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The Best and Worst Cities To Live in For Tech Workers, Based on Rent and Commute (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Most cities with a cluster of tech companies can offer those workers either a short commute or low rents -- but not both, according to a study by property consultancy Savills. Berlin is the exception to that rule. Savills found that the German capital offers tech workers some of the lowest rents and among the shortest commutes of 22 cities it surveyed. Commuting is a hugely important factor for worker satisfaction. One study, by the UK's Office of National Statistics, found that each additional minute of commuting increased workers' anxiety and reduced their satisfaction with life. Based on how long it takes to get to work.
The five best cities are: Austin (16 mins), Melbourne, Stockholm, Berlin, and Tokyo (24 mins).
Five worst cities: Bengaluru (47 mins), Hong Kong, Seattle, Seoul, and Toronto (40 mins).
Based on how much tech workers pay in rent (per week).
Best cities: Seoul ($153), Santiago, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Cape Town ($192).
Five worst cities: San Francisco (with $775.45), New York, Boston, London, and Singapore ($488.16).
The five best cities are: Austin (16 mins), Melbourne, Stockholm, Berlin, and Tokyo (24 mins).
Five worst cities: Bengaluru (47 mins), Hong Kong, Seattle, Seoul, and Toronto (40 mins).
Based on how much tech workers pay in rent (per week).
Best cities: Seoul ($153), Santiago, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Cape Town ($192).
Five worst cities: San Francisco (with $775.45), New York, Boston, London, and Singapore ($488.16).
Speaks volumes about the traffic in other 'tech' cities if Austin is at the top of the "best traffic" list. I moved to an Austin suburb and landed a job in a different Austin suburb because I was so sick of parking on 183.
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Austin, Minnesota?
re-examine the chart. It is weekly. :-D
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The rents quoted are weekly, not monthly.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's all great that it takes 24 minutes, but in general, it's quite hard to find a place to rent long term. So if you're a foreign worker, good luck competing with the locals who have been in queues to get a 1st hand contract rental for many years already...
So well, if you can't move there, you're not part of the statistics of course!
I live in the mid-west, and until a recent job change, had a shorter commute than everything in that list - plus a 3 bed house for less than the vast majority of that list. My income is on par with national averages for my job title, yet I have a vastly below average cost of living.
For the life of me, I can't fathom why anyone would want to live in a big city. Every perk I hear touted, I can beat. It's quiet, I have a yard, and I have more spending money that the saps choking on smog.
A good friend of mine lives in Austin and his commute is less than 10
I'm from Austin and this is BS
I pay $1466 for a studio apartment and make $50K+ per year in IT support in Palo Alto. If I had a car, it would take me 20 minutes in the morning and 45 to 90 minutes in the afternoon. By taking the express bus (one hour each way) for an extra $70 per month, I get read The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook in the afternoon. Why drive when others can drive for you?
Who lives in Austin and has a 16 minute commute?
I don't know who these people are or where they live. Technically I live in Round Rock (far north austin, let's not kid ourselves), but my commute, should I go in during rush hour is more like 1:30. If there is 0 traffic, it is still 30 minutes. I work in South Austin (presently). When I worked in North Austin it was 15 minutes out of rush hour, but still about an hour in rush hour, because our roads are poorly structured. I could probably cut this in half if I lived in west lake or spicewood, but then we're back in to the $600k+ homes, removing any particular advantage of living in Austin.
The "tech" companies, at least of the variety that would hire an electrical/computer engineer or even a systems SW engineer, are either considerably north of Austin, or considerably south. Unless you moved in near where you work and have changed neither thing, you probably have a hike to get to work. Maybe young 20 somethings who rent an apartment can always move when they change jobs, but that describes precisely nobody I know.
Anyone who wants to call bullshit on this should simply look at google maps with the traffic layer on between 7AM and 10AM, or 4PM and 7PM. That dark red shows the story of actual life here, and there are no solutions on the way.
They're never going to pay you 4x, it's probably not even worth your time to talk to them. If you consider a move like that, you are banking on equity you have built up being applied to your future home so that the cost is lower: basically you are going to front the cost of moving and absorb the risk that the higher wages make it profitable before the inevitable downsizing and layoffs begin.
It really doesn't pay to move there for most people, which is why most of those companies, even the hold-outs have been opening satellite offices in other places.
Humble homes available well under $100k CDN, some for less than $50k CDN.. ...all with gigabit fiber to the home, 5 minutes no traffic to an airport with direct flights to Toronto. (2h 30m).
Enjoy the cities. I'm living the good life. You can too, if you can work remotely in Canada!
..don't panic
Vancouver is massive for Tech in Canada... and I turned down $50,000 more money because I'd have to get a tiny apartment to be within an HOUR of where I'd work, for comparable money to a house just about anywhere else except Toronto. That Vancouver wasn't on this list is very very weird.
Who lives in Stockholm and pays less than $1500/month for an apartment? (Or did they exclude second hand rent, which is 300% of list price?)
Stockholm isn't exactly cheap, granted, but if you're paying that much for a flat there, you're doing it wrong. My mortgage + maintenance for a 105 kvm (almost 1100 sqft, which is huge for Stockholm) 3BR ("fyra rum + kök") is about half that, it takes about 5 minutes to walk to the nearest stop on the Tunnelbana and it's about 15 minutes to ride the train from there to Centralen.
ProTip1: You do NOT have to live on Kungsholmen or Södermalm to have a nice home in a nice neighbourhood with easy access to downtown. I'm right next to Nacka Reservatet, too.
ProTip2: The rental market in Stockholm is the most completely fucked up I've seen anywhere, and I've lived all over the US and 4 other countries. Buying is heaps cheaper, and that way you get equity as part of the deal.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Just crunched the numbers for my hometown (Tulsa, OK). Both the average rents ($175/month) and the average commute (21.3 minutes) would be in their top 5.
Yeah, we're not exactly a famous tech hub. But we do have a pretty decent concentration of telecommunications and flight simulation work here. Enough to keep me employed and happy with my 15-30 minute commute and my house that would cost $3.5 Million in San Fran.
The full Savills report (http://pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/global-research/tech-cities-2017.pdf) doesn't really mention how they selected the "top 22 cities", only how the cities they selected rank comparatively and the metrics they used to differentiate them. A cynic might be inclined to think that a "property consultancy" is mostly interested in pitching cities they have active property in.
Since one of the advantages of "tech" (let's just call them software startups) is the possibility of remote working, maybe the answer to the "top 22 cities" to do tech in is - the one you live and work in already?
Isn't this kind of meaningless?
"The pattern of a trade-off between rent and length of commute is evident when you look at the cities with the cheapest rent and shortest commutes. Workers in Austin only have an average 16-minute commute to work, but pay among the highest rents at $476 a week. Workers in Seoul, meanwhile, pay the lowest rent, $153 a week, but have to endure a 40-minute commute, the fourth longest on the list."
In virtually any city, each individual makes that trade-off for themselves. Live farther out, have a longer commute but cheaper rent. Live close in, have a short commute but higher rent.
OT: Austin used to be a lovely city, before it was "discovered". Now it's a satellite of California, both in terms of size (and horrible traffic), and in terms of progressive politics. Californian refugees are repeating the same mistakes that drove them out of CA - pushing things like "light rail", "rent control" and all the rest. Whipping up SJW outrage, for example, the recent survey claiming that 15% of UT undergraduates are raped (the trick: "verbal pressure" counts as rape). A sad fate for a once-nice Texas city.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I am not sure it makes sense to talk about rent in Seoul, Korea. Many people are living on the jeonse system where you give a massive security deposit that the landlord will invest (and give you back when you leave) in exchange for the rent to be very low or even free.
So speaking of "rent" might be very biased. Any Korean around to give feed back on these numbers?
A good friend of mine lives in Austin and his commute is less than 10
When I worked for Tivoli it took me five minutes just to walk across the Arboretum (at which point I was at work, because I was in the nearest possible apartment complex.) I call shenanigans. Even then it was unusual to have less than a fifteen minute commute. All my friends say the 35 is now a parking lot any time it's vaguely near commute time. If you live in Austin, and you actually have a commute worthy of the name, you're not making it in ten minutes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's your problem: ever using I-35.
That tends to be true no matter where you are.
There are plenty of places where a real estate bubble has pushed prices for buying up to nutty levels, while rents are low by comparison (but still high).
Basic rule of thumb: if you can buy for 100 months rent, that's a steal. If it's more than 200 month's rent, it's a rip-off (less than 200 if it's a condo with high fees). Somewhere in between is a matter of taste.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How do you afford the admission after paying the crazy rent?
The variety of free or inexpensive events in NYC is overwhelming: symphonies every week in central park in the summer, $20 rush tickets to the Met opera, the Met museum is free, many other major museums have a free day every week, dozens of free concerts literally every day, free public pools, free gallery tours, free yoga and a variety of exercise classes... it goes on and on, a quick look meetup.com can confirm it. If you want plush treatment, you pay, but being broke is no excuse for not doing stuff here. Besides, what good is money if you're not enjoying it.
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