
Startup Cities Index: best cities for startup employees - Nokinside
https://www.nestpick.com/best-cities-for-startup-employees/?currency=usd
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jbob2000
Genuinely curious about how Tel Aviv, Israel, is considered safer than
Toronto, Canada (4.13 vs 3.93).

Yes, a city that is under threat from terrorist rocket barrages and who's
national army is currently occupying a foreign state is safer than a city that
barely sees homicides.

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Nokinside
Terrorism is fear word.

If you look at the raw numbers, Terrorism is just minor nuisance, even rocket
barrages.

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Pilfer
> _Terrorism is just minor nuisance_ [sic]

If you look at the raw numbers, only _3 people_ died in the boston bombings.
But if you look at the economic costs,

\- The entire boston transit system was shut down for security reasons,
disrupting the entire city

\- Large numbers of people did not go to work the next day, costing hundreds
of millions in lost productivity

\- An enormous manhunt ensued, at the cost of over 300 million

\- Entire parts of the city were shut down, preventing them from going to work

\- 10s of millions in costs to the victims

\- Tens of thousands of hours of additional work for public employees

\- Billions in lost productivity nationwide as people focused on the media
saga

All this cost the terrorists only $200 in explosives. In your words, billions
of dollars in economic damage "is just minor nuisance".

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Barrin92
In Israel the rocket attacks are a large motivation for collaboration between
the military / tech sector and there's plenty of startups that actually focus
on providing services around this, there's an app for example that warns
people when some rocket attack is supposed to happen.

What you're identifying as cost here is actually a service that a business can
provide. The close military connections (also supported by the conscription)
are actually an asset for the country in terms of technological progress.
Think of it like a messy version of the cold war.

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jjeaff
That kind of brings us back to the original point. If there is enough demand
that someone has created a rocket attack warning app, I don't consider it a
safe city in any sense of the word.

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fshaun
Demand is proportional to perceived threat, not actual threat. This "ROI" is
one of the reasons terrorism continues. A city can be quite safe even if its
residents are not rational.

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dionidium
I think people significantly underestimate the economic power of the United
States. For quality of life, income, and opportunity, you'd almost certainly
want to be in, say, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City, or St. Louis
(none of which are on the list) than Lagos, Nairobi, Bogota, Bratislava, or
Bucharest (all of which _are_ on the list).

I know, I know. You think of those as _nowhere_ places. But that's because,
again, you're vastly underestimating the economic power of the United States
and its cities.

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ctlaltdefeat
I don't know, I would much rather be in Bratislava or Bucharest than
Pittsburgh (the only one out of your list I've been in) in terms of quality of
life, income, and opportunity.

Language is a different story though...

~~~
dionidium
As a St. Louisan, let me just say I'd rather be in Bratislava or Bucharest,
too! Sounds super fun!

But, I don't think this holds up if you discount the novelty factor. In purely
economic terms, you'd want to be in Pittsburgh.

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gorbachev
Great resource.

The methodology seems pretty good, except maybe in the quality of life group.

If you're black, I can guarantee you that while your colleagues will treat you
with respect, you will endure frequent incidents of racism outside of work in
Helsinki.

While Singapore is safe, it's not without its problems. The Government there
limits freedom of expression and assembly quite heavily.

It would be cool, if would be able to weigh the different categories according
to your value system and what you see as a priority for yourself, and see how
that affects the rankings. It seems as if the categories are currently equally
weighted.

~~~
drspacemonkey
>If you're black ... you will endure frequent incidents of racism outside of
work in Helsinki.

I've never been, but I've always heard that Scandinavian countries are usually
far better about such things. Gotta say, I'm a little disappointing to learn
that I've heard wrong.

Would you be willing to share some details?

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gorbachev
I'll mention three things both of which received quite a bit of attention in
the local media. Two are directly related to race, one is directly related to
immigration but really about race.

About a year ago a Finnish mother of an 11-year-old son, who was adopted from
South Africa when he was 6 months old, wrote about the experiences of her son.
The son speaks perfect Finnish since he's been raised in Finland. He takes a
school bus, but for some reason the school bus frequently doesn't stop for
him, if he's at the stop by himself. He was in a national morning TV show
telling about his experiences with children AND adults calling him names,
exclude him socially and a woman living in the same building told him to leave
his own playground. I'm not really surprised by what kids call each other, but
adults calling an 11-year-old names is over the line.

The second story is about quite a few stories about people of color using
public transportation in Helsinki. That's apparently an environment where
racists feel especially emboldened to "express" their viewpoints to
minorities. One of the most egregious examples was of an middle-aged woman
yelling at full volume at a teenage girl (half white, half black) to leave the
bus accompanied by liberal use of the n-word. Finally the woman also
threatened to send her dog at the girl. The girl asked the woman to be removed
from the bus. The driver refused, so the girl left instead in fear of her well
being. Again, an adult threatening a child just because the child was black.

The third incident is the roughly three-month "demonstration" by neo nazis in
front of the central train station in Helsinki. These Heroes of the Fatherland
(bah!) decided that they'd demonstrate the current immigration practices by
having an around-the-clock demonstration. That would've been probably ok, and
the police really didn't intervene UNTIL several complaints about the neo
nazis instigating fights or straight up assaulting passers by. Quite
enlightening of the general attitude of some people in Finland is that the
"camp", as it was called in the media, was visited by the Minister of the
Interior of the Finnish Government. She is in charge of the police force in
Finland. She was photographed giving the neo nazis a thumbs up.

Somewhat related is an incident where a member of another neo nazi
organization killed someone in the same area. During another demonstration and
counter-demonstration, a 28-year-old Finnish man walked by the neo nazis and
spat on the ground in front of them. While he was walking away, one of the neo
nazis chased after him and kicked him in the chest causing the man to fall
down and hit his head. He died a few days later.

There's a very vocal and increasingly violent portion of the population in
Finland who are racist and actively violent against people of color.

~~~
drspacemonkey
I concur that children hurling racial insults is... "acceptable" isn't the
right word. Children can be monsters. But holy crap, adults saying stuff like
that is inexcusable. Doubly so when they say it to children.

Overall, you paint a very troubling picture. Are these recent developments? By
that I mean is this a situation that has gotten worse recently, or has it
always been like this?

~~~
gorbachev
I haven't lived in Finland for 20 years, so I can't say for sure. Following
the developments through the lense of the media, I would say it's gotten
worse. Finland, for the longest time, was pretty insular and people's
attitudes towards people of color were mostly just being curious.

The neo nazis have certainly become more visible, and more active for various
reasons. It's the usual stuff...downtrodden people trying to find things to
blame for their situation ("them" is always a good scapegoat), unemployment is
high, there are more refugees coming to Finland like every other European
country.

And then there's the one political party that is pretty brazenly taking
advantage of the situation and advancing more or less pure racism as a policy.
They scored big in the last parliamentary election cycle and actually manage
to finagle themselves into the coalition that formed the Government. Their
popularity has sunk lately to very low numbers, so they won't be anywhere near
as vocal or influential after the next parliamentary elections.

There's also a definitely new development where "entrepreneurial" racists have
figured out how to organize and profit from the situation. There are a few
"for-profit" agitators that mask themselves as "Voices for the Silent
Majority" and "Free Speech Advocates of the Highest Order" while spewing hate
speech, encouraging violence against everyone disagreeing with them (incl.
journalists and critics, or people appearing in viral videos on the "opposing"
side) on their own blogs, online magazines or Facebook. These are the people
who in the past would've been stapling their manifestos on light poles and
other "billboards", but with the Internet they suddenly have a national/global
audience. The most visible of them was operating from Spain and was arrested
in Andorra for inciting violence against muslim immigrants last week. His
trial will be a circus.

That being said, this is obviously not how the majority of people feel or act.
It's just that it takes just one person in a bus full of people to ruin it...

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drspacemonkey
>It's just that it takes just one person in a bus full of people to ruin it...

I think you're understating the problem. It also takes a bus full of people,
driver included, to do nothing about it while it's going on.

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seddona
I appreciate the effort that went into making this but the startup ecosystem
ranking is nonsense.

Berlin - 2? Beijing - 26?

I'd like to be constructive but it appears to just be randomized.

~~~
mox1
Additionally, Dubai (#29) is above New York (42). As a woman, that does not
compute.

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morgante
As a person who's lived in both, this definitely makes literally no sense. The
startup ecosystem in NYC is leagues above Dubai (which is honestly 90% joke,
useless startups). NYC is by any reasonable metric (funding, unicorns, exits,
etc.) in the top 5 startup ecosystem worldwide.

~~~
vdnkh
Agreed. The NYC JS scene is huge, entertaining, and very nicely knit. I've
visited offices and been to meetups all around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens
(and even Jersey). We have our own conferences (EmpireJS and EmpireNode).
There are great companies here in a variety of spaces. I believe that NYC, as
a city, is extremely conducive to the "startup life".

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arcanus
Happy to see my home base in Austin doing respectably at #13.

But London at 43? Seattle all the way down at 21? I find those results
surprising. Is South Korean truly better in terms of gender equality than the
USA? Many asian cultures are very male oriented.

~~~
mark-ruwt
I was happy to see it there too, but if Cost of Living for San Francisco is
2.91 and Austin is 3.71, I'm having trouble putting much value in their
metrics.

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nowo
I stumbled on that one too. But of course a high cost of living results in a
low score and vice versa. Probably should have called it affordability.

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brymastr
For the Tech section; Vancouver, Canada has a lower salary for the experienced
column than for the entry level column. I know tech compensation in Vancouver
is poor but I don't think it gets worse with experience.

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tauntz
I recently used [https://teleport.org/cities/](https://teleport.org/cities/)
when comparing different options on where to move (it also has a startup scene
section).

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esseti
Best is subjective. I've been in Helsinki and Berlin, and I find very
difficult to rank Helsinki above Berlin. There's more than just work for
example.

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Blackstone4
As an Englishman, what gets me is how high the cost of living is in London
relative to the salaries which are low when you compare them to the US or
Switzerland. Us Brits like to think London is a world-class city with great
tech but we just don't pay our people well whilst expecting them to rent tiny
rooms... I've lived in the US the last 3.5 years and it has been fantastic.
You earn way more over here...

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chaostheory
Here's the thing this chart misses. Metros. The value of SF isn't just the
city itself but the entire SF Bay Area metro i.e. Mountain View, Cupertino,
Santa Clara, Oakland, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, ... I'm still missing a lot of
cities but you get the picture. It dwarfs most of the places on this list
except for maybe Seoul and the other US metros like LA and NY

Also a lot of people who work in SF don't actually live in SF.

Another big thing missing from this chart that you can't put into numbers are
local 'attractions'. For example, if you live in the Bay Area you have
relatively close access to Lake Tahoe, Napa Valley, and other really nice
spots. With a place like Singapore, you pretty much seen everything over one
weekend (Malaysia imo is boring).

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jahaja
The lack of a column for family/child related benefits is pretty symptomatic
for startup culture. Interesting nonetheless.

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tmoneyplease
How is tuition $30K in China? It just is not. It's more like $1000 per year at
most.

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JMCQ87
The relatively good affordability of SF compared to Berlin lets me doubt the
methodology for that part of the score. Seoul and Hamburg are also not
similarly affordable, but significantly more expensive than Berlin.

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ytlty
Did anyone even try to scrub the data? Vancouver entry-level and experienced
average salaries are $64,916 and $58,029 respectively. So the average
experienced tech worker earns less than entry level?

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tekkk
This site is extremely jarring on mobile. Please whoever made this fix that
table at least. It renders only two columns at the time and does it terribly.

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ahamdy
try swiping, it works

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jmcgough
might be better on larger screens, it's extremely compressed on mine on
portrait view, and standard view only shows two columns at a time

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themanual
London is got to be much higher for sure!

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milesdyson_phd
Doe's sorting on columns even work? It looks like for the most part it does,
but then for others it doesn't...

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muninn_
Well, clearly this is incorrect because San Francisco isn't number 1.

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celim307
it is if you sort by 'startup ecosystem', but i think is deranked due to COL

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muninn_
To me that just means the weights are wrong.

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personjerry
It's the "best cities for startup employees" not "best cities for startups"

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muninn_
Right, so it still has the weights incorrect because San Francisco isn't #1.

