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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
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...
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.
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.
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
Orange County Culture? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
You're right about the other two, though. Especially the weather.
Really? I was born and raised in St. Louis. Spent almost 40 years of my life there working in tech. And I'm really glad I got out. Same sentiment many of my tech-savvy friends had too when they left.
I'll grant you that for a city its size, it does have affordable housing, and it's VERY good at offering family-friendly attractions.
But beyond that, it's in decline in many ways. First, you have only a few major employers there who employ the bulk of the I.T. workers there. One is the Busch brewery, who ever since getting taken over by InBev, let go of a whole bunch of full-time I.T. workers, preferring to use contractors (often of the H1B variety). Before that, they scaled back much of the advertising/marketing they used to do. (I had friends who lost good jobs there as graphics artists and the like, when they eliminated the "creative services" division.)
Another is Boeing, who IMO really just took over McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis so they could eliminate them as a competitor. There's been a slow shuttering of buildings on that campus ever since the takeover. They still employ a lot of people, but I'd say Boeing is much more interested in work they're doing in places like Seattle at this point.
It also has the HQ for Emerson Corporation, although it happens to be located right next to Ferguson. Luckily for them, they've always been walled in like a fortress, so I doubt the rioters ever had a chance of damaging anything of value in there. But needless to say, a job there means you're traveling through questionable neighborhoods every day for work. Not a lot of pleasant places to go out to lunch or what-not, out there, either.
If you remember the "glory days" of St. Louis, you'll also note that the riverfront is TERRIBLE compared to what it used to be. Ever since the casino went in on the landing and started buying up adjacent properties, it killed the nightlife down there. The riverfront used to be a popular destination that had moored ships and barges of all types, including a floating McDonalds riverboat, an old aircraft carrier you could walk around on, and riverboats (Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn) that actually did riverboat cruises/tours daily. One place let you take helicopter rides too. It also had a wax museum, a coin-op arcade game museum, a cool magic store, and many other neat shops that are all gone today.
I'm sure there are a lot of random opportunities out there, but my experience is, many are tough to find and fleeting. Many I.T. people wind up working in manufacturing for a struggling business someplace in the city for wages below the average, or working in medical I.T. - which is kind of its own beast, with a unique set of challenges and problems. It's not for everybody....
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... ;)