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I currently live between Denver and Boulder. Lived in the DC area for 8 years. It's an AWFUL place to build an HQ, but Amazon might do it anyway. 1) Salaries

by JPKab 9y ago

I currently live between Denver and Boulder. Lived in the DC area for 8 years. It's an AWFUL place to build an HQ, but Amazon might do it anyway. 1) Salaries are artificially inflated by competition from the Govt and Govt contractors. 2) Traffic is nightmarishly bad. 3) Housing is incredibly expensive 4) Tech skills aren't as high as the stats indicate. The gov't and contractors have an amazing way of creating people whose titles indicate they know what they're doing, but they don't. See healthcare.gov fiasco for an illustration. A senior data engineer in DC is someone who knows SQL and Informatica, as opposed to someone that can actually do real tech. The intelligence agencies have awesome talent, but they have enormous salaries inflated by their security clearances and you're not going to get them. 5) Weather fucking sucks. I lived there 8 years, it sucks. 6) Quality of life just isn't good. Average commute times and cultural amenities are bad.

rdtsc 9y ago
Heh. Yeah it's a mix of tech companies and gov. + gov contractors. A lot of people seem to work for the "State Dept." here (cough CIA cough) or other such agencies. Tech talent is varied as you say. There are a lot of tech companies, some of Amazon's AWS is here, and there Microsoft, Google and others. They are probably dwarfed by Lockheed, Booz, Northrop and "We put butts in seats" ManTech but overall at least the NoVa area seems tech-y enough. Traffic is not bad if you don't have to get on the beltway or go all the way to DC in rush hour. And there is Metro, with all the hate and issues they've been having it works and is better than other cities I've lived in. > Housing is incredibly expensive Compared to Midwest or South it is ridiculously expensive. But out in suburbs (and not DC proper) it's more manageable than Seattle, SF, NY and such it seems. > 5) Weather fucking sucks. I lived there 8 years, it sucks True, true. Though it's fall now. Finally a few weeks of nice cool mornings when opening windows feels nice. And I do like the mountains out West. Skyline drive, hiking and the small towns and farms. > 6) Quality of life just isn't good. Average commute times and cultural amenities are bad. I just tried not to commute and lived closed to work. Now work from home. Now you might ask why would I still stay in this area, and that would be a good question. So far it inertia mostly and maybe the idea that it's probably safer to stay in a tech area if had to wanted to switch jobs and working from home wasn't an option any more.

by JPKab 9y ago

rdtsc 9y ago

Heh. Yeah it's a mix of tech companies and gov. + gov contractors. A lot of people seem to work for the "State Dept." here (cough CIA cough) or other such agencies. Tech talent is varied as you say. There are a lot of tech companies, some of Amazon's AWS is here, and there Microsoft, Google and others. They are probably dwarfed by Lockheed, Booz, Northrop and "We put butts in seats" ManTech but overall at least the NoVa area seems tech-y enough. Traffic is not bad if you don't have to get on the beltway or go all the way to DC in rush hour. And there is Metro, with all the hate and issues they've been having it works and is better than other cities I've lived in. > Housing is incredibly expensive Compared to Midwest or South it is ridiculously expensive. But out in suburbs (and not DC proper) it's more manageable than Seattle, SF, NY and such it seems. > 5) Weather fucking sucks. I lived there 8 years, it sucks True, true. Though it's fall now. Finally a few weeks of nice cool mornings when opening windows feels nice. And I do like the mountains out West. Skyline drive, hiking and the small towns and farms. > 6) Quality of life just isn't good. Average commute times and cultural amenities are bad. I just tried not to commute and lived closed to work. Now work from home. Now you might ask why would I still stay in this area, and that would be a good question. So far it inertia mostly and maybe the idea that it's probably safer to stay in a tech area if had to wanted to switch jobs and working from home wasn't an option any more.