Best cities worldwide for Senior/Staff level SWEs to grow their careers and get good schools and peers for their kids?
Two Googler SWE household, one toddler. Both approved for fully remote, currently within the US but pretty sure could make remote work worldwide as both our teams are distributed across the globe's timezones. Not happy with the Bay Area or CA quality of living - seems to be choose 2 - good house, good quality of education and peers for kids or good quality of life (clean air , water, no fires, access to nature), ability to save and invest for retirement. What would be some good cities to look at to optimize for most of the above? - grow a career remotely, we intend to travel once a quarter for keeping up on the TLM track. - get good schools and a great set of peers for the toddler. Maybe living close to a Top-10 university campus would be best for this? Many including Larry, Sergey, Sundar et al had their childhood inside university campuses and it set them up for curiosity, discipline, STEM bent. - have some money left over end of the month to save towards retirement goals. - clean air, clean water, no droughts or wildfires, access to greenery and water bodies is a must. Willing to live with hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms, snow 3 months a year. But want to avoid hot climates and high humidity at all costs. Household TC: 850k
Denver
Eh, I don't know about that one. Love Boulder as a place to live to have fun but I've been consistently disappointed with University of Colorado grads, dont think their education system is worth moving for. Also, Colorado labor laws around disclosing salaries have led many tech companies to advertise their tech jobs as "remote anywhere in the US, but not in Colorado".
Virginia or Maryland. Area around dc has amazing schools
Thanks that's a reasonable suggestion. But they also have Bay Area prices, can we continue to save while paying for housing and childcare? Last I checked homes near TJHS the coveted STEM school were 1.6-2M, that's firmly in the Seattle or Bay Area range. And is that surrounding useful for elementary school or will it just create a pressure cooker? I only have information about the Alexandria, Virginia area where TJHS is and where many diplomats and bureaucrats live. Happy to take down names of other cities.
Check Fairfax, Reston, McLean, Great Falls in VA and Rockville, Kensington, Chevy Chase, Bethesda, Potomac in MD. Reston / 267 before Dulles airport have a lot of companies and areas to live as well (listed cheaper to expensive in general) these area not too far from DC (30-60 mins except Reston which can be higher) These are nearer DC and have town centers or outdoor eating/shopping nearby but have property size compared to more suburban neighborhoods. If commute to DC is not a concern (60min - 1.5 hrs commute each way) Ashburn, Leesburg in VA and other places along the Dulles corridor / 267 in VA past Dulles airport. In MD u can look at Olney. With any of these, u start getting to be far from DC though. These are more suburban than the ones in the first paragraph with farms (with kid friend activities), horse stables (if you like riding this is great), larger houses, ability to see sunset etc.
West Virginia
Is that a joke? Pardon my ignorance, but never heard of WV except in a "leans heavily Red" and "is insular economy" context.
Boston. Ivy league colleges, high paying companies
You’re going to send your toddler to a university?
Problem with that ?
Having the toddler attend elementary school or daycare in a university campus is very different from what you said. Larry grew up on the UMich campus afaik and Sundar grew up on an IIT campus in Southern India
Metro Detroit or Ann Arbor, MI compensation is slightly below tier 1 but cost of living is so cheap you can achieve your goals and there are some good private schools as well
Ann Arbor is a great reco. Thanks!
Bellevue WA. Wildfires are more in eastern WA so you might get a couple days a year of smoke but it was never past red I think.
Also on our list. We have some concerns about overcrowding and heavy concentrations of Indian/Asians like in the Bay Area as opposed to a truly diverse environment. But otherwise it checks all the boxes, yes.
Fair. We are a mixed Chinese family so it’s nice in some ways but hear you on the diversity front.
Can someone also suggest similarly for a family of 3 but single income (300k) with same requirements. Be diverse population Good education for kids Not too costly Good weather.
Outside California in the US, my first thought is the Boston metro area. Next thoughts are a bunch of small-medium sized university towns, like Durham (NC), Madison (WI), and similar. There’s another outside-the-box option, but I don’t want it out there. Sadly, if it’s a particularly good area for the first two of your criteria, it will be expensive, which affects your third goal. There are a lot of places that you can get the good house + clean + access to nature + ability to save & invest for retirement, but they rarely have good internet access or good schools at any price (this includes a huge swath of the western US, including most of the mountain states).
Agree with that analysis. We are actually remote in one such town, perfect in every other way except it has zero educational ecosystem. Toddler loves the outdoors so far, but we'll need to move when it's time for pre-K. Durham has terrible pay bands at big tech (75% or less of Bay Area pay) and Madison has a similar pay nightmare story. The other catch with such towns is that one can feel stifled outside of the campus bubble. We absolutely love the UWisc Madison campus and Capitol area where the tech offices are but going out to Madison neighborhoods even 10-30 minutes away quickly gets us into weirdly uncomfortable territory. Initially I wondered why the MidWest gets such a bad rap, but after a few visits there, I'll probably stick to coastal towns, for reasons I cannot articulate except to say "I didn't feel comfortable" or "I felt stifled".
^ I lived in the midwest for a while and I absolutely agree with that assessment. We moved to NYC though. Boston, DC/Virginia were definitely up there on our list too.
WA, MA, NY
These are states
I’ll let OP do the rest