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As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, but moved to Portland about three years ago, I can tell you there is a stark difference in ecosystems. However, if you a

As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, but moved to Portland about three years ago, I can tell you there is a stark difference in ecosystems. However, if you are a young up-and-coming programmer coming out of school, it makes complete sense to move to the Bay Area. If you're an Actor you move to L.A. to get your big break. If you're a programmer, you go to the Bay Area to work for a big firm that will help build your reputation and resume. For people later in their careers who have "been there/done that" it's less about what you can do for a company and more about what you can do for yourself. People later in their career tend to think more about their quality of life after spending years grinding it out in markets like the Bay Area. I know it's the big reason I moved to Portland. I love the tech community here. It's much more collaborative. The salaries may not match what you get in the Bay Area, but what I lose in salary I gain in not being stressed all the time.

chrisper 10y ago
I agree with you, but only people who want to make big buck should move to the Bay Area. As you concluded later, money is not everything. I am young and about to finish school, but I am moving away from the Bay Area and even move to a different country. I do not care about the high salaries here, as I just do not like the lifestyle here. So, I'd say that the Bay Area is for people who do not mind having to work 24/7 (mind work, not physically being in the office 24/7). Mostly, this is people who love tech a lot and want to innovate all the time (start up people). I for one care more about less stress, less inequality, etc. and decided that the Bay Area is not for me.
- skylark 10y ago
  My experience doesn't line up with your preconceived notions of the Bay Area at all. I've worked at three different jobs in San Francisco, and all of them were standard 9-5 jobs. I've worked weekends under 5 times. Most of my friends are in the same situation. Sure if you want to work at an early stage startup, you can grind yourself into a paste. But there are plenty of jobs here where that's not the case.
  - chrisper 10y ago
    Maybe it is because I live in the South Bay. But here it seems that everyone is just going to work and back home.. and that's it. There is nothing else going on here, but work work work.
    - Mz 10y ago
      It might be your specific location. It also might be a combination of "selection bias" -- people tend to be friends with people who are like them in some way -- and psychological filtering where you just don't see anything else for some reason. I remember reading a piece about alcoholism where it was describing an alcoholic who concluded that everyone drinks a great deal and just doesn't admit it because that was what their social circle was like. I rarely drink alcohol and have known plenty of people like me, so, no, not everyone drinks. Most people suffer confirmation bias. We look for confirmation of what we believe to be true about a thing. It is unusual for someone to actively seek more objective data and try to determine what the actual truth is. Most of us default to trying to fit the world to our preconceived notions of it.
      - yarou 10y ago
        I think it comes down to culture. The culture of the South Bay is relatively non-existent outside of small pockets like Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Mountain view, and maybe Santana Row. It's geared toward raising kids and family life in general.
        Mz 10y ago
        I am having enormous difficulty parsing that comment. I have tried to just let it go, but I am failing at that, and I am seriously struggling to reply in a way that does not sound like snark. Could you clarify what you mean? Because it sounds like either you are saying "Culture only exists in tiny parts of certain places, no place else in the South Bay even has a culture" (which is utterly nonsensical) or maybe you are saying "People who have kids and put family life first are not part of any culture." (again, a big fat nope).
padobson 10y ago
It really depends on what you want to do. If programming is programming and programming is just a job, then you can do that anywhere there are programming jobs, and with so many companies offering remote work, that could be anywhere. But if programming is what you intend to bring as a founder - if it's simply a means to get the burning ideas out of your head and into a product, then there's a much smaller number of places where that will work: San Francisco, Seattle, New York. You need to be able to have coffee with a VC, meet with multiple co-founder options, do a tech meetup and also spend a sizable chunk of the day coding. If you live near a small city, working that way is an impossibility. You'd have to go to the nearest big city to find that type of collaboration, and the trip will burn through all your coding time, and you still won't have the kind of quality selection that you'd get in NY or SF. As you say, hacking the rent-salary ratio, which is what the article is about, should be a much smaller factor in how you decide where to live.
- mooreds 10y ago
  > you need to be able to have coffee with a VC If you are building a company that needs VC funding. Most companies don't. "Venture Capital is the wrong source of capital for the vast majority of entrepreneurial ventures" http://avc.com/2005/03/dont_take_the_m/ http://avc.com/2005/03/dont_take_the_m/ If you aren't looking to raise VC but instead want to be part of a vibrant tech ecosystem, well, that opens up more mid tier cities. For starters: San Diego, LA, Boulder, Austin, Portland, Pittsburgh(?) in the USA.
  - eganist 10y ago
    Adding one: if you're doing anything security related, DC's your friend.
    - mooreds 10y ago
      Good point! And if you are into oil/gas, Houston. Marijuana, Colorado or Washington. Cars, Detroit (maybe?). Commodities, Chicago. Ag, Kansas City (maybe?). Outdoor experiences, SLC. Building something for Latin America, Miami. Ets, etc. I imagine there are many other cities that dominate in niches that I'm missing.
WhitneyLand 10y ago
>go to Bay Area to a big firm to build your reputation Doesn't make sense. The big 4 have campuses across the country. Instead of telling people to move to SV I would recommend making sure to get into the right (big 4 or not) team and role for your career. Just fixing bugs at big SV company will not help much. You want to make sure you have a chance to contribute something to show your skills on an innovative or leading team.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  > Doesn't make sense. The big 4 have campuses across the country. Yes, but a disproportionate number of their positions are in the bay area. Also, it's much easier to job hop between high-paying companies in the bay area, and this is particularly true if you have a specialization more specific/less common than "web dev" or "iOS dev".
- tinbadtin 10y ago
  I have to agree with the OP, I know a few Googlers (my wife used to work there) who transferred from satellite offices (say Venice or NYC) to MTV and all of a sudden their careers took off. Generally, being physically there where the action is (HQ) seems to pay off for ones career.
  - mooreds 10y ago
    One time I talked to a Google recruiter, and that was the message he conveyed. "Sure, you can work at a satellite office, but if you are interested in your career, Mountain View is where you want to be."
    - WhitneyLand 10y ago
      Two caveats to that: - I promise you that's only true as far as your project's priority. For example if Google Maps in Colorado is more important to the company, at the moment, than some other project at HQ, then working on that project at HQ is not better for your career. - Remember a recruiter is a sales person. Some are honest, some will tell you what serves their own interest.
pmoriarty 10y ago
I considered moving to Portland, until I read about how a big earthquake would pretty much completely wipe it out: http://www.oregonlive.com/earthquakes/index.ssf/2015/07/the_really_big_one_and_portlan.html http://www.oregonlive.com/earthquakes/index.ssf/2015/07/the_...
- sjg007 10y ago
  If the super volcano explodes do you really want to be alive after?
- josh_carterPDX 10y ago
  Meh. I was in the Bay Area during the 89' quake. I'm not terribly worried about what would happen here. I remember hearing "the big one" was coming for the past 30 years.
- robocat 10y ago
  I wouldn't worry tooo much about earthquakes in any country with good local building codes. Background: I am from Christchurch New Zealand; my parents live on top of the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, and my sister lives on top of the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. Avoid living or working in brick buildings (they fall apart). If worried, perhaps avoid high tsunami risk zones (that lack high ground, roads are less useful since they will be unusable during large earthquakes). If you catalog your risks, earthquake death or disability is probably low in scheme of things. From my experience, if you work in software with a laptop, earthquakes are not likely to affect your work too much. Unless you have a neurotic partner, in which case avoid earthquake zones, because they lose the plot when the earth takes control.
  - ivm 10y ago
    Yep, I live in the city with the most powerful recorded earthquake (9.5) and not worried.
- automatwon 10y ago
  Might as well live in Washington at that point. No state income tax, while there is Oregon state income tax. Then again, Washington has sales tax, whereas Oregon does not. I used to live in Portland, and some peopled lived / worked in Vancouver, Washington, and drove to Portland to do all their shopping, groceries included.
smsm42 10y ago
I live in the BA and work in tech, and I'm not super-stressed. Neither my peers seem to be. It doesn't mean we don't work - but not more stressfully than I'd expect to work anywhere else. Maybe I'm just lucky. The downside is everything is so expensive. Housing, of course. But also everything else too, services, other things. If you can live frugally, it may be to your benefit - you get higher income and keep low spending, win. But if you can't or work lower income job, it may be a problem. The upside is there are a lot of exciting opportunities around, both in employment and in conferences, lectures, events, etc.
- josh_carterPDX 10y ago
  Totally. The nice thing about being in Portland is that the Bay Area is only an hour and a half flight. We still have family down there so we spend some time there, but we have kids. So one big reason we left the Bay Area was just to find better quality education and we definitely do not regret the move after finding amazing schools here. But to your point, there are some great events and conferences which is probably the biggest thing missing from Portland. There are a few good events, but nothing at the scale of what happens in SF.
  - csdreamer7 10y ago
    Somewhat off topic. I thought Portland's, and Oregon's schools in general, are not that good. Unless you are talking about private schools.
Spooky23 10y ago
It's always expensive to chase the hot thing. If you're an average joe, SFO is that thing that is best avoided. I'm living in a median cost market in an expensive state and live like a king in comparison to someone in my job (senior tech role) in SFO, although my salary is 50% less. I won't be working for Google anytime soon, but I don't need $500k to live in the lifestyle that I want for my family. If you want the northern CA lifestyle, wait for the real estate cycle to bust and save some money in a normal place.
debt 10y ago
if you have that gnawing feeling of "needing to get out" then fuck yeah go to the west coast. but remember, it's all sorts of a fucked up and competitive out here so be prepared to work your ass off. don't move out here to just make friends. try it out at. you will miss your friends and your family.
stewartUK 10y ago
It only makes sense to move there, if you have an incredible job offer on the table. Don't assume you might get one by moving there. If you have no access to some network there already, you much more likely will get access to some kind via amazing work and communication online, than by hanging out in a coffee shop in the Bay Area, burning money for rent and eating Ramen noodles. Curious about how huge the difference in costs and life-quality might be? Play with https://teleport.org https://teleport.org
emodendroket 10y ago
I think there are a number of cities you could get that kind of great experience in though -- Seattle, Boston, New York, Austin, probably others.
rootusrootus 10y ago
I love Portland. I might make more in SF, but I'm already making more than the median SF salary while living in Portland, and my house only cost me $350K or so. The cost of living is starkly lower here, and the city itself is much, much smaller and less hectic -- while still being big enough to have all the things you want and plenty of people if you want to be social. I can't see moving to SF unless I could earn $300K+, and even then it might not be enough to make me jump.
- stbtrax 10y ago
  I really want to like Portland because it is so cheap and seems to have good access to outdoor activities. Unfortunately I can't get past the weather, and the stark lack of diversity.
  - vram22 10y ago
    The weather is cloudy/rainy/misty many months of the year - is that right? only heard of it briefly from someone.
paavokoya 10y ago
As someone who grew up in Portland and still lives here. Please stop telling people about Portland. The traffic is already bad enough and I personally enjoy dreaming of owning a house one day that isn't in the sticks. Portland housing is sky-rocketing because of techies leaving the bay for cheaper housing.
manyxcxi 10y ago
Having grown up in Portland and worked with and for Bay Area companies my whole career, I'd say that I agree with the premise that for younger tech people it could be beneficial to move there- but not because of the money. Because of the size of the community and more diverse opportunities. I thought PDX was a vibrant (albeit small) tech scene until I moved to Seattle. It was amazing how many more opportunities to meet and learn from interesting people there were across all tech stacks. Having enough friends down in the SF area I get the impression that their scene is even more lively. As for bigger salaries, I think it's mostly hype. My anecdotal evidence makes me believe that there's likely more opportunities for early stage equity/stock type agreements than you'd find in other places, but my salary has always compared favorably to people in the exact same role living down in the bay- and that's before factoring in the cost of living.
richie5um 10y ago
I moved from the UK, with my wife and two young kids, to the Bay Area in 2012. I'm an experienced dev; mostly hands-on architecture/development, but also leading teams. Spending time there and experiencing the people and general fast approach to development has definitely help me and my career. It is, mostly, different to the more conservative approach typical used elsewhere. So experiencing the two and being able to use both, when appropriate, is helpful. After two years we moved back to the UK. Living and working there was amazing. But, overall it felt like it came at a too huge a cost (financially, work commitment, and commuting). PS: I do miss being there though. :)

chrisper 10y ago

I agree with you, but only people who want to make big buck should move to the Bay Area. As you concluded later, money is not everything. I am young and about to finish school, but I am moving away from the Bay Area and even move to a different country. I do not care about the high salaries here, as I just do not like the lifestyle here. So, I'd say that the Bay Area is for people who do not mind having to work 24/7 (mind work, not physically being in the office 24/7). Mostly, this is people who love tech a lot and want to innovate all the time (start up people). I for one care more about less stress, less inequality, etc. and decided that the Bay Area is not for me.

skylark 10y ago
My experience doesn't line up with your preconceived notions of the Bay Area at all. I've worked at three different jobs in San Francisco, and all of them were standard 9-5 jobs. I've worked weekends under 5 times. Most of my friends are in the same situation. Sure if you want to work at an early stage startup, you can grind yourself into a paste. But there are plenty of jobs here where that's not the case.
- chrisper 10y ago
  Maybe it is because I live in the South Bay. But here it seems that everyone is just going to work and back home.. and that's it. There is nothing else going on here, but work work work.
  - Mz 10y ago
    It might be your specific location. It also might be a combination of "selection bias" -- people tend to be friends with people who are like them in some way -- and psychological filtering where you just don't see anything else for some reason. I remember reading a piece about alcoholism where it was describing an alcoholic who concluded that everyone drinks a great deal and just doesn't admit it because that was what their social circle was like. I rarely drink alcohol and have known plenty of people like me, so, no, not everyone drinks. Most people suffer confirmation bias. We look for confirmation of what we believe to be true about a thing. It is unusual for someone to actively seek more objective data and try to determine what the actual truth is. Most of us default to trying to fit the world to our preconceived notions of it.
    - yarou 10y ago
      I think it comes down to culture. The culture of the South Bay is relatively non-existent outside of small pockets like Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Mountain view, and maybe Santana Row. It's geared toward raising kids and family life in general.
      - Mz 10y ago
        I am having enormous difficulty parsing that comment. I have tried to just let it go, but I am failing at that, and I am seriously struggling to reply in a way that does not sound like snark. Could you clarify what you mean? Because it sounds like either you are saying "Culture only exists in tiny parts of certain places, no place else in the South Bay even has a culture" (which is utterly nonsensical) or maybe you are saying "People who have kids and put family life first are not part of any culture." (again, a big fat nope).

padobson 10y ago

It really depends on what you want to do. If programming is programming and programming is just a job, then you can do that anywhere there are programming jobs, and with so many companies offering remote work, that could be anywhere. But if programming is what you intend to bring as a founder - if it's simply a means to get the burning ideas out of your head and into a product, then there's a much smaller number of places where that will work: San Francisco, Seattle, New York. You need to be able to have coffee with a VC, meet with multiple co-founder options, do a tech meetup and also spend a sizable chunk of the day coding. If you live near a small city, working that way is an impossibility. You'd have to go to the nearest big city to find that type of collaboration, and the trip will burn through all your coding time, and you still won't have the kind of quality selection that you'd get in NY or SF. As you say, hacking the rent-salary ratio, which is what the article is about, should be a much smaller factor in how you decide where to live.

mooreds 10y ago
> you need to be able to have coffee with a VC If you are building a company that needs VC funding. Most companies don't. "Venture Capital is the wrong source of capital for the vast majority of entrepreneurial ventures" http://avc.com/2005/03/dont_take_the_m/ http://avc.com/2005/03/dont_take_the_m/ If you aren't looking to raise VC but instead want to be part of a vibrant tech ecosystem, well, that opens up more mid tier cities. For starters: San Diego, LA, Boulder, Austin, Portland, Pittsburgh(?) in the USA.
- eganist 10y ago
  Adding one: if you're doing anything security related, DC's your friend.
  - mooreds 10y ago
    Good point! And if you are into oil/gas, Houston. Marijuana, Colorado or Washington. Cars, Detroit (maybe?). Commodities, Chicago. Ag, Kansas City (maybe?). Outdoor experiences, SLC. Building something for Latin America, Miami. Ets, etc. I imagine there are many other cities that dominate in niches that I'm missing.

WhitneyLand 10y ago

>go to Bay Area to a big firm to build your reputation Doesn't make sense. The big 4 have campuses across the country. Instead of telling people to move to SV I would recommend making sure to get into the right (big 4 or not) team and role for your career. Just fixing bugs at big SV company will not help much. You want to make sure you have a chance to contribute something to show your skills on an innovative or leading team.

TulliusCicero 10y ago
> Doesn't make sense. The big 4 have campuses across the country. Yes, but a disproportionate number of their positions are in the bay area. Also, it's much easier to job hop between high-paying companies in the bay area, and this is particularly true if you have a specialization more specific/less common than "web dev" or "iOS dev".
tinbadtin 10y ago
I have to agree with the OP, I know a few Googlers (my wife used to work there) who transferred from satellite offices (say Venice or NYC) to MTV and all of a sudden their careers took off. Generally, being physically there where the action is (HQ) seems to pay off for ones career.
- mooreds 10y ago
  One time I talked to a Google recruiter, and that was the message he conveyed. "Sure, you can work at a satellite office, but if you are interested in your career, Mountain View is where you want to be."
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    Two caveats to that: - I promise you that's only true as far as your project's priority. For example if Google Maps in Colorado is more important to the company, at the moment, than some other project at HQ, then working on that project at HQ is not better for your career. - Remember a recruiter is a sales person. Some are honest, some will tell you what serves their own interest.

pmoriarty 10y ago

I considered moving to Portland, until I read about how a big earthquake would pretty much completely wipe it out: http://www.oregonlive.com/earthquakes/index.ssf/2015/07/the_really_big_one_and_portlan.html http://www.oregonlive.com/earthquakes/index.ssf/2015/07/the_...

sjg007 10y ago
If the super volcano explodes do you really want to be alive after?
josh_carterPDX 10y ago
Meh. I was in the Bay Area during the 89' quake. I'm not terribly worried about what would happen here. I remember hearing "the big one" was coming for the past 30 years.
robocat 10y ago
I wouldn't worry tooo much about earthquakes in any country with good local building codes. Background: I am from Christchurch New Zealand; my parents live on top of the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, and my sister lives on top of the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. Avoid living or working in brick buildings (they fall apart). If worried, perhaps avoid high tsunami risk zones (that lack high ground, roads are less useful since they will be unusable during large earthquakes). If you catalog your risks, earthquake death or disability is probably low in scheme of things. From my experience, if you work in software with a laptop, earthquakes are not likely to affect your work too much. Unless you have a neurotic partner, in which case avoid earthquake zones, because they lose the plot when the earth takes control.
- ivm 10y ago
  Yep, I live in the city with the most powerful recorded earthquake (9.5) and not worried.
automatwon 10y ago
Might as well live in Washington at that point. No state income tax, while there is Oregon state income tax. Then again, Washington has sales tax, whereas Oregon does not. I used to live in Portland, and some peopled lived / worked in Vancouver, Washington, and drove to Portland to do all their shopping, groceries included.

smsm42 10y ago

I live in the BA and work in tech, and I'm not super-stressed. Neither my peers seem to be. It doesn't mean we don't work - but not more stressfully than I'd expect to work anywhere else. Maybe I'm just lucky. The downside is everything is so expensive. Housing, of course. But also everything else too, services, other things. If you can live frugally, it may be to your benefit - you get higher income and keep low spending, win. But if you can't or work lower income job, it may be a problem. The upside is there are a lot of exciting opportunities around, both in employment and in conferences, lectures, events, etc.

josh_carterPDX 10y ago
Totally. The nice thing about being in Portland is that the Bay Area is only an hour and a half flight. We still have family down there so we spend some time there, but we have kids. So one big reason we left the Bay Area was just to find better quality education and we definitely do not regret the move after finding amazing schools here. But to your point, there are some great events and conferences which is probably the biggest thing missing from Portland. There are a few good events, but nothing at the scale of what happens in SF.
- csdreamer7 10y ago
  Somewhat off topic. I thought Portland's, and Oregon's schools in general, are not that good. Unless you are talking about private schools.

Spooky23 10y ago

It's always expensive to chase the hot thing. If you're an average joe, SFO is that thing that is best avoided. I'm living in a median cost market in an expensive state and live like a king in comparison to someone in my job (senior tech role) in SFO, although my salary is 50% less. I won't be working for Google anytime soon, but I don't need $500k to live in the lifestyle that I want for my family. If you want the northern CA lifestyle, wait for the real estate cycle to bust and save some money in a normal place.

debt 10y ago

if you have that gnawing feeling of "needing to get out" then fuck yeah go to the west coast. but remember, it's all sorts of a fucked up and competitive out here so be prepared to work your ass off. don't move out here to just make friends. try it out at. you will miss your friends and your family.

stewartUK 10y ago

It only makes sense to move there, if you have an incredible job offer on the table. Don't assume you might get one by moving there. If you have no access to some network there already, you much more likely will get access to some kind via amazing work and communication online, than by hanging out in a coffee shop in the Bay Area, burning money for rent and eating Ramen noodles. Curious about how huge the difference in costs and life-quality might be? Play with https://teleport.org https://teleport.org

emodendroket 10y ago

I think there are a number of cities you could get that kind of great experience in though -- Seattle, Boston, New York, Austin, probably others.

rootusrootus 10y ago

I love Portland. I might make more in SF, but I'm already making more than the median SF salary while living in Portland, and my house only cost me $350K or so. The cost of living is starkly lower here, and the city itself is much, much smaller and less hectic -- while still being big enough to have all the things you want and plenty of people if you want to be social. I can't see moving to SF unless I could earn $300K+, and even then it might not be enough to make me jump.

stbtrax 10y ago
I really want to like Portland because it is so cheap and seems to have good access to outdoor activities. Unfortunately I can't get past the weather, and the stark lack of diversity.
- vram22 10y ago
  The weather is cloudy/rainy/misty many months of the year - is that right? only heard of it briefly from someone.

paavokoya 10y ago

As someone who grew up in Portland and still lives here. Please stop telling people about Portland. The traffic is already bad enough and I personally enjoy dreaming of owning a house one day that isn't in the sticks. Portland housing is sky-rocketing because of techies leaving the bay for cheaper housing.

manyxcxi 10y ago

Having grown up in Portland and worked with and for Bay Area companies my whole career, I'd say that I agree with the premise that for younger tech people it could be beneficial to move there- but not because of the money. Because of the size of the community and more diverse opportunities. I thought PDX was a vibrant (albeit small) tech scene until I moved to Seattle. It was amazing how many more opportunities to meet and learn from interesting people there were across all tech stacks. Having enough friends down in the SF area I get the impression that their scene is even more lively. As for bigger salaries, I think it's mostly hype. My anecdotal evidence makes me believe that there's likely more opportunities for early stage equity/stock type agreements than you'd find in other places, but my salary has always compared favorably to people in the exact same role living down in the bay- and that's before factoring in the cost of living.

richie5um 10y ago

I moved from the UK, with my wife and two young kids, to the Bay Area in 2012. I'm an experienced dev; mostly hands-on architecture/development, but also leading teams. Spending time there and experiencing the people and general fast approach to development has definitely help me and my career. It is, mostly, different to the more conservative approach typical used elsewhere. So experiencing the two and being able to use both, when appropriate, is helpful. After two years we moved back to the UK. Living and working there was amazing. But, overall it felt like it came at a too huge a cost (financially, work commitment, and commuting). PS: I do miss being there though. :)