
Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities - muzz
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-jobs-cheaper-housing-the-new-silicon-cities-1478181842
======
ejcx
I've lived near Richmond my whole life, and moved to SF within the last 2
years. I have friends who live and work in Tech (in Richmond).

Getting a new job can be hard. Your options for big companies that hire tech
people in the area is GE, Altria (Phillip Morris if you're okay working for a
tobacco co ), CapTech, UPS, VCU... But it isn't like Google, Apple, etc. Your
options for smaller companies are bad. Some startups have popped up there over
the years but they have pretty unanimously been bad.

You get paid less. It's harder to advance in your career. You can't really get
by without a car like many do in bigger cities.

Richmond is a very nice city, and I enjoy going back there for a week every
June, but to call it a New Silicon City is crazy. Sure you can buy a house if
that's what you want to do. There's a reason talented engineers flock FROM
these areas, though.

~~~
quantumhobbit
I'm in Richmond too. It is a great city. Very affordable, youngish, a fun mid
sized city. We probably have more microbreweries per capita than anywhere else
in the US.

But I do feel like we are flyover country as far as tech is concerned.
Compared to northern VA we might as well not exist.

However I do think it is a good place for startups if only because there is an
outsized amount of talented engineers stuck in corporate jobs here. It
shouldn't be hard to poach some of them before they give up and move to SF or
DC. Especially easy if you offer nationally competitive salaries.

~~~
warlox
You can't hire the people working for megacorps if your company is in Virginia
because they are more likely than not bound by noncompete clauses. Only
California throws them out as a matter of public policy, which is one of the
main reasons why Silicon Valley is where it's at.

~~~
dtnewman
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure this is only true if you are looking to
compete with the megacorps, which probably isn't the case if you are a
startup. It's called a non-compete, because it means you can't work for a
competitor. Having to do with tech doesn't make you a competitor.

~~~
warlox
A noncompete typically bars you from holding any type of related position
within a specific radius of your employer.

~~~
dtnewman
What do you been by related position? Would web development for Walmart be a
related position to web development for Microsoft, a company that doesn't
compete with them? I've signed multiple non compete agreements and they always
specify that I can't work _for a competitor_. I looked up various examples
online and couldn't find anything that didn't specifically mention that the
restriction on working counts for anything other than a competitor. I'd be
curious to see an example that says otherwise. Perhaps you can link to an
example of one of the non compete agreements you are talking about?

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tyre
There are many reasons YC requires you to be in Mountain View during the
program. When you finish YC, every partner will tell you to stay in the Bay
Area.

As CEO of a post-seed company, I had to start building relationships with
Series-A investors. They are all here, so I could meet them in person without
much travel, or they could come visit our office. That matters.

When our investors hold events, they are here. I meet other
founders/executives who have started/run large tech companies, in person. I
can ask them about what they are thinking about, walk through problems we're
going through, and build a human-to-human relationship, off the record. That
last part is important when, as a founder, talking candidly about the shit
going wrong isn't usually what you get to do. Most won't do it over email,
unless they know you well already.

When we recruit people, many of the best are already here, working on similar
problems. There is a Catch 22 in building another Silicon Valley: to hire
talented people you need successful companies; to build successful companies,
you need talented people.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but the hard parts of building a tech company
are easier here. They aren't easy, but easier. When you're a small team with
300 things that have to get done, having the most important ones made easier
is a nice thing to have. For every minute another startup spends convincing an
investor or potential hire that they can be the first massively successful
company founded in Richmond, we can think about something else.

Do I wish it were the case? No. But I only have so many battles that I can
fight at once, and our number one priority is building software to run cities.
If being here helps us do that, we'll adapt.

~~~
dibstern
Doesn't being in SV mean the top talent is all hoovered up by Google, FB, etc?
What about huge rent costs?

Would love to be able to start a startup in Melb, Australia, because it's the
most livable city in the world, but the tech scene here in comparison to SV is
like living in the Stone Age. Not sure if I'd be better off moving to SV - but
interestingly, I met a top CTO/CEO who had moved his company to the Valley and
advised against it, because apparently it's very cliquey and it's hard to
break into really well established circles, especially as an Aussie, for some
reason. I'll definitely get him another coffee at some point in the future to
dig into this more.

~~~
johns
Different kinds of people work at BigCos and startups. Some overlap and
occasionally you compete but not always.

For your situation: go work in SV for a startup. That will get you in the
circles and connected. Australia is easy to hire from for US companies because
of E-3 visas.

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jostmey
My wife is looking at residency programs (she will be an MD). She has an
interview at UCSF, but we are not sure we will go--San Francisco is just too
expensive. Salary is only $65000 and we have to pay back student loans. I
cant't imagine any doctor wanting to train in San Francisco. The city is
pricing itself out of existence.

~~~
sndean
My fiancee is currently going through the same process. She's going to, but
not taking seriously, the interviews she has in Manhattan.

OTOH, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and a few other cities look promising.

Some of the programs in Manhattan and Brooklyn are paying ~55000. She's in
(we're in) >400000 in debt from the med school loans. There's no chance we can
go there. (Maybe if they paid ~100000.)

~~~
muninn_
Stay away from Atlanta if you value quality of living. Look to places like
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Columbus, etc.... big healthcare areas
without being the biggest sprawl on the planet or having insane cost of
living.

~~~
libria
> Stay away from Atlanta if you value quality of living

Can you elaborate on Atlanta's poor QoL?

~~~
gtaylor
Dirty, terrible traffic, was decimated by the recession and not quite back.
There are very nice areas like Buckhead, and really rough areas like Lithia
Springs.

You'll need a car to get anywhere and you're going to spend a lot of time in
it. Especially if you live in one of the popular suburbs like Marietta or even
Douglasville.

Source: lived in the area a few times.

~~~
smileysteve
> rough areas like Lithia Springs.

To be clear, Lithia Springs is as part of Atlanta as Vallejo is part of San
Francisco - as Edison is to Manhatten.

You'd need a car to get anywhere if you lived in Vallejo too... And you'd
spend a ton of time in it (and about $10 in tolls) to get to Downtown San
Francisco.

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Tempest1981
Places to consider (from the article):

    
    
      - Richmond, Virginia
      - Eugene, Oregon
      - Manchester, New Hampshire
      - Huntsville, Alabama

~~~
karcass
I've looked for tech jobs in Eugene and found virtually nothing. The only tech
workers I know there have remote-work jobs in bay area companies.

~~~
evan_
Really? There are dozens of companies hiring in Eugene:

[https://siliconshire.org](https://siliconshire.org)

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drudru11
The wealth that has been created here since the last market crash has been
enormous. Given the limited amount of land, the cost for RE has been driven
incredibly high. As a result, the cost of _everything_ is also way up.

I'm sure the congestion on 101, the BART, and the bridges is worse than it has
ever been.

In the past cycles, people left the city because of costs and moved to the
peninsula. Now even the peninsula is full of people hoping to get their kids
into schools that are under-funded and have waiting lists.

I cannot predict when that river of wealth will run dry, but I think the
companies that benefit from this can no longer afford to fund housing, health,
etc. for every single employee they have.

Where are they going to go? They are going to go somewhere else.

It makes sense given that one of the implications of building and amazing
global communication network is... that you don't have to be in a certain
place in order to participate on it :-)

Also, don't get me started on the construction here in the Bay Area vs. some
of the amazing craftsmanship like the one seen in the article.

I think we are going to see a lot more articles like this.

Oh, one other thing. One of the the reasons all these companies started here
was because it was relatively cheap! For example, Apple picked Cupertino
because everything further north was 'expensive'. Imagine that!

~~~
declan
_" Also, don't get me started on the construction here in the Bay Area vs.
some of the amazing craftsmanship like the one seen in the article."_

Drive around Menlo Park south of Santa Cruz Ave and west of El Camino and
you'll see many beautiful houses with craftsmanship at least as high quality.
This is new construction but with a traditional design, interspersed with
1950s ranchers that haven't yet been torn down. Of course you may be paying
$1,000+ a square foot to build these new custom homes, so your 3,000 sq. ft
home is closer to $5M including land.

So only an order of magnitude more than these "New Silicon Cities..."

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mark_l_watson
I moved from living on the beach in California to the mountains of Central
Arizona in 1998. From my perspective, AZ is a very good place to do business:
very affordable housing, inexpensive locally grown food, clean and healthy
environment, and with so many jobs now being remote, why not live in a
beautiful and inexpensive area?

My hourly rate at my current remote job is about half of what I made at Google
living for a while in Mountain View, but with the local very low cost of
living, I am better off financially with my current job.

I hope the future is more distributed, with people and companies taking
advantage of beautiful and cheap places to work and live.

------
sscotth
Add them to the list:
[http://brighton.io/Next_Silicon_Valley](http://brighton.io/Next_Silicon_Valley)

~~~
jostmey
Cuba? Really? Might as well add every city in world to that list.

~~~
467568985476
It's a joke. There are dozens of cities with articles calling them "the next
Silicon Valley". But everyone still moves to California or New York when they
need to raise big rounds and hire lots of engineers.

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allsystemsgo
Or, you know, just embrace hiring remote workers.

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edblarney
Toronto + Kitchener/Waterloo, and Vancouver are sizeable.

Toronto is big. Much bigger than many places mentioned.

A secret Canadian bit: healthcare is pretty good, and 'free' \- at least it's
not out of pocket, and covered by taxes which are on par with Cali/NY. That
makes a difference in the very early stages, I think. There is a lot of
technical talent in Canada, just not great marketing and business leadership,
and of course nothing like the Valley etc..

~~~
GreenPlastic
1\. Canadian salaries are a joke. Senior software engineers make 85k in
Vancouver and housing is as expensive as SF. 2\. Canadians _think_ their
health care system is pretty good because they haven't experienced a good
private system. My wife is from Vancouver and thought that until she tried the
American system (assuming you're insured). Her friends have long waits for OBs
and almost no family doctor is taking new patients. Further, my uncle had a 6
month wait for chemo and had to go to Detroit to get it (about 15 years ago,
don't know if it's better now).

~~~
edblarney
"Canadian salaries are a joke"

Yup.

It's due to a lot of reasons, but that will change if the talent is there.

It's particularly pernicious in Van where the cost of living is crazy, less so
in Toronto.

I live in Montreal - and my flat would be 6500/month in San Francisco. It's
really nice. The culture is great. Cost of living is peanuts. There are smart
people, and 10x more cute girls than SF.

If you grew up in the cold and can hack that, then it's in many ways a great
choice.

Also if you have a hookup at a good company because they are rare here.

Nobody can compete with SF for talent. Nobody - I would not imply that.

But depending on what you are doing - TO, Van and Montreal can make good
choices. Again - very situationally dependent.

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bradezone
Couldn't read article b/c of paywall, but I gotta put in a good word for
Greenville SC, where I currently live. It's been popping up on a lot of "cool
cities" lists recently, and rightfully so. Great & growing tech scene. I
personally work for a medical start-up & could be living anywhere, but right
now I'm content to be in "G-Vegas" =]

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muninn_
Interesting they leave out places like Raleigh, or Columbus.

~~~
gtaylor
Raleigh is where I'd probably be if I wasn't here in the Bay Area.

~~~
base698
There's just nothing to do in Raleigh, unless all you do is drink and go to
restaurants.

~~~
mountaineer22
...and the horrible traffic, where the city loves to randomly close streets
for events (almost every week).

...and the excessive police presence.

...and the re-segregated schools.

Not to mention the state legislature, right?

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dmourati
Article mentions lower home ownership prices in the cities but doesn't cover
salary or other comp.

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whybroke
Too bad housing prices are viewed as a completely uncontrollable force of
nature beyond any human ability to tame. Too bad a supossedly endless stream
off ideas and innovation apparently can't possible solve it.

Otherwise the chief driving force of the economy might not be increasingly
constrained by literal rent seeking.

But rent-seeking is apparently a sacrosanct property right that trumps all
other issues of well being and so we must comfort ourselves with myths that
innovation is so independent of culture that it can appear anywhere and, if it
does, won't be choked to death in infancy in exactly the same way every time.

~~~
WalterSear
Entrenched politics are a completely uncontrollable force of nature beyond any
human ability to tame.

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jroseattle
Important to note is that everyone in the video from the article were tech
employees who relocated to those areas with their same job. They're all remote
workers, save for the guy who commutes to Boston. And, more to the point, they
were established in their positions -- presumably onsite -- before moving.

Good for the folks who do this, but don't kid yourself...it impacts your
ability to move ahead in your career. If you want or need to move on from your
current gig, your options become extremely limited.

Proximity to tech hubs still matters.

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lihorne
Don't forget about Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada.

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stoic
>INSTEAD OF AUSTIN, TEXAS, TRY HUNTSVILLE, ALA.

Yes please

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GirlsCanCode
He forgot Beersheva! There's a city with a good start-up scene and a little
cheaper than Tel Aviv.

