EX Denver developer here. Colorado Native. Now an Austin Dev (I'm a senior / lead android dev) I can safely say that the job market in Denver is terrible. Yes you can find work, but the company culture are terrible. I found myself with brogrammers that had 0 engineering style hobbies or being asked to work 60 hours every week. There are a few gems.. But the Jobs you want, aren't hiring mobile devs because their offices are start up size. IE Uber, google, github. Those are all Boulder offices anyways, not Denver. In Denver you will get mostly Banks, and dinos like Comast / Aol. Sure some will get offers at Pivotal or Workday. But after that you aren't going to like what you can get.
Seriously the drug use is pretty Rampant in Denver too. Not a turn off to all, but given the places I did work, you wouldn't expect it. Texas is so much better. The job I have is so much better, My coworkers are actually nerdy. Honestly. Sorry I just have to laugh at the idea that desert is a great place to look for work.
Here in Austin we can't even find android devs to apply. Denver I interviewed maybe 20 and found most to be just okay.
I agree. Have been here for about 6 mos now, was hoping to have a good work / life balance (to me, that means running outdoors in open trail areas, not necessarily mountains - and not having a bad commute). I'm now working downtown and can not find any acceptable commute to a sparsely populated area. The W line to boulder is way too damn slow, I could probably ride a bicycle faster (it takes about 1:15 to go from boulder to downtown). The sprawl is larger than I expected.
I also notice it stinks pretty bad from whatever those smoke stacks are doing near Colfax & I25, and north of Denver - like some metallic smell.
In areas like North Thornton there is hydraulic fracking, so I'll pass on that, along with Arvada near Rocky Flats.
There is a lot of homelessness, but i read about 75% of those people have jobs - but can't find a place to live affordably. Rents might not be as bad as SF or Seattle but they are going up, apparently from the influx of people coming for legal weed and affordable housing shortage (luxury stuff is being built)
Oh, and avoid the 16th Street Circus. Centennial, Parker, Boulder, or Golden all look nice if you can find opportunities there - but the commutes from those (also nice to live places) are too much into downtown.
Send me a private message. I'm an engineer and my company is hiring and we are nerdy to a fault.
Our stack is C++, Node, React, Python, and C#(we are phasing that out).
We are in Broomfield, since Boulder got too expensive after we grew enough.
Arvada is still a decent place to live if you want to be on the north side of Denver. Otherwise, look down out to the south and/or west so you can at least be on the light rail.
I think you are maybe talking about Commerce City with the giant flaming smoke stacks? That area is indeed horrible.
Boulder is not part of Denver. It's its own city.
If you want someplace cool and good to live (though you will want to secure a 4-5 day a week remote job first, because driving down I25 to Denver will make you want to die. Ask me anything), may I recommend Fort Collins? :)
I can't comment on the rest of it, but many people move to Denver because they have outdoor style hobbies, and think that it's near the mountains. They are probably disappointed to find that it's more or less the standard Great Plains sprawl -- Dallas within a few hours' drive of Longs Peak -- and that Boulder is an overpriced NIMBY colony.
Oh yes, some brought up the homeless. Not to get into it too much. Denver is freaking sketchy. Every few months a gang would kill someone outside my LoDo offices, or someone would show up looking for their ex armed and we would have a lock down. Homeless are rampant. Half real homeless, half young vagabond. It is usually ultra nice, then next block I'd feel the need to hide my watch. Austin, I bike to work every day. I walk around at night every day. Sure there are clusters, like under 35.. but I walk my dog 7 miles on weekends all through down town. Something I'd never ever do in Denver.
Denver has always been an ultra sketchy town, with a hard drug problem. Just look at the Gang statistics for Aurora. If anything Denver has been getting better, but the difference is 10 years ago you would avoid down town at all costs. Now you want to buy a run down house for 700k.
Though if you can find work in Boulder or Fort Collins, grab it. Denver, avoid.
> Seriously the drug use is pretty Rampant in Denver too. Not a turn off to all, but given the places I did work, you wouldn't expect it. Texas is so much better.
What does this mean? If you mean cannabis use, who cares? It's legal and it's harmless. If you are talking about opioid abuse or something else, that's a different story.
It sounds like you had some subjectively bad individual experiences because you mixed with people that you are not socially compatible with, but there's nothing here (brogrammers that don't share your hobbies? weed smokers?) that seems like an indictment of the entire city of Denver. Similarly, while your new job is great and you have found your tribe in Austin, your nerdy coworkers are but a very small part of the selfhood of ATX.
> If you mean cannabis use, who cares? It's legal and it's harmless. If you are talking about opioid abuse or something else, that's a different story.
Whether or not people use drugs or alcohol when they're not working shouldn't be relevant. If it leads to impairment in the workplace such that they cannot perform their job, then it becomes a problem.
Well there's one more way it can matter, and make your experience suck: When the downstairs neighbors smoke out at all hours, and it comes up through your floor and in through your windows, and the whole place smells like Tom Petty & Willie Nelson were hanging out. Not even during work hours. Or worse, during your remote-working hours that don't happen to correspond to the neighbors' working hours.
Almost sounds like I have personal experience doesn't it?
Feel free to move to Denver :-) Just remember you were warned. I only lived there about 25 years. Trust me I am not talking just coworkers. People in Texas are in general more friendly. You will notice these things if you move around like I have.
I've lived all over as well. The Denver metro is about as friendly as Austin metro in my opinion. Texas as a whole is friendly because it's the south, but that pertains to non urban areas.
I do find people in the West to be poorly mannered but not unfriendly. Frankly, growing up in the South, people in other places have bad manners in general to me.
I think it's important to know that companies have different cultures, and your experience of Austin or Denver can be heavily affected by that.
It is not legal. Federal law has not changed. The fact that enforcement in Colorado is minimal does not make usage legal.
The federal government sure does care. You won't be getting a security clearance if you are a user. This cuts you off from over a million jobs.
It's not harmless either, particularly if you breath it. Even non-drug stuff like Lysol and candle smoke will mess up your lungs. The drug aspect is real too; we don't have the term "pothead" for no reason.
You don't need a security clearance. It wasn't a crime to smoke pot in 1900, and pot itself does not one any damage. And I've never smoked pot! I do live in a state that has decriminalized it. In a few years it won't matter across the whole country. We'll still have things you puritan can use to look down at people, so don't fret. Mushroom (I've also never taken these either, person!) aren't becoming legal soon. Although they again cause no one any real trouble.
What are 'engineering style hobbies'? Do you mean doing engineering stuff in your free time as well as work, or stereotypical things like getting into flame wars over vim/emacs, watching Star Wars, etc?
Sounds great, honestly. I do program in my spare time, but I don't play video games, or board games; I don't care about comic-book movies; I'm not interested in prognosticating about cryptocurrencies; I don't think repetitive "sportsball" jokes are funny; and I really, really don't care about the specs of your new drone, tablet, phone, etc.
It's nice having programmer co-workers who like to talk about almost anything else. If having other interests makes you a "brogrammer" then, well, OK, I guess I like brogrammers.
It's funny to me that OP was basically lamenting that there are normal people who happen to be programmers in Denver. Isn't the nerd culture dominant in software frequently cited as part of the reason women drop out of the industry at higher rates than men?
You like well rounded people. You do not understand the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brogrammer
Interesting well rounded people are cool. Being a sterotypical frat boy is not.
I understand the term to refer to something that's more or less a reactionary myth. There are no "brogrammers." They don't exist. It's an idiotic, reactionary term, best forgotten.
To get all my disclaimers out of the way: I don't live in the Denver area anymore (moved for family obligations). I'm an Ops / systems / network person foremost, not a developer. And I'm not responding to the OP directly, just posting my own experiences jumping off from their points.
I loved living and working in CO, and am passively looking to move back there if the right situation comes up. Anyone trying to compare it to SF or NYC is not being serious. Those cities are in their own tier and we all know it. But Denver is a very active job market. Once I got some sufficiently "hot" technologies on my resume / LinkedIn, I had no shortage of recruiter hits, even when I had minimal experience.
It's true the traffic is HORRENDOUS and only getting worse due to the influx of people to the state every year. I would encourage anyone looking to work in Denver to negotiate part-time WFH unless you happen to live super close to the office. Mass transit isn't really a thing unless you luck into your home and office both being on the minimal light rail routes.
I absolutely had NO issues with people pushing drugs on me or making a big deal about drug use. If anything it's a bigger issue where I work now on the east coast.
I had no trouble making friends with people of diverse interests. Some of my buddies in CO were major contributors to OpenStack or Ceph. Some others were PhD's in ecology, or doctors, or poets, or restaurant managers, or lawyers. It's not all ski bums and stoners.
If you're willing to expand your search into the surrounding burbs, there are some good jobs to be had at the likes of Level3 or Comcast. Some of the smartest people I know work for Comcast on uniquely challenging problems of scale, on small, nimble teams. Calling them a dino seems a bit disingenuous. Though they are a huge and hateable company, won't dispute that heh.
Agree with the sentiment that Boulder is not Denver just as SF is not Oakland. Boulder was a cool place to live in the 70's, but good luck buying a home for under a million bucks today.
So I guess I lied a bit, I am responding to the OP directly. I am absolutely NOT discounting their life experience. They lived in CO longer than I did. But since it's one of the top comments on this story, and I had such a great time living in Colorado and want to move back, I felt compelled to share another viewpoint. It felt like home to me. Obviously to them, it didn't, despite being their birthplace. And that's fine.
Some people love it. My dad is obsessed with it despite being from Texas. It's unfortunate that the responses and strong opinions took away from the points I was trying to make.
I will also say I've worked with mostly young people. IE an old guy was a manager in his mid 30s.
I will also note, as someone who has worked at dino companies. That is not a reflection of the engineers. It's how the day to day works. How painfully slow work is because 3 departments need to get their act together. I'm sorry you took that as me saying your friends are bad.
My company is nerd to the core in the right way. Hate the brogrammer crap.
We regularly host tournaments for obscure board games, people hack on crazy languages like Haskell and elm for fun, and add to that the company wide obsession with rock climbing.
I love it. But some of the shops I've seen sound like what you described.
I heard spotx is a bunch of brogrammers for instance.
I love how crazy everyone got and how very far off the mark I went. Hah half of them are telling me, a power lifter who works out 4 days a week how I must hate people who are into sports and athletics. I should have been more explicit. Sounds like you have a great crew! it's just a pattern I've noticed. Having worked in 3 states. Culture is a real thing. There can be pockets. I think the culture is MUCH worse in Denver, than Broomfield, boulder, fort collins.
What type of position were you looking for? I have friends who do backend dev in Denver (lots of Go and Rails folks), and recruiters are beating down the doors to hire them. I haven't heard of anyone going for more than a few weeks before landing a solid gig in the area.
Maybe it's also an issue of job seekers not looking/knowing the right place to search? Off the top of my head there were not too many Denver postings in last months hiring post but hacker news might not be the best place to look.
I hate to hijack this post, but I need help in Denver. And no, I'm not a recruiter... I'm a tech lead. Chesapeake Technology also supports remote opportunities and have a few sites around the country. I think we have a pretty relaxed, yet get stuff done culture that I've had a hard time finding at other work places. In our Denver office there are about 10 people that come in semi-regularly but work remote as life happens.
If you're into IoT, Software Defined Radio, and know the JVM pretty well... you'd be a perfect fit but we'll happily embrace people that demonstrate motivation and a desire to learn. We have a few core products that we work on for the defense industry as well as a random one-off research work. Some travel required periodically.
If you haven’t already, I’d suggest joining https://denverdevs.org/ and dropping this into #topic-gigs on a Gigs Day. There’s a pretty active community there, and word of mouth branches out.
Android devs. We can find iOS easily. No one wants to do Android. Seems weird given that android is OS. But I live in Austin now, not Denver. Denver is terrible.
> Android devs. We can find iOS easily. No one wants to do Android. Seems weird given that android is OS.
Having done both, Android development is a pain and just not fun. The simulator/emulator situation has improved a lot which helps, but it used to be a terrible development experience.
When did you last do Android? I've done both for about eight years and while the development tools at first on Android were total trash I cannot stand Xcode and the iOS development ecosystem these days.
Throw in Swift and things get worse. On the other side, Java/Kotlin interoperability in Android Studio is great and the tooling keeps improving.
Yeahhhh. Heck just trying to do UI or integration tests are a pain. Not to mention the things I do to match the iOS animations my counter part got for free.
I second that (..culture, practically no great opportunities, etc..). My story - if you're a c/c++ & linux & kernel & backend & network & .. & senior sw guy who doesn't do camping (gaming term), I wouldn't recommend Denver, unless you are ready to 'convert' to python, java, .. I've moved from the Bay Area.
In Austin you can get anywhere from 100k to 160k. For instance I know for a fact that Amazon pays mobile devs in austin 160k. That said, this isn't san fran. you can own a house for a quarter of a san fran condo's bathroom. I was making more at my colorado job, but I feel like I have a lot more money here.
how big of a technical leap is it to from Java UI dev (Swing/Java2D/JavaFX) to Android? I know Chet Haase and Romain Guy did so curious to know if it is an easy transition.
There may be a lot of openings around here as Detroit industry continues to modernize and the startup scene matures, but salaries are still lagging.
Some of the large companies (autos, insurance, etc) will occasionally offer higher-paying gigs, but competition is fierce and interviewing (like everywhere) is a crap shoot.
I'm currently contracting remotely with a company in the Los Angeles area, and I don't expect I'll be leaving remote work anytime soon. I expect my clients will be in LA, SF, and NY for the rest of my career.
Last time I was in Detroit the roads were the worst I'd ever seen. You couldn't even call them pot holes, they were just scars in the earth. For a place nicknamed The Motor City, it was a sad state of affairs.
And that's the crux of it. It's not just the money, in fact it's never the money for me. It's a total quality of life scenario. Being across a bridge from Windsor Canada is cool, the Detroit museum is a great place, and the area has a great lineage for quality pizza. But Detroit itself is like a hostile environment to me, where I can't even travel around without risking breaking my vehicle literally in half. I'd have to me making great money there, just to pay upkeep on vehicle maintenance.
To be fair, and I don’t know when you were last here, Detroit is somewhat slowly improving. Some of the roads are still terrible, but that’s Michigan in general (I have some friends in the suburbs, and when I visit them, I specifically avoid certain problematic roads that have left me asking if I permanently damaged my car).
The real bugbear is insurance, which is a state policy issue (poor, white areas are starting to be hit by it too). My car insurance in the city is higher than my car payment (by about $100). Yes, it’s insane. I have good credit and I’m a good driver, but no-fault insurance and unlimited medical coverage makes it superbly expensive to insure Michiganders. If anything would make me move back to the suburbs, it’s actually the car insurance. Everything else I don’t really mind.
Otherwise, you have to take Detroit for all it is, both its faults and its treasures. Yes, street flooding is a problem and the schools are still not great, but property is cheap and some neighborhoods are recovering. You can get a mansion for $500k to $800k (in SF you would get a shoe box). And if you want the cheapest, most delicious donuts you’ve ever had, swing by Dutch Girl on Woodward and Seven Mile. They’re open 24/7.
It’s not for everyone, but it’s unique, and has 300 years of fascinating history. It’s not the war zone you see on the news either. Don’t write off Detroit just yet. :)
I grew up there. As bad as it might have been when you were there, you should try going in the wintertime. Orders of magnitude worse. You couldn't pay me enough to go back there.
But, assuming you just hate winter/snow, you've just described the entire northern tier of the US that's not right on the West Coast. Which is of course your prerogative. I'm just not terribly sympathetic to arguments that life isn't livable outside of the Bay Area because of the weather.
I somewhat hate winter, but I like seasons; they give a nice tempo to life. Personally, I’d rather have snow than earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, tornadoes, and hurricanes, which the rest of the country gets some combination of. Michigan, though? Maybe there’s a tornado in the hinterlands once in a while, but otherwise it’s just the occasional blizzard, and that’s hardly life-threatening for most. Plus, we’re surrounded by fresh water.
> But, assuming you just hate winter/snow, you've just described the entire northern tier of the US that's not right on the West Coast. Which is of course your prerogative. I'm just not terribly sympathetic to arguments that life isn't livable outside of the Bay Area because of the weather.
I think what he was getting at was that a northern winter makes the infrastructure problems considerably worse. Potholes big enough to bathe a toddler can be hidden by snow, and snowplows don't operate regularly and efficiently on roads where they are at serious risk of destroying an axle, wheel, or tire on any given day; and even if they could dodge the potholes, they couldn't clear the snow where it counts! If our road infrastructure here in Toronto, or my previous city, Calgary, were any more poorly maintained, winter could make life considerably harder for those who can't afford to travel by foot.
I recently had a ride on what IIRC our ministry of transport has deemed the worst maintained road in the country, and it's better than 50% of the roads near Pittsburgh, and in my (old, 2011-2012-ish) experience, better than 80% of the roads in Detroit. I can not imagine snow on these roads making life any easier.
Detroit is actually a pretty cool place in a lot of ways but the streets as you mentioned are absolutely terrible. On top of how torn up they are, there is practically no light on the street. A few dim street lights scatter much too far apart gives you major arteries where you can barely see anything. Then there is the fact that the actual design of the streets is terrible, with lots of odd mechanics you don't see anywhere else, one way streets, and the old 'michigan left' (turn right, then find a place to turn around.
> and the area has a great lineage for quality pizza
What lineage are you referring to? Domino's and Little Caesars? (Both are headquartered in the area). They are perfectly edible, but I've never heard those described as representing a "quality pizza" lineage.
There is also [Detroit-style pizza][]. Buddy's is great. I've enjoyed Emmy Squared in NYC, and I'm looking to make one following the [Serious Eats guide][] sometime this year.
Detroit has great foods. For great places to eat, trust that you have never heard of them. Not nationwide chains. There are tons of random hole in the wall joint with amazing food. You just have to know them usually through luck or referral because you could walk past them many times and not know there's amazing food in there.
I'm from the area, so I definitely know that there is great food there, from little local delis to thebest middle eastern food in the US.
I'm just not aware of a great local pizza tradition. And for me personally, Buddy's Detroit-style pizza (I grew up eating it) doesn't meet that standard.
Suppose that The Motor City wanted to help the local car industry. Would they build roads that favor keeping a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry for 20 years, or would they build roads that require yearly purchase of a huge SUV or a full-size AWD pickup truck?
Or, it's the sandy base you get when geographically surrounded by water. Or, it's the laws that removed weight limits for the trucking industry. Or, it's the lack of funds in poor areas. Or, it's the extreme changes in temperature combined with high water tables and wet weather. Or, it's a combination of all the above.
Trust me, when it comes to road infrastructure, there is no conspiracy to help the Big 3. The amount of broken down vehicles that I see on the sides of the roads due to tire issues spans domestic & foreign brands. If there's a conspiracy, it's a conspiracy to benefit body shops and tire/rim manufacturers.
Same goes for UX designers. Very few direct hire positions, and almost everything is a 6 to 12 month "contract to hire" that magically never turns into an actual position. Plus, I'd say that for every job that a company advertises, there's at least 5 or 6 recruiters who will post ads for that same exact job.
Anecdotal story: I interviewed at a well known ad company here in the Metro Detroit area, and the recruiter let it slip that he had sent 16 people their way before me. While I'm sure that this guy was just throwing warm bodies at the position in hopes of earning a commission, it's kind of unbelievable that competition is that fierce here.
I had been at a position for 10 years-- some CEO calls me and says my skillset would be PERFECT for his company, would I be interested in talking.
We get into details, its C2H, I decline. He was absolutely incensed, he says, "well, its just to make sure you're a good culture fit!" To which I reply, "I'm not going to leave a stable job for what is essentially contract work." He was beyond pissed, I guess he was acclimated to dealing with idiots.
You likely dodged a bullet there. A CEO getting “beyond pissed” over what is essentially a business deal is weird. Does he also get beyond pissed when he loses a customer or when a deadline slips? Super red flag when a company rep (let alone the CEO) loses their cool during something as pedestrian as hiring!
Oh I know I did. If I'm PERFECT for the role-- why contract again? I'm not going to pull my trigger if you're not going to pull yours.
These amateur [psycho|soicio]paths have no balls. A real psycho would have hired me then fired me. Basically, he is confident enough to lie to someone to hire them, but not confident enough to simply fire them when needed.
I work in Networking and I am floored at the same phenomenon playing out in that sector.
My current job came from a referral from an acquaintance- and he had gone in C2H. I let him know that wasn't even an option for me- I have lots of kids and a housewife spouse- you know the standard situation a decade or two ago- contracts have zero appeal to me.
It was like pulling teeth- they wanted me bad enough that it ended up making it happen, but they treat actual salary slots like golden tickets. They'll spend incredible amounts on contractors (some have been here for YEARS) and professional services, but a normal actual job is like hens teeth.
In my opinion-- it's a sign of how far our society has fallen. A friend of mine has two degrees, she works in a Stater Bros meat department.
My grandfather had an AA from a city college, and supported his entire family, and retired at 55 with pensions, investments, etc. His wife is still alive at 88 and living off the money he earned. She's never worked in her life.
My parents, retired at 65, and have a very very comfortable retirement until Calpers dies.
I, struggle to find employment that isn't "slavery with extra steps", and will never, ever be able to retire.
The salaries, sadly, are really lagging. I just graduated from UMich and I can name a small handful of people who stayed in the state. The vast majority of them moved out west.
Even when you account for the lower COL, the salaries are just too low in the Detroit area. It’s getting better, but the area needs more real tech employers who value software engineers. The automotive companies still seem to treat them as cost centers.
I have lived in Austin for 3 years now and I work in tech. It's a fantastic city. Great weather throughout the year (very hot though - not everyone's cup of tea!), lots of gorgeous outdoor environments within very close proximity to the city center, and plenty of nice people, many of whom are newly-arrived transplants and are optimistic about life and looking to make new friends.
I'm the organizer of a bouldering meetup[1]. We started back in September but already have 250+ members. I'd say more than a third of them work in tech so it's great for networking too. :)
Hey, didn't know you were in Austin! Definitely will check out the meetup. I'm an occasional climber.
Besides what you already mentioned: the food is one major factor that I like Austin. From BBQ (Franklin, Salt Lick etc.) to Tacos (Torchy's, Taco Deli) to ethnic Indian, Korean etc. this city has it all and new restaurants are opening all the time.
If you like beer and breweries, Austin has many of them too. Oscar Blues, ABGB, 512, Adelberts, Jester King etc. are just a few that come to mind. There are lot of brewpubs as well and new ones are opening all the times.
If you're young and into the nightlife scene, Austin has a lively scene and you can literally go out any night of the week and find something interesting. From live music to famous bands, to music festivals, there's ALWAYS something to do, which is really fucking amazing.
Generally I don't like to say too many nice things since I like to keep this amazing city all to myself. But maybe HN crowd is ok :).
Austin Bouldering Project is great. It is an impressive facility with a really engaged community (almost too much of a good thing, weekends are busy). Highly recommend for any Austinites who may be curious about climbing.
I've lived in Austin for about 5 years. Grad school, not work. My programmer friends seem to have no problem getting jobs, and I have no shortage of male friends, but the gender ratio of singles is pretty heavily skewed towards men for introverted nerds. I'm a single male who doesn't have a lot of free time, so I gave up on dating in Austin. The city doesn't seem to attract many people I'd like to date. Particularly compared against where I lived previously. Many of the people under 35 in Austin seem to have been attracted to the city for the music festivals and relative lack of cold weather. I'm an introvert who finds the summer heat here worse than the cold on the east coast. As I said, Austinites are typically not my kind of people.
Something to keep in mind if you believe you might be similar to me. Austin is probably not worse than SF, but I don't intend to live there after I graduate either.
Well, there is a big difference between "Austinites" and people that moved to Austin from somewhere else and now make up 4/5ths of the population. I made up that number, but it's not a bad guess. Austin is an east coast city in Texas. Everybody there is from LA or the east coast and brought their road rage and terrible attitudes to Austin. It seems all the actual Austinites are leaving the city for nearby small towns like Dripping Springs, Elgin, Fredricksburg, San Marcos, New Braunsfels, etc. People actually from Austin seem to be way cooler than the people that moved to Austin from somewhere else. No offense to the transplants -- I used to be one and certainly Austinites are way cooler than I am. But I'm guessing they've also looked around and come to the same conclusion like the person here. Austin was probably as cool as they say in the 80s and 90s. Not so much these days.
> Well, there is a big difference between "Austinites" and people that moved to Austin from somewhere else and now make up 4/5ths of the population. I made up that number, but it's not a bad guess. Austin is an east coast city in Texas.
You could say the same thing about SF, Oakland, Portland, LA, Seattle, Boston, New York, etc etc. Name a city with a booming economy in the U.S. that isn't mostly transplants.
> Everybody there is from LA or the east coast and brought their road rage and terrible attitudes to Austin. It seems all the actual Austinites are leaving the city for nearby small towns like Dripping Springs, Elgin, Fredricksburg, San Marcos, New Braunsfels, etc.
Once again, you could say the same thing about any of the popular cities for young people to move to. I currently live in Seattle and hear people saying the exact same thing all the time. Californians pricing Seattlites out and bringing road rage yada yada. I'm originally from the East Bay and have experienced the exact same gentrification process in my own home town.
> People actually from Austin seem to be way cooler than the people that moved to Austin from somewhere else. No offense to the transplants -- I used to be one and certainly Austinites are way cooler than I am. But I'm guessing they've also looked around and come to the same conclusion like the person here. Austin was probably as cool as they say in the 80s and 90s. Not so much these days.
I've heard this exact same sentiment online about all the hip cities in the U.S.
Maybe, but I've lived in those places you mentioned (except the east coast cities) and the problem is stifling in Austin. I'm originally from a small, liberal college town in a conservative plains state which in the 80s might have been a great twin city for Austin, if somewhat smaller. So I have some insight into what it "should" be like when people describe how cool Austin is, or how cool people have heard Austin is (because a lot of Austin's reputation is propagated by total strangers). And Austin simply isn't like that, anymore. All of the reasons that people love Austin are actually nowadays being manufactured by outsiders. The plastic, false reality of those qualities is palpable and easy to spot when you're there. There are a few secrets and a few items of local flavor which were still sort of genuinely "Austin" but even when I lived there more than five years ago, they were being inundated by outsiders as "best kept secrets" and diluted.
Having lived in most of the places you mention above, I can say definitively that Austin is experiencing this problem the worst among the "boom cities" by orders of magnitude. I'm guessing it's because of the proportion of recent transplants to "original Austinites". Austin was a small city in Texas in the 80s! ZERO of your boom cities were anything like that so recently. And it's worst among your examples not only because there are actually so few people proportionally who lived in Austin since it was actually cool, but compounded by the fact that a lot of those Austinites are leaving Austin for the surrounding countryside (or wherever).
I haven't found that experience at all. In fact one of the reasons I refuse to move to Man Jose or SF is because I've heard of the famously skewed sex ratio. There is a lot more diversity in Austin, and as a single guy in his late 20's I've had a very healthy dating experience.
I don't doubt SF, etc., is worse. My experience suggests Austin is a step down from where I lived previously.
Perhaps you're more attractive or patient than I am. I also just realized that I forgot to mention that I'm a teetotaler, which seem to be a major turnoff to people here.
If you don't mind me asking, how do you meet single women here?
SF is a sausage fest without a doubt. Fortunately, there's a lot of sausage on sausage action (if that's your thing :-)
I lived in the bay area for ~4 years, lots of dudes, immigrants, and really wealthy people (in addition to a lot of the working poor). Interesting place just not my cup of tea.
Did make Buena Vista inspired Irish Coffees last night though.
I've had no shortage of suiters. Granted I say that as a single dude, but I know a few who would date me. MANY more times that of Denver. Just because I know more people because everyone is so friendly. I mean there is a whole university to offset from the software engineers.
Maybe age is part of the problem for me. I'm about 10 years older than the undergrads, so they're not really in my dating pool. Most of the dates I've gone on were with fellow graduate students, but I didn't go on many dates before stopping.
The ancient philosopher Plato tells us that the ideal marriage ages are 16 for women and 30 for men. One might suspect that he was 30 at the time, but Plato is quite respected. Consider taking his advice. Biologically it makes sense, leading to large families that can be financially supported.
If anything, the undergrads should be your only dating pool. Older women come with too many entitlements and strings attached and you're essentially on the clock to start a family with them.
I don't know why Bay Area companies don't open more in the East Bay. Many of their employees live there. Less commute. It's baffling why companies are so focused on the misery that is Mountain View or Palo Alto.
It is pretty astonishing how little tech companies there are in Hayward, Union City, Fremont, and Milpitas. Tens of thousands of available tech workers commuting to the Valley. Companies opening up there could drastically reduce the extremely constrained traffic, then residents all around the bay would allow for more housing. What's the downside?
There are lots of devs who live in the East Bay (I used to live there myself), but most don’t. The more successful devs (who you are looking to poach) generally live on the other side, and they live there because they don’t want to drive across the bay twice a day.
It’s more of a Moneyball move - go for the underappreciated talent you can get cheap. There are companies doing that, but it’s not for everyone. If you get specific with the location, you realize Oakland and Pleasanton, Walnut Creek and Hayward are pretty far apart, so you don’t even get great access to the whole East Bay. You might as well move to Austin, Denver, or Detroit at that point and pay the same price for a better location.
Although you might see major companies open offices if there is a critical mass eg. maybe it would make sense for Google or Facebook to open a satellite office in Newark if enough employees are commuting across the Dumbarton.
Uber was going to make a big office in Oakland, but apparently canceled those plans.
Can confirm that Los Angeles has wonderful supply of engineers and low demand for them. I would rather fight it out here and try my luck than move to Austin/Denver/Detroit though.
Detroit might be okay if you like long commutes, no transit, and (typically) conservative workplaces. Pay seems like its increasing a bit, if stack overflow jobs is any indicator.
It would be an awesome place for a startup with all the cheap property and rent.
People here are nicer than anywhere else I’ve ever lived
I miss biking and walking to work. And while thats possible here, it’s not easy to find.
But Detroit’s not an easy city and that’s one of its charms. Heh, though people generally don’t talk about Detroit’s hardships in terms of biking to your tech job.
It's weird. The brain drain is constant though, and you have to put up with being the smartest guy in the room and the people you admire always leaving for, like, Phoenix or Pittsburgh. You can buy a mansion for like $50k and then who is going to attend your dinner parties? Your hot wife is a junkie instead of a doctor or pilot.
Does the Dallas story (low demand for devs, high availability of devs) line up with the experience of those here familiar with the market? Based on just looking at job postings, it didn't seem like there was a lack of demand for devs in that area, but I know that postings don't necessarily equate to high demand.
Also if that's true, do alot of the Dallas devs in need of work go to Austin? Or is that not done for some reason?
Dallas guy here, also a very senior SW engineer. My last two hires were about 5 months or so ago, but high availability? hah! I can't necessarily speak for the demand, other than it must be high, because it is hard to find available devs. Also from working with recruiters in the past couple of years, good candidates are snatched up very fast. If you have good experience (and are not a contractor that jumps companies every 3 months), you should find a position within two weeks in Dallas.
As far as Austin, no. Only reason people go to Austin is more a lifestyle choice. More people come from Austin to Dallas simply because the number of available jobs. Last time I checked, Dallas has around twice as many developers as Austin as well.
Right now, people in Texas cities other than Austin are staying away too. Austin's infrastructure has not kept up with the growth and it is nuts. Dallas and Houston have done a much better job when planning ahead for the growth of the entire job market, whereas Austin took somewhat of a Boulder, Co stance and decided they really don't need to work on infrastructure to aid growing the population. That's a whole other story though.
> Austin's infrastructure has not kept up with the growth and it is nuts. Dallas and Houston have done a much better job when planning ahead for the growth of the entire job market, whereas Austin took somewhat of a Boulder, Co stance and decided they really don't need to work on infrastructure to aid growing the population. That's a whole other story though.
That's sadly very true but its not from a lack of trying. The city tried a couple of years ago to float a light rail proposal that was put up to a vote but shot down by citizens. Most of the infrastructure is still very road-focused. Although I'm hoping that the many downtown approach will easy the traffic somewhat (Domain, Mueller etc.)
Yeah its basically a parking lot at daytime during most of the week. Mopac is a lot better, I'm guessing because it has less truck traffic. I consider myself very lucky though since with a developer salary I can choose to live wherever I want and have flexible hours to avoid the worst parts.
> Does the Dallas story (low demand for devs, high availability of devs) line up with the experience of those here familiar with the market? Based on just looking at job postings, it didn't seem like there was a lack of demand for devs in that area, but I know that postings don't necessarily equate to high demand.
That was my experience when I ejected 18 months ago. Yes, there are a lot of postings. There are also a lot of shitty or picky companies.
> Also if that's true, do alot of the Dallas devs in need of work go to Austin? Or is that not done for some reason?
Not sure. I tried, but I could hardly get interviews down there, either.
Speaking purely from anecdotal evidence: Dallas certainly does have a lot of good jobs, but its not a liberal enclave like Austin. In some ways its more representative of Texas than Austin, which is definitely more like SF (except maybe the rents, which are definitely far more reasonable).
But Dallas has its own charms for sure. You can get really huge houses close to work for pretty cheap, the school systems are pretty great. The big Software firms (Google, Apple, Facebook etc.) are all moving to Austin though.
Dallas as a whole is for sure not a liberal enclave like Austin, however, the downtown/uptown/deep ellum bubbles of Dallas most certainly are. If you are coming from SF/CA, Colorado, Austin even, and you are in that part of Dallas, you will feel at home. The "Texas" stereotypes you have for sure heard about are pretty absent here.
For affordable housing, you can definitely get it, but if you want something close to downtown/uptown, it's a good step up. Also, the housing market here is ridiculous, one of the fastest growing markets in the nation. You will be paying above ask in a bidding war for anything you find. And you better be ready to put your money down, no contingency, sometimes before you get to even walk in the front door to see the house. It's that insane.
Interested in hearing the answer to this since I've had several companies from Dallas reaching out to me (I'm in Houston). I'm considering the relo but I'd prefer to not be moving again in a few years
Just moved my startup(www.getpei.co) from Los Angeles to Austin for an accelerator and can attest that software is sprawling! There are tons of great meetups supported by a ton of great innovative companies and with amazing events like SXSW (which will be our first) they environment is growing for engineers.
The reason I see this happening is because I believe with the roots of live music in Austin, there is a lot of creativity growing around here. When you mix it with effective development and adventurous culture, there is a great mixture of support systems to really build a software-based community.
Weirdly enough, my company is actually looking for a CMO now in the area, and we are finding it difficult to fill the position at an early stage company. So shameless plug, if you are in the area ( which I am finding a lot of Austin is HN), please feel free to reach out!
1. There is a failure to clearly specify what is meant by a given city. In this case, linkedin is at least kind enough to use the word "region". For "SF Bay Area", would that count Davis or Santa Cruz? For "Boston", would that count Chelmsford or Braintree? For "Washington D.C.", would that count Arlington or Annapolis Junction or Ballston or Dulles?
2. Anything below a certain size is not considered. If the big city has 54321 people fighting over 12345 jobs, while the small city has 123 people considering 321 jobs, going for the big city might not be so wise. This is before even adjusting for quality-of-life problems in cities.
For anyone looking for engineering positions in Austin, we are hiring at athenahealth ($ATHN). Senior-level positions in C#/.NET (+Azure), JAVA (+AWS), ReactJS/Native, iOS/Android.
Our Austin office is where a lot of R&D happens and there is a huge push to re-platform into micro services. athenahealth also owns Epocrates, a very popular mobile app used by more than 600K providers. That product team is based here, too.
Great place to work, beautiful office, downtown location with parking included, and a very mission-driven culture. Find me on LinkedIn or my Gmail in my HN profile. Happy to connect you with the hiring managers.
Seriously the drug use is pretty Rampant in Denver too. Not a turn off to all, but given the places I did work, you wouldn't expect it. Texas is so much better. The job I have is so much better, My coworkers are actually nerdy. Honestly. Sorry I just have to laugh at the idea that desert is a great place to look for work.
Here in Austin we can't even find android devs to apply. Denver I interviewed maybe 20 and found most to be just okay.