Why software engineers should ditch Silicon Valley for Austin

Just Say No

To moving to Austin. Have only lived here around 20 years, visiting on and off for over 30. The city is getting to be too big for its britches.

Yeah, it's still a fairly nice place to live, but its infrastructure isn't keeping up with the population.

One of Samsung's only non-US fabs is here. Dell is here. Big Blue is here. Google is here (I must say, though, that I do like the fiber speed, and the ability to have gotten TWC out of my house). The University of Texas is the largest single campus in the country, just north of downtown.

I-35, the "Nafta Highway", borders downtown to the East. It's icky, which is why a toll-road bypass several miles away was built that allows one to avoid downtown altogether. The other main artery to the west just lost a lane to make a part-time tollway. Being originally from Chicago, I know once toll roads get in place, they never go away, and they're an abomination to anyone who through taxes has ever paid for a road.

Plus, if you move here now, you'll have to duke it out with all the Big Blue people work-from-home folks getting ready to be force-relocated.

The ACL festivals are nice, but it's held so close to a bunch of neighborhoods parking and noise pollution are out of hand. SouthBy is waaaaaay to big these days.

I know, sounding like Dana Carvey's "Old Man" SNL sketches, but the fact remains Austin has too many people.

So please don't move here!

Grammar and Geography Gnastic alert

In the comments, site sb cite; cache sb cachet. But what really caught my pedantic eye was the map. Seattle is up a snowy mountain somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. Denver is about 150 miles closer to Kansas than it is in real life. Toronto is on a land-extension drawn onto the map because the map itself is of USA. As to its actual orientation inside Canada, you've pinned it around Brantford, but maybe it's a heartier laugh to be London, Ontario. So far as climate goes, I would have thought that the SF Bay area with its surprisingly (considering how far south it is) cold, damp and foggy weather would be a perfect fit for Brits. Also Seattle and its Canadian cognate Vancouver, should help one maintain that English rose complexion. As for the rest of NA: there is a reason for central heating / cooling.