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Duolingo To Silicon Valley Workers: Move To Pittsburgh, Where You Can Actually Afford a Home (venturebeat.com)
As the cost of living continues to rise in Silicon Valley, tech companies in other parts of the country are getting more aggressive in pitching workers to move to their cities for a better quality of life. From a report: This week, the language-learning platform Duolingo put up an ad along San Francisco's US Highway 101, encouraging residents to move to Pittsburgh where the company's headquarters are based. In Pittsburgh, you can both "work in tech" and "own a home," the ad touted. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn told VentureBeat in an email that the company was prompted to put up the ad after realizing that most of its Pittsburgh employees who relocated to the city cited the low cost of housing as one of the deciding factors.
Von Ahn said that 85 percent of the company's Pittsburgh-based employees moved to the city from somewhere else. The company has 110 employees, the majority of whom work out of Pittsburgh. "One [employee] who recently joined Duolingo moved from the Bay Area and ended up buying a house almost immediately," von Ahn said. "He said he never would have been able to do that before, but here in Pittsburgh, he found a reasonably priced home on a large plot of land and jumped on the opportunity to be a homeowner and have a huge yard for his dog."
Von Ahn said that 85 percent of the company's Pittsburgh-based employees moved to the city from somewhere else. The company has 110 employees, the majority of whom work out of Pittsburgh. "One [employee] who recently joined Duolingo moved from the Bay Area and ended up buying a house almost immediately," von Ahn said. "He said he never would have been able to do that before, but here in Pittsburgh, he found a reasonably priced home on a large plot of land and jumped on the opportunity to be a homeowner and have a huge yard for his dog."
Judging from the comments so far, I don't think Duolingo is going to have many takers. However, I lived in Pittsburgh for almost 20 years before I moved back to Ca, so I would like to give it my endorsement. We bought a 5 bedroom house in a good school district for $255k. There's a lot to do in the city. It has museums, professional sports teams, good restaurants, etc... Life is less stressful; people are friendly. It's a family-oriented city, and Pittsburgh is often voted "most livable" city in the U.S. by various magazines. Now, the weather is not great, but it also doesn't get a lot of snow in the winter. Certainly it is nothing like what people imagine if they are still thinking steel mills - those all closed 30-40 years ago. The air is clean and the countryside is beautiful. Now, the big players are health care, research, and universities.
For 2017
91% of all criminal suspects in pitsburgh were black.
But on the upside 74% of the victims were black too.
That's because black males are the single most violent demographic in the entire world. Anywhere you go, this is the case. Including black-run cities and nations. These are the folks who invented necklacing. Necklacing is a form of simultaneous torture and execution. A tire is forced around the body of the victim, filled with gasoline and ignited. It's a popular method of mob execution in Africa. It's often used against those accused of witchcraft.
In the USA alone they are 6.5% of the population yet account for more than 50% of all solved murder cases. They also account for the majority of other violent crimes like robberies. This is according to the FBI crime stats. The Native Americans, the Jews, and many Asian groups have also been the victims of systematic racism. You don't see this kind of violence and savagery from them. So no, "blame whitey" does not account for this. You wouldn't accept such a flimsy theory with so little evidence and so many counter-examples in any other subject. What makes this one so special?
Just look at Haiti. While the French colonists ran the place it had nice things like productive plantations, public sanitation, law and order, a productive GDP. Then the blacks intercepted a shipment of muskets and gunpowder and had their own imitation of the US Revolution (except where the US drove the British out by military defeats against military targets, the Haitian blacks slaughtered every single white man, woman, and child). Now it's a disease-ridden, unsanitary, poor, unproductive shithole nation. People literally shit in the streets. The water is contaminated with human feces. You have to spend about 6 months being vaccinated against several different diseases if you are to visit. And you can forget about any kind of lawfulness or safety. Convenient how Conan O'Brien visited the one touristy area that's nothing like the other 99% of the nation, and still he had to take all sorts of vaccines and spend nearly $200 a night at a very fancy hotel to do it. The average Hatian has an ANNUAL income of about $350, to put that in perspective.
It's not unlike what happened in Detroit after it became well over 80% black. The Detroit blacks have just more recently inherited the benefits of white-built infrastructure. The black population elected black officials. It is a black-run city at all levels. Did they start up their own equivalent of General Motors and rebuild? No. Not even close. They went bankrupt. What's their priorities? Well, their city officials are passing laws telling Asian business owners that using bulletproof glass to shield themselves from black thugs (after several of them have gotten shot during robberies) is "racist" and "sends the wrong message". What wrong message is that? The truth? That people don't want to be shot? That blacks are doing the shooting? The inability to accept reality is staggering.
Oh, hey, another pack of lies from a hatemonger!
In fact, California is 42nd per capita in amount of money received from the feds per dollar spent in taxes:
http://www.politifact.com/cali...
Californians in fact receives roughly 22% LESS per capita than the national average.
Fuck that. The quality of life in the Bay Area is much higher than Pittsburgh, Houston, Austin or anywhere in the US. The only way to get better quality of life is to move out of the country, which is what I did 20 years ago when I moved to the Netherlands and then Norway.
If you moved out of the country 20 years ago, you have no fucking idea what the quality of life is in the Bay Area.
Shit changes.
I rather think worrying about feeding a furnace in Pittsburgh is a bit overblown.
A few stats:
Average temperature: 52F
Annual high temperature: 61.4F
Average annual precipitation - rainfall: 34.8 inch
Annual low temperature: 42.6F
And snow ??
Snowfall is 27 inches. The average US city gets 26 inches of snow per year.
On average, there are 160 sunny days per year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The July high is around 84 degrees. The January low is 22. Sperling's comfort index for Pittsburgh is a 52 out of 100, where a higher score indicates a more comfortable year-around climate. The US average for the comfort index is 54.
So, pretty much an average climate, with a much lower cost-of-living than the Bay Area.
Sounds like you did not have a pool in Houston. Or a decent backyard. I'm on less than 1/3 of an acre and I can't see my neighbors, OR my fence, due to all the shrubbery. It's a botanical pool garden back there. If you aren't taking advantage what your local climate has to offer, you're doing it wrong. Houston has a lot to offer as long as you actually adapt to living there. This is from a guy who left Houston once because I hated it, and came back after living in several other places
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Nashville. No TN Income tax, weather between Austin and Pittsburgh. Lots of Healthcare companies and tech has been booming lately.
The troubles you have experienced are certainly true of the oil industry. I've lived in Houston for 28 years and never worked in oil, and I've never experienced the ups and downs of the job market like you describe. When I interview programmers, I have to make offers fast, because they are getting 2-3 job offers! We've lost several good candidates recently because we didn't move quickly enough!
The thing about the oil business is that it's cyclical. When it's hot, it's hot, and when it's cold, it's terrible. But if you stay outside that industry, life is much more stable.
The Color of Crime, 2016 Revised Edition
Quote: "In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race."
Another quote: "If New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91 percent, the robbery rate by 81 percent, and the shootings rate by 97 percent."
Do black Americans commit more crime?
Quote: "Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and to be the victims. In 2008 the offending rate for blacks was seven times higher than for whites and the victimization rate was six times higher."
However, that web site is a TV station in Belfast Ireland.
There Are No Successful Black Nations.
The author of that article, Chigozie Obioma, is a black Nigerian.
Detroit bullet proof glass
Average annual income Haiti
Health Information for Travelers to Haiti