13 ms·

Tech Jobs, Cheaper Housing: The New Silicon Cities

104 points by muzz 10y ago

bradezone 10y ago
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" =]
jostmey 10y ago
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.
- benmaraschino 10y ago
  Does that salary include the housing stipend? AFAIK, UCSF residents get a decent stipend to use for housing expenses, on top of their normal salary. May not be enough to swing the balance either way, but it's worth knowing about...
  - jostmey 10y ago
    I think 65000 is with the housing stipend, but it is possible the website doesn't tell us everything. https://medicine.ucsf.edu/education/residency/application/comp.html https://medicine.ucsf.edu/education/residency/application/co...
    - boulos 10y ago
      Does she need to be at UCSF Parnassus or Mission Bay? Either way, there are still housing options at the edges that actually let you get to UCSF quickly and cheaply (like Sunset/Richmond for Parnassus, or Lower Dogpatch for Mission Bay). For a reasonable place in a good location, you'll end up at about $3000/month (there's a 1 bdrm at 246 2nd St). That's definitely expensive compared to nationwide averages, but you won't need a car if you both work in the city. As another poster mentioned, UCSF at Mission Bay (and elsewhere actually) has lots of purpose built housing at below market rates. Contact them!
  - deleted 10y ago
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- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  We were in a similar situation and didn't even look at SF. We are currently in SEA which is fairly expensive, but there is a ton of high density housing being created and effort to develop far reaching & high throughput rail.
- pj_mukh 10y ago
  Don't believe the media hype, I have a couple of friends doing their residency out of UCSF and loving it. Look at places in East bay (or slightly south of it) online. It is all on the BART so it is convenient to get SF. Yes, you can't live in SoMa or have a three bedroom house with that salary but SF city is not the center of the universe.
  - meritt 10y ago
    Hype? It's an hour+ commute between East Bay and UCSF. All my friends doing a residency put in close to 80 hours a week at other facilities. I'm not sure how that's remotely sustainable to waste that much time commuting.
    - DrScump 10y ago
      If it's purely wasted time, sure. If she has reading, research, or other "portable" work to do each day, however, commuting with somebody else doing the "driving" isn't wasted time at all. That's part of why I take Caltrain to SF whenever suitable.
      - Retric 10y ago
        11 hours commuting a week + 80 hours working = 13 hour days 7 days a week.
    - chaostheory 10y ago
      The area south of SF (Daly City, South SF, San Bruno, and Pacifica) is still semi-reasonable in cost and there's no bridge to cross. The crime rates are also much better than East Bay (excluding Fremont). As a semi-general rule for crime in the SF Peninsula (with some exceptions), try to be west of 101 and El Camino Real. Ideally try to be west of 280 as well.
- east2west 10y ago
  When I was a postdoc at UCSF there was subsided housing at the Mission Bay. The price was like $1000 below market rate. I think they still have it, but space is no doubt very limited.
- sndean 10y ago
  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_ 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      > Stay away from Atlanta if you value quality of living Can you elaborate on Atlanta's poor QoL?
      - muninn_ 10y ago
        Sure do you have something specific you'd like me to touch on or just in general?
        libria 10y ago
        I've lived in Atlanta and don't much care for it, but I'd think the other cities you mentioned would have similar drawbacks. What makes Pittsburgh/Columbus much better? edit: pros-> good Cost of Living to salary ratio, 4 seasons. cons-> humidity, traffic, public education system, lack of attractions (you can only go to the aquarium so many times).
      - gtaylor 10y ago
        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.
- deleted 10y ago
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- stevehawk 10y ago
  Same. Fiancee interviewed at Stanford last year for a surgery fellowship. But it was never high on the list because of the cost. Oddly enough, ended up in Little Rock which is starting to develop a tech market and is crazy cheap to live in (I came from DC).
  - FajitaNachos 10y ago
    I'm from Little Rock, though I haven't lived there in a few years. It is crazy cheap, but I'm not sure I would call it a "tech market". The Northwest part of the state is vastly superior to LR in my opinion. You should get up there sometime if you haven't.
    - mountaineer22 10y ago
      Bentonville is nice, but pretty crazy real estate bubble. Lots of spec homes being built.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  I assume you also make at least $65,000? If so you'll be fine in the Bay Area with your combined incomes. When I first moved out here four years ago I was making only $95,000/year and still had plenty left over to go on vacation, get drinks, eat dinner out, etc.
- muzz 10y ago
  Residency is a temporary proposition for a few years, and has always paid peanuts. When she finishes residency she'll be paid market value which is significantly higher.
- curun1r 10y ago
  Depending on what type of medicine you're wife is interested in, she may want to avoid SF for completely different reasons. I had a roommate who was an ER nurse. She worked shifts at an SF hospital and also commuted over to Oakland (Highland) to work shifts for lower pay. I asked her why she'd drive all that way when she could just pick up more shifts for higher pay in SF. She said the experience she got in Oakland was so much more valuable. In SF, it was lots of concerned parents bringing in their children because they'd had a fever of almost 100F for over an hour! At Highland, it was gunshot victims, illegal immigrants with obscure tropical diseases and just a much larger variety of medical needs. She claimed that on a per hour basis, the experience in Oakland was 10 times more valuable than in SF. So not only is the city pricing itself out of existence, as you mentioned, but it's pricing itself into a monoculture that takes away a lot of the diversity of the people there. And doctors might want a bit more of that diversity during their training. Then again, if she's studying for a specialty in treating carpal tunnel syndrome or interested in doing Lasik surgery, there's probably no better place on earth to be :-)
- geebee 10y ago
  Are you a software developer? Or some other kind of professional in the bay area? Salaries are pretty high here. If you're a developer, it wouldn't take much for you and your wife to clear 200k. I'm only barely above that with a two income family, and I'm raising two kids in San Francisco. Yeah, I got into the real estate market a bit earlier, during the previous boom, but housing is still expensive as all holy hell, I'd say I get to pay 75% of what I'd have to pay now. So it's better, but not that great for me. Look south of 280. Pacific and Daly City are fine, or some parts of SF. Rent is kind of outrageous, a 2br house near me is going for $4200, though it's really nice, 1920s style, and it's a house, with an extensive downstairs bonus room, separate living and dining room, and so forth. If you were more interested in saving money and it's just you and your wife, by guess is that you could knock a grand off that and still be walking distance from two bart stations, the J, K, and M lines, and the 43 that goes right by UCSF parnassus. It's not hard to access the rest of SF from that corner, there's all kinds of public transportation options near SF City college, Portola, Excelsior, Mission Terrace, etc. That's a ton to be spending on rent in such an unfashionable corner, but jeez, we're talking about the opportunity to do a residency at UCSF. Again, not sure about your salary, and the loans for med school can be pretty heavy, But even if you only earn half the median salary of a developer, you can make this work.
ejcx 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
  - ejcx 10y ago
    I agree with your assessment completely. I actually want to start a startup in Harrisonburg VA, but there are problems with starting one in the area. It's much harder to raise money. There are very few investors there who can help you. There's less of a support system to help you. Fewer potential customers in the area. It's tough out there. Very nice city, great beer for sure, low cost of living, very little opportunity if things go south for you.
  - warlox 10y ago
    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.
Tempest1981 10y ago
Places to consider (from the article): - Richmond, Virginia - Eugene, Oregon - Manchester, New Hampshire - Huntsville, Alabama
- karcass 10y ago
  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_ 10y ago
    Really? There are dozens of companies hiring in Eugene: https://siliconshire.org https://siliconshire.org
- RandomName2020 10y ago
  Eugene has bad air.
  - DrScump 10y ago
    Can you elaborate? It seems counterintuitive unless local smog is trapped by an inversion layer or there is smog-producing industry nearby.
    - pmb 10y ago
      It's at the southern end of the box canyon that is the Willamette Valley (the end that abuts the mountains), and to the north is Linn-Benton County "the grass seed capitol of the world" ( https://www.google.com/search?q=grass+seed+capital+of+the+world&oq=the+grass+seed+capito&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0j69i64l3.7258j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=grass+seed+capital+of+the+wo... ). If you have grass-pollen allergies, then Eugene really sucks. For everyone else it is fine except when the farmers burn their fields (which they aren't supposed to do, but enforcement is patchy).
- pault 10y ago
muninn_ 10y ago
Interesting they leave out places like Raleigh, or Columbus.
- gtaylor 10y ago
  Raleigh is where I'd probably be if I wasn't here in the Bay Area.
  - base698 10y ago
    There's just nothing to do in Raleigh, unless all you do is drink and go to restaurants.
    - mountaineer22 10y ago
      ...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?
      - deleted 10y ago
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sscotth 10y ago
Add them to the list: http://brighton.io/Next_Silicon_Valley http://brighton.io/Next_Silicon_Valley
- jostmey 10y ago
  Cuba? Really? Might as well add every city in world to that list.
  - 467568985476 10y ago
    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.
  - KON_Air 10y ago
    Actually Cuba is slowly moving to a quasi-free market, at their own slow pace. Sure, there probably won't be any longterm gigs anytime soon (like a couple of decades at least), but its worth keeping an eye for their projects, for the adventure of it if nothing else.
lihorne 10y ago
Don't forget about Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada.
allsystemsgo 10y ago
Or, you know, just embrace hiring remote workers.
drudru11 10y ago
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 10y ago
  "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..."
dmourati 10y ago
Article mentions lower home ownership prices in the cities but doesn't cover salary or other comp.
tyre 10y ago
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.
- elnado 10y ago
  Right, I was just about to reply with a similar response to another post. I went to Virginia Tech, lived in Northern VA for a while, and now I'm here in SF and it's like night and day. I did not believe that being here would be such a huge and significant difference, and yet it is. Influential and successful people in tech are so incredibly accessible here. After only a couple months I got to meet VCs, startup founders, CEOs of successful companies, other highly intelligent people in tech doing amazing things and so on. Most importantly, at least for me, there's a constant external motivation to push yourself, learn, collaborate, get involved, to do more, and I love it :D
  - 10y ago
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
He forgot Beersheva! There's a city with a good start-up scene and a little cheaper than Tel Aviv.
stoic 10y ago
>INSTEAD OF AUSTIN, TEXAS, TRY HUNTSVILLE, ALA. Yes please
whybroke 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Entrenched politics are a completely uncontrollable force of nature beyond any human ability to tame.
edblarney 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    I've lived in the US for a long time, as well as Canada, and Europe. Canadian system is 'pretty good' for 95% of needs, and it covers everyone. It's also less than 1/2 the cost of the US system. I understand that there are long waits for some things - and this is a drawback party of the system, but also just crappy service - and definitely not good. And yes - you don't get a doctor anymore. It's a problem - but you can go to any clinic (and you can chose, some are better than others) and get service on the spot. You just don't get to see the same person over and over. I agree this is not good. I don't like 'hard single payer' as we have here in Canada - but some of the advantages cannot be overlooked. The moment you don't have coverage, or the coverage won't cover you for some things ... then you understand. Most people in the US know of a serious 'health care horror story', whereas in Canada, it's not so bad. You have to wait longer. But for things that require immediate attention, you usually get it. Again - not saying it's better, just that there are some advantages.
  - edblarney 10y ago
jroseattle 10y ago
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.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
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.

104 points by muzz 10y ago

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" =]

jostmey 10y ago

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.

benmaraschino 10y ago
Does that salary include the housing stipend? AFAIK, UCSF residents get a decent stipend to use for housing expenses, on top of their normal salary. May not be enough to swing the balance either way, but it's worth knowing about...
- jostmey 10y ago
  I think 65000 is with the housing stipend, but it is possible the website doesn't tell us everything. https://medicine.ucsf.edu/education/residency/application/comp.html https://medicine.ucsf.edu/education/residency/application/co...
  - boulos 10y ago
    Does she need to be at UCSF Parnassus or Mission Bay? Either way, there are still housing options at the edges that actually let you get to UCSF quickly and cheaply (like Sunset/Richmond for Parnassus, or Lower Dogpatch for Mission Bay). For a reasonable place in a good location, you'll end up at about $3000/month (there's a 1 bdrm at 246 2nd St). That's definitely expensive compared to nationwide averages, but you won't need a car if you both work in the city. As another poster mentioned, UCSF at Mission Bay (and elsewhere actually) has lots of purpose built housing at below market rates. Contact them!
- deleted 10y ago
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placeybordeaux 10y ago
We were in a similar situation and didn't even look at SF. We are currently in SEA which is fairly expensive, but there is a ton of high density housing being created and effort to develop far reaching & high throughput rail.
pj_mukh 10y ago
Don't believe the media hype, I have a couple of friends doing their residency out of UCSF and loving it. Look at places in East bay (or slightly south of it) online. It is all on the BART so it is convenient to get SF. Yes, you can't live in SoMa or have a three bedroom house with that salary but SF city is not the center of the universe.
- meritt 10y ago
  Hype? It's an hour+ commute between East Bay and UCSF. All my friends doing a residency put in close to 80 hours a week at other facilities. I'm not sure how that's remotely sustainable to waste that much time commuting.
  - DrScump 10y ago
    If it's purely wasted time, sure. If she has reading, research, or other "portable" work to do each day, however, commuting with somebody else doing the "driving" isn't wasted time at all. That's part of why I take Caltrain to SF whenever suitable.
    - Retric 10y ago
      11 hours commuting a week + 80 hours working = 13 hour days 7 days a week.
  - chaostheory 10y ago
    The area south of SF (Daly City, South SF, San Bruno, and Pacifica) is still semi-reasonable in cost and there's no bridge to cross. The crime rates are also much better than East Bay (excluding Fremont). As a semi-general rule for crime in the SF Peninsula (with some exceptions), try to be west of 101 and El Camino Real. Ideally try to be west of 280 as well.
east2west 10y ago
When I was a postdoc at UCSF there was subsided housing at the Mission Bay. The price was like $1000 below market rate. I think they still have it, but space is no doubt very limited.
sndean 10y ago
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_ 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > Stay away from Atlanta if you value quality of living Can you elaborate on Atlanta's poor QoL?
    - muninn_ 10y ago
      Sure do you have something specific you'd like me to touch on or just in general?
      - libria 10y ago
        I've lived in Atlanta and don't much care for it, but I'd think the other cities you mentioned would have similar drawbacks. What makes Pittsburgh/Columbus much better? edit: pros-> good Cost of Living to salary ratio, 4 seasons. cons-> humidity, traffic, public education system, lack of attractions (you can only go to the aquarium so many times).
    - gtaylor 10y ago
      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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
stevehawk 10y ago
Same. Fiancee interviewed at Stanford last year for a surgery fellowship. But it was never high on the list because of the cost. Oddly enough, ended up in Little Rock which is starting to develop a tech market and is crazy cheap to live in (I came from DC).
- FajitaNachos 10y ago
  I'm from Little Rock, though I haven't lived there in a few years. It is crazy cheap, but I'm not sure I would call it a "tech market". The Northwest part of the state is vastly superior to LR in my opinion. You should get up there sometime if you haven't.
  - mountaineer22 10y ago
    Bentonville is nice, but pretty crazy real estate bubble. Lots of spec homes being built.
jdavis703 10y ago
I assume you also make at least $65,000? If so you'll be fine in the Bay Area with your combined incomes. When I first moved out here four years ago I was making only $95,000/year and still had plenty left over to go on vacation, get drinks, eat dinner out, etc.
muzz 10y ago
Residency is a temporary proposition for a few years, and has always paid peanuts. When she finishes residency she'll be paid market value which is significantly higher.
curun1r 10y ago
Depending on what type of medicine you're wife is interested in, she may want to avoid SF for completely different reasons. I had a roommate who was an ER nurse. She worked shifts at an SF hospital and also commuted over to Oakland (Highland) to work shifts for lower pay. I asked her why she'd drive all that way when she could just pick up more shifts for higher pay in SF. She said the experience she got in Oakland was so much more valuable. In SF, it was lots of concerned parents bringing in their children because they'd had a fever of almost 100F for over an hour! At Highland, it was gunshot victims, illegal immigrants with obscure tropical diseases and just a much larger variety of medical needs. She claimed that on a per hour basis, the experience in Oakland was 10 times more valuable than in SF. So not only is the city pricing itself out of existence, as you mentioned, but it's pricing itself into a monoculture that takes away a lot of the diversity of the people there. And doctors might want a bit more of that diversity during their training. Then again, if she's studying for a specialty in treating carpal tunnel syndrome or interested in doing Lasik surgery, there's probably no better place on earth to be :-)
geebee 10y ago
Are you a software developer? Or some other kind of professional in the bay area? Salaries are pretty high here. If you're a developer, it wouldn't take much for you and your wife to clear 200k. I'm only barely above that with a two income family, and I'm raising two kids in San Francisco. Yeah, I got into the real estate market a bit earlier, during the previous boom, but housing is still expensive as all holy hell, I'd say I get to pay 75% of what I'd have to pay now. So it's better, but not that great for me. Look south of 280. Pacific and Daly City are fine, or some parts of SF. Rent is kind of outrageous, a 2br house near me is going for $4200, though it's really nice, 1920s style, and it's a house, with an extensive downstairs bonus room, separate living and dining room, and so forth. If you were more interested in saving money and it's just you and your wife, by guess is that you could knock a grand off that and still be walking distance from two bart stations, the J, K, and M lines, and the 43 that goes right by UCSF parnassus. It's not hard to access the rest of SF from that corner, there's all kinds of public transportation options near SF City college, Portola, Excelsior, Mission Terrace, etc. That's a ton to be spending on rent in such an unfashionable corner, but jeez, we're talking about the opportunity to do a residency at UCSF. Again, not sure about your salary, and the loans for med school can be pretty heavy, But even if you only earn half the median salary of a developer, you can make this work.

ejcx 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
- ejcx 10y ago
  I agree with your assessment completely. I actually want to start a startup in Harrisonburg VA, but there are problems with starting one in the area. It's much harder to raise money. There are very few investors there who can help you. There's less of a support system to help you. Fewer potential customers in the area. It's tough out there. Very nice city, great beer for sure, low cost of living, very little opportunity if things go south for you.
- warlox 10y ago
  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.

Tempest1981 10y ago

Places to consider (from the article): - Richmond, Virginia - Eugene, Oregon - Manchester, New Hampshire - Huntsville, Alabama

karcass 10y ago
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_ 10y ago
  Really? There are dozens of companies hiring in Eugene: https://siliconshire.org https://siliconshire.org
RandomName2020 10y ago
Eugene has bad air.
- DrScump 10y ago
  Can you elaborate? It seems counterintuitive unless local smog is trapped by an inversion layer or there is smog-producing industry nearby.
  - pmb 10y ago
    It's at the southern end of the box canyon that is the Willamette Valley (the end that abuts the mountains), and to the north is Linn-Benton County "the grass seed capitol of the world" ( https://www.google.com/search?q=grass+seed+capital+of+the+world&oq=the+grass+seed+capito&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0j69i64l3.7258j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=grass+seed+capital+of+the+wo... ). If you have grass-pollen allergies, then Eugene really sucks. For everyone else it is fine except when the farmers burn their fields (which they aren't supposed to do, but enforcement is patchy).
pault 10y ago

muninn_ 10y ago

Interesting they leave out places like Raleigh, or Columbus.

gtaylor 10y ago
Raleigh is where I'd probably be if I wasn't here in the Bay Area.
- base698 10y ago
  There's just nothing to do in Raleigh, unless all you do is drink and go to restaurants.
  - mountaineer22 10y ago
    ...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?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

sscotth 10y ago

Add them to the list: http://brighton.io/Next_Silicon_Valley http://brighton.io/Next_Silicon_Valley

jostmey 10y ago
Cuba? Really? Might as well add every city in world to that list.
- 467568985476 10y ago
  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.
- KON_Air 10y ago
  Actually Cuba is slowly moving to a quasi-free market, at their own slow pace. Sure, there probably won't be any longterm gigs anytime soon (like a couple of decades at least), but its worth keeping an eye for their projects, for the adventure of it if nothing else.

lihorne 10y ago

Don't forget about Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada.

allsystemsgo 10y ago

Or, you know, just embrace hiring remote workers.

drudru11 10y ago

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 10y ago
"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..."

dmourati 10y ago

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

tyre 10y ago

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.

elnado 10y ago
Right, I was just about to reply with a similar response to another post. I went to Virginia Tech, lived in Northern VA for a while, and now I'm here in SF and it's like night and day. I did not believe that being here would be such a huge and significant difference, and yet it is. Influential and successful people in tech are so incredibly accessible here. After only a couple months I got to meet VCs, startup founders, CEOs of successful companies, other highly intelligent people in tech doing amazing things and so on. Most importantly, at least for me, there's a constant external motivation to push yourself, learn, collaborate, get involved, to do more, and I love it :D
- 10y ago

GirlsCanCode 10y ago

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

stoic 10y ago

>INSTEAD OF AUSTIN, TEXAS, TRY HUNTSVILLE, ALA. Yes please

whybroke 10y ago

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 10y ago
Entrenched politics are a completely uncontrollable force of nature beyond any human ability to tame.

edblarney 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  I've lived in the US for a long time, as well as Canada, and Europe. Canadian system is 'pretty good' for 95% of needs, and it covers everyone. It's also less than 1/2 the cost of the US system. I understand that there are long waits for some things - and this is a drawback party of the system, but also just crappy service - and definitely not good. And yes - you don't get a doctor anymore. It's a problem - but you can go to any clinic (and you can chose, some are better than others) and get service on the spot. You just don't get to see the same person over and over. I agree this is not good. I don't like 'hard single payer' as we have here in Canada - but some of the advantages cannot be overlooked. The moment you don't have coverage, or the coverage won't cover you for some things ... then you understand. Most people in the US know of a serious 'health care horror story', whereas in Canada, it's not so bad. You have to wait longer. But for things that require immediate attention, you usually get it. Again - not saying it's better, just that there are some advantages.
- edblarney 10y ago

jroseattle 10y ago

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.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

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.