Ask HN: What sucks about where you live? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What sucks about where you live?

50 pointsmrstrawberry124 comments

I'll start. Here's what sucks about NYC:

1) Home

- Apartments are expensive. Can get 4x more space in Chicago for same price.

- Difficult to shop for home. Wanted a desk for my bedroom. None of the stores in the city, included Target, offered reasonable-priced desks that could fit. Had to buy online, which came with own issues.

2) Services

- Services are expensive. Want to get your hair dyed blond from someone you saw on Instagram? It's $600 and they ruin your hair.

3) Food

- Groceries are expensive and inconvenient. Get delivery or Whole Foods and pay 30-70% over Trader Joe's price. Or you need to walk/Uber to Trader Joe's, wait in line, then walk/Uber back. Local bodegas? Usually bad quality and high prices (eg watermelon is $25).

- Restaurants are expensive. Entree's in Manhattan are usually $25-35.

- Food isn't uniquely great. I recently went to a well-rated David Chang restaurant in Chelsea. Meh.

- Grocery delivery is usually done by foot. Sometimes this is great, sometimes it leads to food being delivered hours late, warm, and gross. This happens across platforms.

4) Transportation

- Can't have a car in Manhattan. Parking is $600/month in my building. Btw, the doorman gets 50%, so $300/month (yay!).

- Car rentals are quite expensive in the city. Want to rent a van to go camping? That's even worse.

- Uber and Lyft is extremely slow in the city. I generally prefer taxi's since drivers understand how to get around faster. They're also priced competitively.

5) Airport

- Traffic between airports is quite bad. Usually about an hour. Makes me jealous of the 20 min SFO commute.

6) Healthcare

- Want to book a doctor or therapist? Go to Zocdoc, enter your insurance, try to book - they call you in a day saying they're booked or don't take your insurance. Great healthcare providers are tough to find.

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Mr. Strawberry, you live in one of the most affluent cities in the world, with virtually every convenience mankind can imagine. Yes, having a car is expensive there. Yes, getting great produce for cheap may require you to transport yourself outside your block or neighborhood. Yes, housing there is incredibly expensive. Yes, traffic is bad.

Nobody has an easy time looking for good healthcare in the US. Call your insurance provider and ask for doctors on your plan, and ask people who live nearby.

Why in the world would you get your hair dyed by an Instagram celebrity? I wouldn't hire Jared Leto to cut my hair just because his looks nice. If you mean a stylist you saw on Instagram, you probably want to read reviews or get references from a stylist if they're going to charge that much. It's also not difficult to take a train to a borough for cheaper, quality services.

Manhattan sucks if you have unrealistic expectations about living there. Downvote me for negativity if you want, but your list seems like entitled whining, and this is honestly ridiculous.

On the other hand, what I would have said sucks about Manhattan are the politics and corruption that stifles the ability for poor people to live there. What sucks are actual food deserts. What sucks is the low-level stop-and-frisk that continues to discriminate against people of color. And, on the lower end of complaints, the deteriorating subway system that still works, but not nearly as well as it used to.

Your response is ridiculous. As a native New Yorker, his comments are spot-on.

His post (and this thread) is a good resource for weighing the pros and cons of moving to any city. Many people move to NYC with ridiculous expectations of living their dream and become despondent when they realize the subways smell like urine and the people can be as cold as the weather.

>>[...] the people can be as cold as the weather.

Most of the people in NYC I've come across have been fairly nice or neutral, although that could be entirely dependent on the neighborhood. Having said that, just the other day we saw a guy in a taxi get out and yell at a student struggling to get onto a special education yellow school bus. That was pretty heartless.

It's definitely a non-New Yorker perspective though.

His comments are not spot on. I’ve lived here for years (not native) and much of what he’s saying is overblown. Where are these $25 watermelons? I hauled them home all summer for like $8. Why can’t he find entrees for cheaper? My lunch today was $10. How jaded do you have to be to not recognize that NYC has a world class food scene if you want it? Chicago is cheaper but not 1/4 of the price. The list goes on.

NYC isn’t easy but it’s not anywhere close to as bad as OP is making it out to be.

This entire post is nothing more than a chance for OP to bitch about his frustrations with NYC. And I get it, I really, really do. But his complaints are overblown.

The very fact that his building has a garage and a doorman is a good indication that his experience is not representative of the entire NYC experience, and that he’s probably trying to live a lifestyle that just isn’t compatible with NYC and he’d probably be happier elsewhere. This city isn’t for everyone.

SF / Bay Area:

1. Public Transit - a lot of the city isn't super walkable, and BART is dirty/unreliable/sometimes-sketchy. Something like NYC's subway system would be a game changer for me, but I tend to stay between only a few neighborhoods I can walk to, else I have to lyft (pretty quick, but usually around $8 to $15 each way).

2. No seasons - Personal preference, but I love winter and fall, and we don't really get either. Some people love this, but for me, the whole year feels like perpetual summer purgatory.

3. Yuck - The streets of SF are gross. WAY grosser than NYC. Like, human feces on every block in the areas surrounding the Tenderloin. Even in nicer areas like the Financial District, the streets are covered in trash and smelly.

4. Homeless population - It's absurd how many homeless folks there are, and the extent to which they're dehumanized on the streets of SF. Many of them have mental health issues, and some have tendencies towards getting aggressive. It's disheartening to see, and in order to survive in the city, you kind of have to come to terms with tuning it out in a way that I don't think is good for the empathetic, human part of being a person.

5. Crime / drugs - I have fairly thick skin with respect to sketchiness, but it's so bad that the police don't respond in person to car break-ins anymore (they can't afford to). You can see a whole host of people shooting up heroin directly across the street from the police station. You can find discarded needles and crack pipes in most neighborhoods. In some neighborhoods (especially the TL, lower nob hill), it can take the police a long time to check up on reported disturbances unless they're violent.

6. Not a great place for dating (for cishet men, at least. I can't speak to other folks' experiences) - There are more men in the city than women, which sometimes feels like a shortage of available women in the dating pool. YMMV

I would have written the exact same points but you beat me to it. I'm planning on leaving for either NYC so at least I get _something_ in return for the absurdly high rent or something way cheaper as soon as possible..

Denmark: - 56% personal tax rate, 22.5% corporate, always increasing

- Low/negative growth

- Massive lack of talent/quality education

- Free healthcare = Long waiting lists = Losing family members for totally curable diseases

- Everything is overly regulated, lawyer bills piling up

- Traffic in Copenhagen is a nightmare

- The hightaxes means high wages = expensive products (+42% EU average)

- Government fees on everything. My electricity bill: Usage: 800kr, after taxes 4.500kr. Gas, Usage 10L @ 5DKK/L = after Taxes 100kr. Cars are 150% taxed, car at 100k = 250k selling price, etc etc. Fun fact: We have a tax on air if, and only if, you blow it into ice cream.

Denmark (and Sweden) are often cited as countries with fairly successful "socialist" social policies such as healthcare.

Can you please elaborate more about that particular point?

From my own research, it seems that most (if not all countries) with socialized healthcare have it worse than the US or other countries that supposedly have the wors because healthcare is not affordable and/or provided by the government.

Socialized healthcare just means that healthcare is primarily a government monopoly and monopolies always provide their service as the highest possible cost with the lowest possible quality.

The waiting times in DK were at one point so bad that it was mandated by law, that certain timeframes for treatment must be respected, but this is rarely possible. I had one family member diagnosed with cancer i november, treatment started in february, death was in september. Another just last week, was hit by a heart attack, something blocking the arteries. She received some pills/nitro and was told she needed a scan of the heart in order to fix the problem, and that she should come back in a month or so. We're hoping she'll make it that far.

I can't say how much worse this is than in the US, but it seems to me that the problems the US face in terms of steep pricing are also the result of government regulation.

It’s a similar story in Norway also add shitty weather crappy expensive food super expensive alcohol to the list.

Couldn’t agree more on health care long waiting list mostly due to limited health care professionals.

I grew up in Srinagar, Kashmir, which is a really beautiful place - even though there’s a really good chance you’ll freeze to death here or get struck by a bullet.

Learning from life with each passing day. Thank God for sapience.

Seattle:

- Traffic is terrible, combined with subpar public transit compared to north-eastern cities.

- housing is far more expensive than it's worth, if you don't want to spend upwards of 500k-1m your commute will be at least an hour.

- Culture is lacking. Fewer good music and performance acts than in the NorthEast, or even what I saw when I was in colorado. Less alt scenes than I was used to (unless you're in a select handful of very strongly represented subcultures)

- Strong cultural/personality friction for someone who grew up in Philadelphia. Things that are acceptable/expected here are unacceptable there, and visa versa. (E.g. talking to someone you don't know in a supermarket, driving habits)

- COL in general seems pricy (e.g. 20$ work lunches considered "normal" and 6$ beers at restaraunts) but that could very well just be inflation since I left the east.

To avoid sounding 200% a pessimist, I would be remiss to say that what I _do_ get is 2000% more nature than I ever got back east. The longer I've lived here the more I've questioned whether the tradeoff is worth it, but thus far it's kept me going. Great skiing too, if you go north a bit, comparable with vermont more or less.

Can you tell me more about the cultural friction? Driving too?

This is twofold, subject matter and personality. In the former, I've had to excuse myself from conversations because mentioning something I thought was innocuous (e.g. paintball) is apparently unacceptable conversation via being "non-inclusive". In the latter, I can be a brusque individual. I was never particularly aware of this as a problem back east, other people acted similarly and people generally took each other in good faith. I've definitely had to soften myself and learn to be more perceptive of subtle social signals since I moved out here. (In my "grocery store" example, if someone talked to me back east I'd probably give them a funny look, a very terse answer, and try to end the conversation ASAP) broadly I have to smile a lot more, use lots of hedging/less strong speech, not be direct/give contentious topics a wide berth etc to avoid misunderstandings.

Driving comes in many forms, but some examples are: You'll regularly have people sitting in the middle lane of a highway _stopped_ waiting to merge into a slowly moving merge lane. Back east you'd have likely been rear ended by an 18 wheeler if you tried that. (same for merging onto a highway). Hard-stopping at yellows is something else I've had to be aware of out here.

> I've had to excuse myself from conversations because mentioning something I thought was innocuous (e.g. paintball) is apparently unacceptable conversation via being "non-inclusive".

You might have first experienced this in the Seattle area, but it is by no means unique geographically. This kind of personality that wants to be offended by everything and everyone is proliferating everywhere.

>if someone talked to me back east I'd probably give them a funny look, a very terse answer, and try to end the conversation ASAP

This sounds a lot like the Seattle Freeze, which has been a long-standing reality. I guess I'm (pleasantly) surprised by your approach of smiling more and seeking to talk to people. Keep it up, it's something we've needed in Seattle for a long time.

As Microsoft / Adobe / whoever else was here in the 80's and 90s money rolled in, Seattle started a cultural shift. I went away to the midwest for college between 1996-2000 and never quite adapted to the shifts. Today I'm there a week out of the month or so and I don't even recognize it; it's not the city I grew up in, in any form.

I'm in Toronto.

1) Housing. It's definitely not as bad as other "world class" cities, but it's bad enough that multiple parents are having to help their children buy homes.

2) Opportunity is too good. "Why not move?", you may ask. Well, there's only so many cities in Canada that are on the scale of Toronto for opportunities. Vancouver is one, but it's even more costly. Other cities just don't come close for job opportunities.

3) Our new Premier is a dip shit and actively ruining our province.

4) Access to outdoor amenities isn't so hot. There's some things, but you really have to drive 3-4 hours for the great stuff.

5) Transit is painfully underfunded. We need more of everything, and we need it 10 years ago.

6) City planning seems totally absent. We have 100k people moving here year over year. Entire new neighbourhoods are popping up almost over night, but there's zero planning in place. A prime example is Liberty Village. Getting in out is a nightmare. There are families growing up here without a new school to be found. There are no parks either.

I'm sure there's more. These are the first that come to mind.

Re Toronto:

- getting in, getting out, and how much farther "out," means. (sprawl)

- post-globalization: chains and franchise businesses make most of it like being stranded in an airport. There are a lot of great niches, but they are rarer and further afield in the sprawl.

- petty crime: bike theft and car break-ins are normal to the point of going unreported.

- street parking: the city is predatory with parking tickets. Mayor shifted enforcement to maintain traffic flow, which was right, but council is addicted to fines.

- local media: they just aren't very good. Its like nobody's asked if newspapers are dying because they are just bad.

- commitment to park maintenance: garbage is common.

- politics: polarized, mainly due to the quality of discourse taught in institutions.

- lots of crappy art: it's a bit of a cringe fest.

Vienna, Austria

There is hardly anything that really bothers me, the streets and walkways are sometimes dirty and of course everything is kinda crowded all the time, but hey, that's a property every city has.

I was last in Vienna about twenty years ago. It struck me as the cleanest, most orderly, and perhaps most beautiful city I'd ever seen. Public transportation was excellent, costs seemed reasonable. I recall vividly how locals would immediately move to the right automatically when catching the escalators - everyone was polite, courteous, orderly. I've wanted to go back ever since but the opportunity has never arisen.

- In general very bad service all around ("Kunde droht mit Auftrag" mentality)

- A lot of weird and bizarre people on the streets (talking with themselves, bad hygiene etc.)

- Not much respect for old people and pregnant women in public transport (young people will block only elevator, most of the time nobody will offer you seat etc.)

Still there are many more other things which make living in Vienna quite good experience.

When I lived in Chicago:

-The Racism, shocked how open people would shit talk muslims/blacks/indians.. being a minority myself I definitely thought it was weird. people in the workplace were definitely less sensitive when criticizing those groups based on the places I had worked at; will talk crap at how the black neighbors should take better care of their lawns. the city + state is incredibly segregated.

-This spills in from above, I could not for the life of me crack into any real leadership positions.. kinda bs, seeing as both west + east coasts previously + currently hold lead positions. During hiring, people I'd advocate for people who were miles more technically skilled + well-rounded for upper positions. It would get overlooked for some white person who could throw drinks down better w/ the CEO

-Cost of living is definitely cheaper, but I have no idea how some people are able to pay off their student loans with the wages around there

-People settle down a lot sooner than the rest of the coasts.

-People are less driven to create companies, so the frequency of interesting startups in chicago are a lot smaller compared to the coasts. a good proportion of the smart tech ppl in the city end up working for some financial company.

I'm a million times happier since I've moved out of the state and feel much more appreciated/welcomed. Definitely do miss the restaurants + music scene.

Chicago (specifically Printers Row/South Loop):

1. Homes - Many apartment buildings are 75-100 years old which comes with a whole slew of issues - Buying a condo or apartment in the city is difficult due to Illinois taxes and the states shit financial situation

2. Outdoors - Chicago has a fantastic lake front and some public parks that are nice but there is little to no, "outdoory" things to do in the city or even near by outside the city. The state is flat so there's no elevation hiking to do. There's no real forests. It's prairie land. Frustrating if you like the out doors

- It's easy to get into a routine that is comfortable in Chicago and they have that be drastically altered when the weather changes. This happens in a lot of cities but Chicago it can change your whole life due to the cold and things being less walk able when it's freezing outside.

3. The Cubs - Chicagoians love sports. Cubs fans tend to be the worst of the fans in the city. If you happen to forget the cubs are playing and have to go through Wriggly on a game day you're in for a bad time. Need to use the red line on game day? Good luck.

Other than that Chicago is incredible. More people should move here. If it wasnt for the lack of mountains I'd probably never leave. Can someone tell me what sucks about Denver before I pack up and move?

Lol, I am from Chicago living next to Boulder now. Everyone on my street is from the midwest, the weather here in the winter and summer is 1000x better.

You're not helping! Haha. Why Boulder over Denver?

I'll add that while it's got a great transportation system, it's still a very car centric city.

Train transportation is directed at getting you into the loop, and not so great if you want to traverse to other parts of the city. Want to go from Pilsen to Lincoln Park? You'll probably drive. Pilsen to Wicker Park? I doubt you are going to take the bus, so you'll drive there too.

The advantage of it being flat is that you can cycle to those places, but that option doesn't work 4-5 months out of the year.

I'd say it's car centric depending on where you live. I designed my life around being able to walk everywhere I need to or hop on the CTA to get places I cant walk. But I'm in a rare part of the city where I can walk to the red line or blue line in 5ish minutes. If you live elsewhere, or cant afford to uber from time to time, a car would be a big plus.

And yes, please give me the Denver version of this as I'm seriously considering a move there. (Portland too please)

Oh, and I'll reiterate the real estate tax issue - you can definitely get a bigger, more livable place here, but the taxes are sort of obscene. For example, you can get a nice, newish 2br / 2ba condo in your choice of neighborhoods, probably with parking for 450k. Your tax bill will be 8-9k.

I've lived in the Denver metro (suburbs) for 7 years now and still love it. I moved here from a small city in the south.

- Large and growing tech community. Every year, I see job postings from new companies in the area. Google, FB, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft all have sattelite offices. Plenty of options to choose from if you're in development, IT, finance, etc. Lots of non-profit organizations as well. Good universities in Boulder, Denver, Golden, Fort Collins.

- Cost of living was certainly higher than my hometown, but much more reasonable than many coastal cities. Not sure how it compares to Chicago specifically. Housing and rents have been rising rapidly over the past few years. I've seen two bedroom appartments listed for around $1600 - $2200, but that's still a fraction of what we would have been paying in the bay area.

- Purple state, if the local politics matter to you. Blue in Denver/Boulder, red in Colorado Springs, more or less purple in the suburbs. There's a pretty broad spectrum of people to connect with. There have been quite a few measures on our state ballot that passed that I've been happy with.

- Traffic on I-25 and I-70 sucks during rush hour. It's a high growth area, so it seems to get worse every year. It's no worse than any other major metro area that I've visited though. Population density is quite low, so you often end up driving longer distances but with less congestion than you would have in many cities.

- Lots of outdoor activities in the mountains (but weekend traffic on I-70 is attrocious because everyone does this)--skiing, hiking, camping, etc. Lots of music, art, cultural events, museums downtown. Lots of good concerts at Red Rocks.

- There are large (and growing) populations of homeless people in Denver and Boulder. I don't think it's necessarily as bad as SF or NYC, but it has definitely been getting worse, especially as housing prices have risen. If you rent, it's easy to get kicked out for a missed payment. Heroin and opiate addiction is a problem throughout parts of the area.

- There are major sporting events here (Broncos, Rockies), but I've never been interested in attending them. I hear tickets are hard to get. Shrug.

- Weather is pretty nice, but it's quite dry. Forest fires can be a problem during the summers (mostly in the mountains), but that's the only kind of natural disaster that I've been worried about since I moved here. We can get a lot of snow during the winter, but the roads are well taken care of, and we get a lot of sunshine when it's not snowing. Makes for some excellent powdery ski conditions.

- Major airport (DIA) with direct flights to most other major airports in the US, which is nice. It was built out of the way, northeast of Denver, but it's a large airport and traffic isn't bad on the express way (toll road).

- Misc: Food and services usually seem pretty reasonable to me. Uber and Lyft are all over the place.

No place is perfect, and it's all about tradeoffs... but life is good and I have no plans to leave Colorado any time soon.

I'll echo some points:

- I-25 traffic is crazy bad, even compared to the 405 in West LA. Really, it's no joke.

- Politics isn't really purple in Co, per se. It's a western state, so it's more libertarian than republican, sorta. People are independent as a rule. I think it's something about the long drives and the mountains that keeps up a love of open spaces and a comfortableness with being alone and out of range of emergency responders. That said, as a western state, all the noise in politics really comes down to one thing: Water. Red v Blue is quaint when it comes to the mountain and the eastern ranchers over water rights. There are no fights in Co politics, just squabbles. But with water there is only war.

- If you want to go skiing anymore you need to wake up at 4. The drives are too long now to sleep in.

- Broncos tickets are crazy hard to get and expensive. Rockies tix can go for $4 often.

- You also have to watch out for tornadoes here too. Not so much close to the mountains, but you will get them in Aurora and at DIA. Wildfires and that death-sweet smell are a part of life now (asthmatics beware).

- DIA TSA is crazy long at times, usually, it seems, whenever I am there :(

- Food isn't bad for the middle of the continent. The Asain dishes (sushi, curries, thai, szechuan, etc) aren't bad, but I'm not singing about them. Mostly it's chilies, peaches, and buffalo steaks (in terms of unique foods).

- Not to get into a traffic pissing match, but Austin traffic is 5x as bad as the Denver traffic that I have experienced. Also the Denver area express buses (I don't live by a train) are pretty great.

- DIA: I normally get through in like 2 minutes, gotta precheck!

- One addition: Very little racial diversity

I agree on the food is mediocre and the time to leave to ski is freaking early!

Very helpful. Thank you!

Minneapolis:

The weather. We get everything from -30 degree weather and raging snowstorms in the winter to unbearably humid 100+ degree weather in the summer.

Apart from that I don't have any serious complaints. And even though I complain about the weather it probably helps keep the cost of living down. Especially once you get to the suburbs (or even the outskirts of Minneapolis proper) housing is shockingly affordable for an urban area on the scale of the Twin Cities.

Salt Lake City, UT:

1) Very poor air quality in winter due to inversions.

2) The local popular religion (Mormonism) has an outsized influence on legislation, so there are weird laws surrounding alcohol, business on Sundays, use of downtown property, etc. Outside of SLC proper people assume everyone is Mormon, and one's religion (or lack of it) can affect job opportunities, etc.

3) The city is extremely car-centric, with large blocks and narrow sidewalks. there are few places where it is pleasant to walk or linger outdoors.

4) Public transit is not great, but still better than some US cities. This seems to be slowly improving.

5) Homeless communities are concentrated around a few service locations, so certain parts of the city can seem overrun and unsafe, especially public parks. Panhandling is everywhere.

6) Local culture breeds busybodies; neighbors will complain to the city if they deem your grass is too tall, etc. There is also a lot of casual racism; for example, neighborhoods with a majority Latino population are considered "bad" despite having no higher crime, attractive houses, etc.

Gripes aside, SLC is mostly a great place to live. There is beautiful scenery, reasonable housing, lots of restaurant variety, and so on. But nowhere is perfect.

>"2) The local popular religion (Mormonism) has an outsized influence on legislation, so there are weird laws surrounding alcohol, business on Sundays, use of downtown property, etc. Outside of SLC proper people assume everyone is Mormon, and one's religion (or lack of it) can affect job opportunities, etc."

This really annoys me as someone who loves the state of Utah.

People who don't really know about the Mormons and Utah think that it's just some quaint thing like the Amish in Pennsylvania or whatever. They don't realize that the Utah government is essentially a theocracy controlled by the LDS church, which dictates every aspect of society in the state. It makes the place completely unlivable for normal people who would otherwise love to live somewhere like SLC for the same reasons Denver is great (winter sports, outdoors, scenery).

Do you see this ever changing?

> Do you see this ever changing?

Probably not in my lifetime, unless the state's efforts to attract big technology business (the "silicon slopes" initiative) draws enough people from out-of-state to seriously dilute the local population. But Mormons as a whole have a lot of kids, so it's a curious competition.

Do you live in Utah? That's not been my experience at all. You meet a lot of Mormons and you can often tell who they are, but they are very nice and it doesn't seem to affect day-to-day life much at all.

I would not describe the government as a theocracy. Liquor stores aren't open on Sunday and you can't buy full strength beer in the grocery store. Other than that the differences living here vs. elsewhere aren't huge.

> Do you live in Utah?

Yes.

> You meet a lot of Mormons and you can often tell who they are, but they are very nice and it doesn't seem to affect day-to-day life much at all.

Well, I didn't say it affected my day-to-day life, I said that it affects local legislation.

> Liquor stores aren't open on Sunday and you can't buy full strength beer in the grocery store. Other than that the differences living here vs. elsewhere aren't huge.

You can't buy liquor (apart from the low-strength beer) from any stores except the state-owned ones. The state strictly limits the number of liquor licenses they give out to restaurants and bars, and the rules surrounding the use of those licenses are strange and ever-changing, such as the "Zion curtain" that forbade bartenders from making drinks in view of the public. The strongest drinks bars/restaurants are allowed to serve are weak, 1 ounce of liquor per drink if I recall correctly (it may be 1.5). For a while they had that weird "sidecar" exception that allowed the establishment to sell you an extra ounce of liquor on the side the customer can mix in themselves. Servers are not allowed to serve you an alcoholic drink if you have one unfinished. Restaurants cannot sell you liquor unless you also order food. And so on.

There was a law (it still may be in place) that forbade car dealerships from being open both Saturday and Sunday. Since no dealer is dumb enough to close on Saturday, this was an obvious effort to force those businesses to close on Sundays.

The state has been very amenable to big land deals with the LDS church downtown, deals they would not have made with any other entity. For example, the City Creek project.

The church strongly influences legislation on things like medical marijuana and gay marriage. For certain people, those influences would very much affect day-to-day life.

This is what I can remember off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. Like I said, it's mostly a good place to live. But the church currently has too much influence in government.

I agree with you on pretty much all of that. I was replying to aphextron who wrote:

> the Utah government is essentially a theocracy... which dictates every aspect of society in the state. It makes the place completely unlivable for normal people

Which is a pretty strong claim and does not seem grounded in reality. Especially when you consider many "normal people" from the rest of the US have moved to Utah in the last few years. People seem comfortable making unsupported claims about Mormons in ways they would find abhorrent if similar unsupported claims were made against other minority cultural or ethnic groups.

Ah, yes, I see now that you were replying to someone who was replying to me. Sorry that I missed that layer of separation.

Re 2: I worked down in Utah County for a while. Down there, the coffeepot in the lunch room didn't feel like just a coffeepot. It was religious tolerance.

Don't get me wrong, the Mormons were very nice, and tried to be inclusive (there would be a conversation, and some Mormon thing would come up, and someone would ask me "did you understand that", not in condescension but just to make sure I was included). But you're in a strong minority, and it can feel uncomfortable at times.

Note, however, that Salt Lake County isn't nearly as bad. It's "only" 50% Mormon.

My corollary to #3: Traffic can be pretty bad - not LA bad, but much worse than I'd like. (Nobody on their deathbed ever said "I wish I'd spent more time in traffic.)

And my #7: Air pollution. Salt Lake City sits in a valley. That valley traps pollution and, in winter, sometimes fog. (One horrible winter - I think 1981-82 - we had fog get trapped in the valley in winter, and for 59 days, the sun shone for a total of 15 minutes. It was very depressing. Still, that only happened one year; most years are not anything like that bad.)

My only gripe with Tampa is the length & intensity of summer.

It's incredibly humid the entire year. Close to 100% humidity and 100 degrees F quite often in the middle of the day. April through November is just hot as heck.

You are hot and sweaty...and stay hot and sweaty until you take a shower and dry off. I see people walking around in suits downtown and I can't understand how they manage it. Getting into your car is a task because you're essentially hopping in an oven.

Additionally, today is the first "nice day" in a while and its's still 90 F with 60% humidity. It's almost October. We don't really have a fall, which is what I loved about living further north in Atlanta. I'm exhausted by it by the time August ends and this will last into November.

The strangest part is that the humidity makes cold nights feel even colder than dryer places. So 45F in Tampa is crazy cold due to the moisture in the air. It doesn't help that we're not geared up for those 10 nights per year either. I noticed this when I spent time in CO. I want to go for a run at 45F in Denver!

The only other major gripes I have is that our transportation and the way our downtown has developed hasn't worked. Urban sprawl hurt us quite a bit with the former.

But(!), there are benefits. * I can easily get away with wearing shorts for nearly the entire year. I go to meetings in shorts and it's great. * Rent is _very_ reasonable. * Lots of outdoor things to do: our Riverwalk downtown is amazing to bike/walk/run on. * We have some quality food and FL loves beer, so we have some nice breweries beyond Cigar City.

Due to the heat, I want to spend some of each year up north. It's just too much for me.

Having grown up in Bradenton, which is even warmer than Tampa, I understand the heat. However, your statement about 100% humidity and 100 degrees is not possible. If it were everyone would be dead after being outside for even a short amount of time. Further 100 degree days are rare in that part of Florida, in fact I believe that TPA has never measured 100 or above. The key to happiness is that area of the country, IMO, is to enjoy the water and the wildlife.

Yea, being a little dramatic about the temp, I apologize. It's 90F during the day on average: https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/tampa/florida/united-s... The humidity makes it a different heat.

I'm talking relative humidity with the percentage, which is typically what weather reports. It averages over 90% for most summer months: https://climatecenter.fsu.edu/products-services/data/other-n...

Totally agree on the happiness part!

Austin:

- Traffic (goes without saying in most booming US cities). Infrastructure is largely unchanged since the 70s. Poorly mismanaged toll roads are instead implemented. Drivers are fucking god-awful (seriously, nowhere in the Northeast was it as bad as it is in the South -- something about the heat). With no short or long term solution in sight for remedying the traffic that worsens every day, makes me worry about staying here much longer, let alone buy property.

- Homeless. Many TX (and other US cities for that matter) cities have no qualms about giving their homeless one-way bus tickets to here. They're nasty too. Even more nasty than NYC's homeless. City has no idea what to do about it.

- Despite there being plenty of new apartment complexes near downtown being erected, there's still lots of obstinacy to increasing housing density. Also some of the most bizarre zoning laws I've ever seen (don't get me started on what Austin considers "historical").

- While there are many outdoor places to hike and whatnot, many of the day hikes are largely the same scenery. Places in Austin will get packed with loud and disrespectful UT students. I miss actual mountains and dense woods.

- Each month or so, some cool and irreplaceable bar/restaurant/music venue that's been around for decades closes down (mainly due to rising property taxes with no ceiling in sight). What replaces them is often some generic crap millennial chain seen in other tech hubs.

- They say it's the Live Music Capital of the World, but they don't tell you that 95% of the music sucks (and much like the previous point, the city continues day-by-day to become more hostile to artists in general).

- Some would say the heat, but it personally doesn't bother me. It's a relatively dry heat in the summer anyway. Better than humid Northeast summers.

1. Missing a big one that affects many people, 365 day a year ALLERGIES!

2. I would add politics. Yes, the city is "blue" but too much evil is produced from the capitol to ignore. Living in a state where almost every law produced goes against what you believe to be logical really wears you down.

3. Bad public transportation that will never get fixed. It is too late now for light rail or more than one train line, people keep voting against it.

I agree with a lot of your points.

Personally, I dislike the nightlife. The entertainment districts are all about dive or patio bars with a band playing. Not many proper hip hop or edm spots.

There is not much diversity.

The main vibes are hippie austin slacker, tx country guy, college student, or tech bro. Which I do not like.

Considering a move to LA.

Amsterdam is altogether great alongside the Netherlands, but its ever-increasing popularity among tourists is making it less and less bearable to live it. It's overly crowded and the housing market is facing serious troubles due to certain overly-liberal government policies and amount of expats coming in for newfound startups.

Still 10/10 though!

Completely agree and aforementioned expat here.

My only nitpick is the quality of career opportunities though I see a lot of new companies coming through like Message Bird, DAZN.

Any other promising opportunities that you are aware of?

Fintech is booming alongside some other niche techy startups, especially medical.

It is impossible to buy hot food in Amsterdam late at night. This to me marks a city as entirely non-functional. It’s not like I’m asking for 10 gigabit fiber to the home, just pizza. It’s bizarre.

Juneau, Alaska

- There isn't much developable land as a lot of it is locked up in national forests or government or tribal entities, so housing prices and rent are high.

- Food prices are high due to transport requirements, both for groceries and restaurants (Juneau has no roads in, so everything comes by air or by sea).

- Wages are not especially high.

- Almost every couple ends up working two incomes to deal with the prices of food and housing.

- There is a severe daycare shortage in town which leads to problems trying to manage kids and multiple incomes.

- Lots of rain in the spring and in the fall.

However, when the sun is shining, it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

If you like being outside, it's one of the best places for experiencing the outdoors that I know of. There is almost nowhere in town where you are more than about a 15 minute walk from being either beside water, or hiking a mountain.

It also has a deep sense of community and people here seem genuinely interested in helping each other.

Stoke UK:

Public transport: shockingly bad, both expensive and time consuming, our city is 5 towns, all of which link through one meaning any journey requires 2 buses and usually an hour or more all to travel around 4 miles. there is no tube/tram or other option

Jobs: there just arent any

General life: most major stores have given up on the city, the high streets are becoming increasingly filled with empty shops that serve the sole purpose of housing the staggering number of monkey dust addicts living in the doorways

this city is dying and at this point there is little that could be done to save it, we are the Detroit of the UK, once the centre of industry in the UK, manufacturing was revolutionised here, the place was so important its the only place in the UK that is a city without a cathedral (generally a city has to have a cathedral to be considered a city but it was given special status due to its industrial significance)

Lived in Stoke for around 8 months last year, moved from Stafford.

Stafford isn't the best place in the world, but I regret that decision so badly, moved to Brum recently and I couldn't be happier. Everyone here complains about it but I'm really enjoying not having to deal with Hanley or Shelton on the regular, still got friends up there so I'll go and visit occasionally but it's a horrible place to live in my experience.

Used to live in Hanley, just opposite the Emma Bridgewater place.

The upside of Stoke is cheap housing, great beer, and it's the World Capital of Darts.

Harrison, AR Population ~13k

1) There are few restaurants open past ~8pm. That's the one thing I miss most about living in a bigger place. Pizza delivery places are open until 10pm or so, but after that you're pretty much limited to Taco Bell, McDonald's, or Casey's (a gas station, much like WaWa or Sheetz)

2) Lack of a tech community. There are a few people in "tech" around, but the vast majority work for a single company, and it's a pretty Microsoft-focused shop. I'm not aware of any tech meetups of significant size unless I want to drive to Fayetteville, AR (~2 hours) or Springfield, MO (~1 hour).

3) Travel. We have a small airport, but no commercial service. When I fly to LA, I have to go drive at least an hour to an airport. Branson, MO has a decent small airport, but only one or two airlines and I'm often not able to get the flights I want from there and end up driving further.

On the other hand, there's what's nice:

1) Land values are cheap. We bought a five-bedroom home on half an acre for ~$125k. I'm looking at rental properties now, and it's not unreasonable to think I could buy a nice (if small) home for $40k suitable for a rental. There are even a few duplexes around $80k and a handful of 4-plexes for under $150k.

2) People are helpful, but keep to themselves. No one is out in my neighborhood after dark, and most everyone is in bed by 10pm. At the same time, I can always count on my neighbors to lend me a chainsaw or tools if I need them, and if you end up on the side of the road you literally have to make a sign saying you're OK if you don't want someone stopping to check on you every five minutes.

3) It's safe. The crime statistics belie this somewhat; the actual crime rate is fairly high. In reality, most of the crime here is either drug-related, or property crime drive by the same. The crime that does occur happens mostly within that social group, so if you don't hang out with druggies you're pretty much golden.

Totally agree, living in Yellville, AR and working in Springdale, AR (+2 hours commute each way, every day)

A few years ago, I tried to teach a free game programming class in Harrison College under the continued education umbrella - no one signed up.

Tried to start a Raspberry Pi meetup group - no one wanted to meet 'in person' ..

Maybe we should meet up! We can go hack on something, then shoot things and maybe blow something up. :)

Seriously though, shoot me an email. I live on the south end of Harrison, and can be in Yellville in like 15 minutes. I grew up in Lead Hill.

Small world.

Chicago

1: Segregation. The black and brown people are all concentrated in the South and West sides, along with most of the violent crime. Despicable and sad.

2: Lack of nature nearby. The city has some nice parks, especially the public lake front, but there isn't any decent camping within a 3 or 4 hour drive.

3: Weather. I've lived here my whole life, and I am becoming less tolerant of the winters as I age.

The traffic is pretty bad too, but I bike commute so I don't really feel that part too much. Finally, and this is a more pernicious problem, but the state's fiscal situation is terrible. It doesn't seem like such an issue now (especially for a fairly affluent white guy like me), but the future will almost certainly include service reductions combined with higher taxes.

Dresden, Germany

As far as daily life is concerned, I have a few nits to pick, but nothing that "sucks about where [I] live".

The only thing I can really complain about is that Dresden is (sort of) the xenophobia capital of the country. There's far-right protests on a weekly cycle [1] and the conservative state government is still denying that there even is a xenophobia problem, even though attacks on foreign-looking people and refugee homes are depressingly common.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegida

BTW. Dresden is the rape-capital of Germany (after Berlin). Done mostly by immigrants (90%).

Got a source for that?

Oklahoma City:

1) Very conservative state government. Public schools are incredibly underfunded. Crime penalties are harsh. Extremely high prison population. 2nd in nation. 1st in women incarceration (nearly 3x national average). Constantly spending money trying fight people who sue them for pushing religious agendas.

2) A car is mandatory. Not walkable. Very spread out. It's one of the larges cities by area and the population isn't huge or anything. Virtually no public transit.

3) Tornadoes. Most people I know in the area are desensitized to them, but I'm not. I turn into a nervous wreck. I've luckily never been affected by them other than roofs/tress/etc, but the May 3, 1999 tornado was .2 miles from my house as a kid. They are frequently within a few miles.

4) Earthquakes. This has seemingly gotten better recently, though I moved a few miles south and that may cloud my perception of it. Between this and tornadoes, home insurance is rough if it covers it at all.

5) Economy tied to one industry: oil. There's a smidge of aerospace, but it's almost completely oil.

6) Tech scene mostly tied to enterprise and C#/Microsoft.

7) Dry and hot. When it rains, it floods.

Can I ask why you stay? I’m guessing family?

That's the main reason. Secondary reason being I want to work to improve the place I grew up instead of running from it.

Dallas/Ft. Worth

Since DFW is so spread out, many suburbs don't have public transportation or limited transportation. I cannot take a bus door to door to my office. I would have to drive to a "park and ride" location to begin my commute. There are no bus stops/lines near my home.

I suppose this would be a welcome change for someone living in NYC. Everywhere takes 15-30 minutes to get to. We don't measure distance in miles, everything is measured in how long it takes to get there. As an example, you can drive for 12 HOURS(!!) and still be in Texas.

Weather:

It's HOT in the Summer. Extremely hot. I'm used to it by now though and it does not bother me.

I am struggling to find other things to complain about.. I like it here but have lived here for a long time and crave change. I want to move to Southern California but know that I would be taking on state income taxes (Texas doesn't have any) and more expensive housing. Why do that to myself..?

TX property taxes are crazy high to offset no income tax, so the income tax is a trade off.

Yup, my house in CO is twice the price and half the property taxes of the TX house I had.

Very true. I'm a Mortgage Loan Officer by trade, doing a transaction for a client in Colorado right now. Her taxes are ~$2000 or so on a $500,000 house.

Compared to my ~$4000 tax bill on my $250,000 house.

You can dispute the bill and apply for exemptions that are applicable to you, but it doesn't help much.

I can help:

Dallas is a city of suburbs, sprawl, and strip malls. Looking for an artisan? That'll be 30 minutes driving please. Driving everywhere means people don't have places to walk. And when you do walk, you're walking amongst dangerous, loud, and smoggy traffic.

There's a race for larger and larger homes in Dallas. Those homes take more energy to cool and heat as the seasons shift, and the larger footprint means the sprawl accelerates.

What do people do with the larger homes? They get lonely in them.

> Since DFW is so spread out, many suburbs don't have public transportation or limited transportation.

Depending upon your outlook, this can also be seen as a positive as the maintainability of very-infrequently-used public transportation in very spread out suburbs can have much higher cost than benefit as opposed to the inner cities. If you crave culture, it's not for you, but if you crave peace and quiet you will be happy (outside of the city of course).

> I am struggling to find other things to complain about...

Liquor laws, bar laws, and gambling laws are some. But in the scheme of things, yes, very few things to complain about.

Boston, MA

People drive extremely bad. Like when I say bad, I'm not talking about US-level bad. It's universally bad bad. I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and people drive there better. As a reference, I lived half a decade in the Bay Area, and compared to Bostonites, people there are driving experts. But what's so bad about people's driving?

They're fast all the fucking time, even in streets they're supposed to go 20, people try 30-40 if they're alone. Insanely dangerous.

They completely disregard bikers. They try to force pass you all the time, if they can't, they honk. People yell at bikers. The fact that biking is very popular in Boston doesn't help.... Very dangerous.

People disregard crosswalks, I can never reliably get cars stop on crosswalks without waiting a few minutes so that traffic slows down and then someone finally decides to stop for me.

Interesting, I did not have those issues when I lived in Boston. I wonder if it is more of an area by area thing.

My office is in Kendall Square (near MIT), my house is in Central Square (Cambridge) and I spent most of my time in Fenway, downtown and Harvard. As a reference. But in my experience, this is a systematic issue in Boston Area.

Also, I'm a biker, I don't drive (I don't even have a drivers license in the US, I hate driving, but I know how to drive and have drivers license in other countries), if it matters.

Boston has a reputation for aggressive drivers and I think there's definitely some reality to the stereotype. That said, just about everyone from cars to bikes to pedestrians has a somewhat casual relationship to traffic laws. The fact that a lot of streets are narrow and come together at all sorts of angles. It's not an easy city to drive in. On the other hand, I drive (and walk) in the city fairly regularly and don't find it to be extraordinarily difficult or dangerous.

It is. The traffic issues GP mentions play out very differently in Boston/Brookline, Cambridge/Somerville, and further-out suburbs. There are even "microclimates" within each of those. Out near 128 where I am, the drivers are no worse than other places I've been. (I lived several years in southeast Michigan, now spend significant time in both Silicon Valley and Seattle.) It's the cyclists who are terrors, but that's a whole different topic.

> It's the cyclists who are terrors, but that's a whole different topic.

No, it is not a different topic. Please explain. I biked in Berkeley and SF for ~5 years and never had a single problem. I bike Central Square to Kendall Square every day now and can't bike without feeling I'm actively being attempted to get killed. Nobody respects bike lanes here, and if I ever have to use normal car lane (because there is an asshole in the bike lane) people start yelling at me, honking at me, or try to pass me very fast. And this is Cambridge, I can't even begin with Boston where there are no bike lanes; biking in downtown/Fenway/Beacon Hill feels like running in a mine field.

I've biked in a lot of places in the world: Paris, Koln, Berlin, Istanbul, the Bay Area etc... and never felt as unsafe as I feel in Boston.

Central to Kendall is a tiny slice even of Cambridge. I was talking about a place twenty miles away. So yes, it's a different topic. I'm sorry that you feel you're a victim where you are, but generalizing to the entire Boston area is utterly ridiculous.

I bike Central to Kendall every day, not exclusively. In weekends I bike all around Boston area pretty frequently. In particular I bike around Fenway very often since my friends live there.

Louisville, KY

- Entertainment - not much to do. There isn't a 'young urban professional' vibe that many cities have. No pro sports teams, etc.

- Jobs. Healthcare is the biggest employer, there's not a lot in tech. What does exist is mainly in the Windows world, which is not helpful for a linux guy. Lastly, the wages aren't good. I'm lucky to work remotely for a coastal company, but realize I'm a hostage of sorts as I won't be able to find similar work nearby.

- Weather. There's not much of a spring or fall anymore. It seems to go from freezing to scorching and back.

- Allergies. We are consistently ranked in the top 3 for allergies, and mine are terrible.

All in all, housing is cheap, people are nice, and there's some charm to the city. That said, I plan to finally leave next year for somewhere with better weather and job prospects.

Poland/Ukraine (back and forth)

Wages are crap for the people but in IT they are actually really good compared to the cost of living. (You can save a few thousand dollars a month - if you're a senior or contractor. Apartment rentals are $300-$500 a month). Its tougher for a woman to be treated seriously in the business. Especially in Ukraine.

Hard to buy good hardware - some stuff is just not available here. No amazon for easy shipping and no real alternative. Shipping from the west is expensive and takes time plus customs fees.

Society is racist and sexist.(the thing that hurts the most) Hate being around people at parties who spew the same jokes after they get tipsy. "Im not racist, but..." Casual racism everywhere. There is violence against minorities and social activists. Government doesnt seem to do much about it.

I live in a small town outside of Phoenix, AZ. I really like where I live. We have a cool small town feel, but only a 20 min drive to big city amenities. Other than 120deg summers (which I much prefer over snow), its pretty awesome. Sounds like you should relocate :)

I live in Orlando

1) People can't drive. There's too many old drivers who shouldn't be on the road, driving half the speed limit. Equally as many aggressively annoying drive. And tourists who are asking to get T-boned constantly.

2) There's only 1 rock climbing gym 30 mins north of downtown. Consequently its also very flat here. I like mountains

3) Constant construction, roads constantly closing, so navigating around the city is sometimes a PITA.

4) Homelessness situation has been getting worst over the years. Especially downtown

5) Your face is plastered all over AWS servers in Orlando, if you care about privacy this isn't the right city

6) You know, Florida. r/floridaman. It has some merit of truth to it

LA Weather is too good Women are too beautiful Beaches are too fun Hate it here

I lived in NYC for 27 years until 12/2017. You nailed it. I had to laugh at the furniture issue. SO MANY STORES in NYC sell giant-sized sofas etc. Who buys them? Not NYers, I guess.

I moved to Lower Merion, a 1st-ring suburb of Philadelphia. What sucks here:

1) can't walk anywhere. Some people can but we can't. Even when they can, it's not like they have choices of places, mostly.

2) Poor diversity. It's almost all white. It was sad to leave our son's great public school in NYC to come to a similarly great public school in PA, with 95% white classmates. But we are able to find small pockets of diversity--like in his karate class.

Toronto, Canada. 1) salaries are low compared to the US. 2) on a per capita basis, we don't seem to start/host great startups (lots of lame knockoffs of US ones, but, targeting Canada). 3) Public transit is terrible. 4) if you live outside of downtown and work downtown, you may lose two hours a day commuting. 5) compared to NYC, London, Paris or Berlin the cultural institutions seem not commensurate with our population (the largest art gallery, the AGO, has a grown man's toy boat collection in it!). 6) if you bike in the city you are almost killed on a monthly basis.

Sao Paulo, Brazil

- Violence: it is not uncommon to hear a friend that was robbed and it is very common to see news of drug trafficking, murder and other crimes: who lives here is usually afraid of violence;

- Public Healthcare is far from being good, although it is free to use (it is maintained by taxes), waiting list to see a doctor or to do an exam usually takes months. Whoever can afford a health insurance usually does;

- Public Transportation: although expensive, metro is reliable most of the time but buses aren't.

- Housing prices: it is very expensive to live near where you work (if you work on the major business districts);

Baltimore:

- Murder capital of the US. Although the murders are often gang-related, it's a proxy metric for the amount of violence and crime in the city, any many innocent people are affected.

- Very bad public school system.

- Very high property tax rate, especially for what you're getting (see: comment about public school system). At 2.2% the rate is higher than NYC and matches that of some of the nicest areas Maryland and New Jersey with superb school districts. It's a huge deterrent to purchasing a home.

There a lot of good things about Baltimore, too, but you didn't ask about them. :)

SF Bay Area:

1.) Traffic. I simply can't drive anywhere anymore between the hours of 2-8 PM.

2.) Zero sense of community. The only reason anyone lives here is to make money. Young people are incapable of existing here without a $100k+ job or living with their parents.

3.) Rent/housing goes without saying

4.) Random insane scary dangerous people walking the streets everywhere. This was a real weird one for someone coming from the midwest.

Beyond that it's not too bad. The best weather in the country, public transit isn't terrible (relative to the rest of the US), great food, and endless jobs.

I'm outside Washington DC (Reston, VA)... 1. Housing costs (not quite NYC or SF levels, but still high)

2. Traffic (pretty terrible, some areas rank worse than part of notoriously bad cities like NYC).

3. Weather - really a double-edged sword. We get 4 seasons, which is nice. But, summer can be pretty miserable (very humid). And winter is cold, but not cold enough for lots of snow (lots of icy mix instead).

But, really, we're an hour from the mountains, three hours from the beach, and employment is pretty good. So, I can't really complain.

San Francisco Bay Area: housing prices. BART could be improved.

Homelessness? It's pervasive

I'd include that under housing prices, but maybe there is more to it.

California taxes are quite high, too.

San Antonio, TX

1) Sprawl - Like most Texas cities homes are moving farther and farther from city center. You can ignore all this and live in the city which I do, but interacting with anyone not apart of the same mindset will take 30-45 mins drive. At least I can live near downtown for < 250k, apt ~800.

- This affect public transportation options. Expect a couple 1/2 hr hub to hub bus stops.

- Good food is limited and spread out

2) Entertainment - Not a huge music scene

3) It's hot.

4) Airport doesn't have many direct flights

Lisbon, Portugal:

1. House rents are really expensive (as in London/Amsterdam expensive) 2. The wages are low (completely the opposite of London/Amsterdam) 3. It's really hot today

Contrasts with: 1. Amazing food (oh god, the food!!) 2. The city is pretty 3. Smart, nice and educated people 4. Really nice weather (motorcycle with amazing weather 90% of the year)

Healthcare and a good education accessible to "everyone" is also a nice thing.

You forgot the environment. NYC is full of garbage, not enough parks, and the rivers are so dirty, you're not allowed to swim in them. It's noisy and full of stress.

That's why I moved to Hawaii and never looked back. Working remotely is a lot of fun, and is just healthier, both environment-wise and mentally.

and the Rats.

> That's why I moved to Hawaii and never looked back. Working remotely is a lot of fun, and is just healthier, both environment-wise and mentally.

I work from Hawaii remotely too. Downsides to here are entertainment and food. Flying back to LA periodically is helpful for that.

Are there any good tech meetups/groups there that you'd recommend? I currently live in NYC but will be working remotely from Hawaii from Dec 15-Jan 15.

I haven't been to this meetup in a couple years, but WetWare Wednesday is a good consistent one to meet up with local developers (on Oahu):

https://www.facebook.com/wetwarewednesday

Event details are usually posted here [1], along with any other tech related events going on in the islands.

[1] - http://www.techhui.com

My wife and some friends visited NYC recently. My wife was the only one that liked the city, albeit only to a degree.

I definitely think NYC is a great place to visit, but I could never see myself living there.

I love the public transport system but hate so many other aspects of life there.

Even many people who like visiting NYC a lot don't like living there. I'm definitely in this category. I'll take a long weekend just about any time of the year. But the one summer I lived there, I couldn't wait to leave after a couple of months.

I definitely think NYC is a great place to visit, but I could never see myself living there.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that about NYC from a visitor, I could afford to buy a place here :)

Seriously though, why do people only seem to say this about NYC? Does anyone say they enjoyed visiting Dallas but couldn’t see themselves living there?

I don't like the way of life there. Schlepping your groceries home in a tote bag is one example.

The same thing I like about the city, is the same thing I hate about the city, if that makes sense. Every time you step out the door, it's like an all day adventure. I'm not a very fit person, I don't like working out. So by the end of the day seeing the sights you are EXHAUSTED. Obviously if I lived there, you would not be in tourist mode seeing things daily and traveling to all the boroughs, but being active is very much a way of life there. I don't recall seeing too many fat New Yorkers. Perhaps because they are walking everywhere.

I want to have my cake and eat it too. Here I have the choice of getting in a car, the feeling of alot of space around me, but wish some areas were served better by public transport for those times that I may need it.

Schlepping your groceries home in a tote bag is one example.

Haven't done that in years. There are like 8 places that deliver groceries. I use Amazon Fresh.

So by the end of the day seeing the sights you are EXHAUSTED. As you said, irrelevant.

I don't recall seeing too many fat New Yorkers. Perhaps because they are walking everywhere.

Well...you're not wrong about this, but it's not a burden in daily life. It doesn't feel like you're working out all the time or something. It just feels like you're effortlessly about 20% lighter than the rest of America.

Everyone I've ever spoken with about real life in Hawaii has said: 1) Schools are not good, IE for those with kids 2) Food, gas, etc are expensive 3) Tensions with native Hawaiians, ie: "this is a locals-only beach" 4) Island madness is a real thing (desire to be somewhere not surrounded by water, experience an actual change in weather, etc)

Have you found that to not be the case?

>Everyone I've ever spoken with about real life in Hawaii has said: 1) Schools are not good, IE for those with kids 2) Food, gas, etc are expensive 3) Tensions with native Hawaiians, ie: "this is a locals-only beach" 4) Island madness is a real thing (desire to be somewhere not surrounded by water, experience an actual change in weather, etc)

From my 3 years living there I'd say this is spot on. It's pretty bi-modal though, people tend to love it or get completely fed up within a couple years. The key is being able to hop on a plane and go somewhere 2-3 times a year. If you can't afford that it gets miserable.

Yeah. A friend of mine moved there and does a combination of remote work and travel. She loves it.

1) Don't know didn't have a kid in Hawaii

2) Yes, these things are more expensive, but rent is cheaper for the same size apartment. In our case it was a lot cheaper. As a programmer though, you're in the top 5% anyway, it's all affordable.

3) You treat certain areas as native reservations, because that's what they essentially are. I did hear stories about obnoxious tourists getting a brick in their windshield. Personally, never had a problem with any of the natives, they were all nice to me. Though I do have an accent, maybe it helped.

4) No island madness for me, I love it. Best windsurfing in the world. Cleanest air in the world (besides maybe the polar caps). Cleanest water in the world. Cleanest beaches in the world. Amazing nature, lots of wildlife. No dangerous / poisonous animals or snakes in the jungle. Great climate, and you do get colder winters.

Which island(s) did you like? I've only spent time on Kauai and Maui. Each seems to have its own distinct culture such that it feels unfair to speak about them as a single entity.

South Bay, Los Angeles, cons:

Housing - expensive

Traffic - slow (405)

Walkability - moderate (10 minute walk to any restaurants, 20 to good->great options)

Otherwise, life is great here, especially for families. We're the forgotten beach cities of LA (low on tourism, high on suburbs) so if you love the beach but still want to go to LA a fair amount, it's great.

Vancouver

1) Rains a lot in the winter, have to be prepared for it

2) Lot's of problems with homeless and crazy people on the streets

3) House is very expensive (close to NY/SF/London)

4) Petty crime seems to be legal

That said, love living here !

Harrisburg/Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

Not very many opportunities for software development unless you want to work for government and/or do contracting.

Calgary here

Pros:

* young, positive population with drive & ambition

* outdoor & health focus

* expanding cultural diversity, western hospitality

* no sales tax

* Calgary Stampede

Cons:

* focus on Oil & Gas masks other opportunities, startups

* boring IT jobs

* rising cost of living

* the weather

* Calgary Stampede

In the last 5 years I've lived in Budapest, London, Dubai.

Each city is a trade-off.

BUDAPEST:

- low salary (not competitive) compared to other cities

- hard to achieve good savings rate b/c overall salary is not very high

- reasonable selection of tech startups/companies to work for (SAP, MS, MoSt, MSCI, IBM, LMI, Prezi, etc)

- most of these have secondary/engineering offices there, not the HQ

- top FAANG companies not available

- cost of living is low, so you will live very well off your salary

- if you can negotiate a western salary in BP, it'll be a good deal

- city life is excellent, best of the 3; if you're <35, you'll have a great time

- low cost flights across EU

- don't do a startup here, there's no local market/VC money (I tried)

- ignore the politics

- least diversity of the three cities

- weather is great

LONDON:

- highest salaries in EU, 2-3x compared to BP, 25-40% lower than in SF

- cost of living is very high (but not as high as SF)

- hard to achieve good savings rate with family

- good savings rate achievable if single, if you optimize

- excellent selection of companies to work for (FB, Google Deepmind, lots of others)

- city is very big and dense, 10M people

- lots of commuting, like sardines if you take the tube (solution: go at 10am, leave at 6pm)

- excellent culture (eg. museums are free entry)

- Brexit is unclear

- lots of diversity

- weather not so nice

DUBAI:

- high salaries, income is not taxed at all

- very high standard of living, at a reasonable cost of living (cheap compared to salaries)

- can live very comfortably (nice car, wide roads, best food, shopping)

- outstanding savings rate achievable

- get very hot (40-50C in the summer), nothing to do, have to be inside

- weather and beach is perfect in the winter at 25C, when it's freezing in Europe

- lots of expats

- a lot less tech companies to work for than in the other 2 cities

- top FAANG companies not available

- laws, customs, rights, social structure very different than in Europe/US, can be uncomfortable/frustrating

- lots of diversity

Vancovuer: Rain, rain, and more rain!

San Francisco:

1.) Traffic

- The traffic congestion levels are bad, it's normal to encounter traffic jams all the way to Santa Rosa or Sacramento.

- Uber and Lyft, while convenient it's getting to an excessive level.

2.) Attitude

- People in general have more anxiety and aggression than they used to. I think it's related to how unaffordable everything has become, everyone is "trying to make it" and few can.

- Compromise, there's a lack of compromise in The City. There's the "I'm from here so I do things my way", to "This city could be more efficient and my way makes more sense". Overall there is an abundance of negativity and not much compromise on both sides.

4.) Culture

- Older generations are still in the area but they're quickly leaving. Local manufacturing businesses are selling off and the older generations are going away. South San Francisco is being transformed at an accelerated rate. I expect the Trump Tariffs to increase this rate (know small business owners already impacted by them).

- Young people in The City have different backgrounds, beliefs, and appearances but their primary focus is usually money and "trying to make it". Related to housing issues and lack of compromise.

5.) Homelessness

- I've always respected San Francisco for being a safe haven for people unable to adjust to a "normal" society. It's been a hub for rebellion, change, and misfits. As prices rise and the rebellious culture erodes we've seen an increase in homelessness and drug addiction. No surprise, it's hard to transition to "hyper-capitalistic" San Francisco. Most people making six figures have a hard time living here.

5.) Lack of emergency awareness

- The City is going to be in a lot of trouble during the next big earthquake. Do you know where your neighborhood meeting points are in case of an emergency? Gas shut off? Have emergency food provisions and water? There are less than 70 fire engines in this city. When you call 911 no one is going to respond when the "Big One" hits.

There are problems but they can be solved, I think the biggest issue is lack community discussion and compromise.

The other humans in this city are awful

philly

Shanghai.

- Cardboard-thin walls, single-bedroom, single-bathroom (no tub) apartment in a crumbling dirty building looking out at your neighbor's drying red underpants can easily run you US$1-1.5mm.

- Renovation and construction noise, dust, inconvenience everywhere, all the time, 24/7/365. If the road was paved last year, let's re-pave it again this year! Anything goes to lower the unemployment rate in the harmonious society! Drilling can easily start at 6 am and go till 10 pm, and construction outside is allowed to bang 24h. The rule of thumb: if no neighbors are renovating this week, someone will next week.

- Services are cheap but shitty. Call a plumber to fix your leaking pipes and he will wrap it in some tape while chain-smoking and making a mess of your floor. Most museums are so bad it's worth to go just for the laughs. Libraries freshest books are from 90-s and maybe a few from 00-s. Nothing you can do at the bank that will take less than 1 hour, including changing the currency.

- Allegedly "the food is great", but Shanghai is a melting pot of China, and almost everything is much, much better at the origin. Shanghainese food is super sweet and greasy in a bad way. Cheap food places and street food is disappearing at an alarming rate, almost nothing is left. Food quality is below average, food service is bad. Groceries are cheap, but most cheap vegetables have no taste at all.

- The largest subway in the world, the largest bus network in the world, and still it can be extremely congested, rude and slow. E.g. when subway trains stop, the machinist exits, checks if everything is "okay", and then presses a button to open the doors..? You have to x-ray your stuff when entering the subway, most people just ignore it, but it adds another layer of stress. People stampede for seats after the doors open. The street traffic is mad, it's better a bit compared to 3-rd tier China cities, but it's still mad mad mad by any Western standard.

- The airports are dark and stinky. When you exit you're immediately attacked by "taxi, sir" touts that will scam you, all in a plain sight of a "policeman". However, Shanghai is very well connected with the rest of China by air and by bullet trains.

- Public hospitals are very efficient and cheap, but not for the faint of heart. A single doctor can process 100-150 people in the morning shift, you have 3-5 minutes and they don't remember you or anything, there is no privacy and no "care". They will fix you up and send you home. Overprescription is rampant. Also, everything is upfront: you can call an ambulance, come to the hospital and 1st thing is to pay, if you don't pay they will leave you to die in the lobby (that's why so many traffic victims end up dead: no money on them and they're unconscious so you can't ask for a relative).

- Air quality in winter is extremely bad.

- No nature at all within 3-4 hours drive.

Bangalore, India

- Traffic : The traffic situation in Bangalore has spiraled out of control over the last decade or so. IT has brought with it loads of people, and the lack of a decent intra-city transportation system, coupled with roads which were never designed to handle heavy traffic, and a total lack of respect for traffic laws (which is common across India TBH) have led to the traffic being so bad that some of the worst affected junctions actually have their own parody Twitter handles [1][2]. The metro system is helping a little, but for most parts of the city, own vehicles/Uber are still the only options (Unless you want to take the bus, which almost always involves switching buses. Also, many routes have buses which are old enough to be considered historic artifacts instead of a means of transport)

- Bad Urban Planning: This is actually responsible of traffic as well, but this point is more of an extension. Bangalore has arguably the worst urban planning for any major city in India. Garbage segregation is still not done in many places, Real estate growth has been thoughtless leading to lakes disappearing and the water table not getting replenished. It's been a cash grab in the truest sense and no doubt made conniving, corrupt politicians and the land mafia very rich. The sad part if places like Whitefield, which were outskirts of Bangalore and were developed SPECIFICALLY for people coming into industries are designed just as badly, if not worse, leading to massive problems across the board. Bangalore has lakes which are LITERALLY on fire and noone seems to care [3]. Studies say Bangalore will be practically unlivable soon [4], and sadly, it looks like government/public apathy is only getting us there sooner.

- Traffic : Yes it's bad enough to be mentioned twice.

+ Besides this, Bangalore is great! Tech opportunities are aplenty, both for employees and founders. VC capital is readily available and the internet market in India is rapidly expanding so market-creating applications are in high demand. Employees get higher salaries here than in most parts of the country and over the last decade, thanks to some big exits, equity has come to mean more than just paper money. The weather is great almost through the year (Goldilocks zone). Housing is costly and the real estate market is frothy, but renting is relatively cheap. Dining out options are aplenty for all price ranges. And since a big percentage of the population are here from a different part of the country/world, there's very little "Outsider feeling" and the city ends up as a cultural hotpot (Of course, that means Bangalore does not celebrate one major festival like other cities in India, but instead celebrates a hundred festivals with much less fanfare).

[1] https://twitter.com/silk_board

[2] https://twitter.com/SonyWorldJn

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W84vziBNp-w

[4] https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/27081...

I no longer live in the UK, but it's the country I have the most experience with. Here's what sucks:

1) Overpopulation. Especially in England, especially in Southern England. One of the highest population densities in the world, and it really shows on the roads, trains and in how compact everything gets built. (Unlike the Netherlands which has similar population density, there are far fewer people on bicycles due to worse infrastructure.)

2) Unwise immigration policy that has ruined many of the most affordable parts of cities that would otherwise be desirable places for young people to live.

3) Stagnant and outdated culture. It's kinda pathetic in the 21st century that there's still a monarchy and unelected House of Lords. And that people actually defend it on the basis of "tourism". Also, the FPTP electoral system for the House of Commons creates an environment in which only majority/conservative viewpoints get represented politically. In the UK I felt like the political system was run by older generations for their own benefit only; there is very little of a culture in the UK of caring about or investing in the young. The tuition fees debacable is only the icing on the cake of this cultural tendency which runs pretty deep.

4) Government services such as healthcare and education vary enormously in quality from region to region, and the quality is usually pretty poor by international standards. The wealthy get private health insurance and send their children to private schools, which aren't an option for those not able or interested in paying twice.

5) Housing prices. Even engineers can't buy houses in the South. Also, a lot of the housing stock is fairly old.

6) Surveillance state and general unwarranted cultural paranoia. CCTV capital of the world.

7) Failed welfare state (there are A LOT of homeless, and a big underclass population) and failed labour movement (the only jobs which have unions are public sector jobs).

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