I live in downtown Seattle and am interested in doing a bigger city for a couple of years. I’ve visited Manhattan a couple times and love it. What’s it like living there? Which neighborhoods are techies living in?
Its much better than seattle in terms of fun stuff in life, but expensiveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Better gender ratio for straight men I think
Seattle any day
Beyond a degree of doubt - NYC in your 20s. Early 30s - Seattle starts appealing if you’re not doing that well in NYC. Seattle’s a nice little town - but it doesn’t hold a candle to NYC. Manhattan is one of 5 NYC boroughs, there are 21 neighborhoods within Manhattan(like East Village, Soho etc). Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland combined would compare to 2 neighborhoods. The other difference is - you’d never ask a question like “where do all the techies live?”. For someone living in a real international city - that’s almost as retrograde like someone in India asking “Where do all the Xyz caste people live in Mumbai?”. The industry you work in - is not a metric/characteristic here. Seattle’s cheaper , has horrible weather but it’s easygoing if that’s your personality. Countless advantages here - better dating scene (regardless of your gender and orientation), 100x more nightlife and food options, more varied crowd/people (makes you humble to see that a small business owner/consultant can break into 7 figures TC) , better connectivity and flights everywhere. Lot of good tech companies are here now - but you’ll always have slightly less important jobs in non-HQ offices - that won’t change. And you’ll always have less options in core tech here - compared to the Bay Area , but compared to Seattle - not too bad. There is a downside though. NYC will ruin you for the rest of the world. (But please stay in a nice NYC neighborhood to experience that magic, not in a far off commuting suburb with any heavy ethnic presence- cheaper but defeats the point)
In nyc, there is a little bit of cliquish living in finance and legal stuff, so it's not true that no one would stereotype you based on profession. But it's very different. A lot of people think NYC is amazing, for a while. I don't think they're wrong. It's just like anywhere else in one sense though, there's a time and a place. Places change and you can never go back even if you return. If there's any reason you think you'd be homesick for Seattle, consider it carefully. Otherwise I generally recommend everyone should try a different culture a few times in their life. And urban East coast is a very mild, barely giving up anything, culture change from semi-urban West coast.
if you are young and single, I would give NYC a try:), if you have a family and kids - Seattle is way better)
Curious though for the ones saying Seattle? What’s so good about it? Honest question. Spent a couple of years there. Bored to death. And more weight to people who’ve lived at both places.
Depends on what things you consider to be fun
I grew up in Seattle and still like it, but I've spent the past five years in NYC. It's totally worth it, there's just more going on and everything is really convenient. Whatever you're into, it's easier to do here, with some exceptions.
Why?