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It is sad that we're at this point where people can't just live in a relaxed manner tinkering on new ideas. I remember Silicon Valley in the early 90s you really had a more hippie mentality and not everyone had a high paying salary and some people were just hanging out and talking and try new things. Austin has a little bit of this Vibe now.

don’t get why everyone’s pretending you need to live in silicon valley or a major metro area to tinker for 6 months. i saved enough from a year in silicon valley to support myself multiple years in other parts of the country.

relevant username.

I think it's fear of unknown coupled with challenge uprooting. So many of us are tied down in our familiar big metro lives with a nice community but our kids will see so much pressure

The parent mentioned "hanging out and talking" (i.e. network effects) in addition to "try new things" (tinker).

Could the same effect be accomplished remotely? Perhaps, but TFA essentially claims otherwise.

IRC is kind of nice for that. As someone who grew up in the middle of the woods that was my substitute for hanging out in person and talking.

Austin is skyrocketing in rent as California becomes too expensive. I'd look elsewhere for more bang for your buck.

and Austin has more and more CA residents, they're immediately trying to make Austin a city just like where they departed, so they can move elsewhere in the future for further damages, it's epidemic.

I'd say that Denver is subject to the same transition but it's further along.

You'll get downvoted because that pattern of facts is really uncomfortable for a lot of people around here.

I think a lot of it depends on where you live. If you're willing to live in a crazy far away place in the US or Canada OR you're in Eastern Europe/Taiwan/Thailand where prices haven't quite gone bananas as they have here, you can still do this sort of thing.

Historically, though, a lot of the innovative things we have enjoyed came because of large corporations and governments willing to invest in research and development. Just take a look at the history of Bell Labs or DARPA, for example.

I've been tinkering more or less full time for half a decade. There are lots of pleasant, inexpensive places to live around the world where you can live well for 1000 USD/month (or less). To name a couple, Diamantina, Brazil, or Kiev, Ukraine. Better to speak Portuguese or Russian/Ukrainian though.

> The big dilemma right now is there’s little funding available that can compete with the salaries of big companies. Rents have shot up so high that it’s not easy to take 6 months of to build something so you don’t have to explain. Failure has become expensive.

Why not work in places where the rents are cheaper? I mean:

Money at ones's disposal = salary - costs of living.

If the rents (and thus costs of living) are much lower, one perhaps can still outcompete or at least compete with big companies.

Yep 100%, but it becomes harder to move once you have kids.