Seattle vs Boulder vs San Francisco

In the past year, I’ve had the pleasure to live in three of the most exciting tech-hub cities in America. Someone recently asked me about what I think of each of these cities. Since I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about it already, here’s my run-down:

Boulder, Colorado

Pros

Boulder is interesting because it is an anomaly. It only has ~100,000 people, but the city has a surprising history of technology.

One of the best parts about Boulder is that work-life balance is a priority. On summer days you can get to the mountains in 15 minutes after work and get in a good long hike. People work hard, but they also find time to do other things outside of work.

Boulder is also not filled with tech brogrammers. There’s a good mix of students, young professionals, yoga instructors, homeless, musicians, rich retirees, and families. Hopefully, that continues.. but with Google and Uber making large offices in town, we will see.

Living in the city is incredibly accessible. Whereas in a large city you may spend 2 hours on the road each day commuting, Boulder has restaurants and the local watering hole (Backcountry Pizza!) that are close and easy to meet up with friends at.

You also get that small-town vibe. It feels like a community. For instance, the local gym at University of Colorado Boulder is accessible to the public (you have to donate to the CU Boulder Alumni Association). Having full court basketball courts available to the public is unheard of in dense cities like San Francisco or New York, but in Boulder it’s just another one of those perks of living in a smaller sized town with, well, relatively, well-off individuals.

Cons

For me, where Boulder really fell down was a couple of things.

1. Lack of diversity —After awhile the overwhelming lack of diversity and lack of good non-american cuisine bothered me. What culture Boulder had was great, I just would have liked a bit more variety.
2. Lack of interesting opportunities — Boulder has a few interesting tech companies. SolidFire (now NetAPP), Uber, Google. Beyond that, you are basically looking at a lot of satellite offices for huge tech firms. This leads to a situation where wages don’t reflect the hyper-competitiveness for engineers that Silicon Valley has. It also means that as an engineer there aren’t a lot of cool things to work on. Also, the satellite offices generally have small teams focused on specific technologies, which can make moving around difficult. It can be great for companies since they have incredible leverage in negotiating, but it can sometimes be a struggle in Boulder as an engineer.
3. Lack of tech focus — As much as Boulder wants to tout itself as a tech startup hub, frankly, it has got a long way to go. VC doesn’t really exist in Boulder. The dearth of talent and lack of variety in talent can make it difficult to scale your company with the right people. It can also be difficult building a technology product in a city where none of your customers, user groups, or competition are.
4. Small size — After awhile, driving down the same roads and visiting the same places gets boring.

Living in Boulder feels like a mix of Groundhog Day and running in a hamster wheel. — A Boulder friend.

All in all, Boulder is a great city. It really depends on what you are looking for. If having work-life balance is more important than working on the coolest technology, Boulder is a great place.

San Francisco, California

Wow. Just wow. Being in the San Francisco Bay Area is an exciting experience. The speed, the opportunity, the scale, the traffic. A shot to the senses.

I lived in Sunnyvale and Potrero Hill in the city. The success and density of talent in the Bay Area can quickly become overwhelming. See the articles on Quora about how to afford a $150,000 down payment on a house. That’s a question that only seems normal in the Bay Area.

Or, the belief by these two 15 year olds that they should move to the Bay Area and pay rent in a startup hostel while they attempt their startup. That’s the kind of ambition the area attracts.

San Francisco is the worst place to build your startup. It’s too expensive to live. You will burn through any money you have.

Conversely the best placed is your parents basement. It’s completely free and they pay the electric bill.

There’s a certain fervor when you pack so many smart people in a small area, which can be exciting and invigorating. During my time there, I made incredible connections with really smart people. It’s definitely a highlight of living in the Bay area.

On the other hand, I think a lot of people would also agree that it can be a stressful area, where the A-type personalities of individuals can lead to unexpected consequences.

Sure, any large city has problems like this, but it’s clear that the high-octane, VC-injected, make-it-big-at-all-costs, take-no-prisoner, im-going-to-disrupt-your-dog perspective shows up in unexpected ways.

Many of the individuals I talked to, from lawyers, to PMs, to VC, to engineers, to UX designers, mentioned that everyone worked too hard. A lot of them would also say they were only in San Francisco temporarily, and this mode of living wasn’t sustainable and they knew it.

It’s definitely something that you need to prepare and account for if you and/or your family are thinking about moving there.

On to pros & cons…

Pros

1. Diversity — incredible diversity.
2. Opportunity — The Bay Area is an absolute hotbed of opportunity. If you are looking for meetings, for bright individuals to hire, for customer intros, for conferences, for industry insider information, the Bay Area has it.
3. Tech focus — the highest density of smart people. Everyone on the train codes. People “get” it. Standard committees meet there. Industry conferences are frequently local. Leaders in the industry are all based there. Great opportunities to grow.

Cons

1. Housing —The high correlation to the technology sector means that when a tech downturn happens your home, your job, and basically all of your worth is in one illiquid basket. Not good.
2. Traffic — wow. just wow. Spending two hours a day in traffic doesn’t help anyone.
3. Lack of room for innovation —One of the interesting dynamics that I frequently saw was that for many individuals the high cost of housing was an absolute albatross on their ability to innovate and take risks on new ideas. Similar to how a VC lends you money to start your company, once you take the money you have to commit to a certain plan. Innovation, pivots and experimentation can start to die and lead to lost opportunities. I think companies move to the Bay Area to scale. It is debatable whether the Bay Area is really the best place for companies to incubate.

Seattle, Washington

I’ve only been in Seattle for two months, but I think I understand the city well enough for some snap judgements.

Pros

1. Housing — Reasonable. IF you find the right spot. Bellevue is expensive, and family oriented. On the other hand, the city of Seattle has a lot going on and has done a great job keeping the housing supply in line with population increases. Seattleites will call it overpriced, but it’s actually quite reasonable.
2. Tech opportunities — This one is a double-edged sword, so let me address the good first: There’s a lot of tech in the area. Amazon, Google, Valve, Microsoft, Facebook all have offices in Washington State. If you are looking to work for a big company, there are many. A lot of really bright engineers. Really sharp.
3. Accessibility — Seattleites are going to disagree about the traffic, but I’d argue with the reasonable housing you have better chances to live near where you work.
4. Incubation — Because Seattle doesn’t have the skyrocketing costs of the Bay Area, it can be a good place to bootstrap. Interestingly, even with the large numbers of tech companies in town, there are relatively few startups.

Cons

1. Tech opportunities — If you are looking to join a big company, and want to work on one of their coolest most elite teams, you might still be better off in the Bay Area. Even amongst the big companies, the engineering teams based in Washington tend to still serve as large satellite offices.
2. Weather - Some people might not like the lack of sun. It can get pretty gloomy, and the lack of sun and constant drizzle makes it harder to get outside and do things. The consolation is that the weather is actually more inline to places in Europe like London and Paris — http://www.seattlerex.com/the-truth-about-seattle-sunshine/
3. Seattle Freeze — it’s real. The gentrification fight and passive aggressiveness towards new “Tech Money” coming into town is real. Way more than San Francisco. I think its because in San Francisco, they have all been pushed out already, but in Seattle, they seem to still be living in the city. Go figure.

There’s obviously a lot more than these pros & cons, but suffice it to say that each of these areas has their own unique spin on being a tech hub. It’s all about what you care about. I hope this helps!