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Ask Slashdot: Undervalued, Livable American Tech Towns?
An anonymous reader writes: I've been working in tech as a software developer for about 15 years. As I've gotten older I'm starting to see the appeal of living in a city that's not crazily blown out and expensive like most established tech markets (think San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles, etc.). Are there are any good tech job markets that are normal, affordable, livable, American cities, or am I forever doomed to be subjected to the rat race found in these overheated and overcrowded markets? Lots of cities have at least some vibrant tech scene; Omaha, NE, Raleigh, NC, and Ann Arbor, MI are three that spring to mind, but everyone's tastes and tolerances will vary. What do you find in your neck of the woods? (Even if it's one of those "crazily blown out" examples.)
Atlanta, Sandy Springs, and Alpharetta have a pretty thriving tech scene
I'm in SF working in tech (of course) and I've been thinking about moving south... Irvine seems like a pretty decent destination.
I'm staring down moving to the SF Bay area to work at Google Mountain View, getting (maybe) ~150K ish. One wife, one daughter (5 years old). Where should I go? (Should I even go?)
Bangalore is pretty good. You can literally live like a king on tech money.
What's wrong with Austin? Did something change in the last 2 years? Did Austin suddenly become coastal-California-level expensive?
Colorado is still relatively cheap to live in with a lot of smaller cities with tech, and worth checking into. Parts of the state are growing fast, like Boulder and Denver, but Fort Collins is an amazing town, and you can definitely do alright with tech in Colorado Springs as well without being overly crowded and expensive. You will run into a fair amount of assholes who refuse to accept that the state is growing (they almost all have a "Native" sticker on their car), but they tend to not be in tech.
That is all
And the rest becomes minimally important.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Plenty of jobs in healthcare and other industries. Traffic is getting to be out of control in certain areas (Green Hills, downtown), but not everywhere.
I looked at atlanta for a while but i decided just in the past 2 weeks Charlotte is where im going. great cost of living, modern, and fairly safe place to live
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Honestly it is 100% RETARDED to require people to go to an office in the middle of rich-fucker land. And honestly Google still being located where they are is 100% stupidity. move the company to central Iowa and instantly deliver a 500% life quality increase for all your employees by having their cost of living drop to 1/5th of what it was in STUPID EXPENSIVE LAND.
There's a fair amount of tech in the area. Prices aren't sky high, though not on the cheaper end.
If you can get past the stigma of telling people you'd move to Utah, there is a lot of upside. Good wages and rock bottom cost of living. Plenty of outdoor activities. Low taxes. Good schools.
The night life is lacking, so it's probably better for a mid-career 30-something with a family than the younger crowd.
Below average cost of living, no income taxes, 3.5 hours from silicon valley, tons of skiing. It is increasingly becoming a tech town with the Gigafactory and lots of drone manufacturers.
I was really surprised by Lincoln, NE. I wouldn't live there but it really is at its heart a college town and has everything that generally goes along with that.
Boulder/Denver has everything Lincoln, NE doesn't have in the way of mountains and outdoor activities while also doing pretty well on the tech and lifestyle front.
Bozeman I hear is doing pretty well right now as well. Again, Big Sky is nearby so lots of outdoor goodness.
We have lots of engineering jobs in Huntsville, Ala. Most are with government contractors (the Army and NASA are very prominent in this town, along with every defense and space contractor you can think of), but there is a growing non-government tech sector here, too. Most of the contractors are in Research Park, while many of the non-tech companies are moving to or already are downtown. Downtown is quickly starting to become a really neat area.
Cost of living is extremely reasonable (I live in a 3,500 sqft house in a nice neighborhood and it runs me about $1,250 a month). Taxes are low, utilities are cheap, my commute is 15 minutes to and from the office. Great place to raise a family, too.
As far as things to do, we're never short of entertainment. If you like outdoors stuff, plenty of hiking, caving and water sports opportunities are nearby. And if you ever do get bored, Nashville and Birmingham are 1.5 hours in either direction. The beach is about a half-day drive too.
"Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that!" - George Carlin.
The future U.S. hub of tech workers
That's only if you measure quality of life by size of house you can live in. For many people, living in the middle of Iowa would represent a 500% quality of life decrease, as some people value other qualities of cities.
Presumably, you'll want to move to somewhere where you can get a job. So... look at job listings, eliminate the ones that are in places you don't want to live, and then look into the places that you might want to live.
Huntsville is a great town -- an island of technology in what would otherwise be a very... rural... state. Our tech sector has a lot of military but there are commercial opportunities as well. Cost of living is very reasonable, commutes are short, and there are a wide variety of housing options. The heat and humidity take a year to get used to, but once you do, you'll never want to leave!
The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area is affordable, has a strong economy (incl. tech). Plenty of sports and culture (arts) options too.
More than famous potatoes...
http://www.hcn.org/wotr/boise-...
Outdoor town also with skiing close by, climbing, mountain biking, Sawtooths, etc.
Low cost of living, decent numbers of Tech startups, Google, Apple, and others all have presences.
You don't want an 'undervalued' city - you want a city whose value is in line with your willingness to pay it. Raleigh and Ann Arbor are not inexpensive cities, for instance, even though they're cheap compared to the Bay Area. Austin (where I live) is heinously expensive compared to many parts of Texas, but even with the tremendous growth and increase in cost of living, it doesn't begin to approach the Bay Area. The brand new 3000sq ft house we just bought fairly close to downtown Austin would have cost north of of 2 million in San Francisco.
city-data.com is a great place to start for cost of living comparisons and questions about specific towns. Ask this question on the Raleigh board, the Omaha board, or the Austin board. Findyourspot.com is also an interesting exercise though not necessarily conclusive.
too many have found out already.
There is an area about 10 minutes south of downtown known as the "Denver Tech Center". This area is HQ for a number of tech companies and it's extremely convenient because you can get a decent tech job there, live in the 'burbs, and not have to drive downtown every day.
The skiing and other mountain activities nearby are phenomenal. There is a lifetime supply of camping, hiking, and mountain climbing opportunities. I'm told that the nearby town of Evergreen has America's largest outdoor ice-skating park, as well.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Research Triangle .... Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill... is the best mix of tech jobs and Southern living. If you like the fine food, art, music, politeness and gentle culture of the liberal South, this is the place to be. Best weather in the eastern US, a culturally diverse society. Right now we have a backwards Republican Governor and General Assembly but that won't last for long.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The Minneapolis/St. Paul area has a relatively high-tech (depending on your area of tech) employment base, with headquarters or significant offices for 3M, Medtronic, Cray, Silicon Graphics, Ceridian, Toro, Thomson Reuters, Target, Best Buy, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, St. Jude Medical, Polaris, Digi, Imation, CHS, Shutterfly, General Mills, Cargill, Seagate (though I think that operation was purchased by someone else), and Digital River. There's plenty of small tech-oriented business around here as well.
Come for the low unemployment and reasonable standard of living. Stay because your car won't start all winter.
Cyrano de Maniac
Google chose Kansas City to be its first market for Google Fiber. They did that for a reason. It's a vibrant, growing city with a low cost of living. Lots of opportunity here, and housing is affordable if you avoid the "luxury loft" market. Mortgage for my two-story house with a walk-in basement is $900 a month. It's four miles from downtown. And I have Google Fiber.
Carnegie Mellon has attracted a lot of major tech companies to Pittsburgh where they hope to pick up CMU graduates who are a looking to stay. It additionally is a significant source of start ups. Companies with offices in Pittsburgh include:
Google
Apple
IBM
Uber
Duolingo
Shoefitr
Dynamics
Safaba
etc.
No better place to be in IT
It's a large metro area with lots of suburbs -- and many tech companies in the area -- in both downtown/Buckhead for the urbanites as well as many of the suburbs. And housing is affordable -- you can rent a house for under $1000/mo and own a big house for under $200k (with very big houses just above $200k -- mine is a 6 bed / 4 bath brand new build at $211k)
Salt Lake City. It has the nickname 'Silicon Slopes'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_slopes
Lots of great out door activities, low cost of living, and the SLC area isn't heavily Mormon.
I am a software/technology business owner and I have been in Baltimore since the mid 90's.
I can say that the tech industry is growing and maturing in the area and the cost of living is quite low for the proximity to urban lifestyles.
A nice summary is here: https://michaelochurch.wordpre...
I am consistently surprised that more of the entrepreneurial types don't drag a bunch of their friends to the South or Mid-West to set up shop. There is little benefit I can see to joining established markets except for the "Me too!"-ism and paying inflated costs.
Especially as far as tech is concerned, that can be done almost anywhere. I remember when Austin was little more than flyover country, and it still would have been except a few decided to make the first strike.
If you have access to a time machine then Seattle WA is a pretty nice place to live, as long as it's in the early 1980s or so.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Super low rent here and lots of jobs to go around. Tech scene is definitely on the up and up with more venture capital and outside equity starting to pour in. Uber and Square are opening offices here and there is a current initiative to get 1000 more tech companies/startups and 10,000 more tech jobs within 10 years.
Nice town. Just an observation from Scandinavia
Utah has a rather low cost of living with a very vibrant and active tech community. Driving down the main highway through the state you will see billboards every few miles for developer related hiring. There are dozens of established tech companies as well as many many smaller startups. A few are:
Qualtrics
Pluralsight
Novell
Adobe
DOMO
WorkFront
MX
InsideSales
FusionIO
Instructure
L3 Communications
Boeing
Oracle
Microsoft
Overstock.com
HireVue
See more at http://siliconslopes.com/deal-...
There is also a vibrant tech community in Utah with a variety of meetups including:
AngularJS Utah ~1400 members
Utah Java Users Group ~1100 members
There are also Python, Elixir, Elm, Haskell, ReactJS, Go, Lambda Lounge, Ionic, F#, Big Data, DevOps, Drupal, C++ and BitCoin meetups.
Also the most common profession currently in Utah is Software Developer - http://apps.npr.org/dailygraph...
Utah is also a great place to live: http://siliconslopes.com/about...
Gainesville, Florida. Also Orlando around Disney, if you are into cutting-edge graphics stuff. Their THATCamp is pretty awesome.
eh, Austin isn't quite like the rest of Texas. I mean, it's consistently favored Democratic politicians, often by a 2:1 margin. Also has a decent music/art scene. And there's a nudist park on the edge of a lake, supposedly the only one in all of TX.
I'm not quite sure how it happened this way but, I think the soundest the theory is all of the smart/sane people in TX banded together in one city to make their last stand, Alamo-ish style.
Plus you can't even eat lunch at the local diner without Presidential candidates coming and sitting at your table and talking to you about your corn harvest.
Believe it or not, Ohio has a huge demand for tech talent. While the top industries in Ohio may be manufacturing and financial, technology is expanding rapidly to support these industries, including medical, and there's not enough local talent. The cost of living is among the lowest in the nation, and the bargains for decent and even luxurious rentals and homes are plentiful. It just requires dealing with all 4 seasons each year and under-performing sports teams if that matters to you.
I worked for many years in Altamonte Springs, FL, which is realtively quiet and not too far from Orlando. Lake Mary also has some tech businesses too and is a but further west.
In addition to Michigan, Ohio also has a low cost of living, with plenty of good tech jobs in Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Cleveland, etc.
Thanks to the municipal power utility rolling out gigabit speeds to Chattanooga and the surrounding communities, the Tennessee river valley is starting to become a good place for tech. There have also been local efforts to attract and develop startups to take advantage of that broadband speed. Furthermore, though the average salary for employees is below national average, the cost of living is even lower, meaning people can get by on less. The local natural environs are great, too. If you want to work for a big company doing tech it might not be the place for you, but if you want to do your own thing and form, or be part of, a small team doing innovative stuff, it's a great environment to work in. That and you can always take your startup team for a hike in the nearby mountains with only a 15-30 minute drive. Talk about a break to clear the cruft out of a cluttered mind!
Because there's "fixed" things about every place in the country that will not be changing.
For example, if you can't stand heat and humidity, you can eliminate the South. If you can't stand snow or cold winters, you can eliminate much of the Northern parts of the country. If you can't stand commie liberal bastards running everything, that's going to eliminate some places. If you can't stand conservative religious nutjobs running everything, that's going to eliminate other places.
Once you have your list, go to a big-name job site and look at the count of job postings in the last two weeks for your kind of work.
If the place has 5 listings, you better REALLY love the companies, and be ready to move if there's downsizing. If the place has one thousand job listings, you'll have your choice of employers.
From that quick search, cross off any place that doesn't fit well. That should leave you with a relatively small number of places, which you can more thoroughly research and possibly visit.
North of Grand Rapids MI you can find good housing at reasonable prices in the Rockford and Sparta areas. Tech employers in GR have been strong for a while and the rest of the economy (mostly manufacturing) has recovered nicely in the last few years. G. R. Ford Airport is expanding so no driving into the Detroit area for flights. Four legitimate seasons, effectively unlimited water supply and lately the place is competently governed.
The DMV clerks mentioned to both my wife and I there has been a steady flow of "returnees" (former Michiganders coming back from the West.) People cashing in on crazy home prices and using the windfall to buy (as opposed to mortagage) nice homes on large properties.
Austin's boring southern neighbor. Lots of work available. Wages aren't as high as other markets, but the cost of living is lower too.
Since I moved to St. Louis, I've had several recruiters reach out to me for local development/management positions over LinkedIn and Stack Overflow. I was surprised how many companies there are in the area doing interesting things. Not to mention that St. Louis is home to one of the premier software development conferences (Strange Loop, which pulls in international attendees and speakers), and one of the biggest gaming cons (Geekway to the West). It's very affordable, and tons of family-friendly attractions in the area, including the incredibly awesome City Museum.
Columbus has a lot of great tech jobs. It's also starting to get some more startups. I work for a local startup, and was raised in Ohio. I love the area. Not extremely crowded (though traffic can be a little rough because of the road infrastructure, but they're really working on that), great food options, and a lot to do.
A lot of Fortune 500 companies are stationed in the MidWest, and Columbus is a great central hub for a few. I definitely recommend it, and jobs seem to be plenty.
I live in the Northwest, and if Seattle is too big for your tastes, Salt Lake City, UT has a decent tech scene at roughly the average US cost of living. It also doesn't take very long at all to get to farms and fields from the center of the city, so you don't have too much crowding.
Nice, small city. Steeler's Nation! Pirates and Penguins. Google is here, Apple is here, Uber is here. CMU and Pitt plus RMU and other colleges. Weather can be a bit brutal, but lots to do: Casino's, culture, zoo. Mountains, lakes, rivers, lots to do. Cleveland, Cincinnati are close, and access to DC, Baltimore, Philly and NYC. I understand the "rat race" - been there (LA, Austin), done that. . . I hear RTP is nice, though they've been through ups and downs.
Yeah it is cheap, but there are better place to live that are just as cheap.
I know smaller towns than Omaha that have more tech industry, but those places suck more.
I live in a small town(~300,000 in the area) and there is lots of tech work: embedded gizmos, high end network gear, enterprise-y stuff, military-industrial crap, web development(lots of SaaS shops), software/network security firms, there is even a company that makes digital gambling machines.
It sucks here but is far better than Omaha(The Cleveland of small towns). Or is that Des Moines, IA?
We have 4 distinct seasons, lots of lakes, mountains and snow skiing. But it can get brutally cold in the winter(high's under 0 F) and hot in the summer(over 100 sometimes 110). No earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes.
It is also a right wing hell hole with some of the worst street paving in America(if the street isn't full of potholes it is 100 year old brick), 80's of the area is nothing but run-down ancient buildings, a very corrupt police force that gets away with 5+ murders every year - this is what small government gets you. If you live outside the main town, it is much better on all counts.
There is very little culture or things to do, unless going to dive bars or really small local museums is your scene. We do get bands coming through that were relevant 20+ years ago.
Despite the great outdoor stuff and wide variety of programming work, almost every company has to pay Silicon Valley wages to get people to come here. On the plus side a $500,000 home in the SV area is under $200,000 here so you can live in a very nice house.
Young programmers hate it here but it is safe so if you are older or have a family it is more attractive so the tech companies don't mark down age as a negative.
Not just the quality of specific cities, but the climate of the area.
:-) This isn't the only place with decent weather, but I grew up south of Portland, Oregon and I'm never moving back there. It is dreary and overcast like 90% of the time. It crushes my soul to spend a week up there now. I like to see sunshine and blue skies at least 250 days a year. That narrows it down to the tech scene in California, Austin Texas, maybe Colorado? Probably a few states on the east coast in that same latitude band, but I'm not that familiar with the east coast.
Personally, I'd rather not live where the average temperature is below freezing for a month at a time. I'd also prefer not to live where the average temperature goes over 90 deg F for over a month at a time. Iowa has cheap housing, but it's climate isn't what I am looking for.
I live in Silicon Valley (just south of San Francisco) and the housing prices are BRUTAL here, but the weather is pleasant. It's November and I'm wearing shorts today.
Until recently I would've said Portland OR, but it appears it has been "discovered" and there's no such thing as reasonable rent anymore.
nuf said..
Live somewhere that bugs aren't an issue.
Doesn't snow get asshole deep on a camel in the winter, up in Bozeman?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Go somewhere you don't need two complete sets of clothes.
Actually, no, Bozeman is technically a desert, so it doesn't get a lot of snow. It does, however, get cold in the winter. A typical winter has at least a couple weeks during which it never gets above 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Snow generally arrives around October, and while not a huge amount, it usually sticks around until March or April. However, the summers are absolutely awesome with lots of outdoor activities to do. There are also two really good ski resorts near town for the winter.
All that being said, Bozeman is starting to become an expensive place to live. But you are less than thirty minutes from being outside of civilization. (I went to school at Montana State in Bozeman, though I currently live in Kalispell, MT. It is a much better place to live, in my opinion, but it doesn't have the same job opportunities as Bozeman.)
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Absolutely beautiful! I love living here!
We are 90 miles from Sacramento, and have a great community!
Our local ISP is in the final stages of approval for a gigabit fiber network. Once we have internet, we will have it all
Yes, new tech business are welcomed here. Our economic development council is active in encouraging tech businesses to come here
We have a strong tech history. The Grass Valley Group has been producing top of the line video equipment for decades
I just hope that we don't get overwhelmed. Part of the magic of this place is its smallness and lack of density
It's a difficult balance..more businesses will provide jobs and help the area.. or OH SHIT!, here comes the avalanche
So yeah, I strongly encourage a VERY FEW tech companies to locate here
There are similar problems within every city in the world. The real answer is in an Agropolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... because that basically enables you to build a town within a city. A separate town with it's own internal focus and cultural orientation. So a university town inside a single structure, with a focus on adult education and research, it own live, work and play population. A place design to function based around walk ability and social accessibility. Although build one and likely more will follow in close support for example a medical services orientated Agropolis or other industry sector Agropolis. A lot of design work still remains especially with regard to fire control, sound, fresh air movement as well as the movement of people (very low commute numbers, basically working in an Agropolis means living in it, which promotes that cultural distinctness to each structure).
Rather than building new cities or trying to rebuild existing ones, you build a new one within the existing one, a gated city with an internal democracy, only taking up a small portion of the existing whilst adding enormously to the existing (services and support).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Tampa, Florida but only for the hermits and the older crowds who work remotely. hermit kingdom. or isolated.
If you're looking for something with a lot of tech jobs but more laid back, the Melbourne/Palm Bay Area in Florida is pretty good. Lots of defense/aerospace/embedded stuff. Orlando and Tampa also have decentish tech scenes.
There was some program about presidential campaigns, they were interviewing this guy from New Hampshire or Iowa or one of those small states where voters get choices. His comment was he got to shake hands with every president since Kennedy. Here in Calif you need at least $50K to simply attend a fundraiser with a Party nominee.
mfwright@batnet.com
Tons of tech, lots of software jobs, Nvidia, Siemens, AMD, Apple, Lockheed, Northrop, etc... Oh, and 45 minutes from the ocean. Plus, I can watch the Atlas V and SpaceX launches from my apartment balcony.
I have to support a small office of two dozen aerospace engineers in Belgrade, MT and travel there a few times a year. I was quite surprised to find a very decent selection of places to go in downtown Bozeman. Good food and drink, friendly people too. A bit right leaning for me but growing up in Yakima I know how to deal with that. It was that one trip when it was -20 degrees that would keep me from moving there. But if you like the outdoors and four real seasons a year, it's a place to put on the list.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Obviously I am biased as I live here in Louisville, Kentucky. However, there is not a better city in the USA for that livability factor and working in Tech. One of the premiere food scenes in the country, a very low cost of living and a very active tech community. Level One, Louisville’s hacker space (http://www.lvl1.org) is a maker supported/run physical property’ a cooperative operation between GE & the University of Louisville is First Build (http://www.firstbuild.com); and Open Coffee Louisville (http://insiderlouisville.com/category/column/open_coffee/) is our version of 1 Million Cups. We are now a Google Fiber City prospect and that is moving forward. Humana,YUM!, Papa John’s, are headquartered here and is always looking for developers and programmers; UPS World Port is at Louisville International Airport. One of the premiere development shops in the Mid-West Forest Giant (http://forestgiant.com) is located here. And, the location of Louisville is within one day’s driving distance to 2/3 of the population of the US. If you come visit let me know and I will help you find your way around here and see all that is important. You really can not find a better tech city in the country if you are looking to move, put down roots and raise a family. I came here 35+ years a to go to school for one year, I’m still year because it is such a great city.
Wherever you live.
No really. Every 'tech' job that doesn't involve hardware can be done remotely. If your company doesn't believe this to be true, they have no business calling themselves a 'tech' company.
Full stop.
Yes its wet but it is on the list of possible google cities, has a BUNCH of established tech companies and is building a startup support ecosystem.
"Omaha, NE, Raleigh, NC, and Ann Arbor, MI"
Would have been much easier to parse if you had said "Omaha, Raleigh, and Ann Arbor" since everyone is going to assume those states associated with those names.
Moved here a year ago for similar reasons ... awesome place to live.
It's cute that Dice Holdings is so desperate to squeeze some value out of this lemon of an investment, that they'd ask us to shore up their market research. It's funny in so many ways.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I like to see sunshine and blue skies at least 250 days a year.
I think you'd like Yuma, AZ
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Waltham, MA is a lovely town, very affordable, loaded with tech companies, and a stone's throw form Cambridge/Boston.
"Eagles may soar, but weasels dont get sucked into jet engines."
It's part of the Houston metro area, with access to just about everything. It's home to Exxon Mobil, which has its own cadre of oil-related tech companies. It's next door to The Woodlands, which has a major biotech hub, and is within commuting distance to tech companies in banking, e-commerce, and medical industries. Median home prices are only $160K.
It's not Silicon Valley, by any means. But the cost of living is low, and there are plenty of tech jobs to go around.
Kansas City
http://www.cnet.com/news/google-fiber-spawns-startup-renaissance-in-kansas-city/
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/11/4580244/broadband-gap-google-fiber-isnt-the-only-revolution-in-kansas-city
Good internet, great BBQ, food, music, some good festivals, museums, home of the MLB World Series Champions the Kansas City Royals
Housing is cheap enough that you can save money for nice vacations several times a year.
captcha: delicacy
Atlanta is a great city, and also very affordable place to live. There's a good number of tech jobs as well, mostly in or around Georgia Tech.
Home of KU, low cost housing. It's the Berkeley of the Midwest.
Starting to get more tech startups, especially associated with SDSMT. There are a few electronics manufacturing, software, and 3d printing companies. It's in the black hills so there's skiing and hiking. The downtown area has really improved with the cities' investment in arts. I've been debating starting a makerspace, but there is already a business incubator associated with the campus. Most importantly, though, breweries, wineries, and more health food shops are opening. And even though it snows, it usually partially melts off less than 24 hours later.
Just don't come to Nashville. It's an absolutely HORRIBLE place to move to. STAY AWAY! Seriously. No jobs here. Oh and we southerners are the rudest people...we don't want you... ;)
Kuala Lumpur is the place to be. Cheap food, affordable living, and a vibrant tech community. Fuck AmeriKKKa.
Idaho Falls, ID, and Logan, UT, both have plenty of tech job openings, plenty of rural living, relatively low housing cost, all the amenities, etc. I work near Logan. Every month at our valley Software Craftsmanship Club meeting people come asking "anyone want to switch companies this month?"
Where the hell is Jacobs Well ????????????
Between Brisbane and Gold Coast Australia .......
Under 1,000 people, on the bay, friendly town
best boating and fishing
1/2 hour to the surf
2 great pubs
rural, sugar cane area, tank water
good real estate prices
commute to city or coast
but I work from home
between 2 international airports, 2 casinos
Go well
It's obvious from your examples that what you're looking for is a college town with universities with strong tech programs that act as incubators.
Shut up! We don't want any more damn yankees!
This place is starting to be lousy with them and their foolish ideas.
The only thing worse than a yankee is someone from Cali!
...Tampa is a fine town with oodles of tech jobs available.
Avoid all states and cities where they talk Sex, Politics and Religion - because if they do they're borderling homicidal.. anyone willing to "force" their ideas "at you" will try to force them "on you".. which is one step from radicial Jihadists
Have a look at Miami! The tech scene has picked up a lot in the past decade. Year-round beautiful weather, no state income tax, easy access to cruises and the caribbean, and you can get a (small) condo on the beach starting in the $200k. The tech nerds ought to be flocking here.
Columbus, OH. Right in the middle of the Midwest. Very reasonable living expenses. Lots of national company HQs are there. Most of those aren't tech companies, but they all need some kind of tech solutions. Mass transit doesn't really exist, so you need a car. But the traffic is actually pretty good. Weather is fairly moderate for a northern state. 90 peaks in summer, winter rarely goes below 20 at the coldest.
Mufasa http://www.firetiger.net/
Obviously I am biased as I live here in Louisville, Kentucky. However, there is not a better city in the USA for that livability factor and working in Tech. One of the premiere food scenes in the country, a very low cost of living and a very active tech community. Level One, Louisville’s hacker space (http://www.lvl1.org) is a maker supported/run physical property’ a cooperative operation between GE & the University of Louisville is First Build (http://www.firstbuild.com); and Open Coffee Louisville (http://insiderlouisville.com/category/column/open_coffee/) is our version of 1 Million Cups. We are now a Google Fiber City prospect and that is moving forward. Humana,YUM!, Papa John’s, are headquartered here and they are always looking for developers and programmers; UPS World Port is at Louisville International Airport. One of the premiere development shops in the Mid-West Forest Giant (http://forestgiant.com) is located here. And, the location of Louisville is within one day’s driving distance to 2/3 of the population of the US. If you come visit let me know and I will help you find your way around here and see all that is important. You really can not find a better tech city in the country if you are looking to move, put down roots and raise a family. I came here 35+ years a to go to school for one year, I’m still year because it is such a great city.
Detroit if you're into automotive tech!
In the Cincinnati area it is very difficult to find IT talent. You can find people who went to school for programming, and/or who have been writing C# their whole life but most are not good by any stretch of the imagination (they actually do more harm than good). It is especially hard to find people for database work--BI, DBA, report writer. You can often settle for report writers or use offshore but that work always needs revisited/fixed.
The weather is decent most of the year, the houses for people in our line of work are cheap, and there is no shortage of jobs or houses in nice areas. All of Ohio is in need actually. Where I live I can actually bike to thousands of jobs safely, and my house in a nice-ish neighborhood, cost me less than $120k.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I've become a perpetual traveller with a laptop. US passport will let you stay in most places for 90 days.
For the vast bulk of my career, I've worked remotely. This lets me get paid in Northern VA dollars without paying Northern VA prices. Effectively it's a 25% income boost. The only extended job search I had was when I worked on-site for a company as a contractor for 4 months while I looked for a permanent position working remotely. I actually live about 90 minutes from Northern VA (Fredericksburg, VA) so I can go in if I have to, but the houses are still half the price.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
It's called a "Powder Day" and the whole city shuts down as everyone goes skiing.
Speaking as someone who has lived here in Ann Arbor their whole life, it's not a great place to live. The schools are horrible, so you wouldn't want to raise a family here. Inside the city, property is hugely expensive because of the university. Outside the city, the internet is really bad with no real prospects for improvement. There are almost no electronic shops left(as in you buy parts like resistors and such). The people are annoying, as they seem to the victims of the school system, and nearly devoid of sense. The winters are colder than hell, and snow clearing service outside the city leaves a lot to be desired. There are; however, plenty of robotics manufactures around here. Most of the tech companies aren't in Ann Arbor itself, but in the surrounding areas that the Ann Arborites keep trying to claim.
You're either going to get raped by your landlord or live in a bland, uncultured 50s American sitcom. You're either gonna have to come to terms with it or run for President.
I left Rochester, NY early in my IT career to move to Boston when Kodak started falling apart and the job market was awash with experienced unemployed engineers with Masters degrees. The economy hurt for a number of years after that, but many of those engineers created small businesses and the availability of talent attracted some new employers to the area. After living in Boston for 12 years I decided to move back when my (now) wife and I decided to get married and have kids.
Rochester, NY has a lot going for it now. I'm an experienced Sysadmin and had little difficulty finding a job. I'm regularly contacted by recruiters for other positions so I know there is still demand. I know some people will scoff at that so I feel I must also say these are not crappy mass-mailing recruiters as was so often the case in Boston. Of the four jobs I entertained from these recruiters in the past three years I had reasonable offers from three and I now work in one of those positions.
The non-tech good:
Housing is very inexpensive and you can choose either urban or suburban living and expect a less than a 30 minute commute time either way. My commute is under 20 minutes as are the commutes of the majority of my coworkers. Want a house for $100,000 in a decent neighborhood? No problem. Want to live in the best school district (Pittsford) in upstate NY? Average house prices are currently $265,000. Want to live in the country? You can do that too and still get to most workplaces in what is considered a normal commute time in most tech cities.
There's lots to do in town and nearby. There are many nice museums: The Strong National Museum of Play, The Rochester Museum and Science Center, The George Eastman Museum and many others. Like music? The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra is spectacular. That and the George Eastman School of Music also attract a lot of travelling shows. I went to see Video Games Live and Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds play with the RPO in the past year at very reasonable prices. Like good beer and wine? There are a ton of local breweries and wineries. You can get to the finger lakes in 1-2 hours for recreation including wine and beer tours, spectacular waterfall hiking (there's an entire book dedicated to it with over 100 waterfalls), touring quaint towns and visiting seasonal festivals. Niagara Falls and Letchworth Park are also within 90 minutes. You may notice all of the water I keep mentioning. Rochester is on Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes and we get a lot of rain to fill our lakes and streams. I think this is a good thing. You won't ever need to water your lawn, should you choose to have one, and there will never be a water shortage here as is becoming common in many cities.
The bad:
Weather: This is a good and a bad. Our late spring, summer and early fall are beautiful with temperatures that let you enjoy the outdoors when it is at its best, but it gets pretty cold here about six months of the year and below freezing for three to four of those every year. Oh, and we get snow. Nothing like the nightmare snowfall you may have heard about in Buffalo last year, but we get ~100 inches of fresh snowfall on average. That doesn't mean we have 100 inches of snow come spring though. Periodic melts and packing down usually give us a maximum depth of 2-3 feet of snow over the course of the winter.
Public Transportation: This is one of the things I miss most about Boston. You will need to own a car to do a lot of the above. We have a bus system, but it's a hub and spoke system and I would classify it as OK at best. It's not all bad though. We have a good road system that can handle the number of cars around so you'll rarely hit any real traffic.
I love living here. If you can put up with the winter weather and don't mind that you have to drive most places it is a great place to live.
Boston has a number of satellite cities (Lowell, Fitchburg, Worcester, Providence) which are much, much more affordable and a pretty short train ride (Lowell is ~45 min, others are more like 60-90) or drive to Metro Boston. Plus, many suburban tech jobs exist in the Greater Boston area (basically anything within and near the 495 belt) if you've got a car. Cost of living in these cities is pretty low, though being Northern you can expect high heating costs. The towns along these transit corridors might be more expensive to live in, but you can get proportionally shorter commutes as you get closer, obviously. I typically see at least one other person in my train rides programming.
I don't know about other major metro areas with a good tech scene, but if you're willing to have a bit of a commute while still wanting some of the amenities of living in a city instead of a suburb, check out any satellites your area of choice may have.
There's been chatter lately about St. Louis increasingly becoming an IT hub.
There's some basis for the claim. Universities, some of them pretty big deals. Washington University. (A friend with a Harvard boyfriend had a red sweatshirt with "Harvard" in big letters above its crest and a caption in small letters below: "The Washington University of New England") St. Louis University. My alma mater, MST (formerly UMR formerly MSM), just a hundred miles down I-44.
Employers that do a lot of IT. MasterCard. Emerson. Square's expanding their presence. Boeing. The IT market is pretty good.
IT user groups. You can find a bunch on meetup.
As a place to live? The cost of living is average to low. Despite the sprawl, I can get from South City ("Dutchtown") to NW St. Louis County in 40 minutes, when it's not rush hour. Even rush hour is not all *that* bad; my co-worker in St. Peters (in St. Charles County) commutes to just a few blocks from the Arch after passing through St. Louis County and all of the City in about 40 minutes. The St. Louis Symphony is pretty damn good, as are the Art Museum and the St. Louis Zoo. Despite the recent problems in Ferguson and nearby communities and the problems all inner cities seem to have, the St. Louis metro area is not as portrayed or imagined. Interracial couples don't cause raised eyebrows, much less raised fists. "Dutchtown" is still an ethnic enclave, but Bosnian, not German. (The only US Bosnian-language newspaper is published here.) The Hindus and Muslims I work with get along just fine with everyone. You can even be a Cubs or Mets fan, and not get picked on. Much. (It's more condescension, I think.)
Reason to think it's hype: It's chatter. Some of it is from the same people that thought "business incubators" were a good idea, or that football team owners were too poor to build a stadium. And it could be I'm somewhat biased in my opinions and selective in what I choose to notice, or to mention.
Still, St. Louis is worth considering.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
I have no personal experience, but I've heard good things about Chattanooga.
It's not really a bit tech town yet, but there are a lot of software types that commute up to Seattle or Bellevue for work, while the city is throwing money at incubators and accelerators, so it could be good to watch. Proximity to Seattle and cheap housing prices are a big plus. (Bought a huge house for under 200k.)
Wanna live alone in an efficiency apartment? 3BR apartments are available, but not in MTV.
I'd recommend Saratoga and a rate bump.
Don't forget Terd Cruz and Don't McLeRoy!
the New River/Roanoke valley of Virginia which includes the city/towns of: Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Radford, Salem and Roanoke. Multiple colleges, Industrial parks where software firms are located (Ex: Rackspace, Corvesta, Qualtrax, etc. Check out the Roanoke - Blacksburg Technology Council for some articles about the region here: The RBTC We moved here a few years ago and this area is a fantastic place to raise a family, there are plenty of tech jobs and the cost of living is fairly low compared to other technology hotbeds.
Honestly it doesn't exist in the US anymore. Not even in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I saw recently someone on Quora described what's happening there as "Bro Tech" or "Pop Tech", while what Silicon Valley used to be was "STEM Tech". I have to agree with that. But I don't see much of that in the US anymore. I do see that in Asia which is why I've moved to Asia and written off the US entirely.
They have this silly custom called "winter", but unlike Boulder they don't have mountains to make that any fun.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Back when the crazy right-wingers were petitioning whitehouse.gov to let Texas secede from the Union again, ex-Texan friends of mine and I agreed we should let them go, but they have to let us keep Austin, like West Berlin as an island surrounded by reds. The Congress St. Bridge will be the new Checkpoint Charlie.
I've only visited Austin once (for my uncle's funeral), but I've got cousins there, and friends who've lived there, and if you've got to be in Texas, and are politically or culturally anywhere left of Rick Perry, it's the place to be. San Antonio's not too bad either, though I'd probably get tired of it pretty fast. Parts of the culture are fun, there's a great arts scene, but I suspect it's small enough you'd see everything in the first year and then be bored.
Houston's weather and traffic are horrible enough that it's off my list even aside from the culture. Dallas? Meh, if I had to live in a big dirty ugly city, it'd be New York, or maybe LA, plus it's a lot more like Texas. I know some really wonderful Texans, but I don't talk politics with them except the family in Austin or the ones who've escaped to California because they had to get out of Texas.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Provo, UT
~theCzar
I live in Ann Arbor, and can attest that it's an amazing place. It's Michigan, so you really should have a car, but if you live in the city proper you can actually get by with a bicycle most of the time, and just rent when you need to get out of town. Excellent cultural scene, and as an added bonus many of the speak easys from prohibition are still open (although most under new management).
Des Moines IA is another place to consider. Many multinational and national corporations have big footprints there, and there are plenty of tech jobs. There's also quite a bit to do. I lived there for a year, and while I'm happy to be back in Ann Arbor, I enjoyed Des Moines itself. Low cost of living, low crime, and wide open spaces are its strengths.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
Check out Sioux Falls, SD. Cheap cost of living. Best rated ISP in the nation (Midcontinent Communications soon to be gig everywhere 2016-2017 time frame). Very active place for datacenters, call centers, and healthcare industries. Good college system that is VERY affordable for instate people. Want to go even cheaper? 20 miles out of town are smaller towns where its possible to purchase decent housing in the $50-60k range. Definitely worth a look!
Yeah... that comment made me laugh. Naming Helen Fitz's as a good example of nightlife or even a "fun place to go" in St. Louis? Wow.... If that's the case, it just reaffirms why I left!
Seriously, I remember YEARS ago getting totally mistreated in that establishment. My buddies and I went in for some food and drinks, and this security guy on a power trip got mad because he thought my friend pushed somebody in a line that had formed, as you went past the front entrance. (The place always gets too crowded like that, so people are standing all over the place - instead of just occupying seats at the bar or at tables. People stand around uncomfortably, trying to watch whatever game is on an overhead TV until they can find a better place to stand or sit.) So anyway, this guard shoves the butt end of a Brinkman flashlight into my friend's back to get his attention, rather than just saying something first. My friend, reflexively, spins around, about to fight someone (wouldn't you?). He realizes, immediately, it was just a security guy at that point and tries to ask what's going on but the guard goes into "bad ass mode" as soon as my friend spun around quickly, and tries to throw us all out. We had words with the manager but were essentially told they don't care if we ever come back again or not, and they're not going to make any effort to make us happy.
There's really NOTHING special about that place anyway. Just another overcrowded sports bar with an Irish theme for the sake of having a theme.
I used to really like Lemmon's bar, further down on Watson Rd. as you got into S. City, but I see it closed not too long ago; a victim of all the Bosnians who took over that part of town and ruined it with street gangs.
So many tech workers are fixated on living somewhere with a great 'tech market'. You don't need a market! You need a job!
When I was in college studying CS during the internet bubble years I was told I should look forward to limitless short term jobs. I wouldn't be spending decades building seniority at the same place like my parents did. I wouldn't need to. I would make plenty of money to save for my own retirement and wouldn't need to acrue vacation time. I could take as long of breaks as I want in-between jobs.
BULL SHIT!
I bought that crap and thought it was going to be great!
After the burst you couldn't survive that way unless you moved to one of those 'great tech markets'. I almost did. Many of my friends did. I only stayed because of family. I'm so glad I did! My friends that left are constantly stressed out, looking for their next job. I suffered through a few shitty employers that I couldn't afford to leave until I found the next. Now I have a great job with great employers that aren't going anywhere! My friends who moved do make more than I do. They spend it all too. The cost of living is rediculous in those areas! I have far more spending power than they do AND I have stability!
Silicon Valley can shove it!
Montana is like Alaska but with more booze and meth.
Yakima has shitty weather, shitty people. What a dump!
Jax has good beaches and thriving financial sector with a low cost of living.