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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

You could say this of most metros. The most glaring is Boston, which is an international hub for tech education but isn't really competitive with the cities you list, at least relative to its educational reputation.

When I think of NYC, SF, Austin, Seattle, I think of cities with robust arts/culture/dining/entertainment, accessibility (public transit) and enough professional basis to allow job mobility. These things entice younger people to congregate.

There are other metros that have great education and in particular tech education (Raleigh/Durham, Pittsburgh, Chicago) but don't tend to build up tech industries.

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Austin doesn’t fill a single one of those criteria for what it’s worth.

I have never lived somewhere with less public transportation, art & culture, dining, and entertainment options than Austin, Texas.

And I’ve spent my entire life in the American south. Houston for example of all places, does twice as much on all of those qualities!

> art & culture, dining, and entertainment options than Austin, Texas.

Buh? I was there less than 2 years but this is a baffling statement to me.

edit: except public transportation point.

Houston is ~5x the size of Austin. Bigger cities have more options.

Houston is also far more diverse, which directly impacts art, culture, and dining specifically.

Much of the same about art, culture, and dining also applies to Dallas.

It’s always surprising to folks, but true, that Houston has a wealth of arts/culture/dining, and even a modicum of public transit (the metro rail, heh). Entertainment could be better, but the rest blow Austin out of the water!

As a transplant to Houston, I will never understand why Austin became a tech center and Houston has not. There is a lot of raw tech talent here, incubators, etc. No matter what policies are in place or what investments are made, it never seems to take hold.

As someone who's spent time in both Austin and Houston, I'd agree with the sentiment that Houston is pretty objectively a much better place to live. These phenomena are probably more driven by superficial appearances, though, and that's where Austin has always had an edge. It's hilly, it's perceived as a college town, and on the surface it has a lot of access to nature. It looks better on the surface than Houston to an observer who hasn't lived in both places. Really, it's just like the Bay Area -- it looks good, but it actually is a very rough and empty place to live for most folks.

A lot of this stuff is just sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

I think a huge element has to be the success of SxSW. That has given a lot of people the personal positive exposure to Austin that makes them think moving there is plausible.

Wouldn't surprise me, only because the Houston metro is >3x bigger than Austin

I'm leaving Austin for the West Coast.

Not enough outdoor activities here. The amount of hiking trails is great for Texas. But not at the national scale or when compared to the West Coast & northern Rockies.

Texas is mostly private land, so there just aren't any greenbelts (that I know of, within 2 hours of Austin) where you can hike for 10-40 miles one way.

I'm strongly leaning towards Washington for that reason-- Huge "parks" (more like "wilderness zones") for hiking, as well as ocean kayaking, ocean sailing, and ocean fishing.

It's a cheap flight to Alaska from there. And WA is the only contiguous west coast state without state income tax.

Washington has a ton of cool outdoors stuff. Just be ready to have maybe max a couple months of great weather per year to enjoy it (unless you don't mind overcast and drizzle, or forest fire smoke in summer). Also competing with the other 4+ million people in Seattle metro to get it in out there. Amazing diversity of things to do though.

Great point. I suppose it depends on the location-- west of the mountains, in the mountains, or east of the mountains.

With remote work, and an off-grid equipped van, I imagine someone who works from a computer can explore a large swath of the state, and nearby states, to find the right mix of weather and activities.

That said, they'd still likely be based in the Seattle area, and would largely remain subject to its weather conditions.

This is somewhat true, but after picking up skiing, I look forward to the winter weather in Seattle more than I ever did before.

It was a huge game changer for me personally - it took a while to pick up, but now I actually look forward to the months of December to March (sometimes April) in Seattle, because it means I'm 45 minutes away from good skiing, and a couple hours away from great skiing.

Of course, it's not a spot for everyone, but even if you just do cross-country skiing or snowshoeing, it's totally possible to get "great" weather in the winter here.

I flew to Austin back in 2013, spent a week looking at places and checking out hiking areas and running. I loved the food/friendly people but that was about all. For me it was a dealbreaker on lack of trails/wilderness, and also the very high humidity there. In addition housing was expensive as I looked at a few condos and they were roughly the same cost as the one I used to own in San Jose.

WA seems very nice, the no state tax thing basically means a free mortgage payment if you are making good money in tech(not paying CA taxes)

I haven't been to Austin but I've only ever heard good things about it's art & culture, dining, and entertainment.

Bostons a life sciences hub and basically the only game in town for serious bioengineering. Different ballgame compared to the kind of tech that gets talked about on HN usually which is basically B2B or B2C SaaS.

There is plenty of biotech HQ'd in the Bay Area to seriously compete with Boston as the #1 spot: 10x Genomics, Guardant Health, Twist, Natera, CareDx, Verily, Invitae, Nevro, Berkeley Lights, Genentech, PacBio, etc.

Austin and Seattle are not NYC or SF, and I'm having a hard time seeing how either of them would beat Atlanta for any of those things you mention (I guess they ALL suck at public transit, but I don't see how Seattle sucks less... Austin sucks more!), except they have more first-class tech companies as an accident of history.

I think we're seeing a trickle down from SF -> NYC -> Seattle and now Austin.

I'd expect this to continue under normal conditions. Companies diving into a new city and trying to foster these conditions in the cheaper costs of a new city. But the pandemic really kicked WFH into overdrive and there are just so many companies abandoning the scope of physical presences.

Thats a really good point. Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburg meet the research university criteria. Perhaps a tech center needs temperate weather (hard to convince a new grad to move to Pittsburg vs moving to Austin of Bay Area)? In that case, Atlanta has the weather going for it.

The humidity knocks it down a few notches though, in my opinion.

Boston is a major tech hub.

I mentioned this in a different comment. Its a major tech hub, but not in a way that would be apparent to your average HN software dev. Boston/Cambridge is THE bioengineering hub of the US.

Yeah. SV gets defined mostly as the hub for the sort of tech that it's the hub for. Which is more than a bit self-referential.

To be fair, SV is also a biotech hub.

As a developer in Chicago, I think it's because the finance sector sucks up a lot of the talent, and it's less known for marquee non-finance companies. The city has struggled to promote our tech scene.

The company I work for participates in UIUC's City Scholars program[0]. If you work for a company in Chicago, push for them to participate. It introduces the students to Chicago's tech scene.

0: https://cityscholars.engineering.illinois.edu/

To add to your point, I was made aware of a tech role at a financial firm in downtown Chicago (dev, infra, and infosec experience required); $300k-$400k total comp. Can't compete against that if you're in Chicago and only sourcing Chicago talent.

Citadel is basically a vacuum cleaner for top-end talent.

google is the same.

we all win with the services and products these companies offer, and that's why they can do that.

I hate weather in the southeast generally. I'll take a northern city hands down.

Pittsburgh has an -h at the end.

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