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I regret that I have but one upvote to give you for this. Here, have an Indignation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s http://www.youtube.com/wat

I regret that I have but one upvote to give you for this. Here, have an Indignation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s In the long term, Silicon Valley and SF is eating its young. It's a city built on young entrepreneurs coming there and doing new stuff, but if nobody who hasn't already made it can afford to live there what happens then? The other problem is that these high costs soak up everyone's spare time and money, leaving them with the requirement to work like crazy for other people to afford to live instead of on their own innovative projects. It sucks away the marginal "play time" when innovation really happens. Someone said to be about Austin, "everyone in Austin does 3 things". There's something to that. For just one example, Austinites aren't afraid to work for the enterprise or in something less sexy than local/mobile/flavor-of-the-month because you're not expected to go all-in on one job at a time (then burn out after 14 months and replaced by another chump). This creates the cross-pollination and breadth of knowledge that generates innovation. Bay Area people are terrified to go anywhere near an unsexy industry because they live in a culture where your job is all you do. In Austin, where 9-to-5 seems to be more tolerated, people are more willing to explore unsexy problems and hear people out in other industries-- and you learn a lot from that. San Francisco and New York seem more fixated on a "do one thing, go all-in, and do it very well" ideology of work. That's fine after you have some good ideas but it's terrible at generating new ideas. You need the more relaxed, open approach when you're young and getting ideas (plus learning from other peoples') is more important.

chiph 13y ago
Austin real estate isn't as bat-shit insane as SF, but what I'm seeing is that there are people who are paying $10k over the asking price. And that is severely distorting the market. Agreed that Austin isn't as "hit-driven" as SF is. Talent here is more diverse on an individual basis than other tech towns.
- caniszczyk 13y ago
  This is true... it's a bit pain in the ass to buy real estate within a mile of downtown in Austin... but if you go outside that it's not that bad...
- pairing 13y ago
  As a comparison though, people are paying 100K over asking without blinking in South Bay for already overpriced real estate in the last 2 months. I've even seen bidding up of rental prices in the last month. 10K sound pretty good in comparison.
cwilson 13y ago
I was born and raised in Austin and used to be one of those people who said they would never leave. I fought very hard to make the tech scene in Austin "happen" for years. There are multiple reasons it's taken so long to get to where it is now, which I won't go into here (not relevant to the OP's topic), but one of the main reasons I left to move to the Bay Area is the lack of hustle, or the lack of need to hustle, in Austin. It was very hard to want to put your soul into building a company (which as a founder you generally always have to do, at least for a while) when everything is just so mellow in Austin. All of my friends were leaving their offices by 5pm to go drink $3 beers every single day, and likely go see a band play that evening. I of course did this too, because I wasn't going to be the only person working through the evening. Then there is the cost of living. It's absurdly low compared to the bay area or NYC. I could have a great quality of life in Austin by doing 1 - 2 freelance gigs per month, easy (I know this because I did it for 3 years before starting a company). This translates to not feeling the small window of opportunity you'd have to build a company that becomes profitable (or you can raise money with) out in the bay area, because you can coast by on so little money. This also presented a talent/hiring problem when I did try to make a startup happen in Austin. It was VERY hard to convince freelancers who were making 100k a year and putting a majority of that in the bank to come make less for my crazy dream. In the Bay Area I do not have these issues. EVERYONE works insanely hard. The cost of living is insane, so I can't just sit around and take my sweet time. Becoming profitable as soon as possible is all I think about. I'm not saying the Bay Area version of this isn't its own extreme, because it is definitely out of control, but there has to be a balance somewhere between the two.
- api 13y ago
  I am presently in Asheville, North Carolina, another "mellow" place that's probably very much like Austin (except smaller). A lot of $100k freelancers too. I moved here from Boston, and I'm not going to go into why as it's off-topic, but... Yours is an interesting perspective. It seems like both extremes are a double-edged sword. On one hand, slower mellower and less expensive places give you the free time to think and play and create. But on the other hand, they drain you of your sense of urgency and they create a culture where people don't hustle -- as you say. I'm trying to get something off the ground in Asheville now (https://www.zerotier.com/ https://www.zerotier.com/) and it's required a lot of self-motivation. There's not a huge tech scene either, so if it starts to get real traction I'm not sure what resources I'd have to surf the wave aggressively. On the flip side, I lived for quite a while in the Cambridge, MA startup orbit and experienced my fair share of hustle. What I saw was a lot of me-too, a lot of crackpot stupid ideas frothing around and getting funding because the founders were connected, and a lot of workaholism that eventually drained people (including me) of genuine creativity or excitement about what they were doing. Costs were high, time was short, and inspiration got thrown under the bus for the need to perform. So I agree that there's probably an optimum in between. My sense is that Asheville, Austin, probably Portland, etc. are probably too far on the mellow end and that today's SF/SV is probably too tweaked out and overpriced. I get the feeling that SF and SV in the 1990s was right at that happy medium. Wasn't there, so maybe I'm wrong, but that's the sense I get.

chiph 13y ago

Austin real estate isn't as bat-shit insane as SF, but what I'm seeing is that there are people who are paying $10k over the asking price. And that is severely distorting the market. Agreed that Austin isn't as "hit-driven" as SF is. Talent here is more diverse on an individual basis than other tech towns.

caniszczyk 13y ago
This is true... it's a bit pain in the ass to buy real estate within a mile of downtown in Austin... but if you go outside that it's not that bad...
pairing 13y ago
As a comparison though, people are paying 100K over asking without blinking in South Bay for already overpriced real estate in the last 2 months. I've even seen bidding up of rental prices in the last month. 10K sound pretty good in comparison.

cwilson 13y ago

I was born and raised in Austin and used to be one of those people who said they would never leave. I fought very hard to make the tech scene in Austin "happen" for years. There are multiple reasons it's taken so long to get to where it is now, which I won't go into here (not relevant to the OP's topic), but one of the main reasons I left to move to the Bay Area is the lack of hustle, or the lack of need to hustle, in Austin. It was very hard to want to put your soul into building a company (which as a founder you generally always have to do, at least for a while) when everything is just so mellow in Austin. All of my friends were leaving their offices by 5pm to go drink $3 beers every single day, and likely go see a band play that evening. I of course did this too, because I wasn't going to be the only person working through the evening. Then there is the cost of living. It's absurdly low compared to the bay area or NYC. I could have a great quality of life in Austin by doing 1 - 2 freelance gigs per month, easy (I know this because I did it for 3 years before starting a company). This translates to not feeling the small window of opportunity you'd have to build a company that becomes profitable (or you can raise money with) out in the bay area, because you can coast by on so little money. This also presented a talent/hiring problem when I did try to make a startup happen in Austin. It was VERY hard to convince freelancers who were making 100k a year and putting a majority of that in the bank to come make less for my crazy dream. In the Bay Area I do not have these issues. EVERYONE works insanely hard. The cost of living is insane, so I can't just sit around and take my sweet time. Becoming profitable as soon as possible is all I think about. I'm not saying the Bay Area version of this isn't its own extreme, because it is definitely out of control, but there has to be a balance somewhere between the two.

api 13y ago
I am presently in Asheville, North Carolina, another "mellow" place that's probably very much like Austin (except smaller). A lot of $100k freelancers too. I moved here from Boston, and I'm not going to go into why as it's off-topic, but... Yours is an interesting perspective. It seems like both extremes are a double-edged sword. On one hand, slower mellower and less expensive places give you the free time to think and play and create. But on the other hand, they drain you of your sense of urgency and they create a culture where people don't hustle -- as you say. I'm trying to get something off the ground in Asheville now (https://www.zerotier.com/ https://www.zerotier.com/) and it's required a lot of self-motivation. There's not a huge tech scene either, so if it starts to get real traction I'm not sure what resources I'd have to surf the wave aggressively. On the flip side, I lived for quite a while in the Cambridge, MA startup orbit and experienced my fair share of hustle. What I saw was a lot of me-too, a lot of crackpot stupid ideas frothing around and getting funding because the founders were connected, and a lot of workaholism that eventually drained people (including me) of genuine creativity or excitement about what they were doing. Costs were high, time was short, and inspiration got thrown under the bus for the need to perform. So I agree that there's probably an optimum in between. My sense is that Asheville, Austin, probably Portland, etc. are probably too far on the mellow end and that today's SF/SV is probably too tweaked out and overpriced. I get the feeling that SF and SV in the 1990s was right at that happy medium. Wasn't there, so maybe I'm wrong, but that's the sense I get.