
Why High-Tech Companies Are Moving to the City - iProject
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577619441778073340.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_MIDDLETopNews
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rm999
I just moved to NYC from California a year ago. In many ways my quality of
life has shot way up. You can't beat the transportation, food, culture, and
intelligent, diverse population.

Cities are perfect for attracting the kind of young, interesting, and smart
people tech companies want to attract. Also, tech companies are often capable
of generating relatively high profit per employee; for these companies, the
biggest downside of a city (cost) is not as big of an issue.

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w1ntermute
> I just moved to NYC from California a year ago. In many ways my quality of
> life has shot way up. You can't beat the transportation, food, culture, and
> intelligent, diverse population.

I concede that NYC has the best public transportation in the country, but you
must have been living in the sticks in California if you think that you can't
find "food, culture, and intelligent, diverse population" there.

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michaelt
Culture depends on travel distance - everywhere can claim to have culture if
you're willing to drive far enough.

The only claim to culture that Mountain View or Cupertino has is being within
driving distance of San Francisco.

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anamax
> The only claim to culture that Mountain View or Cupertino has is being
> within driving distance of San Francisco.

That's true iff you define culture as opera and symphony and certain kinds of
museums.

If your definition includes things that one might find in SF's mission
district and/or Chinatown, there's culture all over the southbay. For some
definitions, Berkeley is the only place in the bay area that "has culture".
For others, Oakland is it.

FWIW, there are reasonable definitions of "culture" that can't be satisfied in
the US.

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michaelt
For sure, everywhere has culture if your definition of culture is sufficiently
malleable.

To me moving from California to New York for culture makes sense, for a lot of
locations in California. Perhaps instead of saying you can't beat New York for
culture, I should say I can't beat New York for culture!

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anamax
> For sure, everywhere has culture if your definition of culture is
> sufficiently malleable.

That's not what I wrote. I wrote that different folks think that culture means
different things, not that those folks have a changing definition of culture.

I get that you like NYC. However, I'll bet that you don't actually take
advantage of the culture that you find essential all that often. You're paying
for the ability to drop in on a broadway show every day even though you'll
likely do it only once every 3-5 years.

I'm glad that you think that you're getting value for your money. How about
being respectful of other people's choices wrt their money?

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michaelt
Sorry, I guess I misunderstood what you wrote.

I'm absolutely in favor of other people doing what they like with their money
- diversity of entertainment choice is a great thing.

For me that meant the city, where the higher density of customers makes it
viable for IRL entertainment suppliers to operate further down the long tail
of demand. The things I'm interested in are right down that long tail, so I
can understand when rm999 found moving to a city has improved his/her quality
of life.

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natrius
Here's another data point from Austin:

 _“Recruiting and retaining great workers is a big part of it, and downtown is
where the development and design community wants to work,” said co-founder and
CEO Sam Decker. “Startups don’t want the typical Class A, everything carpeted
environment. They love character in their office and a place that feels
unique. This is an opportunity to have a place where people look forward to
coming to work every day just because of that vibe.”_

[http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-
gen/blogs/aust...](http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-
gen/blogs/austin/startups/entries/2012/08/27/austin_startup_mass_relevance.html)

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samratjp
Here's an under rated reason - a night owl's schedule! Tech startup founders
and early teams get most of their shit done at night when there are fewer or
no distractions. When you're on this schedule, the city life is much more
accommodating in terms of food, socialization, etc. Then suddenly, dinner time
is suddenly like lunch time.

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Firehed
Living in a city does not lend itself well to getting stuff done at night
"when there are no distractions" precisely because those environments
_provide_ those nighttime distractions.

Early founder schedules tend to be necessarily isolating. Once you're to the
point of having employees and semi-sane work hours, then the rest tends to be
personal preference because you can once again coexist with the rest of the
world.

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Tiktaalik
Everyone is moving back to the city. In Vancouver there was a long gap where
there was no commercial building development in the downtown core, and there
was even a short period where they were converting commercial buildings to
residential, but there is a significant amount of commercial construction now.

The western Canadian telecom Telus is building[1] a new HQ downtown and is
moving there from their current building in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby.
The Telus Garden complex will have a residential component as well, and their
employees were offered priority and a bit of a deal on units in it. It sold
out pretty much instantly.[2]

[1][http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-
business/industry-n...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-
business/industry-news/property-report/a-garden-in-the-sky-in-the-heart-of-
vancouver/article4179465/) [2][http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-
columbia/teluss-...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-
columbia/teluss-vancouver-condos-fly-off-the-market/article4098423/)

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williamcotton
These are not high-tech companies.

These are interactive media companies.

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KevinMS
I agree. These are companies that just duct-tap together high tech, made by
others. High tech companies are IBM, Intel, Sun, Oracle, etc, and those are
firmly planted outside cities. A good rule of thumb is if the company consists
mostly of 20 something hipsters, its not a high-tech company :)

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nugget
What happens when residential prices rise so high that you price out many of
the same employees who created the critical mass and desire for this urban
environment in the first place? How do you recruit a software dev @ $100k/yr
when the 1 bedroom SoMa apartment they want costs $3k/month (~ $40k/yr fully
loaded, or 50%+ of their take home pay)?

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rm999
In most cities people can find much cheaper places to live within commuting
distance. Cities can't support themselves when people are totally priced out.

For example, I know someone who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn and pays
<600/month (with roommates), and another in a studio for 1200/month. Bushwick
is about 30 minutes from Soho by subway.

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dangrover
I second this. I was in Bushwick when I lived in NYC. I saw 1-bedrooms going
for 1200. I moved to the UES after that, and found that the Manhattan tax
really isn't worth it.

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001sky
_At the same time, high-tech products and industries are more
multidisciplinary than they used to be. Success often requires excellence in
more than one field of technology and in other lines of business. East
London's tech scene is led not by tech firms per se but by "digital creative"
companies that combine computer technology with music, art and narrative—and
musicians, artists and writers cluster in cities._

