8 ms·

Seattle, the New Center of a Tech Boom

56 points by peterkchen 12y ago

quotient 12y ago
I'm getting so tired of every city claiming a Tech Boom, headlines like "[City X] is the next Silicon Valley", etc. All these articles are isomorphic ("here, check out this bunch of hip, trendy developers with an app that you haven't even heard of who live in our city"). This is insufferable. Here is a short list of cities on which I have read articles in the past 6 months claiming that they are the next Silicon Valley or something to that effect: -NYC -Berlin -Ljubljana -Chicago -Detroit -San Diego -LA -Toronto -Dubai -Tel Aviv -Nairobi ... This isn't news. Yes, believe it or not, most cities with a few hundred thousand people in them have a tech scene! (Especially the ones with a University housing a major CS department --- like Seattle!) Yes, it is 2014 --- the tech scene is mostly booming wherever you look, especially on a sufficiently long-term perspective. Really, articles of this sort are usually just self-serving advertisement for the city in question. The truth is, of course, that the tech scene in most of these cities is not really booming in the sense of the word. Developing strongly is often a better way to put it, and the growth rate is often non-linear (probably more toward the logarithmic side of things) because founders of successful companies have a tendency to move to the Bay Area.
- odonnellryan 12y ago
  What I like about the prospect of Seattle (when compared to NYC, being in that area) is: Cost of living: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=United+States&city=Seattle%2C+WA http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country... And it often (surprisingly because of the weather..?) gets better-than-most rankings in "happiness:" http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-10-happiest-and-saddest-cities-in-the-us/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-10-happiest-and-saddest-citi...
  - donohoe 12y ago
    I didn't find the cost of living a huge difference in real terms (compared to NYC). I paid the same rent but got a bigger place (which was nice) but I found food prices more expensive overall and I had to but a car. Thats a limited subset of things but you get the idea. Your experience will vary.
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      Were you living in the east side? If so, you aren't really living in Seattle, but Bellevue. I got by just fine without a car in the city, food is much cheaper than the east side also. Housing is smaller (for the same amount of money), however.
      - donohoe 12y ago
        I lived Downtown for a few months, then in Ballard.
        seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        I see why you might need a car in Ballard.
  - apathia 12y ago
    No state income tax is significant. An equal typical tech salary would be ~10% larger post-tax in Seattle than NYC. The trade-off is double sales tax and less funding for public services. Great city to live below your means in.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    I've lived in both, cost of living is deceptive. Non-housing cost of living is nearly identical between the two cities, and housing is really starting to get up there. There's still a good advantage to be enjoyed, but it won't last long. The 2BR I had for $2200 a couples of years ago is now going for upwards of $3000. Housing cost growth in Seattle is starting to hit a hockey stick curve reminiscent of the Bay Area. Tax rate is noticeably lower than California or New York though, so you've got that going for you (though the lower taxes can be felt in other, less awesome, ways - see the constant cutbacks to the already fairly anemic transit system). Side note: you're also going to need a car. Yes, even if you live in urban neighborhoods like Capitol Hill or Belltown. One of my big takeaways is that while you can get by just fine with transit and shopping locally, Seattle itself is a car-centric city. Trying to force a transit-only lifestyle on it means you'll simply be insulated into one of the few neighborhoods where that lifestyle is reasonable and never leave.
    - chrismcb 12y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by non housing cost. Food and going to the movies is right 25% more in NYC then Seattle. Wa doesn't have income tax either. Yes hosting in Seattle is going up. But it is no where near NYC rates
      - potatolicious 12y ago
        You also get paid substantially more in NYC. In the old days (like 2009-10-ish) Seattle's housing was cheap enough that, even accounting for the pay difference, you're still ahead of New Yorkers by a fair margin. In 2014 I wouldn't be so sure. Last time I checked I saw a lot of 1BRs going for >$1500 in Capitol Hill. That's a ~$1K a month difference from NYC rents, so if the New Yorker is earning ~$18K more (to account for tax) they'd be even already. As far as I can tell the pay gap is wider than this. And this rate is going up, seemingly faster than salary growth in the city. The advantage may still be there, but in any case it's being rapidly erased. The main thing Seattle has going for it financially now is the lack of state income tax, which genuinely makes a big dent compared to other tech hubs. A ~5-8% difference in overall taxation comes out to quite a bit. Housing in NYC is expensive, but it's less insane than most people know. The difference between a $1K apartment and a $2K apartment is 100%, but it's also $12,000 a year. Does the pay gap between the two cities cover the difference? Does it actually put you ahead? Side note: these "cost of living index comparison" sites are trash. I've lived in Seattle, SF, and NYC, and in all 3 places my food costs have been downright identical. The food costs between the cities are so close together that they're well within the error bars.
- ghc 12y ago
  And then there's poor, neglected Boston. No media coverage about being the next SV. No Silicon derived nicknames (instead there's Rt. 128, Kendall Square, and Fort Point). Sometimes, thanks to the lack of media coverage, Boston/Cambridge gets left off the list of tech scenes altogether, despite having whole areas dominated by startups and the second largest amount of VC after SF/SV. I wonder if Boston is doomed to be a cautionary tale about what happens when a culture of B2B startups (Digital, Wang, etc.) produces VCs who don't have enough vision to fund companies like Facebook or TaskRabbit.
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    Boston is a beautiful city with amazing seasons and probably the single greatest concentration of smart people in the world. It's also, at least historically, the spiritual capital of Lisp (thanks to MIT). All taken together, I'm a huge fan of the place. Unfortunately, my experience with Boston companies (I've interviewed with a few, and had the misfortune of being reverse-acquired by one) is that they're not progressive. One hiring manager told me (this was a couple years ago, I think I was 27 or 28 at the time) that I was too old to be a programmer (wat?) but too young to be a manager. Another tried to give me a position with "junior" in the title-- this was in mid-2013, so I had 7 years of experience. (I know that titles are bullshit, but if they're going to exist, I'll take an inflated one rather than a deflated one.) Boston is a beautiful, under-appreciated place. Its climate is ideal (cold, snowy winters, perfect springs and falls, mild summers). I like the people a lot. But I see a culture where there is too much deference to authority and too little "fuck it, let's do it anyway". While the Valley is too youth-obsessed and flighty and sociopathic, New England seems to take the other extreme: too seniority-bound and stodgy and prone to following rules. The ideal, for tech, is somewhere between the two.
    - ghc 12y ago
      I'm curious about where you interviewed, and how big the companies were. I've never had that experience with startups in Boston (only big companies out near Rt. 128). Engineers are in high demand here, so most "interviews" are really cap table discussions and salary negotiations over a drink. In fact, multiple startups over the past five years have used their VCs or EIRs to approach me; I can't imagine a situation where a company would look down on a 27 year old developer. I do know exactly what you mean by deference to authority, but outside of the MIT professor-run startup bubble, I think it's mostly dead (well, I can't speak for biotech...). I just hope it isn't replaced by ageism, as you suggest.
- odiroot 12y ago
  You forgot Krakow. I hear it's getting a lot of hype as of late.
- atarian 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_%22Silicon%22_names http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_%22Silicon%... Silicon Alley — Lower Manhattan, NYC, NY Silicon Anchor — Norfolk, VA Silicon Bayou — New Orleans, LA Silicon Beach — Santa Monica, CA Silicon Bridge — DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY Silicon Canal — Seattle, WA Silicon Coast — Orange County, CA Silicon Desert — Chandler, AZ Silicon Forest — Portland, OR Silicon Harbor — Charleston, SC Silicon Hill — Washington, DC, MD Silicon Hills — Austin, TX Silicon Mountain — Front Range Urban Corridor, CO Silicon Prairie - TX, IL, KA, WY Silicon Shire — Eugene, OR Silicon Shore — Santa Barbara, CA Silicon Slopes — Utah Silicon Surf — Santa Cruz, CA Silicon Swamp — Gainesville, FL Silicon Valley — San Jose, CA
  - will_work4tears 12y ago
    Huh, I think that list needs to be updated. I've seen an article on Omaha, NE being Silicon Prairie, as well as Kansas City (MO) and St. Louis. I'm sure if I noticed a few not on there, there's probably a bunch more.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Seattle is the Silicon Canal? I would have thought Amsterdam or some city with...you know...more than one canal, would get that title.
    - rybosome 12y ago
      I'm assuming because of the heavy concentration of tech along the canal near the Fremont bridge? Agreed that it might give an incorrect picture of the structure of Seattle. :-)
      - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        There are only a few companies in that corridor. Heck, I remember when they were just warehouses (I would run by on the trail toward Ballard everyday); then there was Adobe and then Google but first...the ultimate troll. Seattle is more forested and green in color than Portland...I always thought we had that title (Silicon Forest). Maybe Silicon Lakes?
- alphagenerator 12y ago
  I like these articles when they're about my city. I still really have no idea what the true tech scene is like where I live. I lived in Silicon Valley briefly and the cost of living and work-life balance were poor. I left about 10 years ago. I dislike the idea that I'd have to go back there to be cutting edge or successful and would much rather achieve great things from, say, Montana, Nebraska, or Idaho.
  - sjg007 12y ago
    Start up Silicon Prairie.
- webwright 12y ago
  You're right that this often is just PR... In the case of Seattle, it is an actual thing. YC is seeing it too ( https://twitter.com/sama/status/475658241167220736 https://twitter.com/sama/status/475658241167220736 ). Seattle saw $500M in venture funding last quarter, which was its biggest quarter ever. It was the fastest growing city in the country last year... though it still only has a metro area size 50% of SF, 15% of NYC, 30% of LA.
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  The whole article sucks. They mischaracterize products as just cloud products, people as just cloud people, companies as just cloud companies. They even completely bastardize the definition of 'cloud' itself as "lots of computer servers working together for various tasks." Holy shit, 'cloud' has been around since the 1980s?! (Incidentally they use the word 'cloud' 27 times in the article)
- rybosome 12y ago
  I see your point, but when the article cites companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, HP, CenturyLink, Tableau and Chef, your complaint about "an app that you've never heard of" doesn't really hold up. Perhaps I'm just feeling defensive about my city, but I think that your fatigue with this format has lead you to an incorrect conclusion; things really are different in Seattle.
michaelochurch 12y ago
Seattle can definitely do very well. It's one of the most beautiful places on the planet, it has a lot of talent, and it's still relatively affordable. Let's hope that, if it grows, it doesn't fuck everything up the way San Francisco and its progress-hating NIMBYs did. “The galactic players are here, and they are creating lots of little companies. The only thing driving anyone away from here is the weather.” I'm surprised people are saying this. Seattle weather is gloomy by California standards, but it's actually not that bad. If you're from the northeast, you won't notice much of a difference, except for the winters being slightly warmer and the summers being cooler. (Summer is actually a nice season, not a humid hell, in Seattle.) Sure, it's cloudy a lot (55-60% in the summer, 80-85% in the winter) and it rains, a little bit, most days. But heavy rain that prevents you from doing things outside is very rare. If you're into running or biking, you probably prefer 50- to 70-degree cloudy days anyway, which makes Seattle ideal. Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace of mind about setting up shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by making it harder for people to walk out of one company and start a competitor. This is something it will need to change. Whether you want non-competes and employer-friendly ownership laws over side projects depends on whether you're courting hedge funds or tech. (Hedge funds are more of a meritocracy than VC, which means that it's easier for a guy with no connections to run with a proven idea and get a hedge fund.) If you're going for the hedge funds, keep the non-competes in play. If you want tech, then eschew non-competes and give the benefit of the doubt, on ownership, to the employee. (California gets this right in a major way.) However, the hedge funds don't want to be in Seattle, because it's not near any of the major exchanges. Tech loves Seattle. So Seattle should play for tech and kill the non-competes, because the hedge funds aren't about to move there no matter what it does. I'll say one thing, based on very limited data. Seattle's an amazing, beautiful city and, unconstrained, would be one of the top places I'd choose to live. What has concerned me is (based on very limited data; it could be that I just talked to crappy companies) that the creeping non-progressivism of technology employers (back-channel references, aversion to people with "too many" jobs, closed allocation) seems to be meeting less resistance there than I'd like. The sense I got from a recruiter (who may be completely biased) is that workers don't fight back hard enough to have nice things. I said to him, "I'm in my 30s now and only want to work on interesting projects, because I'm old enough to know that I will die someday." He said that if I said something that direct in an interview, that alone would sink me. (In New York, people are more accepting of directness. That a smart person will bolt if given boring work is a given. I like that.) Of course, that can change in a matter of months. Seattle has an incredible number of smart people, and a beautiful environment, and I think anything's possible there. But (if I'm right that Seattle's scene is more conservative and corporate) it's something that will have to evolve if it wants a leading tech scene.
dschiptsov 12y ago
What Tech Boom?
mrfusion 12y ago
Is the climate as bad as they say in Seattle? Would living (a few hours?) away right on the pacific coast be an improvement in climate? (By the way, what's the best way to compare climates in different US cities all at once?)
- Dewie 12y ago
  Good or bad climate is pretty subjective, so it depends on what you prefer, I guess. From Wikipedia (measurements from the airport), the whole 'it always rains' seems like an exaggeration - ~960 mm a year, less than other major US cities that are not known for being rainy. Mild winters, decently warm (and not hot) summers considering it's proximity to the Pacific, and its latitude. BC, Canada seems - from what I've read, not experienced - pretty mild for its latitude, and Vancouver is the warmest city in Canada#, despite being above the 49th parallel. Seattle climate seems nice if you prefer/can tolerate relatively much precipitation (though perhaps not relatively much for being in the Pacific Northwest), mild winters (lows not below freezing, on average), and decently warm summers. EDIT: and apparently not many sunny days, annually. Overcast weather seems to be more of a problem in Seattle than rainy weather. # Or perhaps just the warmest major city; Victoria, BC seems warmer. As an aside, certain places in the mid interior BC looks to be one of the warmest places in Canada, maybe even warmer than Southern Ontario. The Pacific Northwest has a pretty mild climate for its latitude(s), overall.
  - will_work4tears 12y ago
    Yep, it's the overcast weather that bugs some people. The locals here (I live in the Seattle area but am a transplant) tend to like to go with the complaints and add to it with exaggeration to keep people less interested in moving here. I don't mind it at all. In Missouri, the winters do have more sun, but much, much colder and snowy/icy so you don't want to go out anyway. Here I can go for a walk/run/bike/hike or whatever and it's mostly mid to upper 40's (F) all winter with a few exceptions either direction (some 70 degree days in Feb, for instance).
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Is the climate as bad as they say in Seattle? I would argue that the climate is actually quite nice. It is, however, cloudy often. Even in the summer, you get a lot of overcast days and misty rain. Summer mornings are always cool: 13 to 16 C (high 50s F). Summer afternoons are usually sunny and hot: 23 to 28 C (high 70s F). Some people hate the lack of a "real" summer, but having experienced enough 37+ C/humid days for one lifetime, I don't take much out of that complaint. Winters are mild, temperature-wise, but overcast. You'll only get about 10-20 hours of sun per week in the winter. For the plus side, if you look outside in the winter and it "looks" nice, it probably is (nice meaning 8-12 C). (On the East Coast, sunny usually means sub-freezing.) It's not "always" raining but you'll probably get some rain on 2/3 of the days. Of course, some of those days are mostly sunny and have a misty rain for half an hour in the morning, and some are uniformly overcast. It depends on what you like. If you're physically active, you might prefer it. (It's never too hot, or too cold, to run or bike.) Seattle has about the same climate as Paris, but the perceptions are totally different. In Paris, it's being compared to cloudier, colder places like Berlin and Warsaw, so it has the reputation of being a sunny, mild city. Seattle is being compared to San Francisco and Los Angeles so it has the reputation of being cold and cloudy. If you're from the East Coast or Europe, you won't mind it. I've heard plenty of Europeans move to Seattle and, because they've been told the weather is so dreadful, think they've won the lottery when they get what's actually an average winter (mild temperatures, not much sun but some, light rain). Would living (a few hours?) away right on the pacific coast be an improvement in climate? It would be even rainier, and it's the rain (not the temperatures) people complain about. However, if you go east, over the mountains, you get into a climate that's quite dry. One thing to keep in mind about Seattle's weather is that, if you want, you can drive 100 km and get winter sun in the desert, or drive into the mountains for snow and skiing. (Snow at sea level is rare in the Pac NW.) If you really don't like the 5-6 days per week of overcast in the winter, you can escape it on the weekends. On the other hand, if you want an actual bona fide rainforest, you can get to that as well.
donohoe 12y ago
"Seattle Freeze" #neverforget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze http://qr.ae/sDfQ9 http://qr.ae/sDfQ9 Its a real thing. All my friends in Seattle ended up being people who moved there from somewhere else - like myself. I noticed this trend well before I learned about the mythical term "Seattle freeze". Crazy world.
- poulsbohemian 12y ago
  As a native Washingtonian, born and raised in the Puget Sound region, can I suggest a theory? The Seattle Freeze was imported in the late 1980s as the region gentrified. As we moved from a blue collar economy (logging, building airplanes, etc) to a white collar economy (software, biotech), and especially as we experienced significant population growth as transplants moved in rapidly to be part of those new industries, that was when the freeze set in. Yes, there is a lot to be said for the nordic influence and the fact that Seattle is isolated culturally from the rest of the country, but it was the mass influx of cultural outsiders that generated the distrust at the root of the freeze.
wil421 12y ago
The tech boom is everywhere. Some cities have more visibility but I think it's going in some fashion in most major cities or metro areas.
mqsiuser 12y ago
But what do we do about that... ... things turn out to be not well balanced (a fact... for whatever reason) You can make millions in a guys only world in SV (doesn't the lack of private life suck? The lack of a balanced ;) peer group?). And on the other side (outside SV) startups just do not work out that well (and in the long run likely bowing to SV). Now IT is an important future industry... and it's creation is NOT well distributed. Like the gold rush (which happened for some reason also in California)
doxcf434 12y ago
If you're coming from SF and are used to the quality of the restaurants in a foodie city, Seattle is mostly just presentation.
kylequest 12y ago
Seattle has a potential, but it's not a boom until we see more VC/angel activity, which is a good indicator. It has a pretty good tech scene. Most startups are still consumer oriented though, so Jared Wray, CTO from CenturyLink, is wrong :-)
malandrew 12y ago
"Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace of mind about setting up shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by making it harder for people to walk out of one company and start a competitor." That right there is enough to give any engineer pause about going to work for a company in Seattle. Anna-Lee Saxenian's work in the dated, but still relevant "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" goes into a fair amount of detail how the non-compete environment on Route 128 ended up undermining the Boston area relative to the Bay area. 99% of companies are simply not set up to allow success of new ideas related to the core business, but not actually the core business. Non-competes basically cause ideas to die because most companies are excellent at stifling execution on non-core projects.
nickgrosvenor 12y ago
Didn't I read about the Tech Boom in Los Angeles last week?

56 points by peterkchen 12y ago

I'm getting so tired of every city claiming a Tech Boom, headlines like "[City X] is the next Silicon Valley", etc. All these articles are isomorphic ("here, check out this bunch of hip, trendy developers with an app that you haven't even heard of who live in our city"). This is insufferable. Here is a short list of cities on which I have read articles in the past 6 months claiming that they are the next Silicon Valley or something to that effect: -NYC -Berlin -Ljubljana -Chicago -Detroit -San Diego -LA -Toronto -Dubai -Tel Aviv -Nairobi ... This isn't news. Yes, believe it or not, most cities with a few hundred thousand people in them have a tech scene! (Especially the ones with a University housing a major CS department --- like Seattle!) Yes, it is 2014 --- the tech scene is mostly booming wherever you look, especially on a sufficiently long-term perspective. Really, articles of this sort are usually just self-serving advertisement for the city in question. The truth is, of course, that the tech scene in most of these cities is not really booming in the sense of the word. Developing strongly is often a better way to put it, and the growth rate is often non-linear (probably more toward the logarithmic side of things) because founders of successful companies have a tendency to move to the Bay Area.

odonnellryan 12y ago
What I like about the prospect of Seattle (when compared to NYC, being in that area) is: Cost of living: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=United+States&city=Seattle%2C+WA http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country... And it often (surprisingly because of the weather..?) gets better-than-most rankings in "happiness:" http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-10-happiest-and-saddest-cities-in-the-us/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-10-happiest-and-saddest-citi...
- donohoe 12y ago
  I didn't find the cost of living a huge difference in real terms (compared to NYC). I paid the same rent but got a bigger place (which was nice) but I found food prices more expensive overall and I had to but a car. Thats a limited subset of things but you get the idea. Your experience will vary.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Were you living in the east side? If so, you aren't really living in Seattle, but Bellevue. I got by just fine without a car in the city, food is much cheaper than the east side also. Housing is smaller (for the same amount of money), however.
    - donohoe 12y ago
      I lived Downtown for a few months, then in Ballard.
      - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        I see why you might need a car in Ballard.
- apathia 12y ago
  No state income tax is significant. An equal typical tech salary would be ~10% larger post-tax in Seattle than NYC. The trade-off is double sales tax and less funding for public services. Great city to live below your means in.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  I've lived in both, cost of living is deceptive. Non-housing cost of living is nearly identical between the two cities, and housing is really starting to get up there. There's still a good advantage to be enjoyed, but it won't last long. The 2BR I had for $2200 a couples of years ago is now going for upwards of $3000. Housing cost growth in Seattle is starting to hit a hockey stick curve reminiscent of the Bay Area. Tax rate is noticeably lower than California or New York though, so you've got that going for you (though the lower taxes can be felt in other, less awesome, ways - see the constant cutbacks to the already fairly anemic transit system). Side note: you're also going to need a car. Yes, even if you live in urban neighborhoods like Capitol Hill or Belltown. One of my big takeaways is that while you can get by just fine with transit and shopping locally, Seattle itself is a car-centric city. Trying to force a transit-only lifestyle on it means you'll simply be insulated into one of the few neighborhoods where that lifestyle is reasonable and never leave.
  - chrismcb 12y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by non housing cost. Food and going to the movies is right 25% more in NYC then Seattle. Wa doesn't have income tax either. Yes hosting in Seattle is going up. But it is no where near NYC rates
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      You also get paid substantially more in NYC. In the old days (like 2009-10-ish) Seattle's housing was cheap enough that, even accounting for the pay difference, you're still ahead of New Yorkers by a fair margin. In 2014 I wouldn't be so sure. Last time I checked I saw a lot of 1BRs going for >$1500 in Capitol Hill. That's a ~$1K a month difference from NYC rents, so if the New Yorker is earning ~$18K more (to account for tax) they'd be even already. As far as I can tell the pay gap is wider than this. And this rate is going up, seemingly faster than salary growth in the city. The advantage may still be there, but in any case it's being rapidly erased. The main thing Seattle has going for it financially now is the lack of state income tax, which genuinely makes a big dent compared to other tech hubs. A ~5-8% difference in overall taxation comes out to quite a bit. Housing in NYC is expensive, but it's less insane than most people know. The difference between a $1K apartment and a $2K apartment is 100%, but it's also $12,000 a year. Does the pay gap between the two cities cover the difference? Does it actually put you ahead? Side note: these "cost of living index comparison" sites are trash. I've lived in Seattle, SF, and NYC, and in all 3 places my food costs have been downright identical. The food costs between the cities are so close together that they're well within the error bars.
ghc 12y ago
And then there's poor, neglected Boston. No media coverage about being the next SV. No Silicon derived nicknames (instead there's Rt. 128, Kendall Square, and Fort Point). Sometimes, thanks to the lack of media coverage, Boston/Cambridge gets left off the list of tech scenes altogether, despite having whole areas dominated by startups and the second largest amount of VC after SF/SV. I wonder if Boston is doomed to be a cautionary tale about what happens when a culture of B2B startups (Digital, Wang, etc.) produces VCs who don't have enough vision to fund companies like Facebook or TaskRabbit.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Boston is a beautiful city with amazing seasons and probably the single greatest concentration of smart people in the world. It's also, at least historically, the spiritual capital of Lisp (thanks to MIT). All taken together, I'm a huge fan of the place. Unfortunately, my experience with Boston companies (I've interviewed with a few, and had the misfortune of being reverse-acquired by one) is that they're not progressive. One hiring manager told me (this was a couple years ago, I think I was 27 or 28 at the time) that I was too old to be a programmer (wat?) but too young to be a manager. Another tried to give me a position with "junior" in the title-- this was in mid-2013, so I had 7 years of experience. (I know that titles are bullshit, but if they're going to exist, I'll take an inflated one rather than a deflated one.) Boston is a beautiful, under-appreciated place. Its climate is ideal (cold, snowy winters, perfect springs and falls, mild summers). I like the people a lot. But I see a culture where there is too much deference to authority and too little "fuck it, let's do it anyway". While the Valley is too youth-obsessed and flighty and sociopathic, New England seems to take the other extreme: too seniority-bound and stodgy and prone to following rules. The ideal, for tech, is somewhere between the two.
  - ghc 12y ago
    I'm curious about where you interviewed, and how big the companies were. I've never had that experience with startups in Boston (only big companies out near Rt. 128). Engineers are in high demand here, so most "interviews" are really cap table discussions and salary negotiations over a drink. In fact, multiple startups over the past five years have used their VCs or EIRs to approach me; I can't imagine a situation where a company would look down on a 27 year old developer. I do know exactly what you mean by deference to authority, but outside of the MIT professor-run startup bubble, I think it's mostly dead (well, I can't speak for biotech...). I just hope it isn't replaced by ageism, as you suggest.
odiroot 12y ago
You forgot Krakow. I hear it's getting a lot of hype as of late.
atarian 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_%22Silicon%22_names http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_%22Silicon%... Silicon Alley — Lower Manhattan, NYC, NY Silicon Anchor — Norfolk, VA Silicon Bayou — New Orleans, LA Silicon Beach — Santa Monica, CA Silicon Bridge — DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY Silicon Canal — Seattle, WA Silicon Coast — Orange County, CA Silicon Desert — Chandler, AZ Silicon Forest — Portland, OR Silicon Harbor — Charleston, SC Silicon Hill — Washington, DC, MD Silicon Hills — Austin, TX Silicon Mountain — Front Range Urban Corridor, CO Silicon Prairie - TX, IL, KA, WY Silicon Shire — Eugene, OR Silicon Shore — Santa Barbara, CA Silicon Slopes — Utah Silicon Surf — Santa Cruz, CA Silicon Swamp — Gainesville, FL Silicon Valley — San Jose, CA
- will_work4tears 12y ago
  Huh, I think that list needs to be updated. I've seen an article on Omaha, NE being Silicon Prairie, as well as Kansas City (MO) and St. Louis. I'm sure if I noticed a few not on there, there's probably a bunch more.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Seattle is the Silicon Canal? I would have thought Amsterdam or some city with...you know...more than one canal, would get that title.
  - rybosome 12y ago
    I'm assuming because of the heavy concentration of tech along the canal near the Fremont bridge? Agreed that it might give an incorrect picture of the structure of Seattle. :-)
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      There are only a few companies in that corridor. Heck, I remember when they were just warehouses (I would run by on the trail toward Ballard everyday); then there was Adobe and then Google but first...the ultimate troll. Seattle is more forested and green in color than Portland...I always thought we had that title (Silicon Forest). Maybe Silicon Lakes?
alphagenerator 12y ago
I like these articles when they're about my city. I still really have no idea what the true tech scene is like where I live. I lived in Silicon Valley briefly and the cost of living and work-life balance were poor. I left about 10 years ago. I dislike the idea that I'd have to go back there to be cutting edge or successful and would much rather achieve great things from, say, Montana, Nebraska, or Idaho.
- sjg007 12y ago
  Start up Silicon Prairie.
webwright 12y ago
You're right that this often is just PR... In the case of Seattle, it is an actual thing. YC is seeing it too ( https://twitter.com/sama/status/475658241167220736 https://twitter.com/sama/status/475658241167220736 ). Seattle saw $500M in venture funding last quarter, which was its biggest quarter ever. It was the fastest growing city in the country last year... though it still only has a metro area size 50% of SF, 15% of NYC, 30% of LA.
peterwwillis 12y ago
The whole article sucks. They mischaracterize products as just cloud products, people as just cloud people, companies as just cloud companies. They even completely bastardize the definition of 'cloud' itself as "lots of computer servers working together for various tasks." Holy shit, 'cloud' has been around since the 1980s?! (Incidentally they use the word 'cloud' 27 times in the article)
rybosome 12y ago
I see your point, but when the article cites companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, HP, CenturyLink, Tableau and Chef, your complaint about "an app that you've never heard of" doesn't really hold up. Perhaps I'm just feeling defensive about my city, but I think that your fatigue with this format has lead you to an incorrect conclusion; things really are different in Seattle.

michaelochurch 12y ago

Seattle can definitely do very well. It's one of the most beautiful places on the planet, it has a lot of talent, and it's still relatively affordable. Let's hope that, if it grows, it doesn't fuck everything up the way San Francisco and its progress-hating NIMBYs did. “The galactic players are here, and they are creating lots of little companies. The only thing driving anyone away from here is the weather.” I'm surprised people are saying this. Seattle weather is gloomy by California standards, but it's actually not that bad. If you're from the northeast, you won't notice much of a difference, except for the winters being slightly warmer and the summers being cooler. (Summer is actually a nice season, not a humid hell, in Seattle.) Sure, it's cloudy a lot (55-60% in the summer, 80-85% in the winter) and it rains, a little bit, most days. But heavy rain that prevents you from doing things outside is very rare. If you're into running or biking, you probably prefer 50- to 70-degree cloudy days anyway, which makes Seattle ideal. Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace of mind about setting up shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by making it harder for people to walk out of one company and start a competitor. This is something it will need to change. Whether you want non-competes and employer-friendly ownership laws over side projects depends on whether you're courting hedge funds or tech. (Hedge funds are more of a meritocracy than VC, which means that it's easier for a guy with no connections to run with a proven idea and get a hedge fund.) If you're going for the hedge funds, keep the non-competes in play. If you want tech, then eschew non-competes and give the benefit of the doubt, on ownership, to the employee. (California gets this right in a major way.) However, the hedge funds don't want to be in Seattle, because it's not near any of the major exchanges. Tech loves Seattle. So Seattle should play for tech and kill the non-competes, because the hedge funds aren't about to move there no matter what it does. I'll say one thing, based on very limited data. Seattle's an amazing, beautiful city and, unconstrained, would be one of the top places I'd choose to live. What has concerned me is (based on very limited data; it could be that I just talked to crappy companies) that the creeping non-progressivism of technology employers (back-channel references, aversion to people with "too many" jobs, closed allocation) seems to be meeting less resistance there than I'd like. The sense I got from a recruiter (who may be completely biased) is that workers don't fight back hard enough to have nice things. I said to him, "I'm in my 30s now and only want to work on interesting projects, because I'm old enough to know that I will die someday." He said that if I said something that direct in an interview, that alone would sink me. (In New York, people are more accepting of directness. That a smart person will bolt if given boring work is a given. I like that.) Of course, that can change in a matter of months. Seattle has an incredible number of smart people, and a beautiful environment, and I think anything's possible there. But (if I'm right that Seattle's scene is more conservative and corporate) it's something that will have to evolve if it wants a leading tech scene.

dschiptsov 12y ago

What Tech Boom?

mrfusion 12y ago

Is the climate as bad as they say in Seattle? Would living (a few hours?) away right on the pacific coast be an improvement in climate? (By the way, what's the best way to compare climates in different US cities all at once?)

Dewie 12y ago
Good or bad climate is pretty subjective, so it depends on what you prefer, I guess. From Wikipedia (measurements from the airport), the whole 'it always rains' seems like an exaggeration - ~960 mm a year, less than other major US cities that are not known for being rainy. Mild winters, decently warm (and not hot) summers considering it's proximity to the Pacific, and its latitude. BC, Canada seems - from what I've read, not experienced - pretty mild for its latitude, and Vancouver is the warmest city in Canada#, despite being above the 49th parallel. Seattle climate seems nice if you prefer/can tolerate relatively much precipitation (though perhaps not relatively much for being in the Pacific Northwest), mild winters (lows not below freezing, on average), and decently warm summers. EDIT: and apparently not many sunny days, annually. Overcast weather seems to be more of a problem in Seattle than rainy weather. # Or perhaps just the warmest major city; Victoria, BC seems warmer. As an aside, certain places in the mid interior BC looks to be one of the warmest places in Canada, maybe even warmer than Southern Ontario. The Pacific Northwest has a pretty mild climate for its latitude(s), overall.
- will_work4tears 12y ago
  Yep, it's the overcast weather that bugs some people. The locals here (I live in the Seattle area but am a transplant) tend to like to go with the complaints and add to it with exaggeration to keep people less interested in moving here. I don't mind it at all. In Missouri, the winters do have more sun, but much, much colder and snowy/icy so you don't want to go out anyway. Here I can go for a walk/run/bike/hike or whatever and it's mostly mid to upper 40's (F) all winter with a few exceptions either direction (some 70 degree days in Feb, for instance).
michaelochurch 12y ago
Is the climate as bad as they say in Seattle? I would argue that the climate is actually quite nice. It is, however, cloudy often. Even in the summer, you get a lot of overcast days and misty rain. Summer mornings are always cool: 13 to 16 C (high 50s F). Summer afternoons are usually sunny and hot: 23 to 28 C (high 70s F). Some people hate the lack of a "real" summer, but having experienced enough 37+ C/humid days for one lifetime, I don't take much out of that complaint. Winters are mild, temperature-wise, but overcast. You'll only get about 10-20 hours of sun per week in the winter. For the plus side, if you look outside in the winter and it "looks" nice, it probably is (nice meaning 8-12 C). (On the East Coast, sunny usually means sub-freezing.) It's not "always" raining but you'll probably get some rain on 2/3 of the days. Of course, some of those days are mostly sunny and have a misty rain for half an hour in the morning, and some are uniformly overcast. It depends on what you like. If you're physically active, you might prefer it. (It's never too hot, or too cold, to run or bike.) Seattle has about the same climate as Paris, but the perceptions are totally different. In Paris, it's being compared to cloudier, colder places like Berlin and Warsaw, so it has the reputation of being a sunny, mild city. Seattle is being compared to San Francisco and Los Angeles so it has the reputation of being cold and cloudy. If you're from the East Coast or Europe, you won't mind it. I've heard plenty of Europeans move to Seattle and, because they've been told the weather is so dreadful, think they've won the lottery when they get what's actually an average winter (mild temperatures, not much sun but some, light rain). Would living (a few hours?) away right on the pacific coast be an improvement in climate? It would be even rainier, and it's the rain (not the temperatures) people complain about. However, if you go east, over the mountains, you get into a climate that's quite dry. One thing to keep in mind about Seattle's weather is that, if you want, you can drive 100 km and get winter sun in the desert, or drive into the mountains for snow and skiing. (Snow at sea level is rare in the Pac NW.) If you really don't like the 5-6 days per week of overcast in the winter, you can escape it on the weekends. On the other hand, if you want an actual bona fide rainforest, you can get to that as well.

donohoe 12y ago

"Seattle Freeze" #neverforget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze http://qr.ae/sDfQ9 http://qr.ae/sDfQ9 Its a real thing. All my friends in Seattle ended up being people who moved there from somewhere else - like myself. I noticed this trend well before I learned about the mythical term "Seattle freeze". Crazy world.

poulsbohemian 12y ago
As a native Washingtonian, born and raised in the Puget Sound region, can I suggest a theory? The Seattle Freeze was imported in the late 1980s as the region gentrified. As we moved from a blue collar economy (logging, building airplanes, etc) to a white collar economy (software, biotech), and especially as we experienced significant population growth as transplants moved in rapidly to be part of those new industries, that was when the freeze set in. Yes, there is a lot to be said for the nordic influence and the fact that Seattle is isolated culturally from the rest of the country, but it was the mass influx of cultural outsiders that generated the distrust at the root of the freeze.

wil421 12y ago

The tech boom is everywhere. Some cities have more visibility but I think it's going in some fashion in most major cities or metro areas.

mqsiuser 12y ago

But what do we do about that... ... things turn out to be not well balanced (a fact... for whatever reason) You can make millions in a guys only world in SV (doesn't the lack of private life suck? The lack of a balanced ;) peer group?). And on the other side (outside SV) startups just do not work out that well (and in the long run likely bowing to SV). Now IT is an important future industry... and it's creation is NOT well distributed. Like the gold rush (which happened for some reason also in California)

doxcf434 12y ago

If you're coming from SF and are used to the quality of the restaurants in a foodie city, Seattle is mostly just presentation.

kylequest 12y ago

Seattle has a potential, but it's not a boom until we see more VC/angel activity, which is a good indicator. It has a pretty good tech scene. Most startups are still consumer oriented though, so Jared Wray, CTO from CenturyLink, is wrong :-)

malandrew 12y ago

"Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace of mind about setting up shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by making it harder for people to walk out of one company and start a competitor." That right there is enough to give any engineer pause about going to work for a company in Seattle. Anna-Lee Saxenian's work in the dated, but still relevant "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" goes into a fair amount of detail how the non-compete environment on Route 128 ended up undermining the Boston area relative to the Bay area. 99% of companies are simply not set up to allow success of new ideas related to the core business, but not actually the core business. Non-competes basically cause ideas to die because most companies are excellent at stifling execution on non-core projects.

nickgrosvenor 12y ago

Didn't I read about the Tech Boom in Los Angeles last week?