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The answer here is places that are COLD. For any type of city, the one in a colder place is cheaper. Minneapolis might be a good choice, or Chicago if you want
by fipple 8y ago
The answer here is places that are COLD. For any type of city, the one in a colder place is cheaper. Minneapolis might be a good choice, or Chicago if you want a bigger atmosphere. You’ll have to put in elbow grease to create an intellectual milieu but it is there.
- smueller1234 8y agoThat cold-cheap bit is decidedly not applicable to Europe, by the way. Scandinavia is overall among the most expensive places in Europe. I'd imagine Switzerland is more expensive by a bit, but Oslo and Stockholm are brutal as well.
- fastbeef 8y agoThe cost of housing / income ratio in Stockholm is so out of whack that it’s basically impossible to enter the housing market without at least €50k-75k in savings to have as a down payment for an apartment anywhere nice.
- stefanfisk 8y agoAnd in addition to this renting is basically kafkaesque. You might be able to sublet a place for up to a year, but the rents are equally horrible compared to the average income. Getting a first hand contract is essentially impossible unless you know a private landlord who will give you preferential treatment, as generally the is a queue in which you need AT LEAST 10+ years to get something not nice at all
- dvlsg 8y agoThats disappointing. After visiting, I found I really enjoyed both Sweden and Norway, and wouldn't mind moving there someday. Sounds like that may be difficult.
- mclightning 8y agoWho wants to live in Stockholm anyway? Malmö is much better connected to Europe. You can basically drive to Germany, You can fly anywhere from Copenhagen which is 20 minutes train ride away from Malmö. Copenhagen airport has a lot more flights than Stockholm. That said, you get advantage of being right next to Copenhagen. It is a big market of jobs there. Salaries are high because it is a big, crowded city with high living expenses. So you could live in Malmö for cheap and commute to Copenhagen for work. All that said, as a 26 year old, I managed to take a gap year in Malmö now, after working/saving for 4 years, while managing to keep paying my mortgage, owning a car etc.
- dagw 8y agoNorway's rental market is nothing like Sweden's. In Norway rents may be higher but it's trivial to get a nice apartment in the center of town basically immediately.
- dvlsg 8y agoThat's reassuring. If I had to pick between the two (assuming I had a choice), I would pick Norway. How's the job market for developers?
- dagw 8y agoHonestly I haven't checked for a few years (currently living in Sweden), but last time I checked most programming jobs where working for engineering (mainly connected to the oil industry) or finance companies as opposed to more pure software companies. Not that this has to be a bad thing in any way. That being said I gather from friends in Norway that the startup scene is slowly growing even there and there are more and more small software companies looking to hire.
- chrisper 8y agoIt's the same in Switzerland. There is just almost no way to be able to afford a house (or just an apartment), because most of them start at 1 million and I am not even talking about apartments in Zurich.
- namdnay 8y agoI think it is applicable to Europe, but in a different way: Scandinavia and Switzerland are expensive, but salaries are equally high. Compare that to the French Riviera for example, where house prices are nearly as high as Stockholm, but salaries are much lower. That's the problem with sunshine: it attracts a lot of wealthy retirees and tourists, who distort the local market.
- yakshaving_jgt 8y agoHa! No they aren't! I lived in Sweden for seven years, and this is so far from the truth it's hilarious. Relative quality of life is garbage in Sweden for a tech worker. Your life will be not that much better than if you work in Carlings selling plaid shirts to hard-rock hipsters. My Swedish friends have decent jobs and still live unglamorous, frugal lives. As soon as I left Sweden, my quality of life completely transformed for the better.
- namdnay 8y agoI think it's all relative... I have two colleagues who moved from our offices on the Riviera to our offices in Stockholm, and they gained about 15% take-home salary each, with cheaper rents and public transport. I really don't think anyone's life in Sweden is garbage, as long as you can stand the winters
- yakshaving_jgt 8y agoMy anecdata says otherwise. I still work for a Swedish company and visit frequently. I still know many tech workers who's lives are miserable, quite frankly. If you go to live and work in Sweden, where will you actually stay? You can't rent an apartment — the waiting list is around 16 years for a decent apartment in the city. It's even several years wait to rent an apartment in the ghetto. How did your colleagues find apartments? If they didn't buy places or have apartments provided through their employer, I'm guessing they're sub-letting through Blocket.
- 8y ago
- atilaneves 8y agoSwitzerland isn't that cold. The weather in Geneva is basically identical to Paris.
- justin66 8y ago> For any type of city, the one in a colder place is cheaper. Did you leave NYC and Boston just completely out of your calculations?
- the_clarence 8y agoThe cold there is not comparable to the cold of Chicago and Montreal
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThere are outliers. But in general, places that are cold and/or hot and humid are not as in demand as others. NYC and Boston are unique in their institutions and history, giving them enough momentum to stick around as desirable destinations despite the weather. And NYC isn’t that bad cold-wise.
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- SwellJoe 8y agoBut, then I'd have to be cold. What kind of crazy math is that? I really don't like being cold.
- fipple 8y agoYeah, that’s why the cold places are cheaper. The benefit is that a certain kind of person stays out of there. The best way to describe it is people who don’t have their shit together. In a place where not dressing for the weather can be a fatal mistake, there isn’t room for fuckups.
- SwellJoe 8y agoI guess I'm a fuckup, because I really like nice weather.
- fipple 8y agoObviously the logic doesn’t work that way, but you absolutely do not see people showing up late to meetings and canceling plans last minute in Minneapolis or Boston the way they do in Los Angeles or Atlanta.
- madcaptenor 8y agoI live in Atlanta. People cancel their plans in Atlanta because they don't want to sit in traffic. (Or at least that's what they say - it's a good all-purpose excuse.) From what I know of LA it's probably the same way there. Next question: why do Atlanta and Los Angeles have such horrible traffic?
- s_dev 8y agoGDP is corrolated with distance from the equator where it's warmest. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/03/20/why-is-there-such-a-strong-correlation-between-geographic-distance-from-the-equator-and-prosperity/#14688176ab6d https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/03/20/why-is-there-s...
- webXL 8y agoSeasons are definitely a catalyst for evolution.