I made a very similar choice as the article highlights. I'm a experienced Software engineer, particularly with the back end of web systems but also iOS and Andr

I made a very similar choice as the article highlights. I'm a experienced Software engineer, particularly with the back end of web systems but also iOS and Android apps. I could live in nearly any city in the western Hemisphere and have a large choice of jobs. I found a GREAT place to work in Portland Maine and I couldn't be happier. I'm originally from the Rust belt (2 hours from Pittsburgh and about 1.5 hours from Cleveland) and we thought long and hard about either of those two cities as a good place to move but Portland and the Ocean were just too big of a draw. Portland is much cheaper than other East Coast cities but has an amazing food screen, great outdoor activities on it's doorstep, and a thriving art screen. It's also only 90 minutes from Boston and a day trip drive from NYC. We also considered NYC and SF, to me there was no way to justify the expense vs Portland. It's one reason why I don't think there will be another Silicon Valley, I think the next rise of tech companies are going to be far spread out and in places that it's easy to attract great engineers to.