San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Rents have shot up by ~50% since 2008, office space is following the same trend, and competition for (even mediocre) programmers is intense. Worse, a lot of the cultural diversity that made San Francisco interesting has been driven out by the high prices -- it's a much more homogenous city than a few years ago, where mom-and-pop shops and other neighborhood amenities have been replaced by places selling $10 "artisinal grilled cheese" sandwiches and "mixology" bars where you can buy your choice of $15 cocktail. SF feels increasingly like a city for wealthy yuppies, because...it is a city for wealthy yuppies. Living here on anything less than a good engineer's salary is becoming a tall order.
Which brings us to a very important point for all the young programmer dudes: when you all crowd into the same tiny city and bid up the rents into the stratosphere, your available dating pool shrinks to a puddle (yet another consequence of the skewed gender balance in tech. sigh.) All the pour-over coffee in the world doesn't make you happy when you can't get a date, and those artisan cocktails are far less cute when you're jockeying for position at the bar in a crowded room full of guys. If you're a 20-something male programmer looking for a date in SF, I feel badly for you. Hope you like BART, because you're going to Oakland (if you're lucky!)
Once upon a time it was only a mildly bad decision to locate your startup in San Francisco, but you could justify it with the appeal of a diverse, cosmopolitan city. Right now, there's a very real financial penalty (rents, salaries, taxes), and the cultural benefits are waning. There are a lot of great cities in the US, and on the internet, you can work from anywhere. Try those instead.
So what you're saying is San Francisco is now highly optimized for homosexuals? (part of why I want to move there from Boston, to be honest)
note: im straight
If you are an employed (white?) guy who can't get a date in SF (not to be confused with Palo Alto), you need to get out more, or just get on okC. There's a whole lot more to the City than yuppie bars in SOMA or the Marina.
I've heard varied reports on dating. Some friends are very successful, others no so much. This seems to be more a personal situation then dependent on the culture of the city as a whole. You just gotta get on that tinders or cupes or grindr if that's your thing and play the game just like any other city.
It's a fun city, but it's increasingly become a fantasy for rich white people.
Like parent says lots of "lifestyle" shops; I'm going to arrange a store so it looks like my home but everything is for sale. It's all bullshit though because the rent for these lifestyle shops must far outweigh what they're bringing in. It's hobby businesses for the wives of rich white C-level execs. I don't know I just made that last part up, but you get the picture.
I doubt that there'll be that dramatic a change because there are too many actors, Detroit was more vulnerable because it depended on such a small number of anchor employers
The tech industry doesn't really have such requirements. People are comfortable with working remotely and using video conferencing; more importantly, the tech industry doesn't have regulatory requirements like the financial industry does that require people to conduct business from a physical office.
Whether SF is sustainable or not, well, I lean towards not, but in the long-term it looks pretty bad socioeconomically. Personally, I have no desire to live in the bay area and look for work elsewhere.
Signed: Former hedge fund employee and New Yorker.
but there are too many of these (how odd that sentence sounds).
More than that. Rents for apartments have doubled in the last year in Oakland, says my friend who owns a lot of diverse properties in the East Bay, so you know it's much worse in SF.
Women don't live in SF?
Or are you just talking about women in tech? They're rare everywhere.
I don't know if that's true, but I think that's what the commenter was saying.
If you're 30+ things are less bad just because of the basic demographic realities of single life. But my friends from NYC still laugh at the dating scene here.
For startups, it's currently an ideal place IMO. There are quality people here doing whatever it takes to help people get a business started. Money? They can help. Space? They can help. Introductions? They can help. A low cost of living gives you plenty of time to figure things out. Throw in a ton of good restaurants, a decent art/music scene, a couple of good universities and you have something worth serious consideration. Biggest downsides are weather (winters are chilly) and you need a car.
Especially if you have a family. I rented a four bedroom house in a great neighborhood in Sacramento that was a bike ride from Midtown for $2900/mo. We ended up buying a bigger house in the same neighborhood for even less per month. No commute, food is cheap, etc. The cost savings are enormous, and I'm sure it's more expensive than St. Louis...
Yep:
http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/sacramento-ca/st.-l...
The trick outside the Bay Area, if you are consult-strapping, is keeping the contracts coming in. Probably better in areas like St. Louis than in Sac.
(And I have fiber coming into my house and can get 1 Gbps.)
So I'm doubtful that it would be easier to keep the contracts coming in while in St. Louis.
We have a fairly good startup scene (though obviously nothing on SF) and a large number of more traditional corporate employers of programmers like Express Scripts, Monsanto, Wells Fargo, Scottrade, Ameren, Charter, Anheuser Busch, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. There is also an exceptionally active biotechnology scene here.
13% cheaper housing here according to the same site.
I'm renting a 4/3 2500 sq ft house on an 8k sq ft lot 3 blocks away from an 8/10 greatschools.org K-8 (I have 3 kids.) for $1600/mo.
I telecommute to my Bay Area job.
In a typical midwestern city, anyone who can afford it commutes to the central business district by car. They live, shop, and eat in the suburbs. They use their cars for all of these activities.
The C.B.D. ends up deserted at night when the office workers leave. Any successful night-time businesses have parking, in order to attract suburban customers. There is little reason for anyone to be on foot.
The reddit thread mentions very specific districts where you find pedestrians. I imagine those areas have excellent central parking, and deliberately-created "walkable" areas for browsing. A great development pattern to bring life back to deserted downtowns.
And, as I was walking about at rush hour, I expected to see a lot of car traffic, but the streets were practically empty of autos. The nearby freeway across the river was quite busy, however. I think the reddit thread had good things to say about the former decline of the city center.
I was one of the people who mentioned some of those places in that thread. There are such places in St. Louis, but Strange Loop (which I also attended) is not held near any of them. Most of the stretch talked about in that thread, from 9th and Market up to Union Station, is kind of a pedestrian wasteland (for lots of reasons related to density, failed urban renewal projects, and so on). Nobody in St. Louis goes to Union Station anymore; it's a complete failure of a project. But, likewise, nobody here would use it as any sort of example in a conversation about foot traffic in the city.
Everything in the UK is so grotesquely skewed towards London when it comes to modern tech. Some other cities aren't entirely horrible (Manchester, say) and some have a technically progressive air going for them (Brighton) but it sounds like even St Louis as a relatively small US city has more going for it in one place than most top tier British cities that aren't London (say Leeds, Nottingham, or Birmingham).
> As of the 2010 census, the population was 319,294, and a 2012 estimate put the population at 318,172,[6] making it the 58th-largest U.S. city in 2012. The metropolitan St. Louis area, known as Greater St. Louis (CSA), is the 19th-largest metropolitan area in the United States with a population of 2,900,605.
St. Louis City is entirely independent from the surrounding St. Louis County and covers an exceptionally small area by the standards of most big cities (~66 sq/mi). Some similar cities have addressed this by merging with their surrounding county (Indianapolis, for example, which is about 368 sq/mi), but even those that haven't (e.g. Kansas City) still cover a much larger portion of their region (316 sq/mi for KC).
It's very easy to exit the city-proper in St. Louis and not feel at all as though you've left the core of the city. The inner-ring suburbs are quite urban and, while the distinction between them and the City itself is the source of much local posturing, it's a misleading delineation if you're trying to figure out just how big St. Louis really is.
(As a side note, this way of dividing up the region also has a significant effect on the City's infamous crime statistics, for reasons that should be pretty obvious with a little bit of thought. That is to say, if you define almost any city as only its most inner core, then you're going to end up with much higher crime rates than if you include its suburbs. And if you're comparing one city that doesn't include its suburbs with cities that predominantly do, then, well, you get the idea.)
In other words, the larger MSA/CSA numbers more accurately reflect the relative size of both St. Louis's urban core and the surrounding region.
That being said, there are parts that are rundown and sketchy. There are huge problems with drugs like methamphetamine outside of the 'normal' urban drug issues that most cities have. In addition, from what I understand, the Missouri tax system is terrible (property tax on many large items you own like cars in addition to your homestead tax and sales tax on top of income tax).
The city is super segregated. When you cross Delmar, the population shifts from very wealthy and white to poor and black.
Luckily, if you're in the missouri section of saint louis, you'd have to stumble pretty badly to accidentally cross the Mississippi and end up there.
Right now it is 10:00 in SF and 53 degrees.
I think weather plays a large part in why people like to live in the Bay Area. Many refer to the high cost of living here as the "sun tax." As I sit in my office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I can't even fathom living in St. Louis.
During the summer it is not uncommon to have over 100 days of 100F+.
You do not want to be outside during that heat.
Oh, plus we've had a drought for years and years that has dried up most of our lakes to a shadow of their former sizes.
I'm not saying it's not a factor, but I think there are more important ones.
I maybe an exception to the stereotypical software engineer, but I work best around motivated people rather than people who are laid back all the time.
Out of politeness I'll leave you beer, etc. comments alone.
As for the other statements, come to a hackathon or a Startup Weekend and see how motivated we really are.
We are going back this summer (I live in New England but go home to Southern Illinois every summer for a visit).
America has a lot of great cities. They all don't have the technical talent level that San Francisco has, but good culture is not monopolized in San Francisco.
St. Louis (and much of the midwest/south) also has a very high obesity rate compared to SF.
I would visit Memphis as a kid living in Mississippi. I could at least say that Memphis was better than anywhere in Mississippi :)
There is a very active Meetup group for entrepreneurs here - StartLouis. Please check us out!
If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, then you'd probably be better off just moving your startup to Oakland and maintaining a connection to the Bay Area startup network. Or, if it does, move to a more modern, safer city in the South that still has a low cost of living without many of the economic problems of the rust belt cities (and better weather to boot!).
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-dangerous-cities-americ...
St. Louis is currently listed as 3rd highest violent crime rate in the country (Detroit is #1, but in years past St. Louis edged out Detroit for murder rate). I'm not saying don't move there, but just be aware that north St. Louis is a pretty bad area and the economy doesn't seem to have improved much, despite the massive investments into the central urban attractions like the Arch, Union Station, and the things listed in the OP.
Perhaps the main problem with St. Louis is the division between the actual city of St. Louis and the various suburban towns that surround it. In 1970, the city boasted a population of nearly one million, and just 3-4 years later it was down to about half that. City residents blame the population implosion on school busing which led to white flight. The burbs like Clayton, Webster Groves, etc., in St. Louis County ("the County" as people call it) had their own tax base and when affluent people flocked there, the city lost a substantial portion of its tax revenue.
Overall, I really liked St. Louis but the crime rates are pretty bad. The weather in the summer is also bad -- very hot and humid. You will need AC, and it doesn't come by default with every dwelling. If it were me, I'd be looking at Phoenix or Tucson, because of their proximity to southern California and of course the weather, but then I spent some time in Arizona and fell in love with the place. Cost of living is probably comparable if not cheaper than St. Louis as well. Can't speak for the start-up community in Phoenix, however; there's not much of one that I heard of, as of 2010 or so.
If you're worried about the violent crime rate, don't move to the south. Texas, Florida, and Louisiana are always near the top for violent crime rate. The states with the lowest murder rates are in the north, generally. You want to move someplace like Vermont or Oregon.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c...
St. Louis has taken its share of knocks over the years like many Midwestern cities, but those crime statistics are not indicative of the normal experience here.
http://gothamist.com/2010/05/03/patti_smith_suggests_finding...
"New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."
Good luck with your startup!
actually, i already did that, years ago.
SF is a pain in the ass to live in, even if you have lots of money.
it's not perfect but it's good for me. i have an amazing view from both home and the office, i can walk OR drive OR cab to get food/coffee/clothes/entertainment, and have access to the rest of LA if i choose to leave the sm/westside bubble.
Recently, I went back to visit for the first time in over 10 years. I was amazed that there was a night life, and families would go out to eat in the city! It seems to be turning it self around well, but I am sure there are more hurdles to make it even safer.
In addition to it being easier to get funding [1], it sounds like St. Louis is really looking to be a good spot for a startup in the US.
It's inversely proportional to your personal rent? Your company has no revenue, no employees, no office, no servers, no contractors, no contracts, no other costs in general? Is that really a company?
I don't think you're moving a business, I think you're just moving.
I have a tech business in St. Louis. I love living in St. Louis and will never live anywhere else.
A few comments:
It is extremely hard to hire\find good programmers. I've posted job ads on Dice and Craigslist, and received 2 or 3 replies. I don't think I received ONE reply from Dice. The replies you get are people that can't answer the most basic questions.
You will HAVE to use a recruiting firm that will try to poach the talent and you have to search out resumes. It will cost at least $50k for a programmer that can't even answer the most basic questions in an interview. Fortunately, I got very lucky and found one of the most kick-ass people on the planet.
In regards to East. St Louis, as other people mentioned, it is NOT in Missouri, it's in ILLINOIS. The only reason people in St Louis go to East St Louis is because the bars stop serving at 1:30 or 2AM. If you want to drink past that, everyone goes to East St. Louis. Either that, or to go to strip clubs. Given that, if it's a Friday or Saturday night, you'll see a bunch of other St Louisians over in East St Louis at Pops, or the Oz, or at strip clubs. It is definitely a bad area though. I've been to East St Louis many times and have never felt threatened.
The bad part of St Louis is North County. Unless you live there, the only reason to go there is for drugs. I've never been there, and as far as I know, you can't drink past 2AM there, and they don't have any strip clubs. I've driven by there many times, and I knew someone that worked in North County for years and never had any issues. It's like any other city, there are parts you don't want to venture through by yourself, late at night.
Unfortunately, I think most of the crime in both E St Louis, and North county, is local, black on black crime.
Downtown is somewhat desolate. If you want to live downtown, there are some cool areas like Soulard which is making a come back. Most people live in West County, South County, St Charles county, etc. I would never live downtown. Most of the action is outside of downtown. There are good sized office buildings in Clayton, West County, etc.
In the county areas, there are cops all over the place(which is a good thing). I've lived in a lot of places, and the bottom line is it's one of the safest places I've lived.
I read HN all the time, but don't know much about this start-up. Welcome to St. Louis though! As others mentioned, there are a lot of talented people here.
To take an example where I have better data, people have commented on the vibrant and growing startup scene in Santiago, Chile. Maybe it is vibrant and growing, but the total number of people professionally employed in software development (devs, testers, manager, product managers, etc.) is only about 2000.
Split that 2000 into 50 different companies (and 50 tech companies would often be held up as proof of viability for the location), eliminate the high percentage with the wrong skill set for your company, and how likely is it, really, that you could build an engineering team of 20 and sustain that in the face of attrition over time?
St. Louis isn't going to have more than a few thousand of the same sort of people. Most of them are also not products of local universities with strong engineering programs relevant to most of the kinds of software behind most tech startups these days. The supply therefore is not growing at a steady rate or being replenished.
75 startups in one location? What happens, when the half that make it past the founder stage need to hire 3-4 people? Not only are there only a few available devs of any skill level available for each, but they all have dozens of options on the same block.
For startups, a higher percentage of engineers in an area employed by companies of 50-people or less actually makes hiring harder. In such a situation, they all have options of more or less equal value, and you have little to distinguish yourself from the others. The fact that SV has Google, Yahoo, Mcsft, etc. alongside a ton of mid-sized and smaller companies makes it easier.
If you've ever tried to recruit for a startup, think about how often you bring up ownership, autonomy, "startup culture," etc. as selling points? How well does that work in an environment, when nearly everyone already has that where they are?
This is just a quick set of reflections, but the overall point I hope is made. The truth is that staffing your startup is one of the most brutal forms of competition your business will experience. You're one of many, many players competing for an extremely scarce resource that very few founders even know how to identify, qualify, or retain, once they've got them.
If you ever plan on building your company beyond a small team of friends and local referrals, you should be doing everything you can to stack the deck in your favor. The Bering Sea may be an expensive and crowded area for gold prospecting, but you're still more likely to find gold there than in Lake Michigan.
St. Louis has two strong universities: Washington University[1], ranked 14th in the nation, and St. Louis University, ranked 101st [2]. Washington University has the 7th ranked SAT score average, ahead of Stanford, Columbia, Duke, et. al. [3]
While a huge chunk of these kids move away from St. Louis (including myself), the challenge of getting talent to St. Louis isn't as hard when you have a strong U. in the area as a default. There are also great champions of the St. Louis scene, like Jim McKelvey, cofounder of Square and Wash U alum.
[1] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... [2] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/complete-ranking-of-americas-... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McKelvey
If a startup has a cool mission, a cool tech stack, -and- operates in an area with a low cost of living, low congestion, and plenty of culture, art, and restaurant variety/quality, it can compete quite nicely with yet another Silicon Valley company when it comes to attracting talent.
Relocation can work well for more established companies (and even then, two body problems often kill that), but it doesn't make sense at all for a semi-risky startup.
One day I'll unlock that superpower.
