Tech companies thriving in San Diego–Tijuana border zone | Hacker News Reader

Tech companies thriving in San Diego–Tijuana border zone

america.aljazeera.com

44 pointsnkurz14 comments

I thought it was really nice (but still surprising) to see this article appear on HN today, because I think the San Diego region doesn't get nearly as much attention as the Bay Area, though it has a lot of the same benefits (in terms of being a nice locale to live in).

The whole binational capability offered by being close to the border is also a pretty neat opportunity/advantage that I feel a lot of startup companies could utilize well if they wanted to, since there are a lot of highly educated and intelligent folks on the other side of the border.

For myself, living about two hours East of San Diego (in Imperial County) we have a lot of the same advantages from this perspective (since we share the border with Baja California's capital, Mexicali, where there's a strong manufacturing presence and lots of highly educated individuals) but we have 0 tech companies on the US side (and high unemployment to boot). Compared to San Diego, our locale isn't as desirable (we get high temperatures during the summer, hitting the 110+ degrees Fahrenheit mark, and the closest beaches are in San Diego) but we have plenty of sunny days and lots of open spaces (while I don't partake in it, there's lot of people that come down from San Diego and other places to go ride their dune buggies and stuff out in the desert and places like Glamis), less expensive housing and nice small schools/communities to raise a family.

It would be really cool to see some tech companies seek us out too, if they had employees that liked Imperial County's advantages, and setup shop down here (it would be great for the community and could start a greater influx of tech companies and/or an enhanced relationship with other tech hubs in San Diego/Bay Area).

Where in imperial county are you from? My hometown is calexico

Hi Rob,

I live in El Centro (and currently work at IVC as the Online Services Architect).

It's neat to see another person from the (Imperial) Valley on here ;-).

Small world, grew up in El Centro and went to Central for a couple of years!

Small world indeed :-).

It'd be interesting to find out how many of us have left the Valley and ended up in the tech industry somewhere and create a little network that could support each other ;-).

I went off to eBay for a short while before coming back to IVC, but tech opportunities are still few and far between down here so depending on how stagnant growth opportunities are in a few years it might force me to look for opportunities in the Bay Area or San Diego again.

I'm in the "interesting" situation of living in Tijuana* and commuting M-F to my job as a software engineer in "Sorrento Valley" in central San Diego. The article is pretty interesting, and I think that the huge difference in cost of living along with some of the lifestyle / cultural benefits of Tijuana could be attractive to engineers and create an interesting community. I can attest that the border traffic is pretty horrific, though it can be lessened greatly if you get Global Entry/SENTRI. It would be cool to see more tech activity in San Diego.

*To add to the coincidences here, my name is T.J. ;)

*Haha, that's actually a pretty funny coincidence and made me imagine a little conversation like this: --- You: "Hi my name is TJ." Person: "Nice to meet you, do you live here in Sorrento Valley?" You: "I live in TJ." Person: "What?" ---

On a less silly note, the cost of living thing is actually quite interesting because we have the same situation over here between Mexicali and living in Imperial County.

A few of my coworkers in IT actually commute over daily (and use SENTRI) and I've always wondered how much they're able to save by living over there.

One of my staff members also commutes daily from Mexicali and she sometimes gets stuck at the line to cross over if there happens to be an incident (such as a person hiding inside a car the other week). I know for her she's mentioned quite a few advantages to living across the border, one primarily being childcare costs for her daughter (I'm trying to remember the exact figure but I want to say it was $300 for the entire month) compared to this side where it would cost about $500-$600 (and in San Diego it would probably be even higher).

Plus the rent / food costs are much lower in general in Mexicali too and the currency conversion is favorable for USD => Pesos.

Haha, though it's easy for people to remember "TJ in TJ" ;)

Savings wise, if you have SENTRI and work near the border, the economics may work out (things like childcare and healthcare may help as well). But I think that the time wasted is just far to great otherwise. Between waking up super early and spending anywhere from 3-6 hours commuting a day, it seems to be a hard sell. That picture looking down the freeway[1], I drive that every day, but usually its still night out =)

Rent is the biggest difference, food and other items less so. I pay less than 1/4th of my San Diego home's mortgage for renting a slightly larger place in Tijuana (which is also close to the beach)

[1]http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/articles/2014/8/1/...

As someone who has lived in both San Diego and Tijuana, it is not THAT much of a tech place as it sounds (well, Tijuana is not, not sure of San Diego). I personally know one of the people who co-founded Hub-stn. It's mostly just a bunch of export factories there. The true tech scene in Mexico is in Guadalajara, Jalisco. You have big tech companies with many offering benefits similar to those in the Bay Area such as stock options, health insurance, great salaries, and more. Tijuana has none of that. I had to move because it was impossible to find a good job programming in Ruby on Rails.

There's a shenzhen right out our back door just waiting to be developed ... and having spent a lot of time in both shenzhen and TJ, I can say that tijuana would be much better off if they could go that path...

The TJ airport bridge project will really take off the area by the availability of super-cheap Mexican flights by allowing people to park in the US, walk over a bridge, and then fly in/out of TJ.

I'm not sure if any of you have heard of it already, but there's also the Silicon Border project announced quite a few years back that was set to be located on the outskirts of Mexicali: http://www.siliconborder.com/

I remember being really excited when I saw that in the local Imperial Valley Press. So far though I think it'll be a project that'll still take a number of years to be fully developed but if it does come to pass will be a huge benefit to the local area.

There's some pretty neat info on the Silicon Border site, but here's a quick report on there talking about "Five Reasons to Consider Mexico" that has some nice information: http://www.siliconborder.com/sites/default/files/documents/F...

Using Tj to businesses advantage is a really beneficial idea. Uber's current $10 rides across the boarder is a great example of this. Safe and cheap transport for people which will also make Uber a good amount of money.

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