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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.)
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.
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'm in SF working in tech (of course) and I've been thinking about moving south... Irvine seems like a pretty decent destination.
Or you could move east. Fresno is very affordable, and in the last five years has really started building a good tech scene. Lots of companies, ranging from startups to incubators to established firms like Decipher.
It sounds weird to say, but there really is a tech renaissance going on in Fresno these days.
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.
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.
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!
I shot a drone in Reno.
More than famous potatoes...
http://www.hcn.org/wotr/boise-...
Outdoor town also with skiing close by, climbing, mountain biking, Sawtooths, etc.
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
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.
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.
Bangalore is pretty good. You can literally live like a king on tech money.
This is probably true for very small values of "king".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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...
Just to clear the sky?
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...
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.
Absolutely. Irvine/Newport Beach/Aliso Viejo and many other Orange County cities have very large and growing tech scenes. And unlike other tech cities, there's still relatively (for coastal California) affordable housing to be found nearby.
Plus the weather and culture and food choices are amazing.
When I hear those damn twin rotors, I hang my head and cry.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
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.
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
Then let them tell themselves that the traffic, diminished purchasing potential, and degraded quality of life is worth it.
Place I live has a pop. of about 50,000, has a performing arts center that can attract acts like the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, is 1.5 hours out from a major city in any direction, has several good universities nearby, and what I use to pay in rent can get a house.
I would expect especially nerds to do a cost-benefit analysis and figure it out.
It's a good sized city with plenty of city things to do
Yes, cities are generic that way. Go to city, go to House Of Blues, catch a travelling broadway show, leave city. Seriously - if you can't name 5 amazing and important (to you) things about where you live you aren't living there - you're stuck there.
Orange County Culture? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
You're right about the other two, though. Especially the weather.
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... ;)
There are a few major downsides to working in a "Tier-2" or "undiscovered" city if you are a tech guy.
1. You are very unlikely to find high-quality or cutting edge work. Like it or not the movers and shakers of tech are in the bay are these days. They may have remote offices elsewhere, but the work that is parcelled out to these areas is mostly "non-criticial". This is due to both political and practical reasons. This will severely limit your ability to `move up' in the world and is a serious consideration if you are an ambitious type. Unfortunately this has become true even for formerly Tier-1 cities like Boston, and there are so many folks who have been forced to move to the bay area just to find interesting work.
2. There are not too many potential acquirers in Tier-2 cities. So even if you do join a start-up and make a successful product, it would be hard to get to a remunerative exit, and the value of your exit is likely to be much lower than it would be if your company was located in the valley. This very real "exit cost" is well known to VCs and accounts for why they don't invest much outside major cities. Locating in a Tier-2 also makes it very hard for your company to change direction or pivot, because your options will be severely limited by the talent pool in the area.
3. The number of employers is likely to be small. If you are affected by a layoff, it would be very difficult to find another job in the area, especially if you are a bit on the older side. Of course the lower cost of living may mean you can potentially survive for longer during a job hunt.
4. Frankly, if you are not white, Christian and conservative, you are unlikely to have a pleasant time in Tier-2 cities, especially those in the South. Even if the local schools are good, your kids are not likely to have a great time of it, what with being surrounded by peers coming from homes where Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are the primary sources of information, and who think that being informed about other parts of the world immediately makes you a potential terrorist. Being mocked and insulted about your culture & heritage would be fact of life for your kids. I know many folks who have moved to the bay area explicitly to save their kids from roving bands of teenage proselitizers and culture bullies.