Lots of good pros/cons of New York mentioned in these comments, so just one thing to add I haven't seen mentioned: after 7 years living & working in Manhattan/Brooklyn, my network is saturated with people in a dozen different industries who all seem to have careers advancing at 2x speed of the people I know anywhere else.
I consistently meet people in their late 20's and early 30's who are serious players in a wide variety of business and artistic endeavors. I don't have to go more than one degree of separation to find someone at the top of any field. I know less entrepreneurs here than in SV, but the cross-pollination in NYC is a big deal.
NYC has its charms, but it has its nightmarish qualities too.
People tend to live in places convenient to their first job. Getting around for work is a nightmare unless you live in an area served by the right public transit connections.
Now if you are young/poor enough or rich enough to live in Manhattan, it's a magical place.
Also keep in mind that the industry clusters in NYC aren't what they once were. Finance is the king kong of NYC industry.
Silicon Valley had a totally different kind of industry cluster -- you had a torrent of Federal dollars flowing in for defense work, which ultimately concentrated technical talent and created all sorts of spinoff industrial activity. NYC is a great place to make money, but it isn't the same as SV.
A few start ups in NYC ( myself included) are moving to kingston , New york (upstate). In NYC everyone is hustling. If your young and ambitious and can sell yourself your skills, you will find a job. I don't know about the visa stuff. Housing IS damn expensive yeah but you can live in greenpoint, Brooklyn with roommates or move uptown ( Washington Heights) then you have jackson Heights ( Queens) or sunnyside , Queens it's cheaper then living in money makin manhattan if you have 0 connects. When you make friends you will want to network with them to find an apartment or work. You will build a network of friends and those friends who are working at companies will get you into a job. That's how it works here. People are always moving out / changing jobs. Companies are always hiring. The experience will be unforgettable. Nothing like it. After some time you'll get burned from the grind and may want to bounce somewhere else. You'll never know till you get here! and Plenty of front end jobs. Good Lucky!
Don't forget the cost of living in NYC - a cost that will be significantly increased by your networking and socializing habits. I live and work in the city and love it and the employment opportunity is enormous here. Your LinkedIn account will explode if it hasn't already.
I doubt I'm in the minority here when I say I wouldn't move to a 'specialized and remote' community inhabited by people who are all affiliated with the same company. I don't live to work, and I don't want to be surrounded solely by people who are affiliated with the company I work for.
While one of the reasons I live in Manhattan is because the job market is very good, I also enjoy it precisely because there is diversity. I can walk down the street or take the train and see hundreds of people working hundreds of different jobs in dozens of industries. That's why people are moving to cities - they're exciting. There's things to do and people to meet.
Great post. I'm reprinting this from my comment on the blog because I hope more HN peeps who are making the NYC/SV choice read this:
Having recently moved from SV to NYC, I love how much more quickly I can get to startup offices and events. Even better, when I do travel, I do it by train. This means I don't need to pay for a car or car insurance, and it means that I can read my book while on the subway. In Silicon Valley, I couldn't afford a car and had to bike everywhere or be at the mercy of the Caltrain... a _very_ bad thing at 2:30am in San Francisco, I can tell you.
Also, Manhattan rent can be expensive (although the LES is not much worse than Palo Alto btw), but living in Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, or even NJ and Connecticut is much cheaper and, as the map above shows, adds only minutes to your commute time.
Also, after working hard on a startup, sometimes it's nice to play hard too. Bars and clubs that close at 4am, and being able to get home by cab, can make that part of your lifestyle a lot easier.
This is a great post, thanks for the insight. I notice you work with writers and the press, most of whom I imagine would be living in NYC if not the East Coast cities. Do you think there's an advantage to being closer to that? Or do you think that any advantage you get from being closer to those you work with is outweighed by the skepticism you get from other people around you?
I was watching an interview where the Airbnb guys said they were constantly flying to NYC because many of their early customers were there and I was wondering why they didn't simply relocate together, although perhaps the positivity and accessibility of expertise outweighs the burden of travelling.
Also - in your opinion, do you think New York could ever replicate the SV mentality, even just in its own tech scene silo (obviously Wall St bankers will never adopt it), or do you think this is bound to fail?
Pros: Amazing food, music, "culture" in general. In general, if you enjoy some cultural niche, it is probably most at bloom in the U.S. inside the doors of some random address within the NYC boroughs. Compared to many cities, it's relatively easy to make new friends. In most neighborhoods, you can be born, go to school, play, eat every meal, go grocery shopping, get married, get divorced, spin out, find yourself, etc. in a walkable or at worst bikable distance.
Cons: wickedly expensive. You can trade-off some things to make it more affordable, but you have to get creative. It helps to know a local. If you want consistent access to real nature, you realistically need a car. Owning a car in NYC (usually) sucks.
I sum it up as a three-legged stool. It's a great place to have few-to-no responsibilities, be youthful (at heart, at least), and very gainfully employed. If you're short one of those three things, it becomes a shaky proposition. I've wanted to leave at one point or another for at least half the time I've been here, I'll probably still be here in 10 years.
I live and work in NYC as a JS developer, and I feel like it's a great place to be. The community is strong here and there's a lot of diversity in what people do, technical or not, within the tech community. The amenities are good and I walk to work and honestly the rents are not that bad. Manhattan is the most expensive, but if you want to save money Brooklyn, Queens, NJ, etc. are cheaper and all linked by (mostly working) public transit. One of the biggest factors keeping me here is the public transit and the fact that I don't need to drive and sit in traffic.
I live in SV and have friends in NYC. The sense we get is that NYers, and especially those in NY media, take some joy in negative news about SV. It could be because Wall Street (and NY law/consulting/ad firms) used to be the most-coveted jobs for high-performing young people, and then SV rose up as an uber-desirable career destination.
NYC. Ticks off all but the last two. But salaries are more than high enough to make up for the high rent - especially if you’re willing to make some compromises about living by an urban rather than a suburban standard.
I love it here. There’s a great tech scene and tons of career opportunity without the pathological monoculture of SV.
You most definitely don’t need a car, though if our current elected officials have anything to say about it, 5 years from now the subways will stop working entirely and the city will come to a standstill because there is quite literally not enough road space for everyone to travel by car.
That last bit (plus, yes, the insane US approach to health care) is why I’m looking into getting out of the city; but in the meantime it’s a surprisingly good place to build a career and save a bit of money.
I think it's for the career opportunities - there's a huge density of jobs in NYC and a diverse collection of industries. You can job hop and ratchet up your salary if you network and manage yourself well. You can do all this without moving because of the density and transit options. It's really quite rare to be able to do that.
As someone living in SF I’ve been seriously eyeing NYC for a while now. It just seems like an overall better city.
The roads are better, the people seem more varied, there’s even more things to do outside work, there are seasons (god I miss weather), and the tech scene is probably almost as strong.
But are there many startups? It almost seems these days more startups are coming out of Europe than out of NYC.
Yup, this describes NYC pretty well.
If you are in the HN crowd, and moved to a hood you consider desirable with a good commute to where our offices are..
You can have friends nearby if you make them after you move in and are happy with a social circle comprised of people almost entirely in the same field, with a few trust funders mixed in.
If you live in an older hood like UWS/UES there will also be some old timers mixed in who bought/secured a lease in the 80s~90s and maybe from other fields. Or more often than not, they are lawyers and doctors or other high paying but not-quite banking/consulting/software.
Growing up outside the city, my friends dads were, in no particular order - teacher, principal, engineer, auto mechanic, IT, roofer, etc.
Living in NYC with children and we have a very comfortable lifestyle. We live in Astoria, Queens, which is just a short (25mins) subway ride to where I work in midtown. I don't believe anyone in their right mind, in our profession, will be living in Manhattan with children. (certainly no technologist that I know of, and I have met dozens throughout the years). But the big advantage is that, as others mentioned, you can live nearby in Queens or Brooklyn, (or NJ/Long Island) and be within a very short commute to work. Rents will be a lot cheaper - we pay 1,600$/mth for a large two bedroom which is actually an entire floor of a house. I have to admit we were lucky there - but there are enough options if you do a proper search.
There are a lot of tech events in the city, and a lot of other kinds of events and conferences. But the biggest draw factor for me when moving to NYC was the sheer number of companies that are packed together in a relatively small space. This is truly heaven for a technologist who is consulting, because you will have business constantly - especially if you are on top of your game; I can attest that you can make and save a lot of money like that. There are a lot of full-time jobs as well, some which pay well and are 9-5, others that require more hours and pay a lot, particularly in the finance sector. Be careful with startups that require a lot of hours and don't pay particularly well though - you won't get a good deal by working for one in NYC, due to how they compare to all other options I mentioned.
Finally, the other cool thing here if you are looking to start your own company, is that you can meet people to partner with - again due to the large number of people within the area.
I consistently meet people in their late 20's and early 30's who are serious players in a wide variety of business and artistic endeavors. I don't have to go more than one degree of separation to find someone at the top of any field. I know less entrepreneurs here than in SV, but the cross-pollination in NYC is a big deal.
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