
Not So Much ‘New York Poor’ as ‘Pittsburgh Rich’ - ForHackernews
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/talent-migration-work-creative-much-new-york-poor-pittsburgh-rich-82894/
======
jimbokun
Pittsburgh is also an outstanding place to raise children.

Our first child was born in Brooklyn, second in New Jersey, but my wife and I
are originally from the Pittsburgh area. Returned to Pittsburgh while our kids
were still in pre-school.

The Carnegie Library system is outstanding. The Squirrel Hill and Oakland
branches (most convenient locations to us) have large, comfortable children's
sections. With their loan system, can request pretty much any book you can
think of and pick up in a few days in the branch closest to you. My kids
understand the system and use it to get books by authors they like.

Children's Museum, Phipp's Conservatory, and Carnegie museum are all great for
kids. Generally, if you go more than once a yearly membership pays off, and a
lot of these are connected (membership in one gives you admission to others).

A few years older now, we got season passes to Kennywood and Sandcastle.
Kennywood has fantastic roller coasters, especially the older ones.

Schenley and Frick parks are immense. With the Pittsburgh topography, you can
walk through trails and feel totally removed from the city.

In many neighborhoods, you can own suburb sized homes for cheaper than the
suburbs, with access to all the city amenities.

My kids walk 3 blocks to school.

I could go on. Pittsburgh is a great place to raise a family.

~~~
burnte
I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and yes, it's a great place to raise
kids. but it's not a great place to be when you're starting out your life. I
love Pgh and always will, but they city has a serious problem thinking ahead
and finding ways to grow. It tried being a financial city in the 80s, then a
tech city in the 90s, all the while it was growing as a medical city. It's
still the best place to get sick for nearly anything, the medical facilities
are second to none. But aside from education and hospitals, there's no nearly
enough industry there, not nearly enough new-world accoutrements. I, and many
people like me, moved away after high school and college because the city can
feel small, constrained, and too old fashioned. I don't think it doesn't need
to lose that to grow, but I don't know what else it does need. I hope it finds
it.

~~~
bmj
I am life-long 'burger (aside from 4 years away for university), and this
doesn't match my experience (I'm 41, so I've been around the proverbial block
here--I lived through the first "renaissance" in East Liberty, and am
observing the re-growth of that neighborhood now). I jumped about the tech
boom bus in the late 90s, and from what I've seen, the tech boom never ended.
And, in my experience, that industry is varied--want to build websites? Build
medical devices? Work on speech recognition software? There are jobs here for
you.

 _not nearly enough new-world accoutrements_

Can you give examples? As others have pointed out, I think PGH does a great
job of bridging the gap between a large, cosmopolitan city and a small town
where you don't have to feel lost forever. Of course, as you point out, the
flip side to that it is a small town--you have to very careful to avoid
burning bridges because it is highly likely you may need to cross that bridge
again at some point.

(Edit: fixed formatting)

~~~
jaaron
> the tech boom never ended

As a mostly life-long 'burger (up until I was 26), I disagree. In fact, I'll
claim that if you're a software engineer in Pittsburgh, then you're in a dead-
end job as long as you remain in Pittsburgh.

Yes, you'll have a very nice quality of life; however, you have significantly
less opportunities as a software engineer there. Aside from a few firms,
Pittsburgh doesn't have an industry that provides the environment, training,
challenges and opportunities of both large technology firms and a robust
startup community that you see in other major tech hubs. This lowers the wages
and, to be frank, lowers the quality of engineers available to hire in
Pittsburgh. It makes it more difficult to move out for engineers who have
spent the formative part of their career in Pittsburgh.

And that's fine. Software programming isn't the be-all end-all of human
activity. It's awesome to be part of something bigger, delivering real value
aside from shipping the next social-photo-sharing-app. But just because you
can get software programming jobs in Pittsburgh in no way allows Pittsburgh to
compare to San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, LA, Boston, Austin... It's just not
the same environment and we shouldn't pretend it is.

~~~
fixermark
It's not the same environment, but I think that you're way off base regarding
the quality of engineers. Of course, as a software engineer in Pittsburgh, I
may have blinders on. ;)

On the other hand, given the rate that Google is growing in Pittsburgh, I
suspect they'd disagree with you about available talent quality.

(On the third hand, "quality" is a fuzzy metric unless we nail down more
concretely how one would evaluate it. Is someone writing thousands of lines of
code per day at Facebook higher "quality" than someone writing a hundred lines
of code per day on machine-learning cancer detection logic?)

~~~
bmj
I suspect that Google (and Apple, and Disney) are finding they can keep
talented engineers from CMU in the city after graduation.

That's not to say there aren't good, indigenous engineers, but, rather, that
Google has a nice farm system in the local universities.

------
morgante
I think there's a pretty strong argument for moving to a Pittsburgh on
sabbatical, but while I'm working I'd definitely stay in NYC/SF.

Salaries here are substantially higher (I doubt devs make $150k+ in
Pittsburgh, in NYC that's very achievable), and that makes a huge difference
in accumulating savings. Yes, living expenses are proportionally higher here
as well so I'm still only left with a small percentage of my paycheck. But
that small percentage means a lot more because it can be spent on global goods
like travel or savings.

Spending a couple grand on a vacation is basically a rounding error in a NYC
budget, but it'd be a decent chunk of a Pittsburgh salary. Similarly, saving
just a bit of my income in NYC for a few years makes it easy to build up a
large nest egg for a down payment on a beautiful house somewhere like
Pittsburgh.

If I'm way off base, someone please let me know. If it's actually possible to
make $150k+ in a cheap area, or with remote work, I'd be interested to hear.

~~~
steveklabnik
"Pittsburgh" has an "h" at the end, and Pittsburghers will get really annoyed
by this. You almost made my eye start twitching. ;)

Sorry, I don't mean to be a jerk. Just wanted to let you know.

~~~
rickdale
I recently saw a real life crime mystery show where they proved a guy had
written an email under someone elses address by noticing "Pittsburgh" was
spelled without the 'h' in the email. He had murdered a girl and then sent
emails to her family from her account saying she would be in 'Pittsburg'.
Being from Pittsburgh the spelling immediately raised red flags for the
family.

~~~
tzs
I was watching a TV dramatization about the Steven Stayner kidnap case [1],
and at one point the sheriff said something about dredging "the Bear Creek" to
search for a body.

I lived in that town from age 7 or 8 until I left for college (and was living
there when Stayner disappeared), including a few years living near Bear Creek,
and do not recall ever hearing anyone call it "the Bear Creek". It was just
"Bear Creek". It immediately flagged the screenplay for me as having been
written by someone not from there [2].

I thought this was kind of neat, because as far as I can tell there is no rule
that determines what places get a "the" and which do not. It just seems to be
arbitrary, and so someone just grabbing the name off a map has no way to know
whether or not the locals put a "the" in front or not.

I bet there are lots of little linguistic traps like this waiting to trip up
people trying to pretend to be from somewhere they are not.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steven_Stayner](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steven_Stayner)

[2] It's possible, of course, that people from different parts of town
referred to that creek differently.

~~~
steveklabnik
> as far as I can tell there is no rule that determines what places get a
> "the" and which do not.

I was recently looking up the difference between "the Ukraine" and "Ukraine,"
because people really prefer the second. It was said that 'the' is used when
shortening the name: "the Bahamas" instead of "Kingdom of the Bahamas." "The
Ukraine" comes from when it was a territory of the USSR, rather than a country
in its own right, and when it gained independence, it was just "Ukraine."

Some food for thought.

------
rwhitman
Folks miss out on why major cultural centers attract people. In history it was
because of the opportunities from ports and trade, today its still pretty much
the same. Pittsburgh is not currently an airline hub for any airline. Meaning
if you want to go anywhere other than Philadelphia you need a connection. Its
also not adequately driveable or train distance from any city worth going to -
Cleveland is your only neighbor, and getting to Philly from Pittsburgh is
considerably more painful than Los Angeles to San Francisco (have done both
runs routinely I would take the 5 through the central valley over the turnpike
in winter anyday). Its also not a city that anyone passes through on a regular
basis without making it the destination.

I can take a meeting with even international clients in NYC without ever
leaving. They come here. If you're in art, yes you want to go where you can
live cheap, but if you want to make a splash you need to be somewhere where
there is sufficient disposable income and a big enough transient population to
support viral awareness of your art. Pittsburgh doesn't have enough of those
things. I think Pittsburgh is a wonderful city, filled with great parks, cheap
beer and good folks. But I haven't visited there in years and there is a
reason why

~~~
theYipster
100% agreed.

I'm from New York City but went to college in the 'Burgh, and while I do have
an affinity for the place given the four years I spent there, I'd never choose
to live there. It's a remarkably isolated city...

The last time Pittsburgh was a real, honest transit nexus was some 60-70 years
ago for the Pennsylvania Railroad. While USAir had something of a hub at PIT,
it's been tertiary to PHL and CLT since the company was called USAir, and then
they pulled out very quickly after they were acquired by America West. For
road travel, maybe it's a pass through city if you are starting in Philly and
are driving to Cleveland, Detroit, or Chicago, but most of the traffic in the
NE Corridor opts for I-80 to the north, which is much more direct and a much
easier drive than the Turnpike.

Pittsburgh also doesn't have much of a metropolitan area surrounding it. The
drop-off from downtown to rural is rather stark. And while there are indeed
some nice neighborhoods (Shadyside and Squirrel Hill within the city... Fox
Chapel and Wexford to name a few outside,) most of the inner suburbs have an,
IMHO, outer-outer borough NYC feel to them (i.e. Bay Ridge or Bay Side, not
Williamsburg or Park Slope.) There is practically no commuter belt, so you
either really have to like the urban core, or the surrounding mountain towns.

So yes, it's an isolated city. Even Cleveland and Baltimore have more of a
metro-urban feel to them in some respects. It's certainly not an issue for
many who choose to live there, but it's always been my reason for staying away
after college.

~~~
LordKano
I agree for the most part but I would like to question your use of rural in
this context.

As I see it, there are a couple of rural pockets near the city but they're the
exception rather than the rule. There's an approximately 20 mile buffer of
suburbs between the city proper and rural areas.

Maybe it's a difference of experience so where do New York eyes see as rural
near the city?

------
geebee
These stories keep popping up, and they're all very encouraging. There was a
post a while back about a startup in St Louis, another about Baltimore. There
are a lot of excellent cities out there, and SF really is just too expensive
(NY, too, but we're talking about tech).

I'm reminded of a quote by Patty Smyth: "New York has closed itself off to the
young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie.
New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."

[http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding...](http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding_anothe.php#).

I really do think that tech needs to embrace the need to branch out. I
understand SF is a great place to fund tech companies, and that VCs (and often
CEOs) appear to prefer it.

But it is frustrating to see tech elites (I'm talking about the sort of people
who get to pick up the phone and vent a bit to the elected leader of the
world's largest military about their company's hiring woes) insist that there
is a severe shortage of tech workers when they continue to create 110k a year
jobs in a city where the median 3br house costs 1.1mil. I agree that SF should
build more, but this isn't going to be the solution.

If you're offering 110K a year for developers in Detroit, Poughkeepsie,
Baltimore, St Louis, Minneapolis and you can't find anyone, ok, maybe we can
start talking about why and how the government can help. But if you're
creating 110K a year jobs in a place where two full time workers are looking
at roughly 50k in child care costs and a 1.1 mil bill for the median 3br
house, well _of course_ you're having trouble finding workers!

~~~
JPKab
I wonder how much of SF's growth is forced by VCs, like what happened to my
friend who recently got funded. He was DC based, and as a requirement from his
VC he had to move to San Fran for a minimum of a year.

His conversations with me have been interesting, with the main point being
that he has to pay WAY more for talent, space, everything. His main
frustration is he doesn't need the mythical "10X" developers. He just needs
people who can deliver, and has to fight for talent with dozens of apps which
have premises so silly that he can't believe they are funded.

I got an offer the other day for 120k in SF. I did the math, and said no. I'd
be better off taking a job for 85k in Austin.

And regarding Austin getting more expensive: There is a huge differentiator
here. Austin has a booming housing market AND a booming development market.
There is tons of new housing being built, and a lot of it is very interesting,
moderate density in-fill development relatively close to the downtown core.
There's one company building neo-traditional development neighborhoods in old
strip mall locations where the houses all have solar panels and uber modern
designs. They go for 270k for a 3 bedroom. Hardly exorbitant.

~~~
bsder
> I got an offer the other day for 120k in SF. I did the math, and said no.
> I'd be better off taking a job for 85k in Austin.

This is false. Have you checked _actual_ rents and commutes in Austin rather
than silly online calculators.

Yes, you get to avoid state tax in Texas. That is the primary advantage.

Rents within short commuting distance of downtown are ridiculous. Both IH35
and Mopac(Loop 1) have ridiculous traffic with no mass transit in sight. IH35
through Austin is actually acknowledged as a traffic nightmare in the same
class as 101 and 405 in LA!

And, finally, you get to live outnumbered and surrounded in a state that
wishes Austin would simply vaporize because it's full of "daymn libruls".

So, yeah, all that cheap housing is available. It's just a horrible commute
from a community that likely hates your guts in a state that doesn't care.

Don't get me wrong. There is a lot to like about Austin. But this isn't 1996
when Austin really was 85% the cost of living of the rest of the country when
I would fly in from California, buy a $4.95 submarine sandwhich and get back
"3 feet" of food because I forgot where I was.

~~~
big_youth
Your last statement is false. Texas has many large 'liberal' metropolitan
cities. The state is now purple and a lot more open than people expect, the
majority of the state advocates legalize cannabis and the mayor of Houston is
gay. Austin actually used to be known for it's libertarian bent.

In fact, there was a discussion on the Austin reddit about this very subject
today:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/28cmrs/psa_when_you_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/28cmrs/psa_when_you_move_to_austin_you_move_to_texas/?sort=top)

~~~
hkarthik
> Your last statement is false. Texas has many large 'liberal' metropolitan
> cities.

I agree with this. I've lived in Dallas for 10 years and I've seen a lot of
change since I moved here in 2004. The later waves of Asian immigration and
other folks fleeing the freezing Northeast winters is starting to make Texas a
bit more blue these days.

On the flip side, housing is no longer cheap in many areas. If I were to buy a
new home the same size as my current, 6 year old home, I would likely have to
spend twice as much as I spent in 2008.

------
eshvk
I know that someday I will be moving to a small city. However, there are huge
pros and cons. I have lived for the past few years in San Francisco and New
York. Both are massive cities; San Francisco is a huge tech echo-chamber. It
can get nauseating at times. New York has people who can be complete assholes
to strangers. Just because. Yet, every time, I leave the cities to travel
elsewhere, I am reminded of why I pay the expensive amounts to live here.

\- Food: Walk out of your house. Go a few blocks. You will find ethnic food of
your choice in New York or San Francisco. Hell, I live in the UWS in New York.
Even here, in the midst of high residential nirvana, you can find random
restaurants open at all hours of the night. Austin was a great city when I
lived there. Except that the closest restaurant ( a subway) was 5 miles away.
Ever want to do something crazy, like celebrate a birthday of a friend during
thanksgiving. Not a chance. Everything is shutdown. This is not just an
American phenomenon. I have been in Stockholm for the past few weeks. It is
sunday afternoon and you want food? Nope, it is sunny out there so every
restaurant owner in a five block radius wants to close his place and go hang
out.

\- Transport: If you want to live in an American city and not drive a car, I
haven't found better cities to live than the two. It is ridiculous how well a
city like Austin is designed for the four wheeled population. To the extent
that pavements are an afterthought, sandwiched between lawns and tarmac.

\- Culture: This is not going to be an issue for most people making the move.
However, as a person who is a perpetual immigrant, I prefer cities that are
filled with people from varying different backgrounds. New York is the most
non American, American city that I have ever lived in. I wish I could say the
same for San Francisco, but it really is a city of three major clusters.

~~~
potatolicious
This reflects my thoughts on NYC perfectly. Even though every time I leave the
city I end up complaining about how my apartment is the size of somebody's
living room, when push comes to shove I wouldn't dream of trading my Manhattan
shoebox for a big house in the suburbs.

The culture part really rings true for me. I was born in Asia, immigrated to
Canada at a very young age, and now I'm in the US. I find it difficult and
oftentimes annoying to live in places without this sort of diversity. I've
been to, for lack of a better term, "whiter" parts of the US and have always
been a bit uncomfortable. I've met very few hostile "real" racists, but in
these parts of the country I feel like every time I meet someone I have to
first break through the stereotypes attached to my skin color.

"Where are you from?" "Canada" (I speak with no trace of an Asian accent) "No,
where are you REALLY from?"

In NYC the answer is "Cool, which part of Canada?"

Nevermind the people who _just_ have to sneak in the "good at math" joke
somewhere in there. Nobody ever means any harm, but it is profoundly annoying
to go through life being the "other". In big cities this is _never_ a problem
- when I meet new people I'm treated as an individual first, not the sum
perceptions of my race.

~~~
eshvk
> The culture part really rings true for me. I was born in Asia, immigrated to
> Canada at a very young age, and now I'm in the US. I find it difficult and
> oftentimes annoying to live in places without this sort of diversity. I've
> been to, for lack of a better term, "whiter" parts of the US and have always
> been a bit uncomfortable. I've met very few hostile "real" racists, but in
> these parts of the country I feel like every time I meet someone I have to
> first break through the stereotypes attached to my skin color.

Hah. I feel ya. I was born, grew up in Africa. I am of Indian origin. I don't
explicit identify as Indian. Hell, being asked if I am from India as the first
question from the get go is pretty fucking infuriating for me. It is getting
to the point where I occasionally ask if they are European? Not to say this
doesn't happen in the big cities like NYC or SF, but it happens way less than
it would in Podunk town, USA. But it happens more in SF with its huge Indian
tech population than in NYC where tech is just one another industry. This [1]
kind of hits too close to home sometimes.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMJI1Dw83Hc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMJI1Dw83Hc)

------
benburton
As a software engineer, and recent Pittsburgh transplant coming from NYC, I
think it's _ok_ here. The only part that's hitting me pretty hard is food...
it's pretty much incomparable.

I have been trying to find decent Indian food, for example, but have been
coming up short. Pittsburgh does have very good modern-American cuisine, but
"ethnic" food is a bit lacking.

Going out drinking is insanely cheap by comparison. You can get a good craft
beer draft for as low as $2, whereas in NYC the best I'd find would be around
$4 (and that would be pretty lucky). There's plenty to do culturally, and the
rent/housing prices are very good.

EDIT: Thanks for all the Indian food recommendations. I've got some eating to
do!

~~~
osterwood
Good indian? You need to check out Udipi:
[http://udipicafepittsburgh.com](http://udipicafepittsburgh.com)

It's out in Monroeville next to a concrete factory -- but fantastic south
indian food. Definitely worth the drive.

~~~
kibwen
Ah, I'm glad someone beat me to suggesting Udipi! Everything there is lovely,
and I've never seen anyone else make puri (the fried balloon bread) as
spectacularly large as they do. Probably the best Indian food that I've had in
Pittsburgh, though Tamarind
([http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/23/271746/restaurant/Oakland/Tam...](http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/23/271746/restaurant/Oakland/Tamarind-
Flavor-of-India-Pittsburgh)) in Oakland has an amazingly affordable lunch
buffet.

------
mbillie1
As a software engineer working remote, I live in Salt Lake City (not a mormon;
like to ski/hike/climb), and I would never move back to NYC. For what I paid
for a studio apartment in Astoria, I rent a full 3/2 house with a view of
11,000' mountains out here. There's something to be said for relative wealth.

~~~
micro_cam
I'm doing the same thing for the same reason but in rural Montana near granite
big walls and powder covered peaks and I suspect there are many more of us out
there. Just bought a large farm house on 3.4 acres with a stream a couple
miles from the trailheads and crags for less then a condo in Seattle. I can't
imagine moving back to a city for any reason.

This area (the missoula+bitterroot valley area) also has a surprising number
of startups, both software and hardware including a utility bike manufacture
that is stealing contracts from the Chinese and various biotechs and big data
focussed companies.

I think that cheap space and low cost of living are ingredients that are too
often overlooked in YC style startups.

I'm primarily a software/machine learning guy but now that I've got a garage
i've already got small machine shop set up for various hardware projects and
experiments and now that we have guest rooms and space I'll be inviting
various collaborators out for coding/hiking/climbing/skiing retreats.

~~~
gdilla
but what about Indian food! j/k. well, not really.

~~~
stephencanon
Indian food turns out to be really easy to make yourself at home with a
minimal amount of time and effort, and the necessary spices keep well so you
can pick them up a few times a year in the big city.

The only ethnic food I find myself missing living in rural New Hampshire is
sushi, since the fish we have available here is rather limited compared to big
cities. For everything else I’ve either found good restaurants or learned to
cook it myself (and in the latter cases, I’m now often disappointed by
restaurants).

------
steveklabnik
I spent the first 25 years of my life in Pittsburgh, the last two in
California (18 months LA, 6 months SF), and _just_ moved to Brooklyn two weeks
ago.

Pittsburgh is wonderful. There's a lot wrong with it, but a lot of right too.
It is certainly very cheap to live, and there's a lot going on. We even have a
Techstars-affiliated incubator, which used to offer a really, really good
deal. My first startup, CloudFab, went through it years ago. That said, SF is
still the best place in the world to do a startup: every city says "We may not
be SF, but we have X!" X is _never_ enough to make up for not being SF. I said
it when I lived there too, and now that I've lived in SF, I know that's just
deeply, deeply wrong. That doesn't mean you _can't_ do it, but it's a
handicap.

However, living in a place is very rarely about 'economic sense.' I have a
_need_ to live in NYC. I've gotten more work done in the two weeks I've lived
here than I did in the entire six months I lived in SF, and maybe about a
third of what I did in LA. The hustle, bustle, and opportunities are endless.

Last night I woke up at ten am, did my laundry, then went to a juice bar,
worked for a few hours, walked around, ended up literally coding on a bar
while watching the US. vs. Ghana game, then took the train over to Herald
Square and coded in the park. It was a beautiful evening. Around midnight,
walked up to Times Square to squeak in some power before all the stores
closed, then worked in another park until 3am, and took the train home. You
can't really do that anywhere else, at least in the states.

Oh, and I'm saving about 25% on my rent by moving to Brooklyn from San
Francisco, and I'd be saving 60% if I had still lived in the Mission when I
left.

~~~
xienze
> Last night I woke up at ten am, did my laundry, then went to a juice bar,
> worked for a few hours, walked around, ended up literally coding on a bar
> while watching the US. vs. Ghana game, then took the train over to Herald
> Square and coded in the park. It was a beautiful evening. Around midnight,
> walked up to Times Square to squeak in some power before all the stores
> closed, then worked in another park until 3am, and took the train home. You
> can't really do that anywhere else, at least in the states.

So your gold standard is "a city where I code in bars and parks until the
middle of the night?" Yeah, I think there's more than one place in the US
where you can do that.

~~~
steveklabnik
There are very few cities which have bars that are open past 2am, and there
are very few cities in which you can code at a bar and not be weird (which
means things like accessible power plugs), and there are very few cities in
which there's hustle and bustle, even at 3am.

~~~
bmelton
I don't doubt that New York has excellent nightlife, but as someone who's
travelled the nation extensively, I think your categorization of "very few"
cities where there's hustle and bustle after 3AM is perhaps limited.

Nashville, Memphis, Miami, Denver, Portland, Honolulu, Houston, Austin,
Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle all spring to mind
immediately, and that's not even counting the big two -- New Orleans and
Vegas.

Also, for what it's worth, I've been coding in bars for over a decade in
places like Memphis, TN, Albany, NY, etc., and haven't ever been a problem.

Glad you like New York, and I'm in no way trying to disparage it, but the OP
does make a point. That said, everywhere is different, and New York
undoubtedly offers a myriad of things not found in other places, and vice
versa.

~~~
steveklabnik
I've also travelled pretty extensively, both here and abroad. I've been to
nine of the places you listed. I guess I must not have been to the right
parts.

I DID almost move to Chicago once...

------
ChikkaChiChi
Pittsburgh has always been a great city to be "from" and only recently has
become a good city to be "in".

My hometown (grew up in Hazelwood/Greenfield) is still a city very much in
transition. If you stay in your designated neighborhoods like Oakland,
Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, etc. you'll be blissful in your little bubble of it
being a great town on the upswing. Get ten minutes out of town in almost any
direction (sans the southern 376 corridor to the airport) and you'll feel like
you are on a different planet.

Sometimes even taking the wrong street will have you wind up in areas that are
dilapidated, poverty stricken, and villainous. The Consol Energy Center is a
stone's throw from one of the historically worst neighborhoods in the country.

Knowing that, Pittsburgh has radically changed in a very short amount of time.
Medical was always big there; but the dotcom boom incubated a wonderful
technology center that surrounds Carnegie Mellon and the other fine schools in
the area.

I wouldn't hesitate for a second moving back to Pittsburgh...just so long as I
get to live in a place of my own choosing and not my old neighborhood :)

~~~
jimbokun
I live in Greenfield now. Able to easily afford a big house for very little
money. Easy access to all of the neighborhoods you mention, as well as
downtown. I walk to work in Squirrel Hill, for example.

Just to say, some of us actually like your old neighborhood. :)

------
kcovia
The quality of life is really great here in Pittsburgh. I have a huge 1
bedroom, back yard, front porch, in a great safe neighborhood, a block from
major bus lines. All for $600/month. It'd run me at least triple that in
somewhere like SF or NYC. Sure, you can't get some of the things you'd get in
those cities, but quite frankly, you can come close. There are dozens of ethic
restaurants a block away, 10+ museums and galleries within 5-10 miles, and
best of all, it's cheap enough to actually have time to visit them.

~~~
johnward
I live close to Pittsburgh but in the middle of nowhere, OH. I Work in
Squirrel Hill sometimes but mostly from home. I have a 4bedroom 3bath house
with a 2 car garage on 15 acres that costs me ~900 per month. You couldn't
rent a small apartment in some cities for that. However, you give up the
convenience of being in the city and all the activities if that's the
lifestyle you want to live. I personally love my fortress of solitude.

------
forgotAgain
My daughter has lived in Brooklyn since she graduated from an Ivy, class of
2011. She has a liberal arts degree. She found a job where she started in the
mid 30’s. After two and a half years she’s broken 40 but not by much. She
works about 60 hours a week. Her last review made her a manager so she gets no
overtime. She works in an industry that caters to luxury so the company is
setting income records. The money is all flowing to the top. It’s an employers
market and the starting salary the company now offers is lower then it was
when she started because there are so many college graduates looking for
anything resembling a job.

She lived in Park Slope for the first two years, sharing a two bedroom, fifth
floor walkup, attic apartment. The entire apartment was maybe 20 x 20 ft with
a good part of it of limited use due to the slant of the roof. Rent was $1,500
a month including utilities. It was a great neighborhood though and she really
enjoyed her time there.

The apartment building was sold to a luxury developer and the rent was raised
to $2,300 a month. The new owners really just wanted the building empty so
they could gut it and change it to luxury apartments. We walked by there this
past weekend and the place was boarded up.

Her new apartment is a legitimate two bedroom in a clean but very old building
on the edges of Boerum Hill. The neighborhood is okay but you need to be aware
that two blocks away it starts get dodgy very quickly. The rent is $2,200 +
utilities. Her and her apartment mate looked for two months to find the
apartment. It was the only thing they could find that was affordable but
wasn’t a filthy dump. The leases on the old and new places overlapped by a
month and a half but they had to look early because the inventory is so
limited.

Real estate in NYC has gone crazy. Manhattan prices are driven by
international buyers looking for a place that’s safe. One bedroom apartments
in Manhattan for less than a million are becoming scarce according to the NYT.
Brooklyn is priced at what Manhattan was a couple of years ago. The downtown
area of Brooklyn has been very popular because of the availability of mass
transit to get people into their jobs in Manhattan. As you move out from
downtown Brooklyn the commute time increases quickly as subway lines spread
out and express trains make less frequent stops. Two to three hours a day on a
subway commute becomes old very quickly.

NYC is a great place but unless you have some equity in the place you work
you’re very likely not going to be able to afford to have the life you think
is waiting for you there.

~~~
grrrando
Three hours a day on the subway from almost anywhere in Brooklyn to almost
anywhere in Manhattan is a stretch. I commute from Bay Ridge - the far end of
the "R" line in Brooklyn, and not express - to Little Italy, daily. Door-to-
door, the commute is about 45 minutes. My rent is under $1600 for a large 1BR
in an elevator building with laundry.

Coming from Philadelphia, where I lived in a 2BR HOUSE with a yard and all the
amenities for $400/mo less, there was some sticker shock. But when you get to
it, there's a lot more opportunity, a lot more options, a lot more
of...everything. New York is about "a lot". That's what you pay for.

People seem to be unwilling to explore neighborhoods outside of a 20-minute
ride to down/midtown hotspots, which reasonably cost considerably more. If you
can stomach an extra 10-20m on the subway you can find very livable rents in
good neighborhoods.

~~~
Maven911
What do you get in NYC that you wouldnt't get elsewhere (or that's hard to get
elsewhere) ? Legitimate question here, since I am thinking of moving there but
I have feelings the place is just overhyped as a tourist spot.

~~~
freshyill
I lived in New York from '05-'08\. It was fun. I have lots of friends there
and I could go out to awesome bars and concerts and comedy shows, and it was
generally a great time.

Eventually though, I wanted better opportunities. Nobody wanted to pay in New
York. If I looked for web design gigs on Craigslist and elsewhere, everybody
seemed to think $10/hour was a fair rate. It was insulting. So I got the hell
out.

I moved to DC in 2008 and haven't really looked back. In 2008, it was
considerably cheaper, and salaries were generally higher. After struggling to
find a decent job when I was first planning to move to New York, I was shocked
to find that there were many companies and organizations in DC that were
jumping to hire me.

Now I live just outside the city. I actually have kids and own a house. Those
things would have never been an option in New York, unless I was willing to
raise my kids in a shithole apartment. Granted, DC's cost of living is
astronomical, but it's still way more accessible than New York.

Everything that I like about New York is still there when I visit once a year
or so. And that's about all the partying I have the stomach for these days
anyway. Even if I lived there, the best parts of New York would only benefit
me on rare occasions, but the drawbacks would be daily.

All that said, if you're in your mid-20s and looking for a few years of having
fun and living in a tenement, go for it. I wouldn't advise against it. But if
you're looking to ever settle down in New York, it's not a good idea.

I don't know if any city comes close to New York in terms of the entertainment
and culture options available there. Even New York's subway system is
unparalleled. DC's Metro is beautiful but functionally, it's only a tiny
fraction of the New York subway.

Even in DC, I, I keep thinking of how low the cost of living is in Baltimore
or Harrisburg, and whether maybe I should try to convince my employer to let
me become part- or full-time remote, and take my DC salary to someplace with a
lower cost of living.

------
JohnBooty
I felt a little more sane after reading that article. I understand that a lot
of people want to do their art in vibrant cities like NYC, and that makes
sense for people pursuing careers like theater that you can't realistically
pursue while living alone in a cabin in the woods. (Whether you can even
realistically pursue it in NYC is another story, but it's at least
theoretically possible)

But a lot of us (though certainly not all of us) writers and programmers and
other such types would rather live somewhere cheaper and less claustrophobic.
I know it's certainly what _I_ chose. It's not without its downsides but I
like the upsides.

~~~
weeksie
I think if I was a bit younger and a bit less thoroughly ruined by living in
New York for the past six years (I really couldn't live anywhere else in the
US long term)—I'd go to Detroit. It's cheap, a bit dangerous, and drawing a
shitload of artists and writers. Not being near the ocean would drive me
batty, but it would be an awesome excursion for a few years.

I recently did the classic Manhattan to Brooklyn move and I'm thrilled.
Perhaps I have Stockholm Syndrome but I love that it's possible to up and move
to a different town and still be in New York City.

But, to each their own. Some writers thrive on isolation and some thrive on
socialization.

------
nilkn
On the topic of less popular cities: My parents live in St. Louis. It's a
wonderful place. The city was hit hard by de-industrialization, which is
probably the reason why it's so affordable. It has Wash U, which is a really
excellent private university. The campus is next to Forest Park and a thriving
collegetown-type area. There are some gorgeous historic neighborhoods nearby
as well which have been maintained over the decades, like Parkview.

The city is so affordable that it's not terribly uncommon for upper middle
class folks like doctors to have vacation homes, usually lakehouses.

And I imagine there's a lot of really awesome office space available for rent
in downtown at affordable rates for would-be startups; not to mention there's
undoubtedly a lot of fantastic local CS talent coming out of Wash U which is
largely untapped by the city.

Missouri is fully seasonal as well. It's sometimes breathtaking to see
everything in bloom in the spring and early summer, and there are plenty of
opportunities to play in the snow in winter.

The only thing it's lacking, of course, is an abundance of well-paying stable
jobs in technology.

~~~
brational
Showed this to a friend of mine that works for a start up out west:
[http://downtowntrex.com/officespace/](http://downtowntrex.com/officespace/)
Office space is jaw-droppingly cheap.

~~~
nilkn
Sounds like a killer deal for someone working remotely. Live in a great urban
neighborhood without the insane cost, rent your own office downtown so you
have a physically distinguished working space, and enjoy life.

I'd seriously consider doing it if I were more confident in the stability and
longevity of remote work.

------
dreamweapon
_“Knowing there are people on this planet who think their sandwiches are worth
$10 apiece bothers me immensely.”_

It's not that the sandwiches are "worth" $10; it's that they're pegged to the
square foot rent of the shop which sells them (and of the wages + salaries of
the people who make them and provide them for sale; and hence, the rents of
the spaces they live in, also).

That's just economics, and the same principles apply in NYC as anywhere else
(with different rent figures plugged in).

------
jaegerpicker
I made a very similar choice as the article highlights. I'm a experienced
Software engineer, particularly with the back end of web systems but also iOS
and Android apps. I could live in nearly any city in the western Hemisphere
and have a large choice of jobs. I found a GREAT place to work in Portland
Maine and I couldn't be happier. I'm originally from the Rust belt (2 hours
from Pittsburgh and about 1.5 hours from Cleveland) and we thought long and
hard about either of those two cities as a good place to move but Portland and
the Ocean were just too big of a draw. Portland is much cheaper than other
East Coast cities but has an amazing food screen, great outdoor activities on
it's doorstep, and a thriving art screen. It's also only 90 minutes from
Boston and a day trip drive from NYC. We also considered NYC and SF, to me
there was no way to justify the expense vs Portland. It's one reason why I
don't think there will be another Silicon Valley, I think the next rise of
tech companies are going to be far spread out and in places that it's easy to
attract great engineers to.

------
gw
This rings really true, and it's not just for artists or authors. I moved to
Pittsburgh so I could take a year off and just work on free software. I had
about $10k in savings and it lasted the whole year. You can get even cheaper
rent if you're willing to live a bit outside the city.

~~~
keehun
$10k for an entire year sounds really amazing. Did it feel like $10k? Mind
sharing a rough expenses/budget? Even with a $100k salary, saving/investing
$90k annually would be amazing...

~~~
gw
Currently I'm living about 20 minutes outside the city on $450/mo rent,
utilities included except gas. I eat really cheaply by buying in bulk from
Sam's Club, though about once a week I go out drinking/eating. I don't pay any
cable bill -- I just tether off of my phone for internet. I also don't have
any student loans anymore, so that helps.

------
badman_ting
I left Pittsburgh, like all my friends except for one. It's been discussed as
an up-and-coming city for years now, but I'm still not sure it's somewhere I
would want to live. I remember when people pointed to the Google office that
was built there, as an indicator that things were changing. At the time, that
office had 25 employees, not sure about now. I guess I'm saying that I'm not
sure how much of that narrative is actually happening for people in
Pittsburgh.

As far as raising kids, I could definitely see that. Your real-estate dollar
goes pretty far. The weather sucks ass, though -- even Paul Graham says so! I
really wouldn't want to have to deal with that again.

(Also, the bit about "why should I pay a bunch in rent to live near some nice
parks" is such a dumb way of thinking about NYC. But if you really do think
that way you definitely should not go to New York.)

~~~
fixermark
You aren't wrong about the weather. Which is, ironically, why I live here... I
hate sunny weather, I burn easily (even with sunscreen) and it's easier for me
to add clothing to guard against the cold than to shed layers to avoid the
heat. I'm also allergic to the pollen of a whole host of plants that simply
aren't hardy enough to survive the winters here; my childhood summers were a
miserable annual struggle through one respiratory infection after another, but
nowadays I just pop a Zyrtec a few months out of the year and I'm good to go.

Pittsburgh is a great fit for me climate-wise, but given that I'd move to
Alaska for the climate, I'm probably an outlier. ;)

~~~
badman_ting
Well, in my opinion it's not just the cold, the summers are hot and gross too.
Not much "open-window weather", as my mom says. But then, if pollen is a
consideration that would make sense for you. I live in the Pacific NW now,
which is much milder year-round.

~~~
johnward
The weather is terribad. The winters are long(sometimes october-march), cold,
and dark. There is a few weeks of spring which is mild but rains the entire
time. The last few weeks have been the best weather I've experience in a long
time but it still rained 5 days a week. It was just nice on the weekends. Then
the summer is hot and so humid you cannot breathe.

The Pittsburgh area gets less sunlight per year than Seattle does (which is
somewhat known for being dreary). This one really gets me. Sunlight make me
function better. I go to California and the radio stations are talking about
how it's been "overcast" and it's like the most sunlight I've seen in my life.
Overcast in Pittsburgh means the skies are grey.

------
phrasemix
I recently moved back to Durham, North Carolina after 10 years of living in
bigger cities (Tokyo, then NYC).

I expected that the rent would be cheaper but that I'd miss out in terms of
culture, food, and the quality of people I met.

What I'm finding is 1) The culture that is available here is easier to
appreciate and digest because there's less paradox of choice 2) The food is a
little more limited but overall better 3) The people that I meet are just as
smart and interesting. I often forget that I'm back in the South and not in
Brooklyn.

~~~
johnward
I really liked the RTP area when I was down there. Plus they seem to have a
pretty good tech scene. It's kind of like Pittsburgh with decent weather.

~~~
_delirium
Any tips on cool parts of the RTP area? I was at a conference in downtown
Raleigh for a week two years ago, and was kind of surprised that the downtown
is super-small. Had two nice coffee shops, but didn't feel like the downtown
of a 500,000 person city; almost the kind of 5-block downtown you'd expect for
a town 1/10 of that size. I might go again this year, and am hoping to find
somewhere to stay where there's more stuff going on, but am not quite sure
where that is.

~~~
johnward
I was in Raleigh too. It seemed like a much smaller town than half a million
people and maybe that's why I liked it. My wife and I were only there for a
weekend so we didn't do much exploring. The downtown area just seemed clean
and safe compared to other places. I'm not really the kind of person that
looks for things to do in town so I'm probably not the best to ask. It seems
like they had some decent outdoor activities and they are only a few hour from
the beach which is something I enjoy. It kind of reminded me of a bigger
version of my hometown (Wheeling, WV) with much nicer weather.

------
LordKano
I'm a Pittsburgh area native and I still react with shock when I find out what
my friends and relatives in other cities pay for housing.

Over $1,000/month for a little apartment and $300/month for a parking space.

You could buy two houses in the Pittsburgh suburbs for that much money. A nice
3 bedroom house in a clean, low crime suburb can be had for under $100k.
Smaller houses, fixer-uppers and houses in less than ideal neighborhoods can
be purchased for under $50k.

------
robg
I did my graduate work in Pittsburgh. $20k a year sustained me quite well.
Rent for a large two-bedroom blocks from my office was $680/month. I know
people who bought homes and paid a mortgage for less. Food is decent, kind
people, public transportation is pretty good.

------
akilism
Lived in PGH for 10 years and now I'm on year 9 of NYC.

I definitely miss the cost of living but I'm making much more money that I
ever did in Pittsburgh. I love it there though I day dream of moving to back
and living in a nice big house in the east end.

------
Tiktaalik
The author chooses his quote from Florida poorly. Florida is talking about
Pittsburgh from when he worked there in the "early 2000s" (and presumably
earlier). That's a decade or more ago. Cities can change remarkably in a
decade.

Florida doesn't make any statement about what Pittsburgh is like today.

------
andrewljohnson
When I was in college in Pittsburgh (1999-2003), I rented rooms in share
houses for $75-150/month, in nice parts of Shadyside and Squirrel Hill (after
figuring out the dorms were obscenely expensive). I could have probably gotten
by on around $20K/year, feeling very comfortable.

~~~
jcdavis
Its definitely more expensive now, when I rented in 2009-2010 rooms in similar
places were more like $300-400/month. Still a pretty affordable place
regardless.

------
ruigomes
Is it realistic for a fresh graduate (with a masters) in Informatics and
Computing Engineering from Portugal to go straight to NYC and be able to live
alone (as in not sharing rooms) and actually have some money saved by the end
of the year?

I would absolutely love to experience NY, since I'm a passionate web
developer.. There's so many companies in this field over there that I feel
that my career would grow so much faster than if I stay here in Europe (at
least in Portugal).

I would personally prefer NY over SF since it's way closer to "home".

Any thoughts on actually being able to financially live in NYC as a fresh
grad?

~~~
ceras
By "alone" do you mean not sharing just bedrooms or any rooms? Most new grads
share an apartment with roommates but have their own bedroom.

I know many recent grads living in New York (myself included), mostly earning
from $60k to $120k, and it's not a problem for any of us. What's tough is
settling down with a family. But as a single person - especially with the
additional savings you get by not owning a car - it's fine for tech salaries.

To make it more concrete, here's a budget:

$70k starting salary (low for NYC tech)

-$24,500 taxes (overestimated at 35% to be safe)

-$18,000 (1500*12) Manhattan rent + utilities

-$18,000 careless youth living expenses ($1.5k/month subway, eating out, bars, museums, music, traveling, etc)

______

$9,500 left over per year for saving.

So even underestimating salary, overestimating taxes, not choosing a super
cheap apartment, and not being frugal in the slightest on monthly living
expenses, you still net $9,500 per year.

------
chiph
I've been in Austin almost 4-1/2 years, and it's changed significantly in that
time. Fewer hippies, more yuppies. It's common now to hear of cash offers on
houses that are $10k above the asking price.

------
Mz
I am in California. The cost of housing here is galling. But I am here for my
health and the cost of housing here is less galling than what my health
problems are supposed to cost. Living here helps me stay off medication and
out of the ER and out of surgery.

I wish I could go move someplace cheap. Honest, I do. But, for me, staying
healthy is the cheap choice.

Those kinds of quality of life issues are sometimes very, very hard to
adequately quantify. These articles often do a poor job of addressing that.
Price of housing is not the be all and end all of one's life.

~~~
qwerta
Not sure why you are in California. Health care is bloody expensive there,
somewhere else you could afford house AND hospital. And other states offer
many outdoor activities as well.

~~~
Mz
I am here for the _climate._

If I don't need medical care because I can breathe without medication, then it
matters little what local doctors cost.

------
dgabriel
This is totally off-topic, but I've known Wammo for years&years via the music
& poetry scene, and it's very strange to see him turn up on Hacker News.

------
qwerta
I think best way with startup is to choose cheap base to stay permanently and
travel a bit. I just returned from New York, planning trip to Berlin next
month and hike in Anatolia after that. In between I will enjoy summer house on
Greek beach, I also rent permanent apartment in Athens. My total (including
travel) expenses are less than NY rent would be. And did I mention I support
wife and kid?

------
mimighost
Studying in Pittsburgh for my master's...I like this city in general, but it
is just...felt old, stuck in 90s.

------
NDizzle
How are the K-12 public schools in Pittsburgh? Everyone seems interested to
move somewhere and rent a one bedroom.

~~~
jimbokun
I send my kids to a Catholic school.

That said, I know several people who have gotten their kids into Pittsburgh
charter schools and seem to be happy with that.

If we go the public school route for high school, my kids would feed into
Allderdice, and I hear their advanced program is outstanding, with many kids
going into Ivies from there.

Also, there's the Pittsburgh Promise.

[https://pittsburghpromise.org/earn.php](https://pittsburghpromise.org/earn.php)

"The Pittsburgh Promise scholarship is a big idea and a real commitment: if
you live in the city and attend Pittsburgh Public schools from 9th grade on,
up to a $40,000 Promise scholarship will be waiting for you at graduation."

Only applies to PA schools, but still, an impressive program.

~~~
bmj
Allderdice is one of the consistently better high schools in the city,
assuming your kids get into the advanced program. Personally, I'm a product of
Central Catholic, but many of my friends (who went on to Ivies) came out of
Allderdice.

~~~
fixermark
Frustratingly, when I think "high variance," Allerdice is precisely what comes
to mind.

I volunteer for the FIRST Robotics program in Pittsburgh. A couple of years
ago, I was chatting with some of the students from Allerdice who also
volunteer and were away from school that day due to their team being in the
competition---at about the same time that a few miles away, the police were
breaking up a large-group fight in Allerdice itself.

Allerdice (last time I checked) is a good school with some real problems. But
it's a good school.

