Study Says Massachusetts Best State For Technology 507
Anonymous Coward writes "The Milken Institute (site is cnn/msnbc/wapo dotted it seems) has released a study claiming MA is the best state for technology while Texas has dropped to 26th. I'm curious on everyone's thoughts on this. It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space. I just don't see (in my job hunting) very many start-up or expansion in the states they list at the top.
Lots more at Google News."
Reader footh adds a link to a PDF of the results.
Everyone Knows (Score:5, Funny)
Good point (Score:3, Insightful)
If we are talking about cost of living being the determining factor like the poster of the article says, well then India is the best place along with China.
In the USA Texas would not be the best place because theres places with an even lower cost of living and plenty of open space.
The best state for tech is the state with the best economy, most educated population and the most money. That state happens to be Mass due to MIT, Harvard, Tufts, and the many other great schools here of course we'd have the adv
Re:Good point (Score:5, Insightful)
U.T. Austin.
When businesses move to a place the cost of living eventually goes up
The cost of living in Austin did skyrocket during the boom. Then the bust hit and many of the companies moving/starting here went bust. Cost of living then came down some.
Re:Good point (Score:2)
Re:Good point (Score:3, Informative)
So? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh (Score:3, Informative)
That's because you are stupid.
Massachusets has less people in it than Houston does.
Texas has Austin, Houston, and Dallas/Ft Worth, which all have significant tech corridors producing a hell of a lot more than video games.
The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, and Rice University are all superb schools, and depending on what subject you are talking about, everybit as good in some cases as your vaunted ivy league schools (oops
Re:Uh (Score:5, Informative)
I liked your post until I saw what I quoted in bold-faced type. Rice is in fact NOT a member of the Ivy League. Goddamnit, people, look up your facts before you call someone *else* stupid. Here are the 8 Ivy League schools, in no particular fcsking order.
Harvard
Dartmouth
Cornell
Pennsylvania
Yale
Columbia
Brown
Princeton
Don't argue with me if you don't believe this -- just read the fucking history. The term "Ivy League" has been distorted from it's original(and still valid, in the right circles) meaning. I say this partially because I go to Dartmouth. I'm not a snob, though -- I think that there are several non-Ivy League schools that are better than Dartmouth...MIT, Berkeley, and Rice come to mind. I think all three of those(maybe only two, I can't remember) are ranked higher in Mathematics, which is my area.
~jared
Re:The USA has less people than India. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good point (Score:3, Informative)
9th in engineering grad programs.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/e ng/brief/engrank_brief.php
I know that is top 10 in Computer Science
Re:Good point (Score:3, Informative)
Also of is Rice University (in Houston), a top 20 school in CS.
Re:Good point (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good point (Score:3, Informative)
But, Adolph, because you asked, there are several good schools in Texas. Yes, certainly, UT-Austin, which is strong in almost any area you choose, but also Texas A&M is no slouch, especially for agrigcultural technology (don't laugh - people gotta eat). Rice University is also a nationally recognized school (including it's computer science program)
Re:Good point (Score:3, Funny)
Every computer guy in Austin has a job, for sure : waiting tables downtown at the nice resturants. May I suggest a nice Merlot to go with your
Good thing about Arizona (Score:5, Funny)
(It's a joke, I lived there for 16 years.)
Good thing about... (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing about Massachusetts:
MIT.
Bad thing about Massachusetts:
Ben Affleck & Matt Damon.
Re:Good thing about... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good thing about... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good thing about Arizona (Score:2)
Re:Good thing about Arizona (Score:2)
It's all relative. The cost of living here in Arizona is a lot lower than, say, the cost of living in Connecticut... or California's Silicon Valley area...
I paid $75,000 for a house in downtown Phoenix, in the Coronado neighborhood. By the standards of many other communities across America, that's downright cheap. My car taxes are not outrageous, even though I own a "
Re:Good thing about Arizona (Score:2)
I think my property taxes are also pretty close to the median for the country- I will agree that tags on my cars are over priced
Re:Good thing about Arizona (Score:2, Interesting)
Better yet (Score:2)
Re:Better yet (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Actually (Score:4, Interesting)
The prevalent attitude of "Why bother with Arizona when California is right next door?" is slowly dissipating. One advantage of Arizona over California is that we have a lower attrition rate for computer industry professionals. (One of the reasons Intel relocated much of its operation here had to do with the employment merry-go-round in Silicon Valley. One former Intel executive, who was one of the people leading the charge to move operations here, cited cases where Intel employees were job-hopping because of stupid things like being able to make a right-turn into the company parking lot instead of a left turn.)
Then again, the IT job market is really hurting right now in Arizona because of the economy, so there's very little employee churn right now.
One start-up company I worked at in Scottsdale, AZ, foundered about a year into my employment there. They were having quite a lot of trouble securing venture capital, and one excuse cited by the VCs we talked to (difficult to validate) was that we weren't headquartered in Silicon Valley. Apparently, the prevailing belief during the dot-com boom was that all the hot technology companies had to at least have a presence in Silicon Valley; if you weren't physically there, you couldn't possibly be that tech savvy. This is purely a perception issue.
Once the dot-com bubble burst, I think the overriding concern of cost drove a lot of people to reconsider their pro-Silicon Valley biases.
The sad thing is, my former employer, the start-up company I mentioned, relocated from Scottsdale, AZ, to San Jose, CA, just before the dot-com crash. Talk about bad timing. But at that point, nothing would have saved the company.
Ha! (Score:4, Funny)
They havn't seen anything yet.
Seriously though, we're not going to start saying "My site got cnn-dotted" are we?
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
Surely it should just be cnned or msnbced? I mean sites don't get slashdot-dotted do they?
PS: yes, indeed, I am a pedantic bastard.
Re:Ha! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, here is a mirror of the full 2mb, 74 page PDF. At least until they make me take it down. Oh wait, I'm the admin of that server so I'd have to make myself take it down....
http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/benoc/mirrors/state_tech_ sci_index04.pdf [uiuc.edu]
It's especially interesting to take a look at all of the categories, and not just the overall rankings, in my opinion. And what the heck is the poster thinking, since when is open space or low cost of living important as to whether a state is "best for technol
it's obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:it's obvious (Score:2)
1) Massachusetts is probably so far out of reach for Bush that this doesn't matter but -- the Democrat convention is shaping up to be such an intrusive clusterfuck that the election is liable to be closer than usual. 93 closed, North Station closed -- and now the Reebok Summer League is getting cancelled! Kerry is just lucky the Lebron James show came to town last summer, or there'd be even more outrage.
2) You kn
Why Massachusetts is best (Score:3, Insightful)
Bogus Survey (Score:4, Interesting)
Read it in the paper this morning. "The index is a composite of indicators such as the growth of venture capital funding, number of new start-ups, research and development spending, percentage of workers in high-tech fields, number of technology companies and percentage of people with college degrees."
And as the owner of a venture-capital-less internet small business in Texas with no college degree, I find the survey a poor indicator of technology in a state - especially coming from a company that can't even keep their server online.
How you say? I fart in your general direction.
Re:Bogus Survey (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bogus Survey (Score:2)
And I find your opinion clearly biased, and thus just as bogus.
Re:Bogus Survey (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as an example of another way of looking at it: living in Boston, I can certainly say that our traditional strength is still firmly in place, we're a college city. No, not in the way that NY is or LA is. Yes, those cities have lots of colleges too, so do most cities.
But, we have colleges the way most cities have fire hydrants. I've never seen another city where traffic drops to about 1/3 of its normal volume during school breaks. Commuting in the summer is SUCH A JOY. We're one of the densest cities in the country, occupying about the size of the LA central Post Office, and most of that area is covered by schools.
Why is this useful? Because MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Tufts, BU, BC, UMass and many other local schools produce not just graduates but techologies, businesses, infrastructure and more. I work for a company founded by MIT post-grads who spun off their schoolwork as a business. The same was true for one other company I've worked for, and just about EVERY company has benefited from the colleges in some way (hiring at the very least).
Lest I forget, we also have a large number of highly respected specialty colleges which add in an element of niche expertise in many areas. The ones that come to mind at first are Berkely College of Music and The Mass. College of Pharmacy... though you could probably make all sorts of jokes about what sorts of expertise those two would produce together
Back to topic, there are many ways to look at the data and many data-sets to look at. Don't write off this particular report as useless, just don't take ANY such report as conclusive.
Re:Bogus Survey (Score:2)
Most people in high-tech have degrees. Many high-tech companies use venture capital. Start-ups employee people.
One word: college (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One word: college (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One word: college (Score:2)
I mean from MIT, Harvard, BU, BC, Wellesley, Emerson, Tufts, Smith, UMass, Brandeis, etc. etc. etc. just in the Boston-metro area alone...
Re:One word: college (Score:2, Insightful)
1. those wishing to create new technology startups often times choose to start them near or around the school they came from - as it is a) familiar ground b) an easy place to cull slave labor/interns/new recruits (which means more people staying in state).
They do in MA (Score:3, Informative)
Part of the reason why is that high-tech, biotech, medical, and research undergrads don't have to go somewhere else to get summer internships. They can say in the area and work, and develop a relationship with a company/o
Re:One word: college (Score:2)
It's not just the colleges: there is a whole high-tech mindset that you find in areas like Silicon Valley, the Route 128 corridor, and similar places.
Rumour has it there is a 7-11 in Sunnyvale that sells RAM. That's high-tech.
A propos Austin: I'm reminded of what Mark Twain said about Texas, that if he owned both hell and Texas he'd live in hell and rent out Texas. Excessively hot weather can lower quality of life, which probably helps explain the placing of states like Arizona and Nevada.
...laura
Re:One word: college (Score:2)
As far as RAM goes: we have this thing called PARCEL
DELIVERY. Perhaps you've heard of it. Get into the 19th century already.
Austin? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've lived in Austin my entire life. I've seen the town grow from peaceful and comfortable to rude and crowded.
You may THINK there is lots of room in Austin... but really, THINK AGAIN! The traffic here is AWFUL!!! I have an hour+ commute each day one-way (and it use to be 20 minutes before the big boom). The city is just not prepared to deal with all you folks from all-over-creation trying to come and live here because its some sort of "fairy-land-great-place-to-live." It USE to be. That's before everyone and their dog moved here.
Re:Austin? (Score:4, Insightful)
So careful what you wish for.
Re:Austin? (Score:3, Insightful)
The complete rankings (Score:5, Informative)
Massachusetts MA 1 1 0 84.35
California CA 2 3 1 78.86
Colorado CO 3 2 -1 78.77
Maryland MD 4 4 0 78.19
Virginia VA 5 5 0 72.27
Washington WA 6 6 0 69.87
New Jersey NJ 7 7 0 69.03
Minnesota MN 8 10 2 67.49
Utah UT 9 9 0 66.49
Connecticut CT 10 8 -2 66.26
Rhode Island RI 11 21 10 64.01
New Hampshire NH 12 13 1 63.43
Delaware DE 13 11 -2 62.51
New Mexico NM 14 20 6 61.75
New York NY 15 12 -3 60.66
Pennslyvania PA 16 16 0 60.36
Arizona AZ 17 18 1 58.47
Georgia GA 18 15 -3 58.10
Oregon OR 19 23 4 57.76
North Carolina NC 20 17 -3 57.28
Illinois IL 21 19 -2 56.59
Vermont VT 22 31 9 56.00
Texas TX 23 14 -9 54.91
Ohio OH 24 27 3 54.18
Michigan MI 25 24 -1 54.01
Kansas KS 26 22 -4 53.12
Wisconsin WI 27 25 -2 51.76
Nebraska NE 28 32 4 50.91
Indiana IN 29 30 1 50.73
Idaho ID 30 26 -4 49.03
Missouri MO 31 28 -3 48.11
Florida FL 32 29 -3 44.47
Maine ME 33 36 3 43.47
Tennessee TN 34 40 6 42.77
Oklahoma OK 35 37 2 42.65
Alabama AL 36 33 -3 42.36
Iowa IA 37 35 -2 41.90
Montana MT 38 34 -4 40.65
Hawaii HI 39 43 4 40.05
Alaska AK 40 39 -1 39.91
Wyoming WY 41 38 -3 38.72
Louisiana LA 42 44 2 36.66
Nevada NV 43 42 -1 36.09
South Carolina SC 44 41 -3 35.94
North Dakota ND 45 45 0 34.55
West Virginia WV 46 48 2 33.65
South Dakota SD 47 47 0 33.31
Kentucky KY 48 46 -2 32.61
Arkansas AR 49 50 1 29.53
Mississippi MS 50 49 -1 27.48
State Average 52.64
Re:The complete rankings (Score:2)
Sucks to be us, I guess.
Re:The complete rankings (Score:2)
--Steven Vallarian from Tupelo, Mississippi
Arizona and Austin (Score:3, Funny)
Everything is bigger (Score:4, Funny)
Over here (Score:5, Interesting)
As for living here -- I'm a New England native and can't stand the Boston area. Crowded, difficult to get around, insane taxes, the Big Dig and so, so expensive. I make 7x what I earned in grad school and still feel poorer now than I did then. I'd love to get a job in, say, north Route 128 that allowed me to live someplace cheaper/nicer without the insane commute, but if you're in a comfortable situation elsewhere, don't go thinking the grass is greener on this side.
And don't get me started on that long-term capital gains worksheet...!
Re:Over here (Score:2)
Maybe you shouldn't have bought that porsche...
Re:Over here (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, 7ish years ago I moved from Florida to New England (Natick, a small town about 15-20min East of Boston, just past 128), and I work for NEC Electronics America 5 minutes away in Framingham. I love it. I like going to Boston to eat and have fun (though increasingly there's more and more to do in Metrowest), and I enjoy the proximity to NYC and pretty good skiing (got a nice ski house in Madison, NH). But, I can imagine living in Boston itself would suck badly.
Given that (1) I have no commute and (2) I just bought a nice house on a half-acre in one of the safest towns in the country for under $400k, I may be biased, but noting that (3) sales tax is only 5% like the state income tax, (4) there's none of either 30 min away in New Hampshire where the nice outlets and ultra-cheap liquor stores are, and (5) I still get 3-5 calls from local recruiters with good, relevant, local job opportunities each week, I'd say the grass is pretty damn green. That may be because I'm an ASIC designer with lots of physical-implentation experience (not an RTL-coder) and that particular field doesn't seem to have suffered much during the dot-bomb, but I am being admittedly anecdotal here, so YMMV.
I've lived and worked in CA (San Jose and Santa Clara) before, and IMHO the quality of life (and work opportunities) there leaves much to be desired in comparison. Crime. Illegal immigration. Taxes! (They only call it Taxachussetts because Taxifornia sounds weird).
Hmm, come to think of it -- nevermind, it sucks -- don't come here, you slacksadaisacal wild-eyed wrong-coasters will only trample the fine grass in our quaint little silicon village
San Jose horror stories (Score:5, Interesting)
For other Americans, who actually want to make a living wage, and go home to a family, you need to think out of the box. If you have a clean record, and are US born, look at the Aerospace industry. Look at Florida. I met an entire group of high level EE/CS types who were relocating to Alaska to work on a missle defense program and one other had a job with the State of Alaska.
"best" depends (Score:2, Informative)
Still, Boston has some advantages: the James Gate Pub, unbelievably hot college girls (Portsmouth is still better...) and some great bands.
This mi
There's FAR more to Massachusetts than just Boston (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There's FAR more to Massachusetts than just Bos (Score:2, Funny)
Re:"best" depends (Score:5, Informative)
I know MA taxes are higher than, say FL, where I grew up. But I'm afraid the "Taxachussetts" moniker may be more mythical than you realize.
MA: 5% income tax, 5% sales tax
CA: 9.30% income tax, 6% sales tax
Like I said in another post, it may have something to do with "Taxifornia" sounding so odd
But, to each his own -- I don't put much faith or stock in this study, but I know I'm happy (and very gainfully employed, with lots of local oppotunities should I want to change jobs) in MA.
Re:"best" depends (Score:3, Informative)
Last years property tax on the $370k ($290k assessed) house I just bought in Natick, MA (an upscale, highly-desirable are with the best schools, lowest crime, and an insanely high police/fire/service-to-person ratio etc.) amounted to ~$3500.
And, while we're at it, I pay $1.67 for a gallon 93 octane down the street. What do you pay in IL? CA? It's more than $2/gal. in San Diego right now.
Unless you're talking cigarettes ($5-6/pack), "
Space? (Score:3, Insightful)
If that's the case than Alaska should be #1. They have the most space - and since it is so cold people would have no choice but to sit inside and innovate... Hmmm. What about Siberia - where is all the technology from Siberia? They have lots of space there... And we all know about Soviet Russia.
Rhode Island (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rhode Island (Score:3, Interesting)
I for one speak as someone who lives in RI yet works in MA basically because I'm too cheap to buy MA real estate.
It's just Common Sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Gosh, Timothy, why would you have chosen to compare Taxachussets and Texas? There wouldn't be a political reason, would there? I mean, we all know you're not a Bush supporter, but can you try to be less transparent next time than to choose a liberal-biased pro-government cheerleader such as the Milken Institute.
Anyone doubt me? Just look at the Milken Institute front page which is currently promo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Move to Mississippi! (Score:3, Interesting)
For a business owner looking for tech talent, it means bad news for those states. But what about for us, the aforementioned "talent"? Shouldn't this mean that if I move to Jackson, Little Rock, or Bowling Green, that my skills will be in higher demand?
Interestingly, in my family's home town of Hazard, KY [wikipedia.org], there's a call center for SHPS. Those are a few hundred jobs that are staying here instead of going to India. Would moving call centers to MS/AR/KY help those states improve? That's a policy I'd like to see Kerry implement.
BTW, word in Hazard is that SHPS absolutely sucks as a place to work, with high pressure and no advancement. But it's better than the welfare office.
Re:Move to Mississippi! (Score:2, Informative)
I just left Little Rock, AR. There are very few tech jobs in Arkansas. Most of them would be in North West AR around Fayetville. I tried for 3 months to find a job. I moved to TX and a week later had a job.
Re:Move to Mississippi! (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably better to move the call centers to India rather than MS/AR/KY. On average, Indians speak better English.
Re:I'm sorry. (Score:2)
Sorry 'bout that, I was drinking a pop [popvssoda.com] at the time.
Too much spare time at mit (Score:2, Funny)
Background on Milken Institute Founder (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting (Score:3, Funny)
Open space? (Score:4, Informative)
When you say "Arizona" for technology, you actually mean "Metro Phoenix." In the Phoenix area you certainly have plenty of "space" mostly occupied by roads and red tile roofs: my commute is over 25 miles one way, with an average rush-hour time of 40 minutes by freeway. I live in the north Valley (far-north Phoenix) compared to the "East Valley" where the orifice is. Mass-transit consists of two busses and a transfer, net time about two hours one-way (not counting a half-hour walk to the bus stop in 110F weather.)
Despite the north/east thing, I have a shorter commute than several cow-orkers who live in the East Valley because (a) they actually live farther out, and (b) the east-west rush hour traffic through Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, and Gilbert crawls on a good day.
Technology employment used to consist of Motorola, now it's Intel that employs more engineers than everyone else combined. They sack 10% of their staff every year.
Education consists of Arizona State University, with 60,000 students who all commute and haven't any other schools to choose from: ASU knows that and treats them as nothing but revenue sources. The only requirement for tenure is hitting your quota of grant money. This might matter more if students ever saw a professor, but they have better things to do, like fill out grant applications.
Oh, and the only "open spaces" any of us see are when SR101 takes us past the Salt River Reservation (cotton fields, whiteflies that gum up your windshield) or SR202 takes us along the (dry) Salt River bed. Otherwise, it's a pretty fair drive to get out of town.
Don't forget those 110F summer days; it was 97F yesterday (late March). I happen to love the heat, but partly because I grew up here and partly because it keeps the riffraff locked up in air-conditioned denial. Yes, you can see mountains when the air clears. Just don't kid yourself that you'll be able to live in those "open spaces" and still work for Intel; even Craig Barrett has to fly to Montana for that.
Northern Virginia isn't bad either... (Score:3, Informative)
Too bad they're running IIS:Ah well.
Arizona.. (Score:2)
BTW.. Open spaces == sprawl from hell.
Research schools (Score:2)
ASU's EE school has an enormous budget for toys, but they don't have a single faculty member who has ever worked with CMOS, don't have any classes in high-speed signaling, and don't have any faculty who have ever used logic sy
Mass:Best State for Technology, just not Tech Jobs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mass:Best State for Technology, just not Tech J (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry it didn't work out for you, but for many it does. Me, for example.
Now, how is this +1 Inform
Erroneous assumptions... (Score:5, Interesting)
The low cost of living argument doesn't help anyone in the US anymore. If a company is interested in relocating some of its jobs (like call centers) to somewhere with a low cost of living, they have *no* motivation to choose somewhere inside the US. They can do much, much better by relocating overseas.
On another note, I saw Ross DeVol (cited in the article) speak at a panel on Southern California's Regional Economy at UCLA last fall. He had some interesting stuff to say/show about the differences between Southern California and the rest. The issue of importing well-educated labor came up then, too... and he wasn't the only one who brought it up. California is going to keep falling behind as long as we keep raiding our school systems for money
Texas (Score:2)
1. NO STATE INCOME TAX. Yes, there is no state income tax. That's like a 15% raise in and of itself.
2. The Weather - Other then July and August, where it's *really* hot outside, you can always do things outside in Texas.
3. Concealed Carry - Crime rate in Texas has plummeted becasue of it.
4. Music Scene - Whether it's Dallas / Ft. Worth or Austin, there's a lot of good rock bands in the area. Like Country? There's Houston.
I
Re:Texas (Score:3, Funny)
-
WINDOWS 2000 TEXAS EDITION
Dear Consumers:
It has come to our attention that a few copies of
the WINDOWS 2000 TEXAS EDITION may have accidentally been shipped outside of the state of Texas.
If you have one of these, you may need some help understanding the commands.
The TEXAS EDITION may be recognized by the unique opening screen. It reads:
WINDERS 2000, with a background picture of Willie Nelson superimposed on the Alamo.
Please also note:
The Recycle B
I have one thing to say: (Score:2)
Thank God for Mississippi.
Boston is a great place to live and work (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Get to work with smart, old grizzled veterans. They have taught me a few things about discipline, engineering and adaptation. Having a mentor has been invaluable in my career experience.
2. The girls here are hot, and for the girls there are a lot of very fine and eligible bachelors for are actually nice - sometimes too nice for their own good. This place is like "Logan's Run". It seems like nobody is older than 25 at times.
3. You can walk and bike anywhere. Everything is so close. I don't own a car.
4. Compare to New York, you got nature basically right in your backyard - Blue Hills is a 6,000 acre reserve that's 5 miles from downtown Boston.
5. Great, thriving geek culture and community. I never miss the 6.270 autonomous robotic contest at MIT, for example, or the fact that you can take holography classes in adult education schools.
6. Energetic, creative nightlife. If you're into bars, clubs and dancing, it's here. But if you are into performance art, experimental music, hacking groups, murder mysteries or pot luck dinners w/strangers, they are here also.
There's a lot more. Of course there are problems with the city too, but I think the good outweighs the bad.
Re:Boston is a great place to live and work (Score:3, Funny)
I lived and worked in MA... (Score:4, Interesting)
The commuter line goes all the way to Newburyport, so complaining about public transportation is a bit disingenuous.
My house appreciated 33% in less than two years. I used the money to leave my job and come back to my native state...(number 3 on the list, BTW), and it took me 4.5 months, and all of that money to get a new job. (well, plus the downpayment on a house to live in back here...the housing prices skyrocketed while I was gone).
As far as open space goes? In MA I had well over an acre of land, and there were only 5 houses on my cul-de-sac. Anything like that here would either a: be 60+ miles from anywhere you could reasonably work, or b: be 3-4 times what you can afford to pay for it. It's crazy...all this space, and the developers keep building the houses right next to each other (anything up to $350k within 30 miles of downtown Denver is going to be either small or crowded or both) to maximize their profits, or they charge *crazy* amounts of money for larger lots. One small town about 35 minutes from Denver had 3000 sf houses on
I just moved to Boston for that very reason (Score:2)
I was unemployed and living in CT for 6 months (jun-december). I had put my resume info on Monster and well more than half of the responses were coming from the Boston area. I also had a girlfriend in Boston, and one day, I got an offer from a very big consulting firm there. I took the hint, packed up and moved a month and a half ago
To this day my Monster profile (now anonymized) gets at least 1 response a day, and all I am is a wimpy ASP/DHTML/SQL Server developer
Future jobs follow a certain sort of growth. (Score:3, Insightful)
What does this have to do with future tech jobs? Aside from IBM's big facility in Burlington (the biggest single employer in the state) it means there's a lot of fresh money here brought in by the folks who have afforded the moving vans. So how entrepreneurial are you? Plus the weather isn't much different than Boston's - a few degrees cooler traded off against a beautiful landscape you can actually live in. In homes that cost 1/3 as much. Don't tell anyone....
Montana would be my second choice. Those winter days are just too short in Alaska.
State != economic region (Score:4, Insightful)
Massachusetts consists (economically) mostly of the Boston metropolitan area, which also includes the south of New Hampshire. Things don't look so rosy business-wise in the western part of the state, but it doesn't affect the average for the state all that much. (as opposed to e.g. California or Texas, where any averages are going to include a lot of farmers and oilmen, kind of bringing down the tech index)
Lots of people on this thread have talked about cost of living and whatnot, but let's face it - if you're starting a new company, you want to locate where you can steal someone else's employees without their needing to move. And if you work for a little startup company, you sure as hell don't want to have to sell your house if they go under or turn weird and you have to jump ship. All of which means, if you want to work for a hot company, your cost of living is going to suck. Such is life - when engineers are expensive, houses tend to be expensive as well.
Which sort of leads into another point - I think that Boston, and Massachusetts in general, is a center of technology just because it is. It's not just because of the universities - there are other places (Amherst/Northampton, for one) with even higher concentrations of college students, who leave as fast as they can after graduation. Boston (or 128/495/whatever) is a good place to start a company because you can find people who started companies, and you can find them because it was a good place to start a company a few years ago.
Re:There's reasons... (Score:2, Funny)
I don't (Score:2, Insightful)
But arizona is not a desolate land. It is beautiful with a wide range of environments. I love to spend time in the desert as well as the mountains. I wish it weren't so beautiful sometimes because frankly I'm sick of so many people moving here every year.
Re:I don't (Score:2, Funny)
Because they lacked the ambition to drive all the way to hell....
Re:Open space (Score:2)
Re:Arizona (Score:2)
There are soo many small tech companies here, mostly because they all think they can upgrade all of this old technology thats in AZ. There are tons of small businesses that are running on equipment from the 80's.
--D3X
# Of Engineers In AZ (Score:2)
What I see as the problem with startups
Re:Uhhhh (Score:2)
I can get a 2300 sqft home in DFW based off a single professional salary (even in todays market). What does it take in NYC, SFO or Boston to afford something like that?
Re:Colorado (Score:3, Informative)
Denver (tech center) and CO Springs have some jobs right now, but they are few and far between. Longmont, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc... are absolutely dead. There aren't any tech jobs here right now at all. Not sure how we were number 2 last year and number 3 this year.
Re:Colorado (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In keeping with /. protocol, I did not RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
High Taxes (income, property, real estate, car, excise).
MA income tax is 5%. California's is 9.3%.
MA sales tax is 5%. CA is 6%. MA property tax is average 1-2% (mine is 1.232 in Natick). CA is 3%. Car taxes are much higher in CA (don't have number, but neither did you, and I lived in both). Excise is town-specific and easy to avoid.
Lots of gubmint interference
Where in the US isn't there? This is meaningless.
High fees for lic, reg, insurance, title, etc. etc.
It was cheaper by 3x to buy, reg, and license my car in MA than CA. Look it up.
PITA to own a gun for self defense.
PITA if you're a felon. Yeah. So?
Outrageous cost of housing
Only valid point -- but why is housing expensive? Because it's a good place to live -- the market couldn't bear the prices if people wouldn't pay it. I just bought a nice 3BR on
6 months of winter, and the roads are salted so your car will rot out (sheds tear for his decapitated but loved car)
4 months of winter, and some of us like not sweating anytime we're outside. Skiing is nice. And you can always put on a jacket. Back in AZ or FL or even So. CA -- you can only take off so much clothing before you get arrested. And if you have a job, you can't stay in the pool all day. Nice places to vacation, since you can spend it in the water, but I hated living there. To each his own, I guess.
Lots of rudeness and Hate (A house for sale near Boston was set on fire by White neighbors when they discovered the people buying it were Black)
Nice anecdote -- I'm sure nothing like that has ever happened anywhere else. Never any race riots in CA, always in MA, right?
The RMV is staffed by people who actively enjoy being rude and hateful.
This, my friend, is universal.
Rudeness myths (Score:5, Insightful)
This pretty much bears out my experience. Bostonians are always rushing around, with their mind on the next place their going to be. We don't spare any time for things like making eye contact and polite conversation with strangers,and people who do are probably immediately suspect of being muggers or con-men.
One thing that constantly struck me when I started to do business in other parts of the country is how long people take to get to the point. Of course, this may mean by standards of other parts of the country Bostonians are rude, but the converse is also true: Bostonians consider wasting peoples time as rude. Is this any way to live? I don't know, it seems natural to me. It's just a difference in cultural norms, like the way different cultures have different norms about the appropriate distance to stand from another person when having a conversation. Cities have different norms as to how much beating around the bush is enough to express polite human interest in another person; Boston is on one end of the bell curve, and certain southern cities are on the other. When it comes to more fundamental things like true consideration for others, Bostonians not worse than residents of most other cities, and better than some.
Speaking of bum raps, New Yorkers have a reputation for rudeness that in my experience is totally undeservered. Despite what you see in the movies I've found New Yorkers to be far and away the most helpful and genuinely friendly big city dwellers I've ever encountered. Perhaps their reputation for rudeness has some part in this, because many New Yorkers seem to be almost consciously acting as civic ambassadors.
As far as the Mass RMV is concerned, it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be. It used to be so grossly understaffed and training levels were so low that the people working there had an attitude that making an effort made no difference so why bother? I can attest to this myself having seen examples of amazing incompetence and indifference personally. However RMV went through major reorganization that included increasing staffing, and improving training, systemizing customer service, and expanding regional offices so people don't have to travel as far to get service. Since the 90's my personal experience with RMV is that it is quick, efficient and friendly.