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Austin Has Highest Salaries For Tech Workers, After Factoring In Cost of Living
McGruber writes "Austin ranks number one in the nation when it comes to offering the largest tech salaries that have been adjusted for cost of living expenses, such as housing, groceries, utilities and other necessities. This is according to a study by TriNet, a company I had never heard off, that provides (buzzword alert!) cloud-based human resources services. The seven major tech hubs, ranked by cost of living adjusted average salaries: 1. Austin: $105,000; 2. Atlanta: $103,000; 3. Denver-Boulder: $98,000; 4. Boston: $79,000; 5. Silicon Valley: $78,000; 6. Los Angeles: $70,000; 7. New York: $56,000." It's true that Austin has cheaper real estate than Silicon Valley, or London, but what this kind of analysis can't capture well is the worth for an individual of living in a particular place. Some jobs are easier to do from Texas (or Timbuktu) than others, and opinions vary wildly about the importance of climate, culture, alternative job options, and other factors. New York living is expensive, Yes, but it comes with a free bonus if New York is where you want to be. Some people even like Los Angeles. Is there a place you'd rather be but forgo because of the cost of living, or a place you'd consider simply because it would amplify your salary?
this is not an add for Dice reps at SXSW
really
Wherever You Go, There You Are
These are bigger "tech hubs" than Seattle? Does not sound legit.
There are a lot of tech workers in the DC area, and a relatively high cost of living.
One thing I've noticed, though, is that even if you live in a cheaper area, it may not outweigh the standard cost of geek toys. So, someone in New York may make more, pay more for living expenses, but then buying an iPhone or a laptop may result in less of their salary used.
When I looked at the difference, Atlanta's cost of living is less than half of Silicon Valley's - but I factored in living close enough to have the same commute and amenities as I have now.
Also, Atlanta being 31st in the best cities to find jobs and being #2 on salaries makes sense.
There have been a lot of layoffs here and employers are very picky - overly picky, I think. But one hiring manager told me that she got over a hundred applicants for one job and most of them more than likely could do the job: she runs a MS .NET shop, fyi.
She's picky to reduce her work load.
So, it's know the tech laundry list AND have industry experience.
And of course, off-shoring is alive and well. Some poor bastard with a kid on the way just got canned and just guess where the company is sending the work.
It seems as though when an application gets into maintenance mode, that's when the companies start looking at their development costs.
For people trying to break into the video game industry, the four areas I hear repeated over and over are Silicon Valley (#5 per the article), Seattle (not ranked in the article), Boston (#4), and Austin (#1). I imagine that Austin's low cost of living gives it an even bigger edge over some of the other areas for people seeking to move from areas that aren't major tech hubs. So how much money should someone save up before relocating to Austin for the first time? Dutch Gun says it was $10,000 a decade and a half ago, but inflation has probably raised that.
Learn to swim
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm one of the lucky few in that I don't suffer from Allergies spring and fall here in Austin from some kind of Allergies. I mean it is so bad we even have a name for one of them "Ceder Feaver" and if you suffer from it man let me say you don't want to be here!
I'd love to live in a tropical paradise, but so would lots of other people. That drives up the cost of living and/or leads to overcrowding.
Salary amplification in... states with no income tax:
- Alaska
- Florida
- Nevada
- South Dakota
- Texas
- Washington
- Wyoming
If you have no dividend or interest income, add:
- Tennessee
- New Hampshire
What actually matters here is not where you want to live to work, but where you want to live eventually/retire to, and how long you are willing to work before you can safely retire, which is how much money you are effectively able to sock away each year.
Austin is still something of a deal, since compared to California, you get about 25% of your salary back through not paying income taxes, but the other places in the article are less of a deal, regardless of the cost of living, because what matters is not the cost of where you are, but the cost of where you end up when you and your money eventually move there. And that includes differential real estate pricing.
Washington is not so much of a deal, unless you live near the Oregon border; Washington makes up for its lack of income tax through sales tax, and Oregon makes up for its lack of sales tax with an income tax, so if you can get salaries in Washington, and buy your consumables, furniture, cars, and other items in Oregon, you can get a pretty good deal. A lot of Microsofties take this option, and have no problem with job transfers, which are more of a problem in Austin than Silicon Valley, but less of a problem than if you took a job at some data center in Iowa.
It's a good choice to work where you grew up.
Not everyone agrees with that. If you want to act on Broadway, for instance, you'll need to move to New York City. If you want to be a haute cuisine chef, you'll likewise need to move to a big city.
Seattle (and/or Portland, since they've lumped together "Silicon Valley") is an obvious omission, as is the D.C. area generally (from Baltimore to NoVa, huge and robust tax-dollar-sink gov't tech stuff ...), and doubtless quite a few others. (Salt Lake City is another I'd put on a list of U.S. tech hot spots.)
timothy
Austin, L.A., Silicon Valley and I'm guessing Denver and Atlanta are places where you pretty much need to own a car
Capital Metro operates Austin's public transit service. Unlike the bus service where I live, it even runs on Sunday. What do you claim it lacks?
I'm a welder, and I moved to Pittsburgh last summer. I had a lot of friends here from when I used to live here so being here was important to me. It was a large struggle to move. I spent the first two months living out of my car, and then up until recently I wasn't able to find a welding job. I worked shitty jobs, didn't get enough hours and struggled to survive. The whole time I knew, that I could be in North Carolina living near my Grandparents and making 16 bucks an hour welding. Happy ending, I now have a welding job in Pittsburgh where I make 14/hour. I'm currently saving up to buy a house here.
There are a lot technology jobs in the MD/DC/VA area. A low six figure salary for a good Software Engineer is pretty common, and if you can get a clearance then you'll earn more.
One thing nobody seems to mention when they compare cost of living is that most of the difference between locations will be housing. Sure, the price of gas and milk and medicine varies from place to place, but the big ticket item is your dwelling. The cost of housing where I live is much higher than the national average, but my salary compensates for that. As long as you aren't renting, that extra money is going into something that YOU own! When I'm ready to retire I'll sell my house, pocket the money, and move somewhere that's more affordable.
It might have been better to phrase it such that you're asking Slashdot for help on gathering information that you plan to use to make decisions for yourself.
It takes a long time to get anywhere. :(
Austin is *not* ready to be a big city. Its infrastructure wasn't designed for it. Its traffic jams are some of the worst in the country, its aquifers are in serious trouble owing both to desertification and fracking around the Colorado River's headwaters, and much of its distinctive nature is being destroyed by new development. This is why you see signs reading, "Welcome to Austin! Don't move here."
How exactly is the GOP keeping salaries down?
It's where I am an cost of living is fairly high, just not quite as high as the bigger cities like New York. Boston has a nice mix of Biotech, Finance, Defense, etc.
Big surprise, huh:
http://www.trinet.com/document... [trinet.com]
Quality of Life is not factored in, but is ranked separately. The rankings are almost inversely correlated With Adjusted Salary 1st place winner Austin in 2nd to last place, and 2nd place for Adjusted Salary Atlanta in dead last place for quality of life.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Not much about methodology, but they show more rankings and pretty visualizations
http://www.trinet.com/document... [trinet.com]
Quality of Life is not factored into to Adjusted salary rankings, but is ranked separately. The rankings are almost inversely correlated with Austin in 2nd to last place and Atlanta in last place for Quality of Life.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
How can a list of "the seven major tech hubs" not include Seattle, which is home to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, but include cities like Atlanta? That is a strangely biased list so I wonder what the criteria was for "tech hub".
I'd wager that the 1.5% sales tax difference between Seattle and Atlanta is roughly a wash given Atlanta taxes food, so any cost of living differences between Atlanta and Seattle must aggressively be made up for through things being cheaper here, since my over-all tax burden is significantly higher (through the income tax) in GA than it was in Seattle.
:-)
Also, Seattle really does rock - I'd love to move back there one day
making $100,000/year and having $60,000 or $70,000 of that amount after taxes going to rent
That's way too high of a rent estimate. Even in San Francisco, you can get a decent place for 1 person for $3000/month.
Generally speaking, if you put a premium on having a big house and lots of land, Silicon Valley is probably not for you as the difference in pay will not make up for the absurd cost of housing. If you're willing to compromise on housing, the higher pay is more than worth it in terms of the stuff and experiences you can afford. Compared to most places, housing is a lot more expensive, and restaurants/bars are moderately more expensive but groceries are cheaper (high-quality produce, in particular) and most non-perishable goods (cars, anything you can buy on Amazon) are the same price as everywhere else.
How about working in Canada, eh?
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That's way too high of a rent estimate. Even in San Francisco, you can get a decent place for 1 person for $3000/month.
To be fair, that's still an insane amount to somebody living in central/south Texas. You can buy a house suitable for a four-person family in a decent neighborhood for under $1000/month.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
slashdot deleting posts is not new news.
http://slashdot.org/story/01/03/16/1256226/scientologists-force-comment-off-slashdot
All of California, Washington, Texas, Colorado, Nevada have better Salaries and low cost of living compared to the over-hyped and overpriced NYC. NYC is a complete shit hole. Even the other NYC boroughs(like Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx) rent cost is reaching Manhattan levels while Tech salaries remain low and stagnant.
I call BS - $300K is very rare air. $200K is not common either.
Seriously, how many engineers do you know whose base pay is over $200K/year? I've been working in SV since 1987 and I only know a handful of people like that (although sometimes bonus does significantly shift that number).
Los Angeles is a great city. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The weather alone is awesome, the other stuff is a bonus.
I worked for Apple in the early 90's, when they were opening their first sites in Austin. Our group was eventually moved there (and I'm still there, in a suburb) from Campbell, CA. Anyway, at the time there was a lot of internal marketing around "why you would want to move to Austin."
With perfect timing, the local San Jose newspaper ran a political cartoon captioned "There Are Problems Everywhere" or something like that. It had a drawing of the entire United States, with descriptions of the local problems. California was titled with "Earthquakes" and a little arrow. Florida had "Hurricanes."
The state of Texas was decorated with the word "Texans" right in the center, with little arrows pointing all around.
This is still very true today. I wish I had saved that cartoon.
The editorializing is kind of silly, that's what comments are for.
Austin does have a lot of college girls, and the weather ensures minimal clothing. I would list this as a huge benefit of living here, if you're not married and you're a straight man.
, you can get a decent place for 1 person for $3000/month
You can own a 4ksqft+ house for $2000/month in any close burb of Austin. If you want more land, Georgetown is in commute range and has some more ranch-style houses. All for cheaper than that rent.
Having moved here from Seattle 7 years ago expecting to take advantage of a lower cost of livng I can say definitively that the cost of living here is not as low as everyone is led to believe. If you want to buy a house, you can expect to pay substantially more in property taxes than most of the rest of the country. Aggregate real estate taxes are .5/$100 in valuation. This results in my paying a much larger percentage of my income in taxes. And getting part of that back from the IRS doesn't make up the difference.
Good luck finding a place to rent. University of Texas students soak up the available rental space and drive the rental costs to absurd levels.
Food, housing, entertainment, taxes (sales and property), are all higher here than you would expect. The traffic is ridiculous. The stratification of income levels is becoming an increasing problem.
All in all, not a rosy as TFA would have you believe.
CoL is quantitative. "I don't want to live in X" is qualitative, highly subject to individual ignorance. NYC is what I have experience with, having lived there off and on for 20 years. Most people I talk to there have absolutely no clue about anything south of Maryland or north of Connecticut. Jokes have been published to this effect. I'm honestly not sure they ARE aware how much they're paying, and have considered what they're getting in return.
If you're married and have a family, CoL is probably the single most important metric. It determines how much free cash you'll have for luxuries, how you'll be able to put your kids through college and generally your overall quality of life. Every few years we fly back to NYC to visit the inlaws, we see a play, the kids get to see the sights. We're as happy to leave as we were to arrive after about 2 weeks. It's a nice place to visit, but I don't want to live there anymore. And this is why we don't measure non quantitative things. I have friends who could not stand to live in a suburb, who don't have or want families and who will not be happy staying at home and entertaining themselves within.
making $100,000/year and having $60,000 or $70,000 of that amount after taxes going to rent
That's way too high of a rent estimate. Even in San Francisco, you can get a decent place for 1 person for $3000/month.
Umm, re-read the GP - "after taxes." In CA, you're looking at about 10% income tax to the state. Add that to fed income tax bracket of about 25%, and you're looking at $60000 = $39000 or less after taxes. (Obviously a quick estimate.) You say you can get a decent place for $3000/month = $36000 after taxes. GP's estimate is not necessarily "way off": point is that it could easily require more than 50% of your after tax income in CA for rent. In TX, you not only have significantly cheaper rent, but no state income tax.
Except
1) denver is democrat leaning, especially the city itself
2) http://www.bloombergview.com/a...
good luck with your subway in SV, or perhaps you just need reading comprehension lessons. Obviously NYC's mass transit is miles ahead of most other cities, and SF's as well. Im not about to spend an hour or 2 in mass transit or traffic hell when I can have my nice 15min commute and not waste 15 hours of my life a week in commuting
And also we have a rail system here as well, not as extensive as a much larger city obviously, but if your commuting downtown or to the south it works well for that
Which tradition are we talking about? Selling women as property or not allowing them to vote, or maybe something else?
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
As I understand it, the crazy ones don't sting, at least.
I had an ant invasion within the last year that led to some chemical warfare with the little bug(ger)s, and I was wondering whether they were crazy ants or not -- certainly some of them were streaming out of electrical sockets. But then, Hey, it's Texas and they're ants, so many they weren't; I didn't see enough behavior to really tell.
Your article beats either of the ones we linked to last year: http://news.slashdot.org/story... -- thanks.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
No college grad is getting a 130k in SV. Maybe half that if they know the right people.
Wages in the valley are very low and pulled down by both collusion and a huge influx of cheap labor form outside N. America.
Perhaps you are trying to qualify your statement with 'top notch engineer' and the ratio of top notch engineers in the valley is far worse that most places I have been. Something like 1 to 5000 in the valley where you may find 1 to 500 or even 1 to 100 where the wage to cost of living and quality of life ratios are better.
Most of what is in the valley is the modern day equivalent of factory workers being bused to work and back.
It's raining in Austin right now :)
I just wish San Diego wasn't in California.
Aside from a male heavy gender imbalance that rivals China, you are probably right.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Hi there!
re "editing my post" -- Nope; wish that were so easy! Post editing is actually a feature that some sites have and have done a decent job of, but we just don't have it. Editing stories? Yes; whenever you see a typo silently fixed, or an updated appended with a note, etc, that means we've edited the story. Comments are a different matter; that warning about previewing before submitting applies to editors as well as to anyone. Trying to one-off edit comments would be a nightmare -- that would take hassling a coder, and they probably wouldn't like that on Saturday, even if it were germane / kosher / etc. Facebook's interface for editing comments isn't bad, nor is the approach many other sites have taken. (Editing is possible but is indicated, so at least no one can say "X," then "not X," and deny having made *some* change to the comment -- makes certain types of trolling harder to pull off.)
Nah, forget that -- you've well-described described the situation, actually: Yep, I knew that earlier anon. comment (like this one) would go in anonymously, and I knew that the other, later one, would not. If you want to spend life energy disbelieving it, well, I can't stop you. But ... why? :) Here's the bug: there's a peculiarity of the beta site which means that admin accounts (like mine -- admin in the slashdot admin sense; I don't have root, praise be, on the boxes that *host* the site) have trouble staying logged in to the beta, while staying logged in fine to the admin interface, and to the classic site. One of those glitches that make the beta a beta. So I'm reading this, and posting this (again) anon., from a different window than I generally view and edit the site with, and reading the beta site. A work in progress. If I cared to and time was infinite, I could promise a timed update, logged in, from yet another window. But I could also tell everyone to run to the next phone booth or the hostage gets it, unless I learn the combination to the secret container of kryptonite ... that would be an exciting kind of life, I guess, but it's not mine.
And though it's not a rabbit hole to dive down (sorry), if it sets your mind somewhat at ease: Delete *ability* (via checkbox, that is) has been there for I think more than 2 years; and not a secret, as far as I know. It's an interface, rather than a new ability per se. (Comments live in a database; databases are read/write, etc.) But deleting comments has lots of bad repercussions. If you know of it being used to disappear comments in kafka-esque fashion, well, let us know, because that would be news (and a bug). Someone below pointed out that there are some exceptional circumstances that have led to comment deletion; pretty much the opposite of a secret. It was none of my doing, but I like the way both the Scientology and Microsoft demands for removal were handled. (The way DMCA works means that Scientology in particular probably wasn't happy with the response generated ;))
Hmm. Maybe I could have chosen to move to Austin in 2012 specifically because I knew this day would come, and the sleeper cell would awaken ... ARISE YE PEASANTS ARISE! EH?! Eh? Eh ... (Which, speaking of Austin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et-s_GnUNBw)
And it's a generally nice town; it's a tough trade-off between here and Seattle; Seattle costs more (housing wise), but I prefer the weather and scenery there. OTOH, Austin's no slouch for sunsets, bats, hiking, and mild winters -- most years. Places generally have their tradeoffs, but luckily tastes and prices both vary in ways that reflect that. If you're in town and wanted to do so over coffee, we could pleasantly talk about the interface and its tricks and travails.
timothy (if that *is* my real name* ...)
* Which it is**
** If that *is* my real name!***
*** (etc.)
p.s. I kid you not, my captcha to post this = "contrary."
But the problem with Austin is that it is surrounded by Texas. Traveling in any direction the moment you leave Austin you are waist deep in loud, ignorant, obnoxious assholes. I used to work for a company in Sunnyvale, CA. that announced that it was moving to Austin. They kept going on and on about how cheap housing was and how big a house you could get for the money you were paying in the Bay Area. Even with all that more than half the company quit rather than move to G*D forsaken Texas. The company did move and was out of business within a year.
You could double my salary and I would still never move to Texas.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Um, "good public transit" in SV? Calling VTA shit would be an insult to shit public-transit agencies everywhere.
This article states that like New Hampshire, Texas makes up for its lack of an individual income tax with higher property tax, which the landlord ends up passing on to the tenant.
Having lived in Massachusetts and recently moved to New Hampshire, I can say that the lack of income tax and sales tax and lower insurance much more than makes up for the property tax which, frankly as a percentage isn't much more than MA and dollar-wise lower due to lower property prices. My rent is the same for a much larger and nicer place with a garage compared to the relative dump I had in the suburbs of Boston.
Not now you can't. Good luck finding a house for 180k in Katy, TX. At 200k and depending on the local tax rate, anywhere from $1,300 to ,$1,500 a month for a single-floor four bedroom house. BTW, I just closed on a house not too long ago. I've been in the market for well over a year now.
Life is not for the lazy.
On the other hand, Katy's a bit more expensive than other nearby areas. You can find plenty of 3 or 4 bedroom houses in, say, San Antonio proper for around 120k.
Of course, your monthly payment will also vary significantly based on things like the length of your loan, how much you put down, how many discount points you got, and whether you're paying your taxes through escrow or not. I'm paying a bit under $700/month for a two story, three bedroom/2.5 bath house.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
It's too small a city to be widely diversified in terms of tech providers, so whenever a bubble or recession hits, the city takes a dive. There's nothing else within commuting distance with similar tech options (Dallas and Houston are too far, and San Antonio is mostly medical).
I grew up in Austin in the 80s and 90s and watched things first-hand: first there was the mid 80s (1985-86) semiconductor bust (component makers were out-competed by Japan). Fifteen years later there was the Dot Com crash (gutted Dell, as well as dozens of smaller web startups headquartered in the city). Every time the market bust, it was 2+ years before jobs reappeared, making it a dangerous place to call home.
If you want to live there, go on ahead - just make a nestegg your first priority (and take the cost of that into account when you are pricing out the city).
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I make less than half of what I could be making. But I'm also making four times what I need to pay the bills, which means early retirement, hello! And if I ever found myself unable to work in the tech industry, I could still pay the bills working in a grocery store.
I'm skeptical of the 130k value as well, but as for "Maybe half that if they know the right people." --
I was hired fresh out of school with a Bachelor's degree, about 7 years ago, not really knowing lots of people, for a lot over "half that". Now, my academics are well-regarded and I got a better offer than most my classmates, but it's 7 years later and it's Silicon Valley -- I expect lots of people start higher than you think.
Walking to work is fantastic. New York doesn't have a lock on that. I walk to work. I kind of hate driving.
I'll grant some of these other cities have problems with that.
So for everyone else who has more than one person to support, which is probably at least half the people on this site, costs will be higher.
I was pricing it out recently, it would cost me around $7,000/month (mortgage payment) for a 1,500 sqft townhouse in Palo Alto.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
While not completely rural, Hunstville, Alabama is a significant tech area fitting your description. Small city, dirt cheap, and you have NASA, Army (US Army UAV programs are mainly centered in Hunstville), and MDA all right there. Also they have a fair sized university there.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
So what you're saying is that most New Yorkers are ignorant bigots? I'd say that sounds reasonable, but I won't because I'm from the South where people are polite...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But how does that gender ratio vary by age range?
The other thing I'd worry about is the quality of the women. In NYC, you won't find many fat women. Texas isn't exactly known for being full of thin people, OTOH.
I both live and work off Loop 360 (just north of the bridge in the photo) but fortunately only have to drive about a mile on the highway. Even that's bad enough to make me appreciate working from 7am to 3:30 or 4pm, at which time traffic is very reasonable -- I simply won't go back out between 5 and 6 to join the slow crawl. You'd think a city as tech as Austin could at least figure out how to synchronize traffic signals.
I would love to move to Austin or Atlanta. My sticking point is that these places do not have public transportation. A car is another expense. I guess you can tell that I'm from New York. The furthest I've lived from work is about 45 minutes on New York City train.
I believe Austin is ground-zero for worsening water shortages year to year, so if you dont mind having water restrictions and the possibility of water-armageddon, then Austin sounds like a great place to live
Being able to avoid California's brand of crazy and New York's brand of crazy is a bonus to living in Austin, not a problem. Granted, we have our own issues, but they pale in comparison to the aforementioned places. If we didn't have so many Californians fleeing here and pushing up costs it would be even better- after all, most of the issues we do have are related to outgrowing our infrastructure.
Houston has a lower cost of living than Austin. Houston's a much larger city, too. They are close enough that employers match offers. Heck, employers in Dallas and Houston match one another, too. I'm not sure, then, how Austin works out as a better deal financially than Houston.
And as I said, we have a rail system, plenty of people live and work downtown and can walk to work. If they want to they can take the rail system which for most people ends up being a 10-40min ride depending on distance. I think your just stuck in this mentality that NYC is the only place where you never need a car to live when in fact it can be done in many major cities. I have friends in denver who get by just fine without a car. This is all without paying exorbitant NYC rents
Ill take living 15min(drive) outside of a big city, with use of rail to get into the city within 25min, having a 15min commute to work, and then being able to take my car out to the mountains for some of the best skiing, boarding, and hiking in the world within a 1-1.5hr drive. All the while being able to own a 4/2.5 house for half as much as the rent of a studio apt in nyc
But I guess if all you can see is 'cheapskate hillbilly' out of all that then I feel sorry for you
Far worse: Climb the foothills near Boulder, and look at Denver.
People suffer effects of breathing carbon monoxide after driving through Denver on I25.
Spent one year in Socorro NM, where NRAO operates the VLA and VLBA. Renting a whole house was astonishingly cheap. Why, I'm not sure. Salary was a bit lackluster compared to industry, but not bad. I piled up so much $$$, bought a car, got some rolled-up prints framed, even bought the fancy coffee. Donated to projects on Kickstarter. Life was good.
As long as there's a good coffee shop in town, cutting-edge astrophysics lectures, and income much greater than outgo, I'm happy. I'd stay there forever if not for water scarcity throughout the southwest.
For anyone who likes explosions, the dynamite research done by NM Tech would be a bonus.
Boulder has plenty of high tech, especially space science and computing. And great craft beers, if we could rationalize counting that as high tech.
Just what is in Missoula? It is a nice place to visit, but I didn't see anything high-tech there beyond the expected ambient background level for any small city. Unless you are counting the excellent craft beers made in that area as high tech?
... has mountains, trees, and cows. My commute is 13 minutes through rural country. I cross country ski out my back door. Housing costs a quarter of what it is in Seattle. As for fresh water, I have 8 inches of it on my driveway right now, you can have all you want, just have to melt it first before drinking.