Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

I've lived here for 14 years and it's come a long way. I was here when Amazon was merely a place down in the International District before it terraformed SLU.

You know what everyone bitched about then? Microsoft. And MS has done more to take over sections of the city than Amazon ever has, and ever will. Microsoft "killed" Seattle's soul by setting up shop in Redmond and Bellevue and causing urban flight. (Note: I don't particularly believe any of this stuff.)

Now Amazon is the new target. Whatever. Fair enough, that always happens. But Seattle was "dying" just like every other West Coast tech city before the bigger players got there.

What's not cool is railroading "techbros" who are merely 23 year old graduates making good money working a job they probably don't necessarily like very much, but living in a city that is still pretty damn awesome regarding quality of life. And regressive housing practices are driving prices up north of the Bay Area in some locations, all legacy policies that were long on the books before any of this expansion occurred.

> working a job they probably don't necessarily like very much

Worse yet, trying to make tech people feel bad just for finding a job they actually like and going to a city where those jobs exist! If only we could all be so lucky. Like the job or not, I haven't seen very much indication that people are going into tech in droves just for the money (unlike what I assume you see in banking).

I remember living in QA and working at MS in late 90s, before/during the startup boom/bust. Some of the same vitriol directed at us, is now pointed at AMZN folks. Plus ça change i guess.

I am a Bellevue native, but have lived in the bay area for 15 years now. Californians are "ruining" Seattle in a way it would be inappropriate to say about foreigners. Fortunately the only thing "ruining" the bay area is "techies", not people from a specific geographical location.

Oh, and the traffic has always been beyond abysmal, Seattle. You know it, and I know it.

Odd, I'm in Seattle from Oakland. Seems like outsiders are ruining everything :p

I like to joke that nobody ever thanks me for moving to CA, the way they viciously gnash their teeth about all of the horrible Californians moving north (been whining that way at LEAST as long as I can remember, into the 80s, but I've heard it predates that by many decades).

Funny, I know more people who have moved from the PNW to CA and particularly the Bay Area than the opposite. Offhand I can only think of one person who moved north who wasn't returning 'home' after college.

I like LA b/c no one gives a crap since everyone is from somewhere else and the city just absorbs you.

My home state of N Carolina has a lot of people move down for more affordable housing and decent jobs from up north. The city of Cary (near Raleigh) is casually joked about as the Central Area for Relocated Yankees.

No one really cares outside of joking about their poor tastes in sports teams.

Before Microsoft, Boeing "ruined" Seattle

Before Boeing Weyerhaeuser ruined Seattle.

Before Weyerhaeuser Filson, Nordstrom and the gold rush ruined Seattle.

Before the gold rush the Denny Party ruined Seattle.

The EMP seemed like a keyframe in the story of Seattle's underground culture's death. It imitated the cool and usurped some intangible thing that had been lingering in the mist for years. It was like your parents joining Facebook and driving you to Instagram. It was a 4chan meme in its iFunny phase. It's the joke, slapping you right in your weary face.

The weirdest thing about the whole tech book meme is that in one article people will be complaining about sexist brogrammers and the next they'll be complaining that all the single males in Seattle are socially awkward neck beards.

I don't think I would describe a single one of the programmers I've ever worked with as a "bro."

I'm 'young' but it's still funny to hear someone say "I remember when.." about something that seems new to you. One of my last memories of the area was Amazon getting too big for the hospital and moving to the I-district. Hard to believe those were the "olden days".

Same could be said with the tech industry and San Francisco.

Except SF has always been 50% carpetbaggers, back at least to the Gold Rush.

That city was so much nicer before the Gold Rush.

If I put the line anywhere, it would probably be 1937. That's when both the Golden Gate and Bay bridges opened.

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