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This was Google's thought when I was talking to them. "Seattle's only a couple hours away. You could possibly even commute!" I checked out the area through the
by tobyjsullivan 13y ago
This was Google's thought when I was talking to them. "Seattle's only a couple hours away. You could possibly even commute!"
I checked out the area through the lens of possibly living there when I went down for my interview. Seattle and Kirkland are not comparable to Vancouver in the slightest. Mostly the ghettos and rampant poverty, combined with the fundamental social differences between the countries. Didn't help that the one restaurant I ate at in the suburb of Kirkland had a fresh bullet hole in one of the windows. No thanks.
I found areas of New York (Williamsburg and Dumbo to be specific) that felt more like Vancouver to me than anywhere in the Seattle area.
My calls with Google are now pretty short. "Is there a Google office in Vancouver yet? No? Not interested, thanks."
- dubfan 13y agoSeattle doesn't have ghettos. Seriously, compare Oakland or south-central LA to Seattle's "ghettos" and tell me they are similar. Vancouver's Downtown Eastside had the worst concentration of poverty and desperation I'd ever seen in North America while I lived in Vancouver.
- Jack000 13y agoVancouver's poverty is kind of odd and I think not entirely comparable to other areas. It's concentrated in just a couple of blocks on hastings, in a highly visible area. The overall homeless rate is actually higher in less populous municipalities like Abbotsford. It's also not a "violent" ghetto, I've never felt unsafe walking down that stretch of road, compared to some of the places I've been in the US.
- tobyjsullivan 13y agoI probably misused the word ghetto there (forgetting some parts of America have real ghettos). The word I should be using is poverty. It's rampant and seems to be everywhere. You can mostly avoid it if you stick to the very central downtown core which I always did as a tourist. But that was definitely just my impression of the city. I'm not damning the city for it, everywhere has problems. I just can't imagine living around that would have a positive long-term effect on anyone's state of mind. It's not where I would chose to be.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 13y agoNobody who likes Williamsburg or Dumbo gets to have an opinion about cities.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoWait, have you actually been to Vancouver before? Vancouver has one of the higher crime rates for a North American city and is quite noted for it, Seattle is much lower. Also, Kirkland doesn't have suburbs (it is one), and totem lake isn't that bad. http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/wa/seattle/crime/ http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/wa/seattle/crime/ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-crime-among-worst-in-north-america-1.967033 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-cri...