It obviously has a completely different social, ethnic and economic diversity than SF does as well as being far far more cost effective. It also has real BBQ as well as being not that far from Miami (my favorite city but not good to live/work in).

I would recommend Boston (where I currently live) except that it has brutal weather, fairly caustic hospitality to new comers and is not that much cheaper. Its great for college kids but no so much for early 30 somethings hoping to own something some day.

If your are going to live in or near Boston I highly recommend Waltham, MA where I currently live. Waltham is not as cool as parts of Boston or Cambridge but its a hell of lot cheaper. Waltham has so many things to do. I can fish on the Charles in the afternoon, walk down the river and watch a movie in the local theater and then hit up the massive bar and restaurant scene all in the same city with out hopping on the T or car.

Few other south eastern cities to add to OPs list:

Charlotte isn't bad either and has a similar if less developed vibe, lot of financial business around there. People seem split on whether they like it or Raleigh more, seems like a toss up.

For a smaller city Chatanooga has a lot going for it.

OpenTable has offices here. There are a few startups and a decent number of consultancies.

Come visit!

With the cost and ease of flights to SF you can get a lot of the benefit of your business being there if your founders and fundraisers are ready to fly out and hustle.

Not to mention the food scene is amazing especially for the price.

Don't write Atlanta off because of misconceptions about what it is like living in the south.

How come you consider Miami not a good city to live/work in? I live here and I'm genuinely curious.

On the other hand, it does have Chicken Kitchen and Samurai, effectively canceling out all of those other items IMO.

Is this your own set of insecurities being projected on others? I never got that sense in SV...

My wife and I were in tech that whole time (me: SCO, Sun, SGI, Cobalt, briefly at Google, then BitMover).

Neither of us enjoy going to Mountain View any more. It's the worst parts of a big city (crowded, traffic, parking, expensive housing) and the worst part of the suburbs.

And there is a lot of snobbery about where you work and what you do, that's been there since the first day I got there (and I'm part of the problem, I was all snotty about the fact that I worked in Sun's kernel group; at the time that was the top of the heap, at least in my eyes).

Personally, I'm happier up in the mountains. Can still get to SF in about 1h15m, get to the valley in about 30m but I live among redwoods, falcons, etc.

If you work on kernel development, be as snooty as you want.

These days, those jobs that require real expertise and in-depth knowledge aren't nearly as heavily compensated as your run-of-the-mill Rails dev Stackoverflow pasting position.

The networking scene is for networking, so of course it's filled with careerists. The coffeeshop scene is largely the same (though occasionally you meet one of the local students), since "let's grab coffee" is Silicon Valley shorthand for "I would like to assess your usefulness to my future career goals."

But there are many other scenes in the Bay Area. My wife ran the local Peace Corps alumni chapter for a while, so I end up hanging out with a lot of very interesting do-gooder international development types. I still get together for pizza with a bunch of my old Googler friends, even though I left almost 2 years ago. There are plenty of very authentic startup founder types around too, ones who aren't in it for a quick buck but because it's what they do and have been doing for 15-20 years now.

Going from being surrounded by models all day to living in Man Jose is quite the difference. Wish I could still be there.

now i just want to go live in the woods with my dog.

I do, and your description only fits a small minority of those I meet when I actually go out.

Does this mean you give different (mostly untrue) answers to this?

On second thought, you can of course observe how others are treated.

I can confirm that when I worked at Google, people had a lot more interest in talking about my work. That was in part because of the Google Glamour, but I'd guess it's even more because it's a company people have actually heard of and used themselves.

I am not the OP, but I share his/her views. To the above point, maybe?

I used to perceive NY/Wall-Street as all about image, and SF/tech-scene to be much more down-to-earth and friendly. I don't find that anymore. Taking Caltrain, I see people wearing Google/FB/Twitter/XXX t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, bags etc. Company badges are displayed prominently, and its easy to recognize companies from the badge. YC t-shirts, sweatshirts are also common. If not company t-shirts, then I see tons of MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Harvard t-shirts, sweatshirts etc. I rarely saw any company or university branded apparel in NYC.

The prominence of these in SV seems like a way to showcase an elite status.

I take Caltrain regularly (I live on Peninsula and work in SF FiDi) and I see these people, but nothing out of ordinary. There're, I believe, 8000 working in FB Menlo Park office. That's a lot of people. And the industry is heated up, so these people are more visible because the temperature is higher. So what, it happened before (2001) and will happen again :-)

My main worry is that searches for local dev jobs turn up almost nothing. I don't think I could handle a 2+ hour commute daily. Any advice?

Honestly, a bigger problem for a lot of transplants to Sacramento is allergens. We're right at the tip of the central valley and lots of stuff will bloom in the spring and fall and lots of people will be red faced and sneezing for a week or two.

We're considering having to move somewhere else that's less allergenic because of the allergy situation. I start sneezing and blowing my nose a lot in April or May, but it's manageable. My wife and kids have much more severe allergy and asthma issues. My wife pretty much has to remain indoors all the time between March and October because her allergies to various pollens have become so severe and Sacramento has a lot of pollen in the air. She doesn't really like that and wants to live somewhere else where she can go outside without having breathing issues.

I sure love the nice Delta breezes we get in the evenings. It cools everything down and summer evenings are very pleasant. Unfortunately, we're unable to open the house up because of the breathing issues it causes among my family members. Very frustrating.

The Bay Area would be better for allergies, but it's so astronomically expensive that I want to stay far away. Sure I'd probably double my salary, but my cost of living would probably go up by 4x or 5x. No thank you.

My wife loves Seattle because she can breathe so much better there so maybe we'll end up there someday.

If you click my profile, you can email me and I hope you do. I wouldn't mind discussing the tech scene here, the city, etc, although I may end up working remotely.

they are cheap, safe and close to bay area.

I am originally from Chicago, and when I went to school in Mpls it was possibly some of the most mild winters in history compared to Chicago. That said, they can be absolutely brutal.

As someone who is fed up with ridiculous extreme winter, I'll pay the sunshine tax to remain in the Bay Area as long as I can. Likewise, the sun out here did wonders for my mood in the winter. These things are not as easy to place a dollar amount on as rent, but that doesn't mean they don't have value.

Certain suburbs are pretty yuppie, but definitely not all. Really depends on your living needs.

Source: MN native and moved once per year for 10 years straight.

We wanted to move into S. Minneapolis but couldn't justify the high cost. Instead we ended up in the (far) suburbs.

Which part of south minneapolis are you talking about? There is a big difference between southeast and southwest.

I once played a hockey team from the suburbs when I was younger and one of the players had a confederate flag on their helmet and called one of our black players a nigger while on the ice. I am not making this up. Furthermore, all of our minneaplis cops are from the suburbs and they routinely harass minority people and think it's ok to shoot them in the face in north minneapolis.

I really think the minneapolis suburbs are elitist and racist. My source is that I have lived here for over 20 years and now work in the shitty elitist suburbs that I hate. I get a firsthand dosage of the institutionalized racism and elitism every day of my life.

My experience of the suburbs is different from yours.

That said, it's still a great place to live. Some suburbs suck, others are great. Depends on how you want to live.

It's called the land of thousand lakes for a reason. And the city planners were brilliant, every lake in the city has a green belt around it, nobody was allowed to buy land that was on the lake. Greenbelt, with a walk/bike lane, more green, then the road, then the houses. It's awesome.

On the border with Canada is the Quetico Provincial Park which is where you will start your love affair with canoe camping. If you are like me and my dad, it won't end there, there are too many people, so you just keep pushing farther and farther north into Ontario for your annual canoe trip. I could fill a book with my love for that area, it's one huge granite shield that was scraped into a series of lakes. Imagine waking up in the morning, the lake is covered in fog, Dad's asleep, you slip the canoe into the water and fog and paddle towards the sounds of the loons singing. The canoe parts the fog which closes around you. You just paddle into it, it's silent except for the sound of the water dripping off your paddle and the loons. Paddle some more, the sense of peacefulness is so hard to explain but so powerful. The sun comes up, melts the fog, you can see that Dad is awake so back you go for breakfast.

I adore the mountains, when I moved to the Bay Area I was a contractor for the first year for Sun and they didn't want me to bill more than 40 hours/week. I busted ass, pulled 80 hour weeks, then took the next week and both weekends off. Spent 29 days skiing and spent 6 weeks in the Sierras backpacking. Best year of my life. I still have fonder memories of canoeing with my Dad in Canada.

You could do a lot worse than living there. Hell, Prince is from there, I saw him at First Avenue in 1986 or 87 I think.

All the worry about cold is over rated. You end up helping other people because it's a little crazy to live through that so when their car is in the ditch you get out and help push it out and everyone is laughing at how crazy it is but everyone is happy. Cool place.

Meetup.com has a good list, too.

Been here 5 years now, and it's the best place I've lived

I ran some numbers comparing Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis, and found the descending housing prices and ascending state income taxes more or less cancelled each other out in my situation. Of course everyone's circumstances are a little different, so this may not be true for everyone.

Seattle definitely seemed to have the best opportunities at the big players in tech outside of SF/SV.

My company-sponsored doctor gave me a bottle full of two _GRAM_ pills of Vitamin D, and she said she has had to give it to most of her patients.

In the dead thick of the winter, it gets dark at 3 PM (after a 10 AM sunrise), and the rain literally never stops. When it's not raining, it's misting, and it will go weeks on end with everlasting gray skies and no sunshine.

Pittsburgh, comparatively speaking, was better because it snows off-and-on instead of constantly rains, and in January, the sun starts to come out again with blue skies, whereas Seattle stays dark, gray, and gloomy until summer.

Pittsburgh also wasn't as high up of a latitude either so the sunset would never happen earlier than 4 PM, instead of 3 PM.

It doesn't take that many people to make a place amazing. Make amazing where you are.

The max recommended daily dose is 10000 IU (but people have taken higher doses).

2 grams would be 80 million IU.

Seattle weather isn't that bad. During June through September it's the best in the country. Just gray in the winters, doesn't really rain much.

Some other cons. Negligible start up scene. The Indian and Chinese food stinks. Really homogenous for a coastal city. No NBA team.

DTF is overpriced. Facing East is standard Taiwanese which means tons of sugar.

I used to drive to Lynwood and Federal Way for Korean, but my girlfriend doesn't really eat meat so we don't eat Korean as much.

The only good Indian restaurants are in Renton.

La Bu La in Bellevue is also good.

Dough Zone is worth trying if you like DTF, but not as good imo.

Source: Lived there for 2 years.

The seafood is obviously a lot better.

Could you make some recommendations for chinese, ramen (not a daily special) and burgers (other than lil woodies)?

there's no good ramen in seattle, people may claim otherwise but they don't know. I'm not too fond of lil woodys either.

Seattle food is not unlike seattle itself: overpriced mediocrity. For whatever reason many in seattle are convinced that all of their mediocre offerings are "the best", I think this may be due to the fact that seattle is the first big city some of these people have lived in. Top Pot donuts is a good example of this, $2 each and would be unacceptable anywhere on the east coast, but seattlites are convinced they are the best donuts in the world.

I wouldn't be surprised if Atlanta has much better food overall

I am completely losing faith in yelp in Seattle.

Sometimes, I miss those dreary storm-grey clouds of the Pacific NW. "Nice weather" is subjective, and it isn't necessarily "sunny". I have a friend who burns badly in any kind of sunlight -- Seattle is where she makes her home.

Flagstaff, AZ, oddly, is like a miniature Seattle, though the tech scene isn't as happening. My family and I are planning to move there this summer.

Seattle doesn't really freeze and it stays below the temperature that you have to buy an AC unit. It rarely deals with substantial flooding and it rarely rains enough that a simple rain coat/umbrella won't deal with.

By the way unfortunately the tech scene being "less happening" is a bit of an understatement. I welcome it for the interim though.

NAU is not known for engineering or tech though. I walked around campus to get a good feel for it. The engineering building is a single building that covers all the engineering disciplines, including computer science.

What is big at NAU is forestry science. That makes sense. A lot of people come out there to get training to work as forest rangers, or in forest management. The forestry science building is larger than engineering building (in contrast with University of Washington, with that computer science edifice dedicated to Paul Allen). When I walk down the halls and look at the research projects of students, if there were computational projects, they were all geared towards forest management of one kind or another.

Northern Arizona is beautiful. The high desert there gives you a much better appreciation of this contrast between desolation and abundance. July was what the locals call "monsoon season". Both Sedona and Phoenix get hit by that during July -- but because of the presence of the San Francisco peaks, and being up around 7000 feet, you get alpine biomes around Flagstaff.

Add in the hipster culture and outdoorsy folks in Flagstaff, the people reminds me a lot of Seattle -- minus the passionate activism I see fired up in Seattle folks.

I live in a bungalow with a ton of natural light; I imagine I would feel differently about the weather if I had fewer windows and/or no garden.

Please don't come here.

Actually no, too many people at PAX too, stay away. Sasquash will eat you.

Our key reasons for coming here:

    1. Cost of living.
    2. No state income tax.
    3. Laid-back culture.
    4. Warm weather.*

* I feel required to add a qualifier to this bullet point, since so many people cite 100°F summer days as a reason to not move here. I grew up in Miami, where it's humid to a fault, and 80° days there are about as uncomfortable as 100°+ in Austin. The heat really isn't that bad.

"Vienna named world's top city for quality of life" - http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/23/vienna-named...

By the way, Berlin or Cologne has a great startup / hacker scene, and they are very friendly.

The beer and wurst is also excellent.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)

not sure about austria, but germany and spain give you a residence permit even as a freelancer / entrepreneur, so these are good options to look into for folks working remotely or working for themselves (freelancers, consultants, startup founders, ...) and the process is pretty straightforward

might be good non-US destinations for these looking for something different

I've lived for 8 years in Austria and a bit over 2 now in Germany. The feeling I get was that the Austrian officials were constantly looking for ways to make it as hard as possible for me to stay in the country and the Germans for ways to make it easier.

You also have the option to work in Germany at a real job, and thereafter apply for a freelancer visa. I have heard that this is a lot easier than going straight for the freelancer visa.

Primary benefits:

- Strong pipeline of new engineering talent from schools like UCSD.

- Lots of talented senior engineers working in the chip fab, defense, and life science industries who are looking to make a lateral move to startups.

- Great quality of life with 30-40% reduction in COL vs SF. This translates to reduced burn for companies and more disposable income for employees.

- Fantastic weather, beaches, urban life, outdoors, great public schools, etc.

- It's SoCal so public transportation is limited, but with lots of highways there's reasonably low traffic (I'm looking at you Austin and LA), and you can get most places in the county within 30 minutes.

Contrary to popular opinion there's also a ton of VC investment in the area, and San Diego ranks ahead of Beijing, London, Austin, Seattle, Toronto, and Paris in terms of total dollars invested. [1]

[1] http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/01/the-rise-of-global-start...

I'm not in San Diego right now, but I've started projects and a company there, and hired dozens of engineers from the talent pool. If you have are a decent employer, you can have your pick of the litter . . . of bright, experienced folks who are aggressively 9-5.

I'm not knocking 9-5ers. They're in the right place: San Diego is truly paradise, and I support work/life balance more than I used to.

But the consistent high quality of life, and the large portion of talented people who live there for it, will always suppress San Diego's entrepreneurial aspirations.

Of course, if you are OK with less-than-leading-edge projects, or you are aggressively seeking stability, I can't recommend it enough.

Not sure if that's normal, but San Diego sounds a lot cheaper than 30% (it is a nice townhouse though)

Is that normal for the area?

Have to have housemates in Palo Alto - otherwise you end up living by yourself in an old run down apartment for $2800 a month. You can find cheaper if you're willing to live in a tiny studio for ~$2300 or if you're willing to live outside of Palo Alto itself (maybe as low as $1800 for a studio in East Palo Alto).

If you share a house with 4 other roommates and choose the tiniest room you may be able to get $1200 a month.

As a bonus, if you live in Palo Alto you don't have to worry about your roommates finding girlfriends and moving out - since that'll be pretty unlikely.

Love that. It's actually one of the things I was wondering about. At that high amount, you really stand to lose if a room is vacant.

All in all I can't imagine living/working anywhere better.

Our state government is a corrupt mess, but so are a lot of state governments. I tend to think the city governments are pretty good. Cambridge and Boston both seem to have their shit together right now.

Holy shit.

A very nice home in DFW can go for ~$300k.

(I'm not being pejorative)

I was able to buy a house, on a lake, forest on all sides of me and I spent less than $200,000 to buy the house, move, furnish a new place and remodel a bit to my liking.

No startup scene here. For me, it was the slower pace of life, peace and quiet and more time to work on my personal goals.

What's the job market near you like? How long is the average commute? Those are both major considerations for a lot of folks.

(PS I'm not criticizing you--major props for living your dream. I just think that people read comments like this without giving these considerations much thought)

I'm in the Syracuse area (smack in the middle of the state), and the local scene is reasonably unimpressive (I work remotely, as do most of the folks I know in the area). There is a bit of a tech job market 45 minutes east of here in Rome, but that's mostly DoD related work (Rome Labs, etc). An hour and a half south is Ithaca, which is a 'hippy' college-town (Cornell, Ithaca College, and TC3), and has a bit of a startup scene, but again, nothing huge... I'd certainly want to have something lined up before moving.

I wish the area the best and its a great place to live in for the 3 months of good weather they have :)

Why I'd never go back: 1. Snow, 2. Taxes

Why I'd go back: 1. Insanely cheap 2. Hot plates

Thus is life.

Con #2 is largely offset by Pro #1.

2. Taxes totally suck. I am at $6,000 a year.

3. It is cheap.

4. Hot plates? I don't follow this :-)

http://rocwiki.org/Garbage_Plates

If I have to one day find a job. I am looking at at least a 45 minute commute to the nearest major city. If I can't find a programming job there, it would be a 2 hour commute in the other direction..

There are a few universities that are close that might have something as well....

We have a low cost of living, affordable housing (I bought my first house at 21 and I wasn't rich) and the weather is amazing.

If you ever check out Phoenix, I'm happy to show you around.

Edit: It's even an easy transition. We also call this the valley (of the sun)!

I've spent time in Phoenix. It's the land of enormous roads and parking lots. It's almost impossible to get anywhere without a car. Traffic is horrendous all the time. There is barely a functioning downtown. The urban layout isn't conducive to the density necessary to really sustain light rail. Yes, I know about the line that goes from downtown to the airport to Tempe, and yes, it is better than nothing.

The cost of living is low, but people prefer Austin to Phoenix or Dallas because Austin has some there, there. It is striking to me how much Phoenix does not resemble the ideal startup town Paul Graham describes in "Can you buy a Silicon Valley?" (http://www.paulgraham.com/maybe.html):

It will be easier in proportion to how much your town resembles San Francisco. Do you have good weather? Do people live downtown, or have they abandoned the center for the suburbs? Would the city be described as "hip" and "tolerant," or as reflecting "traditional values?" Are there good universities nearby? Are there walkable neighborhoods? Would nerds feel at home? If you answered yes to all these questions, you might be able not only to pull off this scheme, but to do it for less than a million per startup.

Phoenix reflects "traditional values," as the horrific, racist elected sherrif demonstrates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio, and it has few walkable neighborhoods.

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2016/02/an...

Unfortunately the Maricopa County sheriff is often in the headlines, but those of us who live here can speak to the diversity and inclusiveness. The business community strongly supports this, particularly through initiatives such as ONE Community: http://www.onecommunity.co/arizona/phoenix/news/openaz-unity...

I don't know where you got this, I live in Phoenix metro (Scottsdale) and traffic is generally great except for rush hour, and even then it's just I-10 that is really bad. It's true that stuff is fairly sprawled, but I can generally get _anywhere_ within 45 minutes, and the stuff I actually want to get to in less than 30. Plus the airport is right in the middle instead of out in the middle of nowhere, so it's much more accessible too.

As for the rest of your comment, well, OK then.

Phoenix is not where I want to live. The tech scene is kinda anemic -- and granted, I'm used to Atlanta and Seattle.

Traffic isn't bad all the time, just the times when you want to go anywhere. Much of the city doesn't have good drainage, kinda poetic that the flow of traffic in Phoenix resembles the flooding that happens during monsoon season.

Like Atlanta, in Phoenix, you need a car. Unlike Atlanta, in Phoenix you also need A/C. It offends my sensibilities to see so much swimming pools and even an indoor ice rink in the middle of a desert. I don't generally like how the city is laid out, overbuilt, and I don't like the overall culture. (Though there are some really neat places here and there).

As for the GP comment about "traditional values", that can be true for parts of the valley, but others are more progressive (eg. Tempe), and the Sheriff makes national news with his tough-guy persona but I don't think that should deter anyone of any background (I'm hispanic) from considering Phoenix as a good place in which to make a decent living.

Our cost of living is extremely attractive and the quality of life is amazing. The geographic diversity is incredible - you can drive two hours north to ski, there are several large natural lakes just outside the metro area, and the hiking is amazing. I work in a high-rise downtown and can be hiking Camelback Mountain or the Phoenix Mountain Preserve in 10 minutes. The downtown areas in Phoenix, Tempe and Scottsdale have great restaurant and nightlife scenes all with slightly different styles.

The startup ecosystem here is growing rapidly and is known specifically for its inclusiveness. There are many resources for entrepreneurs, including the country's second largest business plan competition ($3 million in grants awarded 2x per year) and a pitch competition that now awards $300,000 per year to the top four finalists. Additional info available here: http://www.azcommerce.com/start-up

I started my company just over a year ago, the investor scene in Arizona does currently suck unless you are in Real Estate or SAAS; but there are some large players doing their best to support Hardware startups. The article "Arizona breeds workhorses" is a great way to sum the ecosystem up, if you have the tenacity and thick skin to forge forward you will find Arizona a fantastic place to start a company.

Arizona has felt like home since day 1.

Of course, I wish the tech scene was better. But I'm making an active effort to seek out the local dev meetups and contribute to the community.

I wouldn't say there's a lot of tech jobs, but there are some, and if you're working remote, it's a great place with a lot of 24/7 life.

I would love to live there again if I could find a decent remote job! Can't wait to leave SF again...

I'd suggest some of the remote work sites, angel list, etc. The remote work concept is slowly catching on with more companies.

Re: weather, the winters are actually somewhat warm (although we had a real cold snap in December), but I haven't gone through a summer yet. In general, you move from one air conditioned building to another until the sun goes down. I'm curious how my first summer will go!

Weather is nice and there are plenty of firms moving to the area. The only downside is that traffic is increasing, but there is enough sprawl it is not a huge issue. Startups are coming out of major universities and office space and co-work spaces abound. Aside from the hot months and increasing traffic, it is pretty great so far.

I lived in the RDU area for nearly 30 years. I grew up there. I didn't realize what I was missing until I moved to California (Orange County). Of course it's more expensive, but I think you get what you pay for in this case. Costal living is expensive for a reason.

That information is only important if the individual has kids, and is within 2+ years of going to either UNC or NCState. (Also, assumes that they'll get in)

Whenever I even halfway get the itch to move and propose it to the family, I am heartily disabused of the notion.

Luckily, I'm in Atlanta which is a fairly good all-around place to be: weather isn't too extreme, healthy tech scene, convenient to some good schools, good in-state lottery-funded scholarships, etc.

Toronto and Vancouver, despite having some pluses, unfortunately can't be recommended to anyone that cares about cost of housing.

If you don't know French some opportunities are not at your reach

There aren't a lot of positions, depending on the area, also the market seem to put outsiders in 2nd place (basically anyone that's not from Quebec)

Most companies I've worked with in Montreal, english is often the main language in the office (almost to a fault) and companies are STARVED for talent. It's very, very hard to hire people in Montreal, there's a lot of competition (like pretty much anywhere else). Outsiders are very welcomed if they bring well needed help.

However, salaries are very low, taxes incredibly high and while real estate is affordable, don't expect to live close to the city or to have a lot of money in your pocket at the end of the day.

Most tech people working in the US likely will be shocked at how little tech workers are paid in most of the rest of the world, including Canada. But not everything is about absolute salary.

Montreal, imo, provides a well-balanced quality of life for a wide range of demographics. Good schools and govt-provided health care for those with families. Bilingualism for the culturally inclined. Nearby mountains and wilderness for nature lovers. Unrivalled nightlife for the younger who want to party it up. I don't know of another place that can offer all of those things together.

I mean don't get me wrong, Montreal is a nice city to live, the culture is great, the people are nice, a lot of great restaurants and what not. While I don't think healthcare is that great, if you don't have insurance, it is enticing to think about.

However, from somebody coming out of SF, they do have to expect their in pocket income after expenses to drop significantly, on the range of 50 to 60% and up. In this case, salary is a VERY important consideration.

To put this in perspective though, you can rent a reasonable 2BR for 800-1000, even not that far from the city center. GF and I rent a 1BR a bit farther, but still close enough that she can bike to her downtown work in the summer, for a fair amount less than that.

"and companies are STARVED for talent. It's very, very hard to hire people in Montreal"

Yadda, yadda, yadda

I spent a couple of months sending CVs around Montreal (this was after having Canadian experience) to no avail, just to have several ones take me seriously in Toronto and actually make an offer

So yeah, they're starved by their own doing.

(And I do speak French actually)

The city is lovely, very cultural, I love it, but the fact that it's an Island makes real-estate issues "interesting". Worse taxi-drivers on the planet though (but now there's Uber)

Vancouver is more expensive, and Toronto has more traffic, from what I've heard, but the low salaries in MTL sound like a downer.

Income distribution is somewhat more even in Canada, so maybe you don't make as much but the people in 'lower' positions make more, relatively. This is actually a feature, not a bug - the city is safe, there is still a middle class, public services work (relatively) well and you can walk around as a tech person without worrying about a person randomly punching you.

Second is that you will not have to worry about, and save for, large costs like health care and schooling. People in the US seem to go way outside of their budget just in order to get into a district with good public schools, or, pay an obscene amount for private schooling. That kind of adds up over 18 years. Private schools in Canada exist, but by no means are you disadvantaged in life if you grow up in an average middle class area and go to a public school.

One more question- how's the climate? Montreal is north of Chicago and New York, after all...

I heard last winter was much colder on average, though I was lucky anough to spend that time on the west coast. Coming from a few other places in Quebec, Montreal so far strikes me as having milder winter. Probably harsher than NY, though.

Atlanta has a lot of opportunity, including in the tech space. It's no Seattle or SF, obviously, but it's a bit of a job oasis on the south. I also personally feel like the city has about 5x the culture and character of either Seattle or SF (where my wife lived for awhile), but that's probably a preference on type of culture than absolute value of culture.

I'll miss all the craft brews of the PNW, but can't wait to be back near the heartland of BBQ.

My main gripes with the metro Atlanta area were:

-The traffic, which was the worst of any major city I've ever spent time in, and yes, I've spent time in L.A., New York, and D.C.

-Bland environment/lack of character. What I mean by this is that you're basically in a landlocked area that is best known for launching Coca-Cola, Chick-fil-a, and CNN. Not much unusual stuff to do in the area, so boredom can come on quickly.

-Full of transplants. For every person I knew who grew up in the area, I knew at least four that were from other states. This made the culture very boring and support for sports teams, etc. non-existent.

To be clear, there are many good things about Atlanta- it's close to Nashville which is awesome, and you're a short flight to a lot of great places. Also, the cost of living is fantastic for a major city. There are a number of beautiful lakes and lots of greenery in the area as well. But all things considered, it can get pretty boring.

On lack of character: we can just agree to disagree on that. I find the culture and character amazing, though it doesn't beat my favorite character-rich cities of New Orleans and Charleston, SC. I never wanted for things to do, and we went camping in the Appalachians regularly.

Full of transplants: that's going to be true of most recommendations on this list. Seattle, SF, Portland, Bend, Nashville, Denver, Chicago, and on and on. Not a negative for me, as I'm a transplant myself (I'm certainly never moving back to Kansas).

Now Atlanta is a good city and the pay/cost of living is very good. There's a pretty solid tech scene, but not a great startup environment IMO.

The west coast has more variety of beer, and that will be a big loss. However, for my taste buds I'll take many of the restaurants in Atlanta over SF or Seattle most days (though I'll miss the Sushi and Korean food greatly). Maybe that means I'm not a super healthy person.

And I definitely disagree on the people. We found people in Atlanta to be much friendlier and more approachable than in Seattle (and my wife felt similarly for SF). I also feel there's more opportunity to form relationships with people of diverse backgrounds. I've found Seattle somewhat colder and much more uniform from a people personality perspective, though we've certainly made great friends here.

The scenery is worse as PNW is world class, but the weather is way better. On balance it is a wash for me, but since I'm a biker and not a snow sports person I'm looking forward to a flatter environment in general.

For what it's worth, I've never spent more than a weekend in Portland. Also for what it's worth, we're moving back for a job offer received, we're not fleeing this part of the country. But the housing prices would have pushed us out eventually (which is insane given our life situation, frankly).

People are quieter and more stand-off-ish in the PNW, but I find once I get talking to people I tend to get along. Then again, I'm a PNW stereotype (bearded, liberal, outdoorsy, tech-y) so it's a more congruent lifestyle for me here. I didn't get along with people in S.F. as much, and found people to be quite negative / not friendly.

I will agree on diversity and understand why you would prefer Atlanta's weather, but I'm a snowboarder and hate the summers there.

I miss some of the southern food, but wouldn't trade it for the west coast's New American / Mexican / beer.

Are you not taking advantage of the Buford corridor?

- Compared to the downtown area of other cities, Atlanta is a ghost town. You don't see a whole lot of people walking around the city like you do in San Francisco, and to be honest, the downtown area has always been a little boring to me. Most people live in the suburbs, commute into the city in the morning, and then commute back out in the evening. The traffic is absolutely horrible. MARTA (the public transportation system) leaves a lot to be desired. The one time I used it, I was harassed and followed around by people asking for money, so I haven't used it again.

- Not a great food culture. At least when I lived there, the city didn't have any Michelin star restaurants. The south is known for BBQ, but in my opinion the surrounding states have much tastier BBQ.

- Not many tech companies. I think this situation is improving, but it's improving a little too slowly for my liking.

To its credit, Atlanta does have some great qualities:

- Has the world's busiest airport. Europe isn't nearly as far away as it is from the west coast.

- Has all four seasons (if you like that).

- Has the largest number of trees of any major city in the US. Atlanta residents go to extremes to keep the forestry alive; cutting down one tree can cost thousands of dollars.

- Georgia Tech. Lots of research opportunities with GTRI.

- Much lower cost of living (and housing) than other major cities

- Great high schools in the metro area

- Short distance to other interesting cities: Nashville, Birmingham, Huntsville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Charlotte, and Raleigh.

I think there's a lot of tech jobs available, but not the same level of tech-specific org.'s, you are correct. However, the opportunities in the tech space there started ballooning in the mid-naughts according to the labor and job data work we did at the tech company I worked for at the same (about this time I was transferred to the tech HQ of my company, which was in Atlanta). It's even easy for me to move back because my tech consulting firm that I work for has an office there.

I don't disagree on downtowns, but it doesn't bother me (and it's not that much worse than Seattle, frankly). All of the fun stuff is in all of the ITP neighborhoods (with a few OTP).

Bend has already been "discovered". However, there is still affordable housing and you can't beat the weather, beer scene and the outdoors here.

If you want to check it out, you can stay in my awesome big house when we are traveling: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/7497695

Hopefully, Bend will get right some of the things that SV and SF get so very, very wrong in terms of NIMBYism that is causing people to move away.

I get that the great outdoors is really the thing to do in Bend, but our children are very small (1 and 3), and we want to be outdoorsie but have to work our way up to it. So I don't know how Bend would work for us. I'm curious how others deal with small kids there.

We used to take our daughter rodelling (sledding) in Austria, for instance. We had lots of fun!

It's certainly more isolated - for some people, that's a big negative. I'm mostly ok with it. Being constantly rained on and seeing gray skies is a far larger drawback.

NYC is a great place to live (have done so), and I would pick it over Seattle (at least for a year or two) if you don't have kids, are young, and can afford it.

Chicago is great, less tech than NYC/Seattle, so I would set up a job before moving.

I would skip Denver, but I haven't spent as much time there. The city just felt uninteresting. I liked Boulder, but it is a small town.

I feel like you might just not know where to look. We have a very thriving tech scene and it's growing very fast. 4,045 job opening as of now. http://portlandtech.org/

http://calagator.org/ is a great resource for meetups, talks, round-tables, sessions, etc.

[1] https://pdx-startups-slack.herokuapp.com/

Tech jobs are very easy to come by and the tech scene in Dallas has been steadily growing over the last 7+ years.

I would consider Dallas over Austin, just from the sheer growth and potential Dallas has. The tech/startup scene has exploded over the last 3 years. No state income tax, low cost of living. Dallas also has the highest growth percentage in the nation, it was 2nd behind Houston but the oil market killed that real quick, so Dallas is on top. Literally all of my friends are from Seattle, Denver, California, D.C., NYC...etc. You would not be alone moving here...everyone else it too.

Also the central location is super nice, I'm a ~3 hours or less flight from almost anywhere in the Continental US.

I guess I also should have noted in my first comment, prior to Dallas, we lived in Boston. There was a fair amount of tech jobs there, but nothing really "new". The tech scene never really seemed very strong either. Unless, maybe, you were part of the student tech scene with MIT/Cambridge.

I could pull up hundreds of articles on how Austin is in the top 1-5 in growth in the USA so I'm not sure where you're getting this statement from. Not to mention the growth is blatantly obvious if you live here and deal with traffic, house shopping, or getting brunch on a Sunday.

I've been here 6 years and it feels like a completely different city now. But I do live and work downtown.

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/moneybox/2015/0...

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/17/248757580/even-an-85-mph-highw...

I think our failure if any will be due to poor public transportation and traffic.

Dallas is not based on Oil/Banking. Tech is leading (depending on where you look) [0].

Then there are the lists of companies with headquarters in Dallas [1]. And the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex [2].

Those lists also don't include State Farm (8,000 employees) [3] or Toyota [4].

I don't see much of the same very-large "diversification" happening in the Austin area. But, again, that's just based on what I read. I don't actually "see" anything in Austin, as I don't live there. I have watched the new State Farm towers in Dallas (Richardson) being built from my house 3 miles away.

[0] http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-South/Dallas-Economy....

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/List_of_companies_in_Dallas

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_in_Dallas/Ft...

[3] http://www.telecomcorridor.com/latest-news/state-farm-coo-ne...

[4] http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/28/autos/toyota-moves-headquart...

Edit: formatting

Houston is in a pretty scary position right now. When I drive through it, it's absolutely insane how much development they've had over the last 5 years that are Oil/Energy companies that you can see right off the highway.

Maybe you don't consider F500 the market, not sure that I do, but those companies do employ a huge number of people. Austin only has HQs for 2, Dell (44) and Whole Foods (264) but Austin is a very different market. People absolutely loathe large chains here.

2 Exxon Mobil (Irving) * 12 AT&T (Dallas) 112 American Airlines Group (Fort Worth) 124 Fluor Corporation (Irving) 130 Kimberly-Clark (Irving) 143 HollyFrontier (Dallas) * 146 J.C. Penney (Plano) 175 Texas Instruments (Dallas) 203 Dean Foods (Dallas) 205 Southwest Airlines (Dallas) 262 GameStop (Grapevine) 266 Tenet Healthcare (Dallas) 292 Energy Future Holdings (Dallas) * 351 Energy Transfer Equity (Dallas) * 361 Commercial Metals (Irving) 341 Affiliated Computer Services (Dallas) 388 Celanese (Dallas) 404 Dr Pepper Snapple Group (Plano) 473 Atmos Energy (Dallas) * 492 RadioShack (Fort Worth) 493 Wistron (McKinney)

Houston

4 Phillips 66 45 ConocoPhillips 64 Enterprise Products Partners 65 Sysco 77 Plains All American Pipeline 106 Halliburton 135 Baker Hughes 136 Fluor 144 National Oilwell Varco 167 Apache 174 Marathon Oil 200 Waste Management 233 EOG Resources 265 Kinder Morgan 310 Cameron International 334 KBR 343 Group 1 Automotive 344 CenterPoint Energy 381 Enbridge Energy Partners 397 Quanta Services 417 FMC Technologies 435 Targa Resources 451 MRC Global 459 Calpine 475 Spectra Energy Not known Buckeye Partners Not known Noble Energy Not known PVF Resources LLC

edit: Damn, the formatting is terrible. Sorry.

I've contemplated this before, and make a point to check out jobs in other cities when I'm job hunting, but it's hard to ignore the local recruiters who just send me local jobs out of the blue so I always end up staying where I am. I'm currently in LA, and am somewhat interested in relocating to somewhere with a similar/warmer climate, lower cost of housing, equivalent/better outdoor recreation opportunities, and not-awful startup/software scene. I've considered Denver, SLC, Bend, and Phoenix pretty strongly, but haven't found anything that lines up yet.

If you know at least one person in your new city, it can really clear a lot of the early confusion. (I once thought about posting a Craigslist ad offering a free dinner to anyone who'd also come and talk to me about the city...) And Meetups are a great way to find people who share your interests, whether it's tech or a certain sport or even just going out to movies....