pernicious in Van where the cost of living is crazy, less so in Toronto.
I live in Montreal - and my flat would be 6500/month in San Francisco. It's really nice. The culture is great. Cost of living is peanuts. There are smart people, and 10x more cute girls than SF.
If you grew up in the cold and can hack that, then it's in many ways a great choice.
Also if you have a hookup at a good company because they are rare here.
Nobody can compete with SF for talent. Nobody - I would not imply that.
But depending on what you are doing - TO, Van and Montreal can make good choices. Again - very situationally dependent.
...and the excessive police presence.
...and the re-segregated schools.
Not to mention the state legislature, right?
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.
Good for the folks who do this, but don't kid yourself...it impacts your ability to move ahead in your career. If you want or need to move on from your current gig, your options become extremely limited.
Proximity to tech hubs still matters.
Yes please