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Comment by PerfectElement | Hacker News Reader

It depends on what you like to do. Countryside living is appealing to many people.

Except then your best friend moves to San Fransisco and now you have no friends, so you move to San Fransisco and then you live in San Fransisco (I'm not bitter or anything....) :(

Technologists are probably not typically the ones that find it appealing.

On the contrary, most of my peers are either living in the country on their own land or saving to do so. Especially if it's within driving distance of a city.

The Bay Area is something on an exception in that you really can't easily drive out to reasonably priced exurban/rural housing quickly enough to go into the city for an evening. With many other popular cities, an hour outside the city can get you into the countryside (and many employers are well outside the city in any case).

That’s anecdotal, but I’m willing to bet the typical technologist is not like your peers.

As is your claim. What is the typical technologist? My peers, along with me, live outside of one of the biggest cities in the Midwest, and work remotely or commute to and from. I would consider us part of the prevailing technological culture.

True. We need real data to say otherwise, but we already know most techies live in cities anyways, you can claim that is not within their desire and they would like your lifestyle better, but I would claim it is as they want.

I would claim that the majority population of techies probably do desire to live in cities and hubs in which there are large communities of other techies, you're right. My point is just that there is also a sizable community of people who work in tech who also enjoy living outside the city, and can still enjoy a city lifestyle from time to time as well.

I often notice that this sizable community is brushed to the wayside because they aren't the in-crowd of city-based IT enthusiasts, with their regions being considered "flyover" and their opinions devalued. Yet still, in small towns, we do have Slack and hackerspaces and lots of professional development, just like the cities.

Plenty of introverts who like building things (the stereotypical technologist) are into it.

More income savings to spend on new gadgets, space to build things (plus No HOAs to say you can't run a business or put up a big antenna on your property), and relative peace and quiet in your environment are quite appealing. I know some brilliant technologists who work remote and wouldn't trade their life-style for any salary in a big city. I'm a city-lover myself, but easily understand the appeal of working in tech while living in the country.

What do you think is so special about technologists that they uniquely prefer urban (or suburban) living?

It really isn’t a mystery: they like tech obviously, they probably went to a big university with lots of diversity and eat out options, they feel a strong need to network. All hint toward city living rather than country side living.

Also, many techies in the USA aren’t even Americans, they are even less likely to be craving for the countryside lifestyle.

I think you're projecting your preferences and those of your circle. The significant majority of the people I work with at a fairly large tech company live in exurbs/suburbs/country. Relatively few live in the nearby major city.

None of that is countryside or even small town America.

You can define terms however you like but I do live in a town with a population of about 7,000 people and together with my two neighbors we're on about 100 acres adjacent to town forest. Sure, it's not some remote small town where you have to drive 3 hours to get to the nearest Walmart but it's not exactly urban--at least the way most people use the term--either.

There's a pretty broad continuum between living/working in a city where you can walk to everything and living somewhere that's hours from "civilization."

Yes, but you’ve just described about half of the Bay Area, or West Chester county, or even Queens (let alone Long Island).

It describes a lot of places. If someone argues that tech people tend to prefer the greater metro areas (combined statistical areas) of large cities rather than truly rural areas (as defined by the census), I don't think there's much argument. Of course, by the numbers, so does a significant majority of the US population.

But that's a lot different from people arguing that tech people like big cities specifically, as that tends to suggest that they can walk to coffee shops, take public transit to work, etc. which does not describe the bulk of the space in greater metro areas.

The original comment I replied to:

> It depends on what you like to do. Countryside living is appealing to many people.

My reply:

> Technologists are probably not typically the ones that find it appealing.

Your reply to that:

> What do you think is so special about technologists that they uniquely prefer urban (or suburban) living? reply

Putting your last reply in the context of the entire reply chain, I'm confused about what you think we are arguing about?

I think we were just using terms differently. "Countryside" to me includes everything from really rural to lots of trees and space while still being within the general sphere of a major metro. Quite a few people in tech like the latter. Not so many the former.

Why do you say non-Americans are less likely to crave countryside lifestyle? As an EU developer, that's not been my experience at all; small town developers get dragged to our bigger cities for the jobs, not because they prefer the life. Some have pretty long commutes just so they can keep living in a non-urban area.

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