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Three cities in Colorado in top ten leading destinations for U.S. brightest
- SQL2219 9y agoHow smart are they if they trade a 20% increase in pay for a 100% increase in cost of living?
- adventured 9y agoYour setup premise is false. The pay increase is far beyond 20%. 1) The median household income in Denver CO is $64,000. That's around 77% higher than in Altoona PA. Two locations specifically referenced in the article. 2) The opportunities that pay a lot more than that gap, do not exist to begin with in Altoona. Software, Internet, misc engineer jobs - the locations that people are fleeing from are death zones economically. Denver and Boulder are quasi boom cities; the Altoona's are the exact opposite; that means, over the next ten years your income will very likely expand nicely in those CO locations, whereas you're very unlikely to see meaningful improvement in Altoona. 3) Lifestyle is important for most people and likely that much more so for people willing to move across the country for better opportunities. Boulder and Denver are both incredible by comparison to Altoona PA, when it comes to lifestyle upgrade. To answer your question, the people desperately fleeing from all those dying economic zones, seeking a vastly superior future, are extremely smart indeed.
- minitel 9y agoI left Kentucky for California in my early 20's. I've been making > 100k per year since then and living as cheaply as possible to hold on to it despite the cost of rent. Most of my friends back home make 20-30k a year. The tradeoff is that quality of life is terrible. The cities are full of petty bug people. And COL makes living standards precarious for all but the wealthy and the extremely poor (government programs). The precariousness also inhibits the formation of stable IRL (as opposed to chat group based) friend groups. That said, after half a decade of this I've saved enough money to go back home and use stocks, real estate, and side hustles to put down roots with a decent quality of life. Sometimes I feel like Odysseus on Ogygia. It's easy to be trapped in one of these hubs so long that you miss out on the chance to exit young-adulthood gracefully. (Very sad the number of friends I have who decided to start a family too late and couldn't quite make it work out).
- driverdan 9y ago> The cities are full of petty bug people. What does that mean?
- potbelly83 9y agoI think they mean a cross between a bug and a person. Sure wish I lived near some bug people.
- soared 9y ago> The precariousness also inhibits the formation of stable IRL (as opposed to chat group based) friend groups. Also what does this even mean?
- khuey 9y agoYou make friends here and then 18 months later those friends move to Seattle/Portland/Reno/Las Vegas/Phoenix where they can actually afford to live.
- minitel 9y ago"Bugman" implies that the person has been cut off from their cultural roots, and totally subsumed into consumerist neoliberal hive. they are totally lack any sort of sympathy for their ancestors folkways, higher spirituality, or passion. if they do engage in activities that are somewhat human, they still are heavily tinged by global capitalism. if they are a sportsfan, they will participate heavily in fantasy sports(which is obsessed with statistics, 'scientific' analysis of performance). if they exercise, it will be all cardio, and tracked by fitbit and then uploaded to faceberg. tastes in food, art, music, movies are predetermined by review aggregator sites like yelp, metacritic or rotten tomatoes. political views only appeal to them if they seem 'rational,' and derived from the sort of conventional wisdom, economics influenced worldview seen in works like 'moneyball', nate silver's 538 blog, and 'freakonomics.'
- corpMaverick 9y ago4) Even if you already have a job. It is easier to finde a better job or find a new one if you are ever laid off in Denver than in Altoona.
- kbutler 9y agoMinitel[dead]'s comment below is worthwhile: > I left Kentucky for California in my early 20's. I've been making > 100k per year since then and living as cheaply as possible to hold on to it despite the cost of rent. Most of my friends back home make 20-30k a year. > The tradeoff is that quality of life is terrible. The cities are full of petty bug people. And COL makes living standards precarious for all but the wealthy and the extremely poor (government programs). The precariousness also inhibits the formation of stable IRL (as opposed to chat group based) friend groups. > That said, after half a decade of this I've saved enough money to go back home and use stocks, real estate, and side hustles to put down roots with a decent quality of life. > Sometimes I feel like Odysseus on Ogygia. It's easy to be trapped in one of these hubs so long that you miss out on the chance to exit young-adulthood gracefully. (Very sad the number of friends I have who decided to start a family too late and couldn't quite make it work out). --- Good luck making it to where you want to be! It's good to remember that different people have widely varying preferences of quality of life - urban/rural, ocean/mountain/plain, wet/dry, tropical/temperate/less-temperate, etc. I'm glad not everybody wants to live in the same place!
- bluejellybean 9y agoNumber 3 is really massive and a large reason I picked Denver over the valley. I can wake up everyday, hike a 14er for the sunrise, and be back in the city for work. If you're into mountaineering or an outdoor lifestyle, the cost of living is easily worth it.. The great thing is what you bring up though, the cost of living isn't actually that large when wages are sky-high for techies. I live 3 blocks from my office and I don't have to spend thousands a month for some shitty studio 30 minutes away.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoThis is what people who are retirement age would have said about SV when they moved there. Enjoy being retired in SV 2.0
- tspike 9y ago> hike a 14er for the sunrise and be back in the city for work Definitely not Longs. I guess you could drive to the top of Evans or Pikes Peak :)
- bluejellybean 9y agoDefinitely Longs! It's only an hour and a half out.. Getting back though... the traffic just gets brutal.
- tspike 9y agoIt's a 10+ hour climb though? I'm good with a quick jaunt up Sanitas before work haha- you're (respectfully) nuts!
- AndrewGaspar 9y agoUnfortunately the nature of specialization means that jobs you are qualified for and will be paid well for are more likely to be located in dense urban areas. My wife and I, who are both engineers but with different specialties, had to face this recently when we relocated to her home state.
- dang 9y agoThis comment breaks the HN guideline which asks you to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of a point, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize (please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them). The model in which masses of migrating people are too dumb to consider their own interest is less plausible than one in which a snarky internet dismissal might be failing to consider everything.
- SQL2219 9y agoI am basing this on my own thought experiments while browsing jobs in various over-heated markets: Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Boston etc. Actually, the 100% increase is understated, the true figure is probably higher depending on the inputs. Let's say you're living in Topeka, making $75,000, you happen to own an average home with a market value of $150,000. Amazon Seattle offers you a job for $130,000. Is taking the job a better deal when the average home in Seattle is $700,000? Your $1,000 Topeka mortgage payment will quadruple consuming 50%+ of your take home pay.
- goialoq 9y agoIt doesn't matter how much you spend, it matters how much you save.
- geoffreyhale 9y agoThis. Not to mention, after saving similar (or more) you'll own a home 5x in value.
- lotsofpulp 9y agoMy mantra has always been spend your time and effort trying to make more money, not saving it. If you have a decent head on your shoulders, and a good family to fall back on, then investing in creating your network in a city or company with other aspiring people is going to win out many times over versus concerning yourself with saving.
- madengr 9y agoYeah, but maxing out your 401K contribution for the first 20 years of your career is much more productive than doing it the last 20 years. If it were not for the withdrawal penalty, I could retire now at 46 and live off the interest alone. If I keep slugging away another 20 years, I’ll have several $M. You need to save when you are young to take advantage of compounding interest. Don’t get caught up in the rat race.
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- analogwzrd 9y agoCost of living is higher and the increase pay doesn't always make up for it...but also keep in mind the non-tangibles. If you move to one of those areas, you're going to surround by some of the top tech talent in the country. That means you're learning, collaborating, competing, and socializing with some of the best peers you could have anywhere. That has a lot of career advantages...mobility, huge potential for upside, exchange of ideas, etc. It also boosts the standards of local universities, schools, etc.
- bathwa80 9y agoThey're smart enough to know your numbers are wrong.
- sixbrx 9y agoMeh - Where I'm employed, in my "flyover state", I get to use the technologies that I like, some of which aren't very mainstream, and also I really like the developers I work with. Not arguing the money aspect, but there are other priorities as well, and I'm a bit tired of the assumption that money trumps all, always. So go ahead and think your smarter based on where you move, and I'll just keep enjoying where I'm at...
- hn_user2 9y agoI think you just argued against a straw man. The article didn't even really talk about salaries. This is about where people are moving from and to. This is about tracking "business formation as well as employment and education in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics" There was no call to move there, or statement that they are better places. But surely there is something interesting and possibly something to learn about by looking at migrations of people, especially STEM companies and employees.
- tabeth 9y agoWhy so defensive?
- DylanBohlender 9y agoGood! Part of the beauty of our chosen career is that we can work from pretty much anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. If you're happy where you're at, you're doing it right. Personally, as a software engineer in Colorado, I wouldn't trade locations either. But that's because of the things CO has to offer - incredible outdoor recreation, 300 days of sunshine, mild winters, decently competitive salaries, affordable cost of living (on an engineer salary at least), and a culture where people prioritize being well-rounded as individuals instead of allowing work to dominate their lives. Now, the article's headline "The Smartest Americans Are Heading West" is definitely a generalization, but the migration patterns of people shouldn't be dismissed as simple "money-seeking" - one reason trumping all the others fails to address the complexity innate to big personal decisions like choosing where to live. What we should be asking is WHY people who fit the "smartness" criteria described in the article are deciding to move West - and then using that information to make informed policy decisions elsewhere.
- driverdan 9y agoBesides snow (assuming you don't like it), what are Colorado's negatives? Both the state in general and the cities mentioned.
- no_one_ever 9y agoNever been to CO personally, but friends say if you aren't into outdoor activities/slow lifestyle, it can be dull. A lot of social groups are centered around what you do outside.
- trentmb 9y ago> slow lifestyle I've seen this before, but never quite understood what it means- lack of a 'night life?'
- bproven 9y agoyes I guess if you are used to places like SF / CA bay area, LA or any of the big east coast cities. Also it is not located close to any other major cities so you are "stuck" with whatever Denver has to offer for the most part. However the positive is the people in CO are the fittest in the nation due to this love of the outdoors.
- TYPE_FASTER 9y agoI was new to Boulder, and noticed a lot of people jogging. So I asked somebody in a store if there was a race or something. They looked at me funny and, no, it's just Saturday in Boulder.
- jhgaylor 9y agoThis is totally anecdotal but, moving from Mountain View to Denver was night and day. A couple of examples: Work seems to go slower here. It seems even the frantic pace of startup life takes a back seat to work life balance. People aren't usually in a hurry on the sidewalks downtown. It can be infuriating if you have somewhere to go.
- blackguardx 9y agoMost people don't realize that Boulder is as small as it is. It has a population of 100k that is growing at 1% per year. 60k people commute into Boulder everyday (many from other cities in the county) and this number is growing much more rapidly.
- dantillberg 9y agoThis was my first thought, too. The article starts out with, "Three cities in Colorado...," but goes on to discuss Metro Areas, which I think means "Boulder County." Boulder County includes almost all of Longmont (a city of ~90k in which I reside) as well as another 100k+ in smaller towns and unincorporated areas; that's all Boulder County, but the majority of that is not considered part of Boulder the city.
- bproven 9y agoYeah - They really need to get that rail built along 36. I hate to say it but I hope CO isn't making the same short sighted mistake that CA made. The traffic hell and housing hell is on the horizon :(
- oh_sigh 9y agoThey'll need to strongarm BNSF, which is trying to charge egregious fees for passage rights on their railways. It really gets my goat that the government is the one that gave the railways to BNSF for basically free in the first place.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoGave the railways to BNSF for basically free? I presume you're talking about the land grants back in the 19th Century; nothing else I can think of counts as "giving for free". Even then, though, the (Federal) government gave the railroads land for the track, plus blocks of land on the side. They didn't give them rail, much less an already-built railroad. True, the railroads were able to sell the land off to the side for money. But the government also required the railroads to carry the US Mail for less than cost. That continued until World War II, when the Federal government, desperate for additional money to fight the war, allowed the railroads to buy their way out of the obligation. That's hardly "for basically free" - it's an expense for the next 70 years, with a balloon payment at the end.
- geoffreyhale 9y agoThere's lots of discussion of salary vs cost of living. Is there an economics term for this ratio?
- tabeth 9y agoPurchasing power, more or less.
- crazy1van 9y agoThis entire article hinges on the "Bloomberg Brain Concentration Index", which does not seem to be defined.
- nanistheonlyist 9y agoColorado is horrible, please stay away.