What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)
cdixon.org
cdixon.org
> You can rent a decent place in a cool part of town on a typical startup salary.
"Decent" and "typical" are open for interpretation, but I can tell that for most interpreters I know the expression above evaluates to False. :)
Yes, you can afford a place in Manhattan on an engineer's salary. But it's going to be too small for a family, and if you want a bigger place you're going to need to do a long commute. Compare that with other cities where a well-paid software engineer is at the top end of the income ladder and can rent out a full house for what they'd pay for a 2-bedroom in NY.
(And yes, it's even a lot more expensive than SF. I've looked at apartments in both cities - while rents in SF are comparable to New York, you're still generally getting a much larger place for the same price. That matters if you have kids.)
Brooklyn and Queens are nice (if not that much cheaper for the areas near Manhattan.) But if working in New York means you have to live 40 mins outside of Manhattan, or in Hoboken / NJ, what's the point of being in NY? Might as well be in Denver with a 4000 sq ft house.
It's unlikely that NY rents are going to drop a lot. If startups in NY want to attract more top talent, they're going to have to pay significantly more than startups in cheaper locales.
Certainly, if you're intent on living in the city, you'll pay a premium.
Great parties, concert venues, cafes, restaurants, parks, bars, and lots and lots of super talented people ranging from musicians in Williamsburg to artists in Bushwick. NYC is more than just Manhattan. It's also easier to bike around.
It's like thinking that the Bay Area is just San Francisco and that there is no reason to live in the BA if you don't go to SF.
And at least for software engineers, you probably _do_ make more in SF than NY, since it's a much more competitive job market for hiring a good software engineer. Just look at the wars that have been going on between FB and Google over hiring top talent. There's still nothing like that in NY.
My rent is probably about 30% cheaper than the equivalent place in Manhattan, and that's savings of about $475 a month, which is nothing to scoff at.
If you fan out to the metro area, Manhattan falls to less than 9%. Do some of those people wake up some mornings wondering "what's the point", sure, but I promise you (or more specifically: other readers who haven't lived here) most don't.
I've done a lot of hiring to companies both in NY and in other cities, and the "where will my kids play and where will they go to school" is a standard issue for anyone you're hiring over 30. The answer in New York is generally "somewhere a lot less nice than they would if you lived elsewhere."
There's little denying that NY rents / housing prices are way out of line with average income at this point. I've heard bankers making $500K complain that they have to move to upstate to get a decent sized house.
I see saying NYC needs some extremely successful startups, more engineers, or more product designers as well intentioned, but it's like saying mice need more bells on cats. Everybody agrees, but no one knows how to make it happen.
Also, Parsons has a design and technology program like NYU's ITP. I've taught at both and they're both excellent. There may be other programs. I've worked with two Cooper Union alumni (one artist-turned-graphic-designer and one engineer) and both were among the best people I've worked with.
I can't speak to programming/engineering jobs, but there's plenty of design jobs from non-startups. Almost every agency (including tiny ones) are based or have an office in NY. DUMBO has a ton of digital agencies. Motion graphics firms are centralized in Manhattan or in LA. Small ones can be found south of 14th or in Brooklyn. Easily the best city in the U.S. for design jobs.
While I don't know what the true "typical" start up salary in NYC, I'll give you my experience: I interviewed with 7 start ups, and 6 of the 7 were offering a nice chunk of equity and salaries over $100,000. If you can't live in NYC on 100k, you're doing something very wrong.
And, great article!
Anyway, my impression is that the NY startup scene consists of a lot of high-profile startups. Could someone explain to me why these (or any other) startups should aspire to be PayPal-esque, aside from being absurdly successful?
We then moved to our own office in Chelsea and the Internet is bad here, as we use Verizon's second best connection. Depending upon the location of your office or where you work in manhattan, you may have time warner, verizon, optimum, etc. and high speed Internet is usually a crapshoot.
I also know for a fact that many unassuming buildings have gigabit ethernet drops that connect directly or semi-directly to 60 Hudson or 111 8th Ave. Probably wouldn't be able to get access without some serious contacts, though.
Most of the co-working spaces I've worked out of have horribly inept people in charge of their network allocation. They use older WiFi routers that have trouble with packet collisions. They provision a 768k DSL line to serve 20 coworking spots.
As recently as two weeks ago, about 16 people overloaded the internet at a coworking space I was visiting. Someone else (not affiliated with the space; the space employee didn't know how to do this) mentioned that they'd initiated a dhcp reset and a couple minutes later everything was back. When I asked him how he knew the router password, he said: "Oh.. they were just using the factory defaults." TBH, I wouldn't want to conduct business over a wifi network whose router was using the default admin password.
http://www.cogentco.com/index.php?continent=North+America...
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/bonus-season-for-b...
The final amount that was actually spent is subject to a lot of interpretation, but it's clearly in the nine-figure range.
There's a lot more here than finance, if you know where to look.