The Great Decentralization? Geographic shifts and where tech talent is moving
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I guess it's probably unrealistic to expect P-values in a blog post, though...
I’m skeptical of the rest of the analysis if simple things like that are not considered.
But, in the middle of the day - I still see empty offices all across town. At some point something is going to give.
It makes me more considerate that there is a housing crisis, simply because Florida does not have enough diversity of industry - it's very hospitality, real estate, entertainment and military driven even though the state and people have tried to diversify into tech and manufacturing - but the pay is quite low when comparing to other cities.
Growing up in FL in the late 00's also had me see people buy condos that went one year fro 35k, then to 150k, then left empty and then sold for 25k in a period of 5 years. Houses, similar.
(a) they not beholden to any specific corporation and its hierarchy (b) they get tax write offs (c) they get to work on projects that excite them (d) they stay current with skills rather than stagnate (d) and other advantages I can’t think of right now :)
And for consultants, being remote is the norm and corps don’t question it much.
An independent consultant can make bank, but for many legacy companies - the consultant is the only one they can pressure into working hard.
Both cities are small, between 50,000 and 75,000 population (2020 census), and are about an hour's drive away from the nearest larger city (Joplin is near Springfield, St. Joseph is near Kansas City, and it would take 3 hours to drive from Kansas City to Springfield.)
In terms of Midwest tech hubs,the ones nearest to me are Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska (3.5 hour drive from Kansas City).
If I were to guess, I would say you could cause this apparent shift in traffic simply by shifting a few corporate VPN exit points from several large companies in the region from St. Joseph, Missouri to Joplin, Missouri.
I use it a lot for my secondary languages, but when writing a well-documented language/framework like C# .NET, I never use it. The Microsoft docs cover everything.
I thought Google didn't even use VPNs.
I am also shocked that Portland is growing. I went to Portland this year recently, it is the worst city in the country I have been to. 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, massive homelessness crisis.
Elmira/Corning dropping is kind of interesting. Since Corning is entirely propped up by Corning Glass.
Patently untrue. Portland is booming.
Yeah, I found that to be an odd "top 10" as well. My guess is that they are the top 10 US metro areas from which Stack Overflow traffic originates? It'd be nice if we didn't have to guess though.
I had the opposite response, but I guess I've been in San Francisco. All the locals were scared of downtown. Yes, it was boarded up. But it was safe. One homeless guy was being talked to by a cop because he was yelling. (They were all sitting cross legged on a corner. Super non-confrontational.) They left and then he left (not yelling). I don't think you could get a San Francisco cop's attention if a homeless person were flinging things at you.
This statement reminds me of "Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it's too crowded".
I moved back to PDX up from San Francisco in 2021 to try to settle in a fun place where I could buy a home and it was just a disaster. The stories people tell are both exaggerated and vastly understated.
I’ve since left, and I hope the best for the people there.
A few random ones the top of my head:
* Baker City, Oregon: near a small ski area, mountains, sunnier and nicer than western Oregon.
* Silver City, New Mexico: (very) small college town next to the national forest. Great climate because it's far south, but at enough altitude that it's not miserably hot in the summer compared, to, say, Phoenix.
Some concentration is good but it’s way over saturated. That said real estate is still bonkers in Seattle (and everywhere really) so even with a huge out flow it isn’t even making a dent in affordability.
San Francisco’s main problems stem from government mismanagement of the city, and also the state with respect to housing.
Notice how New York built things like Grand Central Station, and San Francisco/California can barely build a single rail line, can’t keep up with homeless populations or defend it’s citizens? What great buildings were built in San Francisco? The Golden Gate Bridge and…? And with all the wealth there? That’s mismanagement. Where is San Francisco’s vision? It’s audacity? It’s splendor? The roads should have been paved with gold with all of the wealth that it has and continues to generate. I don’t see it anywhere.
I still live near enough to San Francisco / San Jose that I can go to the office if needed once every few weeks -- but far enough away that I have a much better quality of like (Santa Cruz). I can't help but think I am not alone in that.
Especially considering the fact that highly sought out engs end up spending 90% of their time in meetings with teams across the globe, they're much more likely to continue being remote.
The flexibility side is for Riviera's (witch in some countries might be called cities, or at least being inside some cities) where people is "a bit dense" but not too much, where we have single-family homes with some ground around (let's say 1k-2km² (~10k-20k ft²) land per single one/two stairs home to have room for future changes) mixed with workspace (small buildings for various activities) and few "more dense" areas for specific activities (hospitals, schools, military/gov buildings, airports, harbors, ...) + some local districts (large enterprises, mining, manufacturing etc).
For a certain amount of decades we have pushed the efficiency model, now perhaps 'efficiency' have reached a level where fragility and absence of flexibility is too much so we shift toward 'resilience' witch happen to be given by well-crafted flexibility.
The point is: will it be exaggerated as we have exaggerated before? Or will it be too little too late? Or the right amount? Some theorist have crafted a "small-medium city" hypothetical future (UN New Urban Agenda), I have many doubt on it but anyway we need both a certain density for economy of scale and sociability and flexibility to evolve in a changing world. My personal choice is a middle ground but still outside urban area to have room to evolve while being near-enough to urban area to avoid being completely "out of civility", I suspect not so much but not so little others have done similar choices. Not much "talented" but just those who can and care about their future. Future air mobility might arrive in less than a decade bridging the gap between actual-city density and actual riviera density or to have the best of both world in a spread model.
That's a dream, a sci-fi one, so something with some valid and solid bases behind, just in need to be drawn more and implemented :-)
They were all unhappy growing up in a town where there's nothing to do but opioids and where being LGBTQ+ or anything other than an evangelical protestant would get you ostracized by the community at best or violently assaulted at worst. Getting a good job was just their method of getting the hell out of that environment.
For example, Vegas, Cincinnati, and Columbus are metro areas home to 2+ million people, while Elmeria is the 10th smallest American metro area listed wikipedia with just 83k people, literally a rounding error compared to the others.
I expect family is a big factor in wwhere people move, as in people are moving to have some proximity with their extended families. It's just that remote work has allowed this to happen.
But here's another potential factor: the Trump tax "cuts" did three big things to individuals, which is particularly relevant in tech:
1. Raised taxes in the $200k to $500k tax bracket;
2. Ended the longstanding SALT deducation (mostly); and
3. Any personal income tax cuts (unlike the corporate tax cuts) are temporary and are slowly being rolled back.
So consider a software engineer with TC of $500k in CA or NY. You're paying close to 10% of your income in state income taxes and might be paying $30k in property taxes. In addition to losing $80k in taxes, you no longer get a Federal deduction of 33% for those taxes so you can be losing more than 20% of your income to state and local taxes.
Now that same engineer moves to, say, Nevada. State income tax is gone and property taxes are low (because of casinos) so your net pay could be almost $100k higher.
Put another way: that means working in CA for 5 years will net you the same money as working in NV for 4.
The Northeast has already had a longstanding trend of migration to the Sun Belt, so much so that NY lost a congressional seat in apportionment from the 2020 census while Florida gained 1 and Texas gained 2. For non-US people, every 10 years there's a census and based on the results the 435 Congressional seats are distributed. If a state gains or loses enough population they can gain or lose (respectively) Congessional seats. It's actually a big deal.
I'm happy people have the option of living outside a few big urban centers. Some locals are mad at skyrocketing real estate prices. The biggest reason for this is and overall demand shock but migration doesn't help. Still, it's more high-paying jobs in those economies.
I'm far from impressed. The housing market is so inaccessible that we had to rent a house about 1 hour commute from the office. I have hardly visited the offices a handful of times since we moved, and every time there is maybe 1 or 2 people there. Also this spring seems to be one of the wettest and coldest in recent memory.
So high prices, dreadful weather and no value from visiting the office is making us very seriously consider moving to a southern state. I have already brought this up and my manager is ok with me going fully remote and coming to the office on an as-needed basis. For anyone who has no roots or reason to stay here sounds like a no brainer.
In my case I've been leaning hard into remote work for about 15 years now. Mostly for quality of life/access to nature. I've made real sacrifices to make that happen, but I'm glad to see the rest of the IT world is coming around to embracing us remote devs. It's still an uphill battle in many cases though.
I don't think you'll ever see me in a big city again, and I don't think I'm alone.
Though if the winter isn't a dealbreaker, the summer makes up for it by being absolutely gorgeous for a few months almost straight, at least aside from wildfire smoke and a handful of days of unbearable heat.
Personally I come from a much colder climate than the PNW so I enjoy how mild and lush it is all year. And I find rain to be cozy.
Personally, I find the amount of violence and crime (all-time high for road rage shootings this year) is more demoralizing than the weather.
Rain in and of itself isn't bad if it's balanced out with sun and warmth.
Every city in the UK has less sunshine than Seattle, for instance.
In Vancouver I think it was a day in early May that was the coldest on record with the temperature not even reaching 10 degrees celsius.
I've also been interested in North Carolina for a little while. Much more affordable (compared to PNW), and has some really nice areas (Asheville, Raleigh/Durham). But transportation is a bit more limited.
Honestly unless OP goes to California, where the housing situation is much worse, or middle of nowhere like Nevada, they're going to be much wetter (albeit in the Summer and not Winter/Spring) in most of the south
A lot of the drier parts of California, if you aren't tied to the LA Basin because you need local work, don't have as much of a housing problem, though. (That's also true of a lot of the wetter parts that you might chose to live in, if you aren't dependent on local work, too., though the wetter places that's true of often aren't the best places for the affordable, reliable high-speed internet you want for remote work.)
If you’ve got a Seattle tech salary, and want a dry location, you can find plenty of places in California where you can live like a king. Though I suspect you could as well or better, in that regard just by moving to Eastern Washington instead of Seattle.
US States are often neither climatically nor economically homogenous.
Expensive housing as well, maybe not terrible compared to some places, though. Moving outside the perimeter doesn't help on the traffic front either.
The south in general seems like a stable job market and place to buy a house for the decades ahead. However, it seems like Atlanta shifted from being a fast growing area to moderate growth a while ago.
The lower classes are abused here as well and classes do exist but it's probably better being poor in the US than being poor in most parts of the world. If nothing else you have access to emergency rooms and food, although you may not have real housing.
This is clearly in contrast to people coming from poverty in say Sri Lanka where even the worst here are often doing better in terms of human rights, access to ERs, access to shelters, etc.
But one thing is clear: Last year I saved more money than I made in my last year in Europe. And that’s while paying rent in downtown SF
To give a more surprising comparison - my country’s entire GDP fits into Apple's quarterly profits. The pie is large here.
Everyone benefits from higher GDP. Yes the rich benefit more, but I promise you that everyone being equally destitute is no walk in the park either.
Reading about the economic histories of South America, China, Eastern Europe, and Africa are great places to learn more about how low GDP is terrible for everyone involved.
"The stock market isn't the economy" goes both ways.
If you're Average Joe looking to start a family, a middling job and no assets or inheritance to your name, it's pretty mediocre (though some would argue "well you could learn programming").
It should also be noted that very few people immigrate even among people who have "plausible" paths to it. I don't think it's fair to draw much conclusion about the whole society from immigration flows.
Most anecdotes I read are either "I earn 200k+ and work 40 hours", "My job is my life and I do great love the American Dream" or "I can barely make rent and work 60 hours a day". I don't doubt average people survive but it sure would be nice to get an idea what "average" actually entails across an entire year. Especially someone who doesn't have a house or an inheritance on their name.
Median family will have 1 child, earn $80K/year, pay <20% income taxes, live in 2400 sqft house, own two 12 year old cars and commute 1 hour/day to work. Will have ~15 vacation and another 10 days of paid holidays per year.
a) Higher salary
b) Better career opportunities
c) An idealized view of the American society
a) is easiest. I more than doubled my income by moving here. If I jumped companies (I can't due to visa) I could easily expect a 50%-100% bump. That's nothing to scoff at. Even accounting for increased cost of living, we are talking about life changing amounts of money. Also it's impossible to not feel bad when you know that the junior eng. you are coaching due to perf issues makes more money than you, just because he lives in the US and you don't.
b) is more subtle. I always had the perception that people at the main offices got better opportunities and faster promos than people at satellite offices. Other's have echoed these feelings, but I've never seen data. Outside the company, it is undeniable the job market is bigger and hotter here. Even the largest EU tech hubs don't come close.
c) is the lousiest one. I haven't had much chance to experience it yet so I don't have much of an opinion. I'd say though that having lived in 5 different countries, there are other places with a culture that resonates with me. So yes, USA might be better than my home country, but there are alternatives.
Now due to Covid points a) and b) are becoming less important. Salaries in the EU have gone up, and with mostly remote workforces career opportunities are better distributed. c) was always subjective and a matter of taste. So far I haven't got a great image of the American society, but our landing here has been particularly rough. I think I'll give it a couple of years before I pass judgement.
Source on this? Preferably with respect to inflation.
>and with mostly remote workforces career opportunities are better distributed
I think you're overestimating the effects of this. Companies are already making a fuss about remote work in the same time zone, let alone 4-6 time zones apart.
The only data I got from the top of my head is levels.fyi annual report. Numbers are all over the place but it shows a general upward trend. These numbers are from past years so they shouldn't account for the massive inflation of late.
Regarding opportunities, again this is mostly personal and anecdotal evidence. Due to Covid I worked remotely across the ocean for 2 years. Last year I got a top perf rating and I got my case for promo, despite being the only person in the whole org working 8 hours apart. I feel in EU there were more project with collaborations between people from different countries compared to pre-covid.
[1] https://www.levels.fyi/2019/
That sounds like a failure to negotiate properly.
> there are other places with a culture that resonates with me. So yes, USA might be better than my home country, but there are alternatives.
American culture was built by trailblazers, innovators and adventurers who left wherever they came from to build here. It's up to you to build the culture you want to see. Welcome!
This spring is one of the wettest and coldest, but it has been going that way, wetter springs, colder winters/snows Jan-Feb
High prices and reduced value all around.
Plugging this tool again because it ate up an hour of my day last time it was posted: https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
Where I am we had a big tornado 120 years ago and we're still talking about it. So we're in a "tornado danger area" but ... snow is the much bigger danger.
This seems to confirm my intuition. Our parameters spit out southern california and a few places in Texas, including Austin.
SoCal is still incredibly expensive. I considered Austin before but I'm a bit concerned about politics. Although I know it's a bit of a progressive bubble, Texas is still overwhelmingly and overly conservative, so that might be a big drag.
Kind of, keep in mind ~50% of Texas votes Democrat, Republicans just squeeze wins. Also keep in mind that Texas Democrats are not like national Democrats, and I'd hardly call Austin something like "progressive". It marches to its own tune, which is just fine for Texas.
In Presidential elections, since 1976, the range is 37.1% to 51.1% with 46.5% in 2020 the highest since the 51.1% which was in 1976. The median in that time period has been 41.4%.
Personally speaking, I'd go back to Texas if it stayed purple-ish and didn't adopt or drive national narratives of either party.
“~50%” as the typical Democratic share of the vote in Texas requires a generous interpretation of the approximation symbol.
The state government is actively criminalizing any kind of gender-affirming treatment for LGBTQ+ youth, and there's nothing the local governments in Dallas or Austin can do about it. If I had kids, I would have already uprooted my family and left the state months ago.
Right now, as someone who lives alone I'm torn between wanting to get the hell out of here before they come for adult trans people and knowing that I'm going to be miserable no matter where I move because I love everything else about Dallas and absolutely no other city will be just like it. I'll just be a bitter, miserable refugee for the rest of my life.
That's a good thing, considering that "gender-affirming treatment" is a euphemism for sterilizing the child, excising healthy body parts, and leaving them with lifelong health issues.
If they really want to go through all that, they can wait until they're an adult and see if it's still an issue then. A child cannot possibly give meaningful consent to these procedures.
We're incredibly happy. The schools are outstanding, I've never seen a single homeless person in our town, and the crime rate is nonexistent. We bought a 4000sqft palace for half of what our last house cost. Cost of living generally is far lower. There is virtually never any traffic. People we meet are generally happy and not obsessed with their careers. There is actually a lot more for us to do since a lot of places cater to people with young children.
Yes it's hot, but everywhere is air conditioned. There isn't a lot of outdoorsy things to do aside from hanging out by the pool anyways. The nature is ugly and there are no hills, but with the money we save we are able to travel a ton to prettier locales. We're right by one of the biggest airports in the world after all.
I would never recommend visiting Dallas, it's a dull city, but as far as places to live it's far surpassed my expectations.
That's primarily why people tolerate Seattle's climate. 9 months out of the year it will often be grey and rainy, but the natural wilderness is phenomenal exactly because of that. If you're into the outdoors, backpacking, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, mountain biking, trail running, skiing, rock climbing, there's tons of stuff within an hour drive of the city. If you get out backpacking and chat with other people you meet on the trails, it's a pretty common refrain that they moved here in large part for the outdoors.
And then when July - Sept rolls around and it's consistently warm and sunny -- you can't beat it!
Personally, the grey rainy weather was never really off putting for me. But that's probably because I was born here and I'm used to it. It's like that Bane quote from Batman: "Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!"
I wouldn't advocate for our weather generally but I do like these breaks from winter we seem to get.
I grew up in Eugene and I am just done with that much rain and, like others have mentioned, endless gray.
Even if your office is close enough for a regional airport you might change jobs.
Of course Eugene basically has the same problem.
Some friends recently moved to Asheville, NC, which seems to be an attractive destination these days. But it's hard for them to find affordable flights, and they end up with out of the way connections that make travel onerous. Once when I was visiting Deadwood, SD, I talked to a guy who recently moved there from Denver and travels for work. But his company doesn't want to pay the high prices to fly out of Rapid City, so he found himself driving six hours back to Denver to catch flights!
If I was considering a move to a smaller metro or a rural area, I'd need to think hard about how well I could push back against my customer's requests for travel.
This isn't really a big problem, and RDM does have daily flights to most major west coast destinations.
haha same as me. I don't mind it but I'm used to it.
Though another colleague of mine from elsewhere has a better answer those that dislike the PNW winter. He'd assert that no, winter is the best time of the year in the PNW. Why? Because when it's raining in the city, it's snowing in the mountains. Learn to snowboard and it'll be your favourite time of year too.
I'm guessing Richardson... Arlington? Those are really satellite suburbs.
However up here I haven't seen a single one in over a year.
As far as traffic, yeah some areas have a bit of congestion but I'm comparing to Seattle, Portland, SF, and LA. Compared to those cities the traffic in DFW is nothing even in the worst parts of the city center at rush hour.
My personal target for living is a city of at least 50,000 people but less than 1,000 per square mile.
I think this point is key. When your day-to-day is spent staring at a laptop, it doesn't really matter where you live.
I used to live in NYC. I loved it; great city to be in your 20s. But I left due to COVID. Since then, I've returned to visit a handful of times and realized that visiting NYC is probably better than living there. In a long weekend, I'm able to visit great restaurants, see a show, and catch up with friends. Essentially, I pack the social activities that I would have spread out over a month into 3 days. Then in my day-to-day, I don't have to pay Manhattan rent, fight the crowds on the subway, or deal with all of the friction the city has.
I'm well into my 30's with a family now though and those more "dynamic" environments would just cause a lot of problems in my life.
My company just transferred me to Dallas to trade equities. It's gonna be awesome!
Oh, sure Dallas, doesn't have the usual tourist attractions, but I bet that if someone came to Dallas for a week I could put a huge smile on their face by taking them to as many different ethnic restaurants as I can fit into a week. Just thinking of all the food options we have here makes me drool. And the best part is that all of these wonderful places are out in the suburbs, not in the city core (in fact, 95% of what I've seen in the city core is pretty solidly made for white yuppies).
We went to Vrindivan last weekend and it was easily the best Indian food I've ever had outside of India.
Let's start with Chinese food...
There are multiple places here that can easily be called Chinatowns, the bigger ones being the one in Richardson on Greenville between Arapaho and Belt Line/Main and the one in Plano at Park & Coit. Lots and lots of good restaurants in both places, and the one at Park & Coit has a lot of non-Chinese Asian places too (like a fantastic Korean fried chicken place called BBQ Chicken). Any place with "Sichuan" in the name is going to be a banger; Sichuan King (now merged with Royal Sichuan, and I think the restaurant carries both names) is one of my favorite places to order ma po tofu. One of the more famous places in Richardson Chinatown is called Jeng Chi, they were one of the restaurants that introduced xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) to Dallas though they've kinda let their fame go to their head lately (they're kinda expensive now, and other places are better) though they're still pretty good. Canton's another decent place, some of the best chow fun and Hong Kong-style wonton soup in Dallas. One of the few Hunan restaurants in Dallas, Hunan Bistro, is at the Plano Chinatown, right next door to another Sichuan place. Plano Chinatown also has a decent hot pot place, called Chubby Cattle.
Of course, there are lots of Chinese restaurants that aren't in the Chinatowns. First Chinese BBQ is a local chain with locations all over town... they used to be cash-only but i understand they started taking card very recently. Fat Ni at Spring Creek & 75 in Plano serves Chinese street food, mostly on skewers—I recommend their vegetarian stuff, such as their fried gluten and tofu (yes, fried gluten on a stick, it's good). Sichuan Folk at Spring Creek & K in Plano is another fantastic Sichuan place (there are a ton of other great Sichuan places all over Dallas too). Wu Wei Din at 15th and Independence in Plano specializes in Taiwanese food. I'm fond of Tian Tian at Preston & Frankford in Far North Dallas, which has a huge menu including Peking Duck and gold and silver buns. We also have some wonderful hot pot places, Happy Lamb at Legacy & 75 in Plano being one of my favorites. My current favorite place to order from is Long Time Ago at Coit & Belt Line in Richardson, they have a huge and diverse menu with a huge selection of Sichuan dishes and Cantonese food like BBQ pork fried rice.
Next, on to Japanese food. We have an actual sushi buffet here, Osaka on Belt Line & Midway in Addison (we used to have more, but this is the only one left). We have lots and lots of ramen joints that also serve other things including some great takoyaki and curry rice: Ramen Hakata at Belt Line & Marsh in Addison, Higuma Ramen & Izakaya at Belt Line and Midway again (different corner from Osaka though), Monta Ramen at Coit & Arapaho in Richardson, and several Yama Izakaya & Sushi locations all over town. We have an actual Japanese supermarket, Mitsuwa Marketplace, at Legacy & 75 in Plano, which has a food court inside full of great places. Gyu-Kaku is a chain of yakiniku restaurants (with an all-you-can-eat option) and locations in both Addison (Belt Line & Montfort) and Plano (Preston & Headquarters).
Korean food... our main Koreatowns are at Old Denton Road & Trinity Mills in Carrollton and Royal Lane & I-35E in Northwest Dallas. I've only been to the one in Carrollton, but it's amazing. Korean barbecue (some of which are all you can eat!), Korean fried chicken, Korean bakeries, Korean shaved ice places for dessert... the centerpiece of it all is H-Mart, a giant Korean supermarket with a wonderful food court inside. Everything in that food court is fantastic, and they serve food from several other Asian countries too, including my favorite place for xiaolongbao in Dallas. But their actual Korean food in the food court is fantastic too, there's one place that seves bulgogi in stone bowls and amazing sundubu (tofu soup). There are also a number of Korean fried chicken places outside the Koreatowns, including a number of BBQ Chicken franches all over and Bonchon Chicken at Belt Line and Quorum in Addison.
Thai food... we have Thai restaurants all over. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the breadth of them because I've usually stuck to my favorites because they're so good. Banana Leaf at Preston & Campbell and Thai Spice at Frankford & the Tollway, both in Far North Dallas, are fantastic and I always find myself going to one of those two when I want Thai food (keep in mind: Thai Spice lives up to its name... I can handle spicy food really damn well normally, but I got a 4 on their menu once and it was too much for me, I've been told by friends that their food is usually one or two levels spicier than other restaurants at the same number). Plenty of other good places, I'm just a bit set in my ways here.
Vietnamese food... oh we have a ton of them. Lots and lots of pho places, just search Google Maps for any restaurant with "Pho" in its name and you'll find something fantastic. The best places are the holes-in-the-wall with no decor. My go-tos are Pho Pasteur II at Belt Line & Josey in Carrollton and Pho Truong at Arapaho & Custer in Richardson. I have to admit I haven't gone for pho much lately... thanks to the pandemic I've mostly just been ordering delivery with a few exceptions, and pho doesn't deliver well. But it's still good, and I'm starting to go out to eat again so hopefully I should be eating more pho.
...and I think I'm going to take a break before typing out any more. I'm sure I'm rubbing up against a character limit anyway, and I want to get this submitted now in case my machine eats this post. I'll write up some stuff about food from India, Nepal, West and East Africa, various parts of Latin America, other regional American cuisines, etc. later.
Indian food... good Indian food is all over Dallas. Probably my favorite is Sigree, at Belt Line & Midway in Addison. They have a huge menu with lots of choices including a sizable amount of Indo-Chinese food. Other good places include Mumbai Grill at Preston & McCallum in Far North Dallas, India Chaat Cafe at Preston & Frankford in Far North Dallas, Mughlai Fine Indian Cuisine at Alpha & Noel Road in Far North Dallas, Curry Bliss at Coit & Belt Line in Richardson (this one is entirely vegetarian, and absolutely fantastic... their paneer is to die for), Maharaja Indian Restaurant at Coit & Spring Creek in Plano, and several others. If you want a buffet, I recommend Vindu at Frankford & the Tollway in Far North Dallas or Chennai Cafe at Preston & Gaylord in Frisco. There's a huge Indian community in Irving with lots of restaurants, but I can't give any specific recommendations because Irving is pretty far from where I live and I don't really go to that part of town.
Nepalese food... yes, we have Nepalese food! If you're not familiar with it, their specialty is a kind of dumpling called momos, and they also have a number of curries similar to Indian food. Most of the Nepali restaurants here are in Irving, which again I don't really go to, but there are a couple in my neck of the woods. Everest at McDermott & Custer in Plano is amazing, and I'm also fond of Momo Magic and More at Coit & Plano Pkwy, also in Plano.
Ethiopian food... most of it is clustered in the Lake Highlands area around Forest & Greenville or in eastern Richardson around Buckingham & Jupiter. Unfortunately, it's been a few years and I haven't dragged myself out that far east in ages so I don't remember the names of any specific restaurants, but you should be happy with anything there. If you're not willing to go that far, there's Queen of Sheba on Inwood Road in Addison just south of Belt Line and Shebelle at Preston & Campbell in Far North Dallas.
West African food... I'm not too familiar with it, but there are a couple of places: Afrika Fusion at the Tollway & Haverwood and Aso Rock Market at Frankford & Midway, both in Far North Dallas.
Mexican food... Dallas is full of great Mexican and Tex-Mex, unfortunately the best of it is all south of I-30, which is waaaaaaaaay far from where I live (I have been told to specifically look for places on Jefferson Blvd), so I don't get to go there often. My favorite place near me is Don Pepe's Rancho, which just moved into a new location at Arapaho & Hillcrest in Far North Dallas. Another excellent place is Gio's Taqueria at Trinity Mills & Marsh in Carrollton. It also feels weird recommending a chain, but you have to try the queso at Torchy's. It's not an authentic place, it's a chain from Austin, and their tacos are overrated (not bad, just overrated), but the queso is to die for.
Other Latin American food... for Peruvian food, I'd recommed Tineo Peruvian Cafe at Arapaho & Custer in Richardson. For Colombian, I'd recommend Casa Vieja at Belt Line & Josey. There are a number of Salvadorian restaurants that serve pupusas, and I remember ordering from one once and loving it but can't remember what it's called for the life of me (I tried searching Uber Eats, but it turned up more places than I was expecting). There are a couple of good Cuban places at Josey & Trinity Mills in Carrollton, including Cuba Bella Cafe and Cuban Dulceria International Bakery. I've heard good things about a couple of Venezuelan restaurants but haven't gotten to try them yet: El Arepazo Vzla at Midway & Trinity Mills in Carrollton and Big Yummy at Midway & Keller Springs in Addison. Good Latam fusion places I'd recommend are E.B. Latin Bistro at Park & Midway in Plano and Latin Deli. Latin Deli is a local chain with a number of locations around town... I always ordered from the one in Addison Circle but Google says it's closed now, though Uber Eats says it's still open. The one at 15th & Custer in Plano should still be open though, and they have fantastic sandwiches from all over Latin America including Puerto Rican-style tripleta, Peruvian-style butifarra and lomo saltado sandwiches, Mexican tortas, and more. And I might as well mention it here even though it's not strictly Latin, though it's from the part of the world right next door: we have an excellent Jamaican restaurant in the Island Spot at Midway & Trinity Mills in Carrollton (if I knew more Jamaican places, this probably would be its own paragraph).
Mediterranean food... we've got a lot of it here. There's a _huge_ cluster of Middle Eastern places in Downtown Richardson on Greenville. If you want a buffet, I'd recommend Afrah at Greenville & Belt Line or Ali Baba at 75 & Campbell. Our most authentic Greek restaurant is Zorba's, at Preston & Plano Pkwy in Plano. It blew my mind when I went there. And even though it's a chain, we have a number of Little Greek locations that have really tasty gyros and falafel.
German food... it's Texas, we have Germans here. The king of German places in Dallas is Bavarian Grill on Premier just north of 75 & Parker in Plano (that whole area is a nightmare to navigate). It's expensive but well worth the money. For someplace cheaper but with a less impressive (but still tasty) menu, there's Henk's near Northwest Hwy & Greenville in Dallas. The best thing about Henk's isn't the food menu but the attached German and Dutch food mart, where you can buy a lot of nifty goodies. Yes, German and Dutch, they have both... including a whole rack of Dutch licorice which had me feeling like a kid in a candy store (yes, I love salty licorice, it's an acquired taste but oh so good once you acquire it). And though it's not strictly German, we have an Austrian restaurant too, Jörg's Cafe Vienna at 15th & K in Downtown Plano (keep in mind that it's run like an actual European restaurant, which means their hours are really really wonky, make sure to look them up if you go there). And of course, if you're comfortable with crowds, don't forget to go to our Oktoberfest celebration at Addison Circle in September, supposedly it's one of the biggest ones outside of Germany.
Other regional American foods... our single best New York-style deli is Deli News at Preston & Campbell. There's also a local chain called Cindi's, with several locations all over, that's not bad, but Deli News is way better... except for the matzo ball soup, Cindi's is unbeatable at that one. We have a number of decent Philly cheesesteak places too, with two local chains that are really damn good: Texadelphia and Fred's Downtown Philly. They've got a handful of locations. For southern soul food, I'd recommend Trucker's Cafe at Arapaho & Custer in Richardson.
...and I'm sure I'm missing _something_ but I'm gonna wrap this one up now. Maybe I'll have a third post with stuff that's fallen through the cracks, maybe not.
Why's that the best part?
I’m in the Seattle area too and it was indeed the wettest May in like 30 years. (Usually summers are great in the area but not so sure about that this year)
With remote work a lot of options opens up for you, esp with some rural areas getting community built fiber! You don’t have to choose between acres of pasture and fast Internet any more!
I think most of the US is can be disappointing in different ways, but it's still mostly divided between City, Suburbs and Rural lifestyle. A prevailing problem is how most cities are designed as car first, this goes back to lobbying in the 50s-Today but its enough to say that the only places with good walkability and public transportation are large cities in mostly progressive areas.
As an example Southern California Vs Texas. Cali has worse traffic and more people, but has better public transportation (though its still not great compared to other countries), while Texas has lots of toll roads, near the highways instead of loading ramps they have frontage roads (which to me feels like a solution optimized for about 30% of what the population is), has almost no public transportation and has somehow made their cities even less walkable than nearly anywhere else I've ever been (only certain districts are walkable, usually places like a downtown or places to bar crawl). The sprawl in the south is even more pronounced than almost anywhere else, the cities are not condensed at all, The Dallas-FortWorth area is a good example, it's probably easier to call it a region of 10-20 cities than to call it a city area, just the way it's designed, they are all kinda separated districts that don't mix with each other, don't connect properly.
Housing is expensive anywhere the closer to a city you get, it's slightly cheaper in Texas than California, but if you live in the middle of nowhere in Cali, and the middle of nowhere in Texas it is comparable.
The rest of the south I've visited or spent time in, once you get away from the cities there is a kind of weighty feeling there, almost despair, it's palpable. I think it comes from centuries of poverty and how nothing changes except prices going up. The weather is nice but the culture, lack of resources, lack of opportunities and lack of networks almost always make it a negative to be there.
The positives are the food is tasty, the music is good, Atlanta is doing some cool stuff in entertainment and AI and Miami is also doing some interesting stuff in Finance and Stocks, Austin has a fun culture of music + tech + weirdness, San Antonio actually could become a place of tech manufacturing if they play their cards right. There are some fun places to go fishing too. Thats about it really. I've found most of the south to on the whole be a rather unpleasant place.
We moved due to the consumerism (I've called it the Los Angeles of the South) and utter boredom of the city if you're not into shopping, eating out, sports teams, and many are focused solely on their corporate j.o.b. However, after moving I've also found that places that don't care about their career - are on the opposite end of the annoying spectrum (ha!)
The people in Dallas are some of the best I've met, down to Earth, easy to talk with and get along. But hell if I'd ever move back.
I think it depends on where you are in life and what you want out of your city. I would hate this place if I was 20. It's not the best for meeting new people from different walks of life and experiencing new things. It's for people looking to settle down in comfort with their families. It has a real 1950's postwar America feel to me. If you don't have a family don't bother moving to Dallas: you'll be bored out of your skull and have no way to relate to people.
I think you're wrong that people are focused solely on their job here, for that experience move to the Bay or Seattle. Here I find even software engineers are more likely to talk to me about what fruit trees they're growing in their backyard than what Series their startup just entered.
For the same price, I could get a small, mediocre 1 BR/1 BA apartment in Austin with views of... another apartment, and a wall.
In San Jose or Seattle, I imagine I'd get just a bedroom for $1300.