Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of younger people who choose to live in a city, especially new grads, are essentially continuing their college experience. A lot of friends probably live in the city too. They can often bum transportation/do joint activities from friends who do own cars and are mostly fine with minimizing out of city activities that require a car.

They also restrict themselves to jobs they can easily get to. Which in tech was basically impossible in, say, Boston 25 years ago.

A friend of mine made the observation that people mostly just don't do optional activities if they're hard or expensive to do. So if you live carless in a city with decent public transit, you mostly restrict your recreational activities and people you get together with to what's convenient and tend not to do things that require renting a car on a Friday night and returning it Sunday or Monday.

View on HN

> jobs they can easily get to. Which in tech was basically impossible in, say, Boston 25 years ago.

Really? There was plenty of tech in Kendall Sq area within an easy walk from the T. I worked for three different companies in that area and regularly walked from a couple of different apartments (generally leaving my car in the company parking garage).

It might have been impossible to do that in tech in other cities, but Boston/Cambridge has been strong for 3+ decades.

When Teradyne moved out of Boston, that was pretty much the last major tech company that was in Boston as I recall. The outposts of the west coast companies are much newer as is most of the pharma/biotech. All the big computer companies were out in Metrowest (one of which I worked for) and the defense companies were outside the city as well. In any case, I certainly didn't have any job offers in Boston/Cambridge when I graduated and Draper Labs and Polaroid are the only examples in that general area I can think of from the time.

Maybe it's more like 30 years than 25 at this point but there was very little in Kendall Square a few decades ago.

Akamai was founded there in 1995. Thinking Machines moved to that general area in 1984. Lotus Software was nearby since 1982. Infocom was there in the 1980s. Google opened Cambridge in 2003. Several other MIT-spinoff startups came and went, of course (Lisp Machines/Symbolics).

Akamai was probably the first really significant tech company to populate Kendall. Lotus was up in Fresh Pond. Infocom was on Wheeler Street as I recall. As you, there were a number of AI Lab and other MIT spinoffs in the general MIT area. But, to my original point, the vast majority of computer industry employment was out in the suburbs.

Oh, I thought Lotus was over by the Cambridgeside Galleria area. Indeed there was a lot in the suburbs, but it didn't feel difficult to me to work in tech on the subway in the early 90s when I started my career.

Ah, I think you're right. I sort of remembered "Parkway" and was assuming it was Fresh Pond Parkway and it was actually Cambridge Parkway. I do remember having an IBM meeting over that way at one point and I think it was in a former Lotus building.

The other thing that throws me off is that when I started working in Massachusetts in the mid-80s and certainly when I was a student there five years earlier or so, the area of Cambridge over toward Lechmere was sort of a different world with east of MIT being sort of a there be dragons here area of old warehouses and the like left from industrial Cambridge. Coming from the west, you mostly didn't walk much past MIT. Things were starting to pick up more in the nineties.

Wow. That seems such a sad and limiting way to live your life. I love how I can use my cars to go anywhere at any time without depending on anyone else. And my family and I do a lot of optional activities. Different perspective, I guess.

> Wow. That seems such a sad and limiting way to live your life.

Mostly true in my experience. I used to get away a lot more when I had a car and could just decide to hit the road whenever I wanted than I do now that I either have to rent or plan earlier and buy train tickets. It's purely friction linked by the way. I could still do all the things I did and it would actually cost me less money in the end. I just don't.

Friction for sure. In most cases (other than trying to find parking where that's difficult) having a car means most of the friction (cost, maintenance) is decoupled from each ride. With other options like train, Uber, etc. most of the friction (cost, waiting, planning) is coupled to each ride.

We tend to take more rides in the decoupled model, I'd think.

I know a couple in SF who don't own a car and still seem pretty mobile between bike, walking, Uber, Zipcar, rentals, etc. But it takes a certain mental accounting disciple to go "I'm OK with spending $50 in transportation to meet a friend for dinner--and maybe a bit longer--because I'm still coming out ahead on an annual basis."

The thing that helped me most is looking up the costs for owning a car and building that into my budget. I know that as long as the sum of all rides in a month is below that figure, I'm coming out ahead. (plus the added comfort of not actually being the one to drive)

> in a month

It might make more sense to say "in a car ownership window" than "in a month" to prevent heavy months (say, holidays/vacations) from seeming problematic and lighter months (not doing much besides working) from implying that you're winning more than you really are. Assuming sufficient buffer of funds, that is.

Definitely, I do averages :)

In all fairness, it works both ways. Increasingly with traffic and difficult parking, I think twice before driving into the nearest major city for events or just a casual dinner. So it works both ways. People, very reasonably, are biased towards activities that aren't routinely inconvenient.

Depends on the options available in your city. It's like the arguments against piracy based on the fear that no one will make books or movies ever again. Even if true, the existing stock has far more than anyone can enjoy in a single lifetime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com