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Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps you were in NYC at the wrong time?

2006-13.

To be fair, my sample size on startup quality is about N = 15, so I'm sure I missed some good ones. And there are a lot of high-quality engineers (and people in general) in NYC. The engineers I met at Google NYC were a great crowd, for one example, and there are a lot of good people in finance.

I think NYC would be a great tech hub if the city could solve the cost-of-living problem, which would expand the pool of possible startups and help real technologists (as opposed to well-connected turds) get more play. Until then, the smart money's on places like Austin for the 2020s.

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I don't think the cost of living problem as such is solvable. When I point out that there are places in all five boros that are safe, affordable, and in reasonable commuting distance of the commercial parts of Manhattan I'm told that it is unrealistic to expect techies to want to live in such boring places. But it is very trendiness of e.g. Chelsea that makes it so expensive. The same exact criticism is even more potent when deployed for Austin or Chicago as an alternative.

Positional goods are never going to be cheap, if they were they would no longer be desirable.

> When I point out that there are places in all five boros that are safe, affordable, and in reasonable commuting distance of the commercial parts of Manhattan I'm told that it is unrealistic to expect techies to want to live in such boring places.

Pricing is high everywhere in five boroughs in places which are safe and in reasonable commuting distance, regardless if anyone finds any of them "boring". NY is just a very expensive city when it comes to rent and let alone buying anything.

I think NYC would be a great tech hub if the city could solve the cost-of-living problem

Doesn't Silicon Valley have a similar problem?

Yes, and that's why its first derivative is steeply negative.

However, it's far enough ahead of everywhere else (due to six decades of momentum, developed before that problem existed) to still be #1.

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