3 ms·
I'm starting to think the balance is going to shift to lower-COL areas. This is based on my experience having been on the hiring side. It's not about salaries
by michaelochurch 14y ago
I'm starting to think the balance is going to shift to lower-COL areas. This is based on my experience having been on the hiring side.
It's not about salaries because those aren't the major issue. The COL difference is minor in comparison to the execution risks. In fact, the traditional reason why startups "had to be" in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco is job-market latency. Yes, you can find great engineers elsewhere, but for some ridiculous purple squirrel query (production experience in the 3 NoSQLs you use) that needs to be filled tomorrow, you need to be in the Valley or New York (due to Wall Street, there's a lot of technical talent, albeit expensive). If you're in Austin, you can find great people but probably not the guy who matches your purple squirrel query exactly.
That said, a place like NYC has the urban dating problem (too many alternatives, so people treat each other like shit). We'd write great offers to people only to have them picked off based on minutiae. We were ridiculously picky and rejected people for dumb reasons; only fair for them to be.
However, I feel like the grow-fast-or-die red-ocean nonsense is played-out and the next wave is going to be in the mid-growth (5-30%/year headcount growth, focus on technical excellence) space which doesn't need to be in the Valley or New York.
- tocomment 14y agoWhat are some promising low COL areas? (I like your thinking by the way)
- michaelochurch 14y agoI can only speak for the U.S. here. * Austin, TX (seems to be the obvious pull-ahead winner in 2013) * Portland, OR (great weather, beautiful, lots of potential) * Madison, WI (near Chicago, great college town, not as cold as people think) * Minneapolis, MN (underrated gem, beautiful, just very cold; I'm told they haven't had a 60+ yet in 2013) * Pittsburgh, PA (CMU is right there; how is it not kicking ass?) * Ann Arbor, MI (another Midwestern gem) * Chicago, IL (if you consider that low-COL) * Toronto, Ontario (ok, not a US city, but I spent a summer there and loved it) Almost none of these would be considered low-COL (they're above 100) and relative to their regions they're quite high, but they're a hell of a lot cheaper than New York or Palo Alto. Oh, one ass-kicking advantage of the low-COL places: people actually want to be lifelong software engineers. In New York, you can't raise a family on a (non-WS quant) engineer's salary. Of course, most of young idiots have this insane dream of having a manager's title and pay (plus real stock options!) which you can get by 27 if you play the politics, but being full-time programmers and just using their magic manager powers to assign themselves the best work. It turns out not to work that way. Poor them... I really think the fact that one can't raise a family out here on an engineer's salary is toxic to the culture. It creates the wrong kind of ambition.
- rdouble 14y agoMinneapolis "beautiful?" Portland "great weather?" Can't tell if serious...
- michaelochurch 14y agoI was in Minneapolis in the spring a few years ago and it was a very attractive city. The winters are harsh and long, though. I actually mind it most in the fall, because I'm used to November still being somewhat warm (northeast's "Indian summer"). Portland, according to Wikipedia, has an average January high of 47, an average July high of 81-- some seasonality but not too much-- and with 40+ percent sunshine in most of the year, doesn't seem to have the overbearing cloudiness of Seattle's winters.
- rdouble 14y agoI lived in Minnesota for 20 years and just got back from Portland. I'd say Minneapolis is average-nice but not "beautiful." The Grand Rounds and city lakes are great. The actual city parts, however, are nothing special and I would argue are actually kind of ugly, especially in late winter and early spring when there's a layer of dirty ice crust covering everything. Portland's weather is truly miserable during the winter and is rated #1 in the country for seasonal affective disorder. The summers, however are beautiful.
- sjg007 14y agocould be worse, you could live in England.
- nickv 14y agoLet me tell you, I absolutely love the total shit of PDX -- it's amazing, walkable, great bike culture, great food/beer/coffee culture, good public transit, beautiful environment, an amazing DIY culture that permeates everything... But the weather? Oh my god, the weather. The weather is horrible a good 6-9 months of the year. It's amazing for 3, but oh my god does it have a cloudy, wet, no-sun-ever feel for a good chunk of the year. Wikipedia might say one thing, but really, the weather... oh man the weather.
- angersock 14y agoI'll plug Houston, TX. It's a really nascent scene, and you want to avoid letting the culture get in the way of business, but it has a lot of promise. Houston is a wonderfully large and diverse city, and there is always a lot of work to find around here while pursuing your startup. We've got top-notch engineering talent (NASA and the energy sector), and the best private research university in Texas. The food is really good, housing to match near any requirement is readily available, and the people are friendly.
- tomkinstinch 14y agoRochester, NY (roughly equal time away from Boston and NYC, legacy of engineering culture from Xerox, Kodak, ITT, etc. Low COL, high quality of life, manufacturing base for physical goods, multiple universities, data centers with good connectivity) Perhaps of interest is this report from the Brookings Institution: Patenting Prosperity: Invention and Economic Performance in the United States and its Metropolitan Areas http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013/02/patenting%20prosperity%20rothwell/patenting%20prosperity%20rothwell.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013...