

The new SF/Silicon Valley suburbs: Portland and Seattle - erickhill
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304198004575172541279575622.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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code
I grew up in Portland. Moved to Seattle after Portland. Finally to San
Francisco after Seattle.

I will say the article is full of bullshit. Yes, cost of living is drastically
lower and the quality of life and the surrounding is not bad at all in any
way. But a Silicon Valley / SF? It is not.

If you're like me and you've lived in all 3 areas and grew up spending a huge
chunk of your life in each of the 3, you'll quickly realize it's not even
close in terms of the culture and resources the bay offers. I can understand
the sentiment if you have a family (spouse and kids) and want to find
affordable housing and all but lets not kid ourselves, that's not the same as
arguing a tech centric hub worthy of comparison to the valley.

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rgrove
I moved from Portland to the Bay Area to take a job at Yahoo! four years ago.
After a year and a half, I moved back, and have been telecommuting ever since.
A coworker recently moved back to Portland and began telecommuting as well.

Remote collaboration isn't yet as painless and awesome as it has the potential
to be, but Skype group video chat (when it works) is almost good enough to
make us feel like we're in Sunnyvale when we can't actually be there in
person, and IRC and IM are great for low-overhead collaboration.

I've been so much more productive and so much happier since I began working
remotely that I can't imagine ever going back to spending five days a week
commuting to an office, especially if that office is somewhere other than
Portland.

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aschwo
I've known more than one colleague that has commuted from Portland to the Bay
Area. In each case they were older men with wives and children that didn't
want to (or couldn't) leave Portland. They rented small, cheap places during
the week then spent the weekends at home with their families.

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kloncks
_Alex Payne plans to move to Portland with his wife next month, while keeping
his job at San Francisco-based Twitter Inc._

Thought he was with Bank Simple?

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ktsmith
This is from April of 2010

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erickhill
He did move to Portland, however. "I live in Portland, Oregon. Before that, I
lived in San Francisco. I grew up around Washington, DC."
<http://al3x.net/about.html>

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ktsmith
Your point being? The article is from April of 2010 when he was with Twitter,
in May he joined Bank Simple. The parent comment is about where he was working
not where he was living and I pointed out the age of the article for that
reason.

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erickhill
Note to self: tread lightly when commenting on the "community" Hacker News.
The parent topic was about moving away from SF. Sincere apologies if my simple
clarification torqued your jaw.

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ktsmith
Not trying to come off gruff or anything, I was just posting quickly between
meetings and not necessarily proofreading for "voice" in the message. I don't
see how your "clarification" actually clarified anything. The article says he
moved to Portland, his profile says he moved to Portland. There doesn't seem
to be any confusion about where he lives. The parent comment, not article,
asked about his employer not his location.

