
Ask HN: Have you moved from Bay Area? What's your experience in your new city? - vanwary
I&#x27;m thinking about moving out of the Bay Area in the next 2 years and trying to evaluate the pros&#x2F;cons. For those who have done it - where have you gone and what&#x27;s your experience been?
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dvduval
I moved from Santa Clara to Irvine. I just think that the area down here is
much bigger. At first I felt like I would miss a lot of the beautiful parks
and scenery of the Bay area, and maybe I still do, but in time I found that
there are so many beautiful things down here to and arguably a lot more
interesting culture too.

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souprock
It all depends on why you want to leave. Some people despise the politics,
while others try to bring that with them to places like Alabama and Georgia.
Some people want to stop having a huge commute, while others limit their
choices to places with similar trouble. Well, why do you hesitate? You didn't
say why. If job availability is a concern, remember that you only need 1 job.

I left San Jose as a kid, leaving behind family who remain in San Francisco
and Palo Alto. I only miss my relatives and the easy access to places like
Lassen and some of the national forests. The rest can slide off into the
ocean.

Ultimately I wound up in Brevard County, FL. (the "Space Coast") There are
actual tech jobs here, at least for US citizens without drug issues or out-of-
control debt, and engineers make up a very large portion of the population.
Business here revolves around aerospace, cyberwar, and train automation. You
can work for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Thales, L3 Harris,
Cromulence, Collins Aerospace, Rincon Research Corporation, Securboration, GE
Transportation, Infoscitex, Alstom, Radgov... you get the picture. My place:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797601)

It's affordable. Gasoline is going for about $2.60 now. There is no income
tax. If you aren't fussy and don't need a big place, $60,000 should get you a
house less than half a mile from work. Nicer 3-bedroom places get up to more
like $200,000. I got a 3500 square foot 4-bedroom place less than a mile from
the beach, which goes for about $400,000 now. My commute is 3 minutes by car
or 20 minutes if I walk. An experienced person with a tech job can afford a
McMansion or a dock (canal ultimately goes to ocean) or a multi-acre property
with horses.

It fits my style. I made 12 kids. I can't really picture that in the Bay Area,
though somebody probably manages.

It might not fit your style. Brevard County most definitely has a different
culture than the Bay Area. If you are comfortable with the Bay Area, you'd
slam hard into culture shock. This is a place that had two packed Trump
rallies despite a low population density to draw from. This is a place where
people go hunting for alligator, deer, pig, squirrel, and frog. (to eat) This
is a place where our elected sheriff (a culture shock in itself) Wayne Ivey
deputized a bunch of teachers so that they could be armed in schools, made a
gameshow out of wanted criminals, and openly encourages law-abiding citizens
to be prepared to return fire against criminals. This is a place where people
fly the US flag from a personal flag pole in their lawn, or sometimes a
confederate flag, and where the US flag gets displayed at work. This is a
place where public transportation is a joke, with buses labeled "SCAT"
(really!) that make a trip of a few miles take hours, and nobody is bothered
by that. Until a few years ago, huge pickup trucks rolling coal were a more
common sight than electric cars. This is a place where you can shoot a real
AR-15 in your backyard if you have enough acres, and people do. This is a
place with hurricanes and termites instead of earthquakes, so houses are
usually concrete block.

