Seattle, the New Center of a Tech Boom
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This isn't news. Yes, believe it or not, most cities with a few hundred thousand people in them have a tech scene! (Especially the ones with a University housing a major CS department --- like Seattle!) Yes, it is 2014 --- the tech scene is mostly booming wherever you look, especially on a sufficiently long-term perspective. Really, articles of this sort are usually just self-serving advertisement for the city in question.
The truth is, of course, that the tech scene in most of these cities is not really booming in the sense of the word. Developing strongly is often a better way to put it, and the growth rate is often non-linear (probably more toward the logarithmic side of things) because founders of successful companies have a tendency to move to the Bay Area.
In the case of Seattle, it is an actual thing. YC is seeing it too ( https://twitter.com/sama/status/475658241167220736 ). Seattle saw $500M in venture funding last quarter, which was its biggest quarter ever. It was the fastest growing city in the country last year... though it still only has a metro area size 50% of SF, 15% of NYC, 30% of LA.
I wonder if Boston is doomed to be a cautionary tale about what happens when a culture of B2B startups (Digital, Wang, etc.) produces VCs who don't have enough vision to fund companies like Facebook or TaskRabbit.
I'll assume for the sake of my sanity that this is sarcasm.
In my opinion, Boston is just fine the way it is. It's a mecca for people developing new technologies, anchored by Harvard and MIT. Not everything needs to be a consumer-facing, internet-delivered solution to ordinary problems. There's a lot of money in that, no doubt, but it's not the be-all, end-all of the tech scene.
Boston is fine...for now. Companies from the first dotcom boom produced enough investors to sustain most of the ecosystem. But in the future, if there aren't the kind of IPOs that lead to huge amounts of money being thrown at startups, the high cost of living will take its toll.
Even now, the VC pool is small enough that the loss of Fred Destin in the shakeup at Atlas is widely mourned. Can you imagine the loss of a single early stage investor (not involved with YC) being noticed in the Bay area?
If the only early stage investors left are groups of lawyers (Beacon Angels, I'm looking at you), and the Series A climate remains as tough here as it's been, will Boston still be in good shape?
That's why I say that Boston has a bit of a PR problem. Even now, as an advisor for those companies "developing new technologies" at the Harvard Innovation Lab, I've seen first-hand that there's just not enough "smart money" to go around.
Maybe the HubSpot and Wayfair IPOs will change all of that. Maybe Paul English's Blade will provide the PR, even if it just produces consumer companies. It's an open question.
Unfortunately, my experience with Boston companies (I've interviewed with a few, and had the misfortune of being reverse-acquired by one) is that they're not progressive. One hiring manager told me (this was a couple years ago, I think I was 27 or 28 at the time) that I was too old to be a programmer (wat?) but too young to be a manager. Another tried to give me a position with "junior" in the title-- this was in mid-2013, so I had 7 years of experience. (I know that titles are bullshit, but if they're going to exist, I'll take an inflated one rather than a deflated one.)
Boston is a beautiful, under-appreciated place. Its climate is ideal (cold, snowy winters, perfect springs and falls, mild summers). I like the people a lot. But I see a culture where there is too much deference to authority and too little "fuck it, let's do it anyway". While the Valley is too youth-obsessed and flighty and sociopathic, New England seems to take the other extreme: too seniority-bound and stodgy and prone to following rules. The ideal, for tech, is somewhere between the two.
I do know exactly what you mean by deference to authority, but outside of the MIT professor-run startup bubble, I think it's mostly dead (well, I can't speak for biotech...). I just hope it isn't replaced by ageism, as you suggest.
Doing a startup in Boston is definitely no fun. That's true.
>(cold, snowy winters,
as an ideal climate. My Dad's side of my family is from Boston, so while I've never lived there, I have been there from time to time (usually in the summer) and they didn't seem that mild to me. Must like the Summers I was used to in the Midwest (which is [just] one reason I left the Midwest).
Cost of living: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country...
And it often (surprisingly because of the weather..?) gets better-than-most rankings in "happiness:" http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-10-happiest-and-saddest-citi...
The trade-off is double sales tax and less funding for public services. Great city to live below your means in.
There's still a good advantage to be enjoyed, but it won't last long. The 2BR I had for $2200 a couples of years ago is now going for upwards of $3000. Housing cost growth in Seattle is starting to hit a hockey stick curve reminiscent of the Bay Area.
Tax rate is noticeably lower than California or New York though, so you've got that going for you (though the lower taxes can be felt in other, less awesome, ways - see the constant cutbacks to the already fairly anemic transit system).
Side note: you're also going to need a car. Yes, even if you live in urban neighborhoods like Capitol Hill or Belltown. One of my big takeaways is that while you can get by just fine with transit and shopping locally, Seattle itself is a car-centric city. Trying to force a transit-only lifestyle on it means you'll simply be insulated into one of the few neighborhoods where that lifestyle is reasonable and never leave.
In 2014 I wouldn't be so sure. Last time I checked I saw a lot of 1BRs going for >$1500 in Capitol Hill. That's a ~$1K a month difference from NYC rents, so if the New Yorker is earning ~$18K more (to account for tax) they'd be even already. As far as I can tell the pay gap is wider than this.
And this rate is going up, seemingly faster than salary growth in the city. The advantage may still be there, but in any case it's being rapidly erased. The main thing Seattle has going for it financially now is the lack of state income tax, which genuinely makes a big dent compared to other tech hubs. A ~5-8% difference in overall taxation comes out to quite a bit.
Housing in NYC is expensive, but it's less insane than most people know. The difference between a $1K apartment and a $2K apartment is 100%, but it's also $12,000 a year. Does the pay gap between the two cities cover the difference? Does it actually put you ahead?
Side note: these "cost of living index comparison" sites are trash. I've lived in Seattle, SF, and NYC, and in all 3 places my food costs have been downright identical. The food costs between the cities are so close together that they're well within the error bars.
I paid the same rent but got a bigger place (which was nice) but I found food prices more expensive overall and I had to but a car. Thats a limited subset of things but you get the idea.
Your experience will vary.
I got by just fine without a car in the city, food is much cheaper than the east side also. Housing is smaller (for the same amount of money), however.
I lived in Silicon Valley briefly and the cost of living and work-life balance were poor. I left about 10 years ago. I dislike the idea that I'd have to go back there to be cutting edge or successful and would much rather achieve great things from, say, Montana, Nebraska, or Idaho.
Silicon Alley — Lower Manhattan, NYC, NY
Silicon Anchor — Norfolk, VA
Silicon Bayou — New Orleans, LA
Silicon Beach — Santa Monica, CA
Silicon Bridge — DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY
Silicon Canal — Seattle, WA
Silicon Coast — Orange County, CA
Silicon Desert — Chandler, AZ
Silicon Forest — Portland, OR
Silicon Harbor — Charleston, SC
Silicon Hill — Washington, DC, MD
Silicon Hills — Austin, TX
Silicon Mountain — Front Range Urban Corridor, CO
Silicon Prairie - TX, IL, KA, WY
Silicon Shire — Eugene, OR
Silicon Shore — Santa Barbara, CA
Silicon Slopes — Utah
Silicon Surf — Santa Cruz, CA
Silicon Swamp — Gainesville, FL
Silicon Valley — San Jose, CASeattle is more forested and green in color than Portland...I always thought we had that title (Silicon Forest). Maybe Silicon Lakes?
(Incidentally they use the word 'cloud' 27 times in the article)
"Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete
clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can
give established firms some peace of mind about setting up
shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by
making it harder for people to walk out of one company and
start a competitor."
Anna-Lee Saxenian's work in the dated, but still relevant "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" goes into a fair amount of detail how the non-compete environment on Route 128 ended up undermining the Boston area relative to the Bay area.
99% of companies are simply not set up to allow success of new ideas related to the core business, but not actually the core business. Non-competes basically cause ideas to die because most companies are excellent at stifling execution on non-core projects.
(By the way, what's the best way to compare climates in different US cities all at once?)
If you are like me and dislike extremity of temperature, then you'll like Seattle. If you don't care about temperature as long as it is sunny, then you will not like it. Either way, you should at least visit during the summer! Consistently sunny, 70's, surrounded by mountains, trees and beautiful bodies of water...this is what the people who hate the weather stay for. :-)
Seriously, it's really nice here. No mosquitos (I'm from central Canada), no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no hail, no snow.
The "it always rains" thing is just a seattle meme.
I guess you could say that Seattle doesn't have distinctive weather character, but that's not really a problem, or a bad thing.
I would argue that the climate is actually quite nice.
It is, however, cloudy often. Even in the summer, you get a lot of overcast days and misty rain. Summer mornings are always cool: 13 to 16 C (high 50s F). Summer afternoons are usually sunny and hot: 23 to 28 C (high 70s F). Some people hate the lack of a "real" summer, but having experienced enough 37+ C/humid days for one lifetime, I don't take much out of that complaint.
Winters are mild, temperature-wise, but overcast. You'll only get about 10-20 hours of sun per week in the winter. For the plus side, if you look outside in the winter and it "looks" nice, it probably is (nice meaning 8-12 C). (On the East Coast, sunny usually means sub-freezing.)
It's not "always" raining but you'll probably get some rain on 2/3 of the days. Of course, some of those days are mostly sunny and have a misty rain for half an hour in the morning, and some are uniformly overcast.
It depends on what you like. If you're physically active, you might prefer it. (It's never too hot, or too cold, to run or bike.) Seattle has about the same climate as Paris, but the perceptions are totally different. In Paris, it's being compared to cloudier, colder places like Berlin and Warsaw, so it has the reputation of being a sunny, mild city. Seattle is being compared to San Francisco and Los Angeles so it has the reputation of being cold and cloudy. If you're from the East Coast or Europe, you won't mind it. I've heard plenty of Europeans move to Seattle and, because they've been told the weather is so dreadful, think they've won the lottery when they get what's actually an average winter (mild temperatures, not much sun but some, light rain).
Would living (a few hours?) away right on the pacific coast be an improvement in climate?
It would be even rainier, and it's the rain (not the temperatures) people complain about. However, if you go east, over the mountains, you get into a climate that's quite dry. One thing to keep in mind about Seattle's weather is that, if you want, you can drive 100 km and get winter sun in the desert, or drive into the mountains for snow and skiing. (Snow at sea level is rare in the Pac NW.) If you really don't like the 5-6 days per week of overcast in the winter, you can escape it on the weekends. On the other hand, if you want an actual bona fide rainforest, you can get to that as well.
I have spent 12 years in Seattle, 7 on this go round. I hate the weather here. You are wet and cold all winter. The mountains get snow, but sometimes rain, which freezes the snow, or makes the snow go away, negating the snow possibilities. The fact that you are surprised by how low the sun is on the horizon on a rare sunny day in winter, because you so rarely see the sun in the winter, is certainly entertaining. Let's also not forget the sun rises at 8:30A and sets at 4P in the winter.
The 2 months of sunny weather from July 5th are amazing. When the sun is out, this place is absolutely beautiful. But, for reference, I went for an early morning training ride yesterday and it was 44 degrees at 5:30A. In June. June!
Insofar as cost of living, this place is cheaper for housing, though the market is tight in the mid-market range for houses. Public schools are reasonably good depending on the district. Tech employers are not as voluminous as the articles would have you believe. IME, the Valley has way more tech opportunity, and less concentration in a a very small handful of large employers.
Sun-breaks, yeah. Hard to believe that those are a thing, but Seattle people get really excited about them. No mosquitoes was a huge win over New England. Aside from the tech, the mountains and the water are what brought me there. I got there just when the first wave of anti-Californian sentiment was getting going and R.E. prices were on the uptick.
Among the things that led me to leave were the absolutely horrific traffic situation in the city and eastside. It got so when I left the house to drive somewhere, it didn't matter what day or what time of day/night it was, I faced very high odds of encountering a stop & go backup along the way. I became convinced that part of this was due to the region apparently having the most timid drivers I'd seen anywhere. The slightest roadside anomaly, the most minor unexpected sight would result in brakes being slammed on and a mile-long stop&go forming. On 128/90/495 in MA we drove bumper-to-bumper at 70mph and got where we were going.
Speaking of the highways, the sight that completely blew my mind in Seattle (again, as a New Englander) was that of people abandoning their cars on the interstate highways when a few inches of snow fell. Not just stopping, but getting out and walking away.
Regarding the weather, the summers are glorious but very short. The weather is probably starting to clear up about now, but winter will be back in October. The gray is what got to me, and in the winter the gray combined with cold (30s-40sF) drizzle made it all feel much more miserable to me than 20F, blue skies and sun on blinding white snow, which, by the way, is just what we get here in Spokane. Speaking of that, Spokane weather is remarkably like New England - four seasons, fall foliage, cold+snowy winters and hot (but not humid -- very dry) summers. Alas, there's no significant software tech scene and the cultural scene is awful.
Washington has a half dozen or so dramatically different climates, it's an amazing place to live.
http://weatherspark.com/history/29735/2014/Seattle-Washingto...
Unfortunately they don't have a great way to compare cities, aside from just loading multiple pages and eyeballing.
Seattle climate seems nice if you prefer/can tolerate relatively much precipitation (though perhaps not relatively much for being in the Pacific Northwest), mild winters (lows not below freezing, on average), and decently warm summers.
EDIT: and apparently not many sunny days, annually. Overcast weather seems to be more of a problem in Seattle than rainy weather.
# Or perhaps just the warmest major city; Victoria, BC seems warmer. As an aside, certain places in the mid interior BC looks to be one of the warmest places in Canada, maybe even warmer than Southern Ontario. The Pacific Northwest has a pretty mild climate for its latitude(s), overall.
I don't mind it at all. In Missouri, the winters do have more sun, but much, much colder and snowy/icy so you don't want to go out anyway. Here I can go for a walk/run/bike/hike or whatever and it's mostly mid to upper 40's (F) all winter with a few exceptions either direction (some 70 degree days in Feb, for instance).
... things turn out to be not well balanced (a fact... for whatever reason)
You can make millions in a guys only world in SV (doesn't the lack of private life suck? The lack of a balanced ;) peer group?).
And on the other side (outside SV) startups just do not work out that well (and in the long run likely bowing to SV). Now IT is an important future industry... and it's creation is NOT well distributed.
Like the gold rush (which happened for some reason also in California)
It has a pretty good tech scene. Most startups are still consumer oriented though, so Jared Wray, CTO from CenturyLink, is wrong :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze
Its a real thing. All my friends in Seattle ended up being people who moved there from somewhere else - like myself. I noticed this trend well before I learned about the mythical term "Seattle freeze". Crazy world.
“The galactic players are here, and they are creating lots of little companies. The only thing driving anyone away from here is the weather.”
I'm surprised people are saying this. Seattle weather is gloomy by California standards, but it's actually not that bad. If you're from the northeast, you won't notice much of a difference, except for the winters being slightly warmer and the summers being cooler. (Summer is actually a nice season, not a humid hell, in Seattle.) Sure, it's cloudy a lot (55-60% in the summer, 80-85% in the winter) and it rains, a little bit, most days. But heavy rain that prevents you from doing things outside is very rare. If you're into running or biking, you probably prefer 50- to 70-degree cloudy days anyway, which makes Seattle ideal.
Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace of mind about setting up shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by making it harder for people to walk out of one company and start a competitor.
This is something it will need to change. Whether you want non-competes and employer-friendly ownership laws over side projects depends on whether you're courting hedge funds or tech. (Hedge funds are more of a meritocracy than VC, which means that it's easier for a guy with no connections to run with a proven idea and get a hedge fund.) If you're going for the hedge funds, keep the non-competes in play. If you want tech, then eschew non-competes and give the benefit of the doubt, on ownership, to the employee. (California gets this right in a major way.) However, the hedge funds don't want to be in Seattle, because it's not near any of the major exchanges. Tech loves Seattle. So Seattle should play for tech and kill the non-competes, because the hedge funds aren't about to move there no matter what it does.
I'll say one thing, based on very limited data. Seattle's an amazing, beautiful city and, unconstrained, would be one of the top places I'd choose to live. What has concerned me is (based on very limited data; it could be that I just talked to crappy companies) that the creeping non-progressivism of technology employers (back-channel references, aversion to people with "too many" jobs, closed allocation) seems to be meeting less resistance there than I'd like. The sense I got from a recruiter (who may be completely biased) is that workers don't fight back hard enough to have nice things. I said to him, "I'm in my 30s now and only want to work on interesting projects, because I'm old enough to know that I will die someday." He said that if I said something that direct in an interview, that alone would sink me. (In New York, people are more accepting of directness. That a smart person will bolt if given boring work is a given. I like that.) Of course, that can change in a matter of months. Seattle has an incredible number of smart people, and a beautiful environment, and I think anything's possible there. But (if I'm right that Seattle's scene is more conservative and corporate) it's something that will have to evolve if it wants a leading tech scene.
Having interviewed with a variety of Seattle companies, I'd say that they are primarily hiring pragmaticists who 'jel' with their culture. Education is respected, but not at the premium it is in Boston.
In terms of growth, the NIMBY crowd isn't in power at the moment (and hasn't been for a while - construction is going nuts), but I wouldn't be surprised to find that in the next elections, anti-growth candidates will be elected. The Stranger (alt-weekly) seems to be making anti-growth & anti-tech their plank right now.
In terms of jobs? Seattle, Boston, Austin, Boulder, Phoenix, etc all seem IME to be at rough par - not like NYC or SF, but definitely up there.
I think a lot of that is due to the particular management styles and personalities of Ballmer and Bezos. They have had an extremely deep influence on the tech culture of the Seattle area, by virtue of leading two of the most dominant tech industry companies in the region (and, well, entire world). These guys are not engineers trying to encourage organic innovation, R&D, agile development and progressive employment policies, nope. They are ruthless, iron-fisted, monopoly-seekers, and the culture of their companies (which it seems almost everyone in tech in Seattle works for or used to work for) reflects that.
Definitely more gray than average, but fares pretty well on pleasant temps (source: http://www.kellegous.com/j/2014/02/03/pleasant-places/ ).
When people say this, do they literally mean one of the most beautiful places on Earth, or do they really mean really beautiful? This might be an obtuse question, but the literal interpretation of it feels a bit... well.
Having lived in dry, brown California, and now in concrete jungle Manhattan, a hike in the hills of the PNW sounds positively divine right now.