Portland is one of my favorite American cities. But if you're freely choosing somewhere to relocate to, I would think Seattle would be a tough competitor. It's nearby, has a bigger tech community, and has Washington's zero state income tax versus Oregon with the highest state income tax in the country at 11% for the top bracket.
When I was out in California, my company closed up our Santa Cruz office very suddenly.
A large contingent of people working there decided to move to just outside of Portland (Vancouver Washington) mainly because of the fact that by living in Washington you wouldn't pay any income tax, and by adjoining Portland, you could do all your shopping and avoid paying sales tax.
I opted not to relocate there with everyone else (it seemed silly to move somewhere just for tax reasons), but I imagine there are at least a fair number of people who use that scenario.
I think it is kind of silly to move somewhere just for tax reasons. I've spent nearly my whole career so far in relatively higher tax jurisdictions, but it's typically way more than worth it for what you get with the location. And for example I'd much rather live and work in the Pearl district of Portland than in Vancouver, Washington. But it seems like Seattle versus Portland is anomalously competitive.
With average traffic/distance and ~25mpg, it takes about $6 for a round trip from Vancouver, WA to Portland, OR. Which would save you ~$4 on a $100 item.
However, for some reason, lots of people in general were fleeing CA at the peak of housing bubble.
That was a "~" too far for HN. It's a 19.8 mile round trip, and gas was $3.71 yesterday in Vancouver, Washington, so making the trip in your 25 mpg vehicle would cost $2.94 in gas.
The Pearl District in Portland is nice and all but I'll never understand why you would want an office there, especially if you aren't a business that requires a trendy, hip image. A web-based business with no front door is going to pay a TON per square foot just to be downtown.
Is it the address they are after? The need to impress investors? It's already expensive enough to run a business, why burden yourself and your employees with a completely irrelevant location?
I do live and work here and love the city, I just don't get the appeal of working downtown. The company I currently work for left downtown before I joined and I'm glad they did. Not many people live downtown and getting to and from work every day would take longer for me (and many others) than it does now. Not to mention an added cost of parking or taking mass transit.
We asked our employees here, and even the ones who live on the East Side enjoy working in the Pearl. Plus, we like that there are other startups in this neighborhood, PIE (the incubator), etc. etc.
It's already here. Our company (AppFog) was founded in Portland and we just secured our Series B. We have offices in the same building as JanRain and yet another co-working space. In Old Town or the Pearl District, there are startups on every other block.
Interestingly, our biggest challenge right now is recruiting. If you're considering moving to Portland, we could use you.
There's definitely increased activity, but I think it falls short of being a scene (I say this as someone looking on from Hillsboro). I guess I'm looking for a larger VC to set up shop, rather than visit from somewhere else.
OT, and completely uninformed question: how's the scene in recruiting straight from Portland State University?
(I ask out of idle curiosity, because I once had the opportunity to do an MS in CS there a while (6 years) back, and I passed up because I couldn't take on the financial burden - please drop me an email if you feel this might threadjack the discussion here.)
We haven't tried recruiting from PSU ourselves, but we probably should. Galois (http://corp.galois.com/) recruits students from PSU's CS program. My colleagues from PSU's mathematics dept have also been a pleasure to work with.
Yup, Galois is the most obvious direct recruiter from PSU, but there are others, to be sure, but not enough. I've got a few friends in the MS and PHd programs at PSU and they certainly don't have people beating down their doors, I'm sorry to say. It would certainly be good to see more direct recruiting and internship opportunities opening up.
Umm... Eugene is not Portland. You should come on up to a rubypdx meetings some time -- really great people and almost always interesting topics. http://pdxruby.org/
You're just trolling right ? Portland is a great place. And its good even though Oregon (in general) has had an unemployment problem for longer than most other states.
Probably the rampant unemployment, underemployment, low paying jobs if you can actually get one, and the huge homeless population which is more a reflection on how abysmal the city and local economy is than those unfortunate enough to be homeless themselves. Don't forget the nonstop rain and suicide hotline numbers posted on every bridge or parking garage higher than 20 feet, since nearly everyone is cranked out on antidepressants or else they'd be leaping into the Willamette river with cement shoes on too.
When I lived there and had visitors from out of the area, everyone commented on how depressing the place was. Not a good place to live or raise a family. If you like the Pacific Northwest, go with Seattle, yes the weather is still crap but the city is vibrant, has real jobs with real wages, and you can actually build a career there.
Wow, can't believe all of the negative comments on here towards Portland. My wife and I moved here a couple months ago and can't stop thinking about how much we love the place. We were just joking last night about how if we listened to people on the internet, we would have never made such a great move out of fear we would be depressed and living in the streets. We've had a completely opposite experience from the points listed here:
1) Impossible to find a job? My wife just applied to 3 companies and got offers from all 3 within one month of us getting here, all paying equal or higher to her previous jobs -- and we knew literally zero people when we arrived.
2) Filthy and disgusting? Sorry, I've seen some disgusting shit (literally) on the streets in some of the other cities mentioned in this thread. People have tattoos and piercings? I'm surprised that bothers anyone. Who cares.
3) Rain? Sure, it rains. Not many cities have perfect weather. Where I just moved from (Austin), it has been 105 degrees for 70 days straight. That can be pretty depressing.
Since we've been here, we've gone to O'Reilly's OSCon, went to multiple beer festivals, went to multiple block parties, went to the coast, visited Cannon Beach, Rockaway Beach, Cape Meares, went to the Columbia River Gorge, saw many waterfalls, saw the Shins perform live in a small bar, also Phife from A Tribe Called Quest. Frequently visit amazing coffee houses and breweries, went to a neighborhood picnic, ate at a jillion food carts for less than $5, worked at a free coworking space downtown, walked/jogged/hiked in many beautiful parks, and browsed badass bookstores.
I like the food better, the public transportation is better, the rent is affordable, it is bike friendly, there are beautiful flowers in the neighborhood, the people are chill.
I moved to Portland from California in 2001. I love it here, and can't imagine ever moving back. That being said, the big adjustment for me (and for many folks moving from further south) isn't the rain. It's that the days are so much shorter in the wintertime, and even when the sun is technically up, you can't see it through the cloud cover.
It's easy to love Portland in the summer (and, having grown up in Sacramento with weeks of temperatures over 110 degrees, I was very surprised to discover that I actually like summer now). The real test is whether you still love it in the middle of your second or third winter. ;>
Another Sactown => PDX refugee here. Pretty much love the weather year round. But I loved Sacramento's rainy winters, so I'm likely wired that way. It's taken a while to adjust to the idea that summer is a season where you actually go outside instead of hiding indoors with a/c.
I resonate with the "filthy and dilapidated" comment though. I blew off Portland as a dirty industrial town for a lot of years before moving here. It still has a lot of that heritage, and if you're from a place that constantly tears things down and rebuilds, you likely won't understand it here.
I lived in Portland for four years and loved it there. The city is wonderful for so many reasons, especially if you like good food and great beer.
However, I hate to let you down, but if you've only been there a couple months, you have not yet lived through a Portland winter. It's certainly not unbearable, but the weather does take a drastic turn for the depressing.
In any case, I'd like to move back there eventually. From the cities I've been in, Minneapolis and Portland are about tied for the nicest.
I'm a life-long Portlander, and absolutely love the place. I'm glad that you and your wife have been having a good time thus far- it can indeed be a great place to live and work. It sounds like you guys have been getting to experience a lot of my favorite things about the region, which is great to hear- many newcomers don't get out as much as you guys are. That said, however, Pakourama raises some valid points, and I think it's incorrect to dismiss them out of hand.
Portland does indeed have an extremely high homeless population, and there are real structural issue with how the city deals with that problem. Depending on where and how you live, it's possible to ignore that problem, or to not fully appreciate how bad it is, but believe me: it's real. It's also gotten a lot worse in recent years due to the economy as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our local VAs have brought on extra social workers to try and deal specifically with homeless vets, and the various homeless services agencies have been expanding, as well.
We also have inflated unemployment, mostly because the city's such a nice place to live that lots of people move here without a job, or, when they lose their job, don't leave. If you've got technical skills, it's a great time and place to find a job- but if you don't, there are way fewer options than it might seem, and it is can be an extremely competitive job scene. It's like that everywhere, I know, but for whatever reason it's especially bad in Portland. I am (honestly, no sarcasm) thrilled for your wife that she had such an easy time finding a job; not knowing anything about her, I can say that if she's not a techie than hers is the first such story I've heard from a new arrival in Portland over the last few years. Far, far, far more common is the "well, I picked up a few hours here, and a few hours there, but I can't find anything full-time, and I've been looking for six months, etc. etc."
Regarding the weather- winters in Portland affect everybody differently. SAD is indeed endemic; my GP blames it on wide-spread vitamin D deficiency, but who knows. At least in the 1990s, Portland did have an above-normal level of teen suicide. I don't think the rain here is any worse than Seattle, and from what I've heard the SAD issue is about the same up there as it is down here. But it's a real thing... you'll know what I'm talking about when we get a freak-occurrence sunny day in Feburary (typically, it will have been raining or at least completely overcast for three or four months by that point) and suddenly everybody around you seems ten times happier.
Anyway, welcome to Portland, and like I said, I'm glad you're enjoying it. I love it, myself, and feel like the positives vastly outweigh the negatives. But it's important to have a complete and balanced view of one's city, and Portland definitely has room for improvement.
Thanks, appreciate the thoughtful reply. Didn't mean to paint it as perfect or dismiss the city's problems, just trying to balance out the very negative posts that started in this thread with a positive perspective. My wife works in health care and brought with her good experience, so things have worked out well. Before we made the move, we read many negative posts on city-data.com forums about the downsides, so I am aware that there are many issues -- it's just that those posts almost scared us out of a move that has turned out to be a great decision, so I feel the need to throw some positive job stories into the mix.
The place was filthy and dilapidated. Seeing people covered in tattoos and piercings gets old and tiresome for some reason. It's just not the place for me, but awesome for those who fit in there.
Man, if Portland was anything like Plano, I'd leave here faster than anyone. I grew up in Austin with cousins in Plano and while it was certainly clean, it was the most soulless, character-less place I have EVER been. Thank FSM we're not anything remotely like that place.
So let me get his straight, you are comparing Plano, a town with a population of roughly 250,000 people, that was named the wealthiest city in America (per your own link), with Portland.
I might as well compare it to my tiny hometown in orange county, of course I'm going to reach a ridiculous conclusion about it's employment level and cleanliness (and tattoo level?) I think you would hate SF btw.
No, I'm comparing it with Plano and surrounding areas, which is larger than Portland. There are aspects of SF I like, I've been. The problem is the housing costs. It's just much cheaper to live in the DFW area. And not only is it cheaper, you can buy a new home that's much larger compared to what one could buy in Portland or SF. Even in Seattle, the houses here are very old, small, and expensive. Some people like that style of home, it's just not me. What I do like about Portland, SF, and Seattle is the geek culture.
I guarantee that if you like what Plano represents, you'll hate what Portland represents, and that the feeling is mutual. But you'd probably like Lake Oswego or Beaverton. I'm surprised you like Seattle, for that matter, unless you're actually living in the suburbs and not telling us.
I really love Portland, and I'm sure it's a great new home for BankSimple, but I am a little shocked that a company would move to a city where literally everyone in the company would have to be relocated. I've seen companies move to SF or NY before because of VC raised, but this is almost the opposite!
1) they wanted everyone to be in once place
2) they're hiring a lot of people, especially customer service.
Customer service in NYC or SF would be prohibitively expensive, so if they want to be all in one place, they would have to move anyway. This is no different than Zappos being in Las Vegas or Groupon being in Chicago (I think Zappos relocated). Personnel costs when you have 50 employees per hacker become a big deal.
Portland has a ton of skilled, educated people and high unemployment, so they're going to get a lot of bank for their buck.
Portland, from all accounts, is beginning to look like a city-sized SOMA startup scene, and the city's personality certainly jives with the common stereotype of the hipster startup developer.
Vegas is certainly ideally situated for a place that wants a big warehouse, but I wonder how well Zappos are attracting tech talent. I can imagine Vegas might be a fun place to be, or it might be hell. I'd try it out for a year. It's certainly very different.
Probably worth putting who you are in your profile, at least one of your other answers has been killed, possibly because it wasn't obvious you were answering for the company and it's a one worder:
We don't have to relocate "literally everyone" in the company. We have myself (one of the co-founders), three engineers, and a project manager here in Portland already. A couple of other people planned on moving for personal reasons in the next few months.
Still, there are a number of people in the company who are uprooting their lives in NYC, SF, and elsewhere, and we really appreciate that they were willing to do so.
Before we were at PIE, our company worked at cafes. I guess you could say we scaled from our home offices to a multi-tenant office to dedicated office space.
Cute. But, actually, if my co-founders had decided to move the company to another city entirely, I would have happily moved. Portland happens to be a good fit for what we're doing, particular from a customer service hiring perspective.
In fact, you made me wonder: how the hell do you determine that one city is better than another for "customer service hiring"? I don't imagine there's indexes for these sorts of things.
Or education programmes for customer service people, at all. Or a single "best profile", even?
Maybe it's simple experience and observation? Do those still count anymore? Does everything have to be written up in BusinessWeek before it becomes assertable?
From anecdotal experience, it does seem like Portland is drawing a lot of talented folks. It is definitely a "bike to work, complain at city hall and drink obscure beer" crowd, but is that such a bad thing?
We're not a bank, but we view our customers as being the people who would use traditional banks. We partner with banks, and those banks are located around the country.
That said, our processing technology partner, TxVia, is located in NYC, as are several of our investors.
I don't know your plans, but if banks (or Fiserv or FIS) are the ones paying you for a license to your front-end, then they are your customers. End users are the banks' customers, and in whatever contractual agreements you end up signing, based on my experience, the banks and their regulators will make absolutely sure you know that.
Also, you should change your name now before the regulators make you. Consumers think that financial companies with "bank" in their names are banks.
Nope. I won't. 500,000 people live in this area. We're the cultural center of the state. We aren't small potatoes. Face it, Portland, OR is bigger, but it certainly doesn't dwarf Portland, ME.
Moscow, Russia has 11 million people. Moscow, Idaho has 23,000. I know you're probably being flippant, but I hardly think that's a fair analogy.
It's actually a very exit-unfriendly state from a tax standpoint. Very high state income-tax rate and capital gains are taxed at your state income level as well.
However, it's pretty sweet to pay the price listed at stores and restaurants.
This is not true. There is a history of technology entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley going back (at least) 60 years. There are a great many pieces of human infrastructure that exist in SF that do not exist in Portland from the largest collection of technology VCs & Angels in the world, to lawyers that understand corporate structure and stock options, to bankers that understand IPOs, and of course thousands and thousands of engineers.
Even though I guess I'm supposed to be the one sticking up for Portland in these comments, I have to agree with this. I don't think Portland or any other city is likely to be the next Silicon Valley. I also don't think that's a bad thing for some types of businesses.
I'm kind of a foodie, and our project manager is definitely a foodie. He runs this site that lists some great places to eat and drink if you're only in a city for a couple days. Here are his picks for Portland: http://noms.in/portland
I've seen very few places here that categorize themselves as gastropubs. There are a lot of breweries in Portland, and some of them have their own restaurants/pubs. But's that's a relatively small percentage of the diverse dining options here.
the portland area has some amazing restaurants, such as: Beast, Pok Pok, Nostrana, Le Pigeon, and Gruner. Those are all beard nominees. Not one of them is a gastropub. Have you not been to any of the above? If not, I'd suggest you get to "some real restaurants"
Beard nominees are expensive. All up scale restaurants are "real restaurants". But beneath them (while still well above fast food) are mid level restaurants. In Portland this market niche seems almost entirely dedicated to "gastro" pubs. The very fact that they are called "gastro pubs" suggest people are aware there is something lacking in mid and low end (but not fast food) restaurants.
But that's not what you said. You stated "but seriously gastro-pubs are silly, get some real restaurants people". I provided several excellent counterexamples.
You then state "All up scale restaurants are "real restaurants"". That's poor logic. Portland has real restaurants. Some of them are expensive.
You then state mid level restaurants in portland are almost entirely dedicated to gastro pubs. Do you want me to debunk that as well? Very well, I'd suggest you look at:
del inti (italian)
gilda's (italian)
doc (italian)
a cena (italian)
de carli (technically beaverton)
st. jack
vindalho
meriwether's
oba
etc.
Portland has a vibrant restaurant scene full of "real restaurants". It's not just high end. If you want more than gastropubs, seek out more than gastropubs.
To be fair, I wasn't that much a fan of the gastropubs in portland. A couple were ok (ned ludd and the victory were the only two i remember), but i've never been a big fan of gastropubs anyways....
Portland? WTF? Why? It's a hipster dump. Rains 9 months a year, has 12% perpetual unemployment, plus the USA's largest resident homeless population, which isn't terribly shocking given the awful job market. But, if you can actually get a job the salary will be circa 1994 and yet the property and rent prices are in fantasy land stuck in the 2006 housing bubble. Oh, plus the city has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. Great place to live if you like being wet, underemployed, and depressed.
Glad I got out of that dump, if you want to have a future you need to be in Boston, NYC, or The Valley.
Real estate prices are definitely down from 2006; maybe not as much percentage-wise as California, but the equivalent house here still costs much less than one in Boston, NYC, or The Valley.
The rain can get you down sometimes but summers are fantastic (and dry). I feel I have a high quality of life here without having to sit in a car for 12% or more of my waking hours. Not that I don't get annoyed by something or another here from time to time. Every city has its own benefits & burdens.
Visit Pittsburgh someday. We have some hollow suburbia but we don't have the typical endless suburban sprawl. We do have a fair amount of hipsters though, just a warning.
