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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

You know what's funny? Six or seven hours south is Santa Fe/Albuquerque NM. Both have nearby national laboratories, colleges, and (some) technical businesses. They're also generally affordable. Pretty much anywhere in NM would just kill for more business and has some technical workforce. I'm also sure it'd be relatively easy to convince people to move there.

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Two years ago I moved from Albuquerque to Denver, explicitly for work related reasons. The difference in available engineering jobs is night and day.

ABQ is a starkly beautiful midsize city with an unusually high number of nuclear physicists. That's necessary but far from sufficient for being a tech center. And as far as I could tell, the city's ideal is for a relatively small number of relatively large employers, not in hundreds of 5-20 employee firms.

Besides, if you're interested in working for one of those firms, let alone starting one, Denver's only six or seven hours north.

That's why I think Abq could be a budding tech hub with relatively few changes. There are some phds in the neighborhood and at least one good, affordable engineering college (Socorro/NMT). I'm guessing it's governmental policies (or lack of tax incentives) and a lack of at least one tech billionaire that likes the place keeping it down.

I mention that last part as I think Zappos being in LV has pulled some tech interest into LV.

Albuquerque does have reasonably good Internet infrastructure and the cost of living is low. But most of the tech employers are government contractors that require a security clearance, which is a turnoff for some. (If you lose your startup job and you don't have a clearance, you're screwed.)

We also have this good news/bad news airport situation: The airport is in the middle of town and it's VERY easy to get in and out of quickly. OTOH there are few direct flights anywhere -- the Bay area being a notable exception.

How is it possible they have few direct flights? It's an international airport. Anyway, that's the sort of thing that would change if it became a tech hub. I imagine that's all supply/demand. The infrastructure is already there.

Supply and demand. There are plenty of direct flights to hub cities (Dallas, Houston, Denver, Chicago, etc) but Albuquerque itself is not a hub city. So a trip to e.g. Boston from Albuquerque is an all-day slog.

As for the "international" aspect of ABQ, that's mostly wishful thinking. There might be a few flights to/from Mexico, but that's about it.

EDIT: Here's the list of nonstop destinations. Looks like there aren't any direct international flights, period. http://www.abqsunport.com/flightsairlines/destinations/

Unaffordable housing is how local homeowners loot the vast sums of money chasing tech talent. If housing is affordable, you can assume that the high-paying jobs aren't there. If you start to prop up the job market there, it'll quickly become unaffordable once folks realize that its a tech hub.

I have a brother that lived in Los Alomos, the National Labs are no where even close to Santa Fe or Albuquerque and the Universities there are not comparable to CU. When the Lobos join the Pac-12, that's a good way to know that they are comparable. Housing in Santa Fe is not exactly cheap either. Also, NM is an acquired taste and is not for everyone. The labs were kinda put there because of the remoteness of the place. I mean, Los Alomos is at about 7500 feet, 2 beers and you are knackered. That said, I do love NM and it's wilderness; I'll take my enchilada Christmas style ;)

> When the Lobos join the Pac-12

Your metric of comparison is a sports conference?

S/He didn't even spell Los Alamos correctly. Pretty offensive all around, really.

Coffee will do that to you.

true true

Sports teams seem to correlate pretty well with donor funding, grant funding, and general population. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's not a bad metric

You might as well just say the city's not large enough for startup funding.

I find it funny that you consider Sandia Labs not close to the city where it resides.

Compared to LBLN or LLNL, yeah, it's not close. Not ANL bad though, you are right.

> I mean, Los Alomos is at about 7500 feet, 2 beers and you are knackered.

Oh FFS. When you're visiting, sure. But not after you've lived here a few weeks and your body has built more red blood cells. That's why cyclists come here to train -- it's legal blood doping.

Not only is it a nice and inexpensive place to live, but the traffic situation is cake. A very bad day is a 45 minute commute. (ABQ resident here)

We ended up in Bend, Oregon rather than Boulder and are happy. Prices are lower (for now) and traffic is nonexistant IMO. But there's something wrong with the development patterns in much of the US that means those things will get worse over time unless we do things differently.

Seconded. But the big problem with NM is there's no first-world healthcare here, which makes it a tough place to live if you're older. Okay that's an exaggeration. There is good healthcare but not nearly enough for the population since doctors and nurses can make a lot more $$ elsewhere. So getting a PCP is very hard, ordinary appointments take weeks, and specialist appointments take months.

What's weird about that is UNM has a research hospital.

UNM also has a Level 1 trauma center and a world-class cancer center. But ordinary routine medicine is hard to come by in the state.

I have a few questions about the ABQ area. How can I get in touch with you? Alternatively, mind emailing me? <hnusername> @ gmail

I emailed you.

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