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Comment by diek | Hacker News Reader

I can only speak to my experience, but I've turned down offers from Google and Netflix to stay in the Phoenix area. The cost of living (relative to salaries) in the valley is crazy, and you're competing for housing with people who just happened to "be around" when their company IPO'd. In Chandler I can afford a nice house near parks and good schools and I don't have to worry about earthquakes.

Speaking to your troubles hiring, I can only generalize based on some job ads that I've seen. Like I mentioned before, some ads just seem too targeted at the "early 20s fresh out of school" demographic that companies think they can lure in with free soda in exchange for 80-hour weeks. Senior devs just don't go for that, so they ignore those ads and go interview at Honeywell instead.

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The quality of living is different.

I am working mostly in Python these days. When I was in Silicon Valley I could go talk to Guido. When I had questions about AppEngine from Google I met with the PM's.

Phoenix doesn't have that. Also the place I rent in Tempe is with in 10% of the price of the same thing in San Jose.

That's more about personal connections than the quality of life of a region, right? Granted, geographically if you happen to know those people it makes it hard to connect with them, but most people can't just ring up Guido when they have a Python question.

As far as Phoenix-based Python developers, there appears to be a Python meetup group, 'DesertPy': http://www.meetup.com/Phoenix-Python-Meetup-Group/

As far as real estate... I don't know about your specific situation but as a whole the valley is much more expensive than the Phoenix area. San Jose, through Cupertino, up to Mountain View... on average you're easily paying twice as much for the same square footage (I just checked San Jose on Zillow. 2,000 sq ft is easily 600k).

The Buy is better than rent in Phx, opposite of San Jose.

"nice outside" doesn't happen much in Phx. In Silicon Valley you open the windows and let the breeze in. In Phx you kick up the AC.

Not knocking your decision to live outside of SV, believe me I understand it, but on the purely economic front one thing to recognize that while housing and other expenses may eat a lot of the salary, you are contributing (or rather, can) to 401K and regular savings at a higher percentage level than you would be with a lower priced job. Your standard of living might not be any better while living in SV, but you can invest in your future more in absolute dollars.

The flip side of that is that this place is just endless bubbles. Get on the wrong side of that and you'll never recover.

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